ALTON - Local artist Maia Huddleston has created art for NASA. For this month only, you can see her work at Milton Schoolhouse.
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Huddleston is Milton’s September Artist of the Month, and her photography and collages are on display in the building’s main hallway. But while Huddleston is now a Master of Fine Arts student in photography, her journey to photography wasn’t always clear.
“I started in photojournalism, actually, but I was finding that I wanted to create my own artistic style and I wanted to develop my own body of ideas that I could convey visually, and that was something that photojournalism was not specifically conducive to,” Huddleston remembered. “I wanted to be able to tell my own stories and my own opinions.”
Huddleston began taking photos in high school as a member of her school’s yearbook club. After a school shooting rattled the student body, Huddleston was determined to capture those feelings in her photography. Her photojournalism stood out for its raw emotion.
“I fell in love with photography and being able to capture moments that are fleeting, moments that can be taken away,” she explained. “I was learning how to take photographs. I was learning to convey these sort of feelings that students had after the shooting, these feelings of uncertainty and the lack of safety. We were wanting to convey all of those emotions in that year’s yearbook. So that’s when I decided that photography was the right medium for me because I was able to capture all of those feelings and ideas and really make powerful work.”
Her photojournalism propelled her through a stint at her undergraduate university’s newspaper, then an internship with NASA. During the internship, Huddleston created multimedia work to promote NASA’s Psyche mission, which launched in October 2023.
Now enrolled at SIUE as an MFA student in photography, Huddleston’s work focuses on accessibility. She credits the internship for inspiring her to make art with purpose.
“While I was doing that, I kind of fell in love with the idea of art that is made for a purpose and art that has a specific goal in mind, so doing that just kind of made me want to start making my own art in my own way,” she said.
Accessibility has become especially important to Huddleston in recent years. An autism diagnosis encouraged her to take a job working with children with disabilities, where she creates art projects with her preschool students. The experience has been powerful for Huddleston as a neurodivergent person and an artist.
“It's really helping me come into myself and realize more about myself, so that’s been super great,” she said. “It is a big part of me and me as an artist. I think a lot of my work is influenced by neurodivergence and the ability to think visually and the ability to transform a lack of spatial reasoning into compositions that are meaningful to people.”
Altruism is the undercurrent to Huddleston’s story, both during her time as a photojournalist and now as a photographer and teacher. In addition to her schoolwork and freelance projects, she does commercial photography for weddings and senior portraits, and her favorite part is making people feel comfortable in front of the camera.
Looking ahead, she is excited to complete her MFA and share her artwork in more venues like the Milton Schoolhouse. She hopes to continue creating her own work, but it’s equally important to her to help other artists.
“I would like to teach art and make art, and I will do that by whatever means possible,” she said. “Whatever is going to get me to a spot where I can mentor other artists and I can develop my own art.”
You can follow Huddleston’s career at her official Instagram profile and Facebook page. To schedule a photography session or inquire about her work, email maiahud@gmail.com.
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