BIO:

Caitlin Rhea received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 2011. Prior to graduate school, Rhea also attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics with a minor in Art History in 2006.

Immediately after receiving her MFA, Caitlin spent four years as an adjunct professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts. At FSU, she taught a required course for elementary education majors, “Image, Sound, and Structure”, as well as split-level Ceramics courses. For ten consecutive summer seasons, Caitlin worked as a full-time ceramics studio manager at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill on Cape Cod.

In 2015, Caitlin and her husband Jimmy moved to Pensacola, FL where she spent two years teaching art and art history at Pensacola State College, until 2017 when she became the Executive Director at the First City Art Center, a growing non-profit arts organization. After four and a half years, she made the bittersweet decision to resign in 2021, in order to re-focus on her love for education. Caitlin currently works for the University of West Florida Historic Trust at the Pensacola Museum of Art. At the PMA, she is the Curator of Education and Public Programs, and continues to teach Art Appreciation online courses for UWF.

Caitlin Rhea’s artwork responds to a wide variety of water issues - from water quality, including filtration and purification processes, to water flow patterns, to ocean acidification and its effect on shellfish and corals. Caitlin channels her research toward the improvement of water issues, primarily through the creation of objects that signify the need for environmental remediation.