Aaron Seriff-Cullick

Biography

Aaron Seriff-Cullick is an artist, writer, and baker from Austin, Texas. He received his BA in Photography from Yale University in 2013, and will graduate with an MFA in Visual Art from SMFA/Tufts in May 2026. Aaron uses writing and drawing as part of a daily practice of introspection, and pursues larger expressive projects in photography, sculpture, and performance. His work explores the human condition and the nature of the self, through an ever-evolving study of the body’s multifaceted existence as material, symbol, consumer, vessel, verb, and surface. Aaron was the founder and owner of Paper Route Bakery in Austin, Texas, which ran from 2016 to 2023 and was ranked by Yelp the #1 Best Place to Eat in Texas in 2022. 

Artist Statement

I am not a potato.

I’m not really any type of tuber, as it turns out. I have ten fingers and ten toes and I breathe. All day long and all night long, I breathe breathe breathe. What am I supposed to do with that?

And so, I make art.

I keep a daily practice of automatic drawing, and over time my sketchbook comes to contain parts of my psyche that I don’t understand yet. It’s good for the phantoms to take up space in my notebook, outside the scrutiny of logic or resolution.

Sometimes something emerges on the page or in the clay or through the viewfinder, and that something is as big as I am. Bigger, even! It begins to breathe its own breath. It grows up and demands to live its own life, apart from me. I do my best to raise it. I treat the image with care, curiosity, discipline, and labor, and I let it smile. I let it ache. I let it scream.

My hope is that the art I make may one day take its own steps into the world… that it may tell someone the truth, or provide a shoulder to cry on, a pair of friendly eyes in the fog. To be completely honest, I hope that it comes home one day, to take care of me in my old age. 

I love the smell of pine sap, and the sound of running water. My teeth itch at night. Even if I grew a tail, I like to think I’d still sing in the shower. 

Potato is as potato does, you know?

Instagram: @freshprinceofbelaaron