Current Exhibition: Spring 2026 CFCC Student Art Exhibition

Dates: March 9 – May 1, 2026

Reception: 6-9pm Friday, March 27, 2026

Wilma W. Daniels Gallery and Cape Fear Community College is proud to present the 2026 Student Art Exhibition, showcasing the artistic vision and creative inquiry of current CFCC students from across the college. This annual exhibition celebrates the emerging voices of a new generation of artists growing and learning within the Wilmington art community.

Featuring work across a wide range of media—including ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, painting, digital design, and more—the exhibition brings together works created at a pivotal moment in each artist’s development. These pieces reflect experimentation, technical exploration, and the ongoing process of translating personal ideas into visual form. Viewers are invited to engage not only with the finished artworks, but also with the ideas, revisions, and questions that shaped them.

Thematically, the works move between the serious and the playful, the personal and the shared. Together, they reveal how student artists navigate curiosity and discovery while absorbing new artistic practices and perspectives. Whether studying within the Commercial, Fine, and Performing Arts Department or other areas of CFCC, each artist contributes a distinct voice and approach to their creative practice.

This exhibition affirms art as a space of inquiry, growth, and possibility. As a collective presentation of CFCC students, it highlights the value of emerging voices and honors the persistence and imagination required to make work and share it with others.

2026 CFCC Student Art Exhibition Awardees:

Best in Show

  • Hold Me, Riley Wood

Ceramics

  1. Fall, Emilia Michelsen
  2. Coral Planet Series, Kaili Renee
  3. Hand, Addison Hockaday

Digital Media

  1. For the Birds, Matt Allegretto
  2. REDRUM, Amanda Sullivan

Drawing

  1. Fish Market, Addison Hockaday
  2. Pierrot, Ethan Helms
  3. High Rise, Addison Brown

Mixed media

  1. Echo of a Hummingbird, Hyke Taylor
  2. Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Abigail Miguel Velazco
  3. Fred, Alycia Maldonado

Painting

  1. Sprout, Saion Stuckes
  2. Submergence, Stella Millard
  3. Corner Pocket, Breanna Atkins

Photography

  1. At a Glacial Pace, Charlotte Fuchs
  2. Alive, Hai Nguyen
  3. Bad Words, Becky Filer

Printmaking

  1. Children With A Side of Grits, Please!, Abigail Huerta
  2. Crabber-Fly, Anabelle Puttbach
  3. Nautical Night, Patricia de la Sota

Sculpture 

  1. Floral Box, Hyke Taylor
  2. Pelican, Doug Ramsey
  3. Agree to Disagree, Sarah Haltzer

Two-Dimensional Design

  1. Don’t Resent A Hare, Audrey Upchurch
  2. Miss Independent, Makayla Morgan
  3. Phosphenes, Abigail Huerta

About our Invited Guest Juror for the 2026 CFCC Student Art Exhibition:

Madison Creech is the co-founder of Fried Fruit Art Space in Wilmington, North Carolina as well as an assistant professor of Art and Art History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She specializes in graphic design, digital illustration, and pattern and printed textiles. She holds an MFA in fibers from Arizona State University and a BFA and BS in textile, merchandising, and fashion design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has served as faculty associate at Arizona State University, instructing surface design and served as Visiting Assistant Professor and the Brown Visiting Teacher-Scholar at Stetson University teaching digital art and textile art courses. Creech was the 2018-19 Fountainhead Fellow in the Department of Craft and Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

A word from Madison Creech: 

“In my own practice curating exhibitions for Fried Fruit Art Space, I lean towards artists who are experimenting within their medium and step out of traditional expectations. I’m drawn to art that is vulnerable and personal, as well as artwork that teaches me something or makes me think. 

Choosing among the student work in this exhibition was an extremely difficult task. Across the show, I was struck by recurring themes of storytelling through personal reflection, alongside compositional and material exploration. I was especially taken with Hold Me by Riley Wood for Best in Show, which stood out for its vulnerability and its quiet portrayal of sadness and self-soothing, a feeling that we are all familiar with. 

I’m especially excited to see young artists honing their craft and pushing the limits of what they can accomplish with their own creativity. At any stage of an artist’s career, especially in the beginning, it is important to take risks, be brave, and share your artwork publicly. You never know what conversations your artwork will facilitate or what new connection or inspiration that will propel your artistic practice forward.”

Artist Talks to come soon!




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