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WIU alum Tyanna Buie turned her time at WIU into a nationally recognized career in art and now works at the Rhode Island School of Design.
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One of Buie's works is found in the in the University Union's Chicago Room.
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Buie Turns Opportunity at WIU Into Success

January 21, 2026

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MACOMB, IL - - From foster care to nationally recognized artist and professor, Tyanna Buie's journey is a story of resilience, creativity and discovering what's possible when opportunity meets support. Western Illinois University wasn't just where Buie earned a degree; it was where she found belonging and the freedom to become herself.

"College was the time I got to sit still and choose my own path," Buie said. "I really got to make the experience my own. It was a time of personal and professional transformation; I became myself. I felt emancipated from the system."

Buie, a 2006 WIU alumna, has featured in solo exhibitions and residencies across the country. Her work has included installments at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Detroit Institute of Arts and Russell Sage College in New York. Now she continues her work while serving as an associate professor and graduate program director in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.

To hear Buie tell it, the tale is one of hard work and determination, something she honed at WIU.

"It's a story of, ‘I learned as I went," Buie said.

Buie's story started on the south side of Chicago, but growing up in the foster care system she moved between Milwaukee and Chicago throughout her childhood. Buie had goals of being a first-generation college student and credits her latter foster home for giving her the tools to find a place.

"He is a pastor and they valued scholarly experiences and education," Buie said. "That shaped the person I wanted to be as an adult."

She tagged along with a friend on a road trip to go visit public universities around Illinois, which eventually led her to WIU.

"I was a first-generation college student and wanted to follow my own path," Buie said. "I didn't know much about Western. There was something about it; the trees were beautiful; the colors were gorgeous; it felt right. It felt almost magical. When I visited the other schools, it didn't feel the same. That feeling lingers all these years later."

Buie wanted to be a graphic designer and immediately wanted to join the WIU Art program. She quickly found community and made lifelong friendships, something she said was difficult to do while growing up in foster care.

Coming to college opened up Buie's world view, and a sense of what was possible. She said WIU excelled and helped her meet new people from all different backgrounds who all had the same educational goals, in turn building her leadership abilities and work ethic.

That freedom gave Buie the opportunity to express herself as an individual and as an artist. Buie used these experiences to blossom as an artist at WIU, spending many nights inside Garwood Hall, which she referred to as a second home.

Following WIU, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning the 2012 Mary L. Nohl Fellowship, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Love of Humanity Award, the 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant, the 2019 Kresge Artist Fellowship, the 2019–2020 Grant Wood Fellowship in Printmaking at the University of Iowa.

Her work is held in private and public collections nationally and internationally and has been featured in Hyperallergic, Newcity Art, The Chicago Reader, Essay'd and New American Paintings (Issue No. 155) and right here on WIU's campus.

"I always give credit to schools like Western who aren't in a metropolitan area," Buie said. "There is a benefit to being in a school that is more rural because there is time and there is space. As an artist, that's what you need."

For Buie, Western was the place where opportunity truly happened, and where a lifelong path began.

For more information on WIU's Art program, visit wiu.edu/Art.

Posted By: Aaron Viner (AP-Viner@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing