Sam Shamard is a mixed Mexican American artist originally from Austin, Texas. She received her MFA at Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina, where she has received multiple awards, grants, and scholarships, including the Cecelia Voelker Award in Graduate Art History. Sam pursued her BFA in Art Education at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (UMHB), during which she also studied at Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy. She went on to graduate summa cum lade with published research from UMHB in 2018. Before attending graduate school, Sam worked as a middle school art teacher on the Fort Hood Military Base in Central Texas.  Sam was a 2023 Penland Winter Fellow, and her work will be exhibited at Mason Gallery, and in the National Juried Student Show at DAAP galleries in Cincinnati, Ohio this spring. 

She is currently focused on making slip-cast ceramic assemblages and wallpaper-adorned altars that explore divisions of space and identity. Drawing on blurred histories and icons from southern suburbia and Latinx culture, her works situate the dynamic intersection of mixed-race identity in contemporary culture