B.F.A. alumna McCallum leads printmaking and glass works at OSU’s Craft Center
Aspen McCallum
By Jessica Krueger, CLA Student Writer - December 29, 2025
If you’ve ever been to Oregon State University’s Craft Center in the basement of the Student Experience Center, there’s a good chance you’ve met Aspen McCallum, ‘25.
A versatile artist who specializes in printmaking, McCallum graduated from OSU with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a minor in art history.
During their undergraduate degree, McCallum spent much of their time at the Craft Center, where they worked as a tech to help other students navigate the vast and eclectic art studio. After graduation, McCallum became an official instructor, teaching classes in stained glass and printmaking.
“Surprisingly, I get a lot of engineering students over there and I’m glad,” McCallum said. “I think it’s very important to have some sort of creative outlet.”
McCallum’s other job is at Living Studios, an art studio for neurodiverse adults with locations in Corvallis and Salem. At Living Studios, McCallum provides artists with the tools they need to explore different mediums of art. The goal is not to teach a certain way of creating art, McCallum explained, but to foster a supportive and accessible environment where artists can let their creativity flow.
McCallum’s own art spans the gamut of color, design, and material. McCallum is inspired by the world around them, sometimes by seemingly random things, but also by personal experience and memory. McCallum also likes to incorporate a sense of whimsy or fantasy into their art.
Though McCallum works with a wide range of art materials, they find themselves drawn to printmaking especially. “It’s very meditative," McCallum said.
McCallum begins by carving a design into a block or plate, which can require much forethought and subtractive thinking. After the design is finished, McCallum applies ink to the surface and places it on paper. Then, the finished piece is revealed.
A benefit of printmaking, McCallum explained, is that you can print an image however many times you want. “I have one plate that I made my first year (in Corvallis) and every year I return to it and print it a different way,” McCallum said.
“I really like that about the whole process. You don’t just pull one print and it’s the same. You can move it slightly, you can do a different color, you can do all these things. It’s just these little details within the process that I am really drawn to.”
One of McCallum’s pieces is called “Honesty.” The process for creating it was unique in that McCallum added writing to the piece after the ink had already been applied to the plate, but before it hit paper. The piece was largely unplanned. On a whim, McCallum decided to incorporate a written reflection into a print that they had already been working on. The end result was exhibited and awarded the Cherry Pick award at The Arts Center in Corvallis and later purchased by the College of Liberal Arts.
McCallum always knew they wanted to pursue art. Both of McCallum’s parents are artists, so McCallum was surrounded by art from an early age. Before coming to Oregon State, McCallum lived in Colorado and took art classes at a local community college. After earning an associate’s degree at Front Range Community College, McCallum was ready for something new. They wanted a place where they could continue to advance their skills in art.
The Craft Center played a large role in McCallum’s decision to attend. “I’ve utilized it a lot for my own practice and for networking,” they said, reflecting on their time there. “There’s some really cool people there that I wouldn’t have been connected with otherwise.”
“To be successful in the arts you really need to network, and that was one of my biggest takeaways from OSU,” McCallum said. “I made a lot of really good connections with a lot of my professors.”
One of McCallum’s favorite classes was a photography field course that they took with School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts (SVPDA) faculty Evan Baden. Over the course of eight days, McCallum and other OSU students traveled through much of the Southwestern United States on a roadtrip. The class took photos along the way as Baden taught them useful tips and tricks for better photography.
In the summer of 2024, McCallum studied abroad in Italy with SVPDA faculty Daniele Di Lodovico to study Italian Renaissance art and architecture. Thanks to the Sponenburgh Scholarship, McCallum was able to stay in Italy for an extra week to conduct a research project. For this, McCallum compared and contrasted a sculpture, a painting, and an architectural design that Italian sculptor and painter Michelangelo had created some five hundred years ago. The goal was to determine what defining factors exist in Michelangelo’s artwork. Doing this research, McCallum said, helped them to think about their own artwork in a new light.
“It was an awesome experience to go over there and see firsthand the art that we had been talking about for years,” McCallum said. “It was really nice to apply my knowledge and do it on my own terms.”