Aspen Mays
Visiting Professor
Spring 2027

Aspen Mays is an artist whose work investigates photography’s relationship to science, chance, and material transformation. In 2010, Mays was a Fulbright Scholar in Santiago, Chile, where she spent time with astrophysicists using the world’s most advanced telescopes to look at the sky. Her publication, Where We've Been, Where We're Going, Why?, was shortlisted for the First Photobook Award by the Aperture Foundation in 2016. She took part in the inaugural cohort (2022-2024) of Unseen California, a research initiative inviting artists to engage with the Nature Reserve System of the University of California. Mays is a 2026-2027 Guggenheim Fellow. Honors also include an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in 2021 and a Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida in 2025. Her work has been written about in Art Forum, Aperture, Foam, The New Yorker and the New York Times. She is the spring quarter visiting professor in The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies.