Currency

Page 1

CURRENCY

SAN FRANCISCO AR T I N S T I T U T E

R201#


SAN FR ANCISCO ART INSTITUTE 2013 GR ADUATE PROGR AMS

© 2013 San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco, CA 94133 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-930495-03-9 

Charles Desmarais, President Janette Andrawes, Director of Marketing Cynthia Colebrook, Vice President for Institutional Advancement Elizabeth O’Brien, Vice President for Enrollment Jennifer Rissler, Acting Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs Espi Sanjana, Chief Operating Officer 

Claire Daigle, Faculty Director of MA Programs Tony Labat, Faculty Director of MFA Programs Claire Daigle and Allan deSouza, Co-Directors of Low-Residency Graduate Program Zeina Barakeh, Director of Graduate Administration Ian Kimmerly, Director of Graduate Operations Vera Kachouh, Graduate Administration Manager Milton Freitas Gouveia, Graduate Studio Operations Manager Kedar Lawrence, Graduate Studio Evening Coordinator

Admissions 415.749.4500 admissions@sfai.edu


TABLE OF CONTENTS Message from Charles Desmarais, President

5

Message from Jennifer Rissler, Acting Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs

6

History of the San Francisco Art Institute

8

Graduate Programs

10

MASTER OF FINE ARTS / ARTIST PAGES 

“The Granite Lady” Tony Labat, Faculty Director of MFA Programs

19

Graduating MFA Artists

20

MASTER OF ARTS / THESIS PROJECTS 

“The List”

108

Claire Daigle, Faculty Director of MA Programs and Co-Director of Low-Residency Graduate Program Graduating MA Scholars MA Collaborative Projects

110 126

SELECTED PROJECTS 

No Reservations Art

132

International Projects and Exhibitions

134

Local Projects and Exhibitions

137 145

Art Competitions and Awards

ON-CAMPUS EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS 

Return to SFAI Alumni Celebration + Winter Art Festival

150

Swell Gallery

152

Diego Rivera Gallery

154

Walter and McBean Galleries

156

Lecture Series

158

Remembering Carlos Villa, 1936–2013

160

Graduate Program Faculty

162

Board of Trustees

170

Acknowledgements

171


SFAI entrance Photographed by Trevor Hacker


MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT There are many connotations of the word

It is the currency of ideas in which these artists

Currency that are appropriate to an emerging

trade, and as they leave the Institute into a world

artists exhibition, “the state of being current”

driven by competition and profit, they bring

prime among them. But, of course, at a time

with them the most valuable assets any creative

when many sectors of society are reflecting upon

person could amass: experimental yet intentional

national economic conditions, an art exhibition

approaches to making and interpreting culture;

at the Old Mint brings first to mind the sense of

inventive attitudes to problem-solving; indepen-

“a medium of exchange.”

dence of thought.

This monumental site provides artists of the

One important thing about Currency is that it is

San Francisco Art Institute a unique opportunity

not a student exhibition, with the amateur quali-

to juxtapose contemporary expression with

ties that the term connotes, but rather the launch

a National Historic Landmark that was central

of professional artists and visual scholars into

to the country’s economic development.

their fields. The work of an SFAI graduate stands

Constructed around the same time as SFAI’s

up to that found in any gallery in San Francisco,

beginnings in 1871, the Old Mint has a past

nationally, or internationally, and in fact occu-

both glittering and gritty: At one point its vaults

pies the leading edge in art practices, as has so

held a third of the United States’ gold reserves

often been the case throughout this institution’s

($300 million, or $6 billion adjusted for

celebrated history.

inflation), and as a survivor of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fires, it played a pivotal

As you explore the exhibition and these pages,

role in San Francisco’s reconstruction.

I invite you to reflect on the ideas being exchanged and circulated; the richness of San

A symbol found on the old vault doors, the

Francisco’s artistic community, in which SFAI is

United States initials formed into a dollar sign,

proud to play a vital role; and the worth, measur-

says much about our nation’s economic strength,

able or not, of art in your life.

but also its international hegemony. It became the exhibition logo.

Now, if you’ll pardon the pun—congratulations to the newly minted Master of Fine Arts and

The contemporary art world has a twinned

Master of Arts graduates, and may your SFAI

fascination and revulsion around the commodi-

education serve as invaluable currency in the

fication of art, from Andy Warhol’s dollar-sign

adventures ahead.

screen paintings to reports of record-breaking auction prices to the explosion (and bemoaning) of art fairs. SFAI presents this exhibition with full knowledge of the market’s crucial role in supporting the activities of the art world—but

Charles Desmarais

also with the expectation that its daring artists will bring a sense of irony and subversion to the proceedings, and offer compelling evidence of the higher, distinctly non-monetary value of artistic practice. 5


MESSAGE FROM THE AC TING DE AN AND VICE PRESIDENT FOR AC ADE MIC AFFAIRS In his seminal 1998 Artforum article, “Surf and

perhaps it is because this institution’s strong

Turf,” author Andrew Hultkrans outlined what,

community—and stellar legacy—generates a

from his perspective, persuaded a then-record

collective, aspirational vision of all that art can

number of MFA candidates to enroll in two

be and accomplish.

particular Southern California art schools— Art Center College of Design and UCLA. Many

The work in Currency illustrates the invaluable

of his assertions still resonate today, 15 years

nature of these transactions, interactions, and

later. First among them is a belief that the faculty

relationships. Within this network, all of our

makes a school and shapes its pedagogy as

emerging artists and scholars have created their

“artist-professors.”

own artistic path in the independent spirit of SFAI, understanding that individual choice has as

I cannot help but insert into Hultkrans’ narrative

much to do with success as community engage-

SFAI’s important role in educating emerging

ment or geography. It is no surprise, then, that

artists. SFAI’s faculty members, who are all active

the choice of the Old Mint building for SFAI’s

creative practitioners, prepare student-artists for

annual Vernissage is characteristically unortho-

entry into a complex and increasingly networked

dox. It presents real challenges to the exhibitors

art world. Too often San Francisco suffers under

and asks them to consider site and context and

the weight of its own provinciality, yet SFAI con-

all of the complex decision-making associated

tinues to provide its students with a rigorous

with such a venue. Yet, I am confident in their

education and real training for life as practicing

ability to transcend expectations—their faculty

artists or visual scholars. Perhaps it is because

and I would expect nothing less.

SFAI’s distance from the major art markets allows for the freedom to experiment (and sometimes fail). Perhaps it is the encouragement of risktaking that characterizes the Bay Area in general and informs our pedagogy. Above all,

Jennifer Rissler


SFAI Graduate Center Photographed by Joshua Band

7


HISTORY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE For more than 140 years, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) has been a magnet for adventurous artists, and its groundbreaking history encompasses some of the most important art movements of the last century. Standing at the forefront of higher education in contemporary art, SFAI embodies and nurtures a spirit of experimentation, risk-taking, and progressive thinking. 

NEW PROGRAMS AND NEW QUESTIONS

SFAI was founded in 1871 by artists, writers, and

community leaders who possessed a cultural

After World War II, the school became a nucleus

vision for the West. Built out of a pioneering

for Abstract Expressionist painting, with faculty

history, San Francisco was cosmopolitan yet

including Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Roth-

removed from the centers of Europe and New

ko, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Clay Spohn.

York, and poised to become a hub of creativity

In 1946, Ansel Adams and Minor White estab-

and cultural development.

lished the first fine art photography department

BEGINNINGS

in the United States, with Imogen Cunningham, In 1874, the San Francisco Art Association

Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange among

launched The California School of Design, which

its instructors. In 1947, distinguished filmmaker

was renamed California School of Fine Arts

Sydney Peterson began the first film courses at

(CSFA) in 1916 and then the San Francisco Art

CSFA, positioning the school as the epicenter of

Institute in 1961. During its first 60 years, influ-

avant-garde film. In this spirit of advancement, in

ential artists associated with the school included

1949 CSFA Director Douglas McAgy organized

Eadweard Muybridge, photographer and pio-

The Western Roundtable on Modern Art, which

neer of motion graphics; Henry Kiyama, whose

included Marcel Duchamp and Frank Lloyd

Four Immigrants Manga was the first graphic

Wright, to frame new questions about art.

novel published in the United States; Sargent Claude Johnson, one of the first African-Ameri(Above Right) View of the California School of Fine Arts

can artists from California to achieve a national reputation; and Louise Dahl-Wolfe, whose work

c. 1939

for Harper’s Bazaar defined a new American

Photographed by Ansel Adams

style of “environmental” fashion photography. In

Co-Ed Life Drawing Class

1930, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera arrived

c. 1908

in San Francisco to paint a fresco at the school’s

Photographed by Gabriel Moulin

new campus on Chestnut Street.


BEATS, JAZZ, AND FUNK

ART IN THE STREETS

By the early 1950s, San Francisco’s North

Since the 1990s, the studio and classroom have

Beach was the West Coast center of the Beat

become increasingly connected to the world via

Movement, and music, poetry, and discourse

public art and community actions. As students

were an intrinsic part of artists’ lives. A distinctly

at SFAI, Barry McGee, Aaron Noble, and Rigo

Californian modern art soon emerged that fused

23 were part of the movement known as the

abstraction, figuration, narrative, and jazz. CSFA

Mission School, taking their graffiti-inspired art

faculty Park, Bischoff, James Weeks, and Richard

to the streets and walls of the city. Organizations

Diebenkorn became the leaders of the Bay Area

like Artists’ Television Access and Root Division,

Figurative Movement. Students at the school,

founded by alumni, and SFAI’s current City

including William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson,

Studio program, engage and educate local com-

William Allan, Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, Carlos

munities and cultivate a vital artistic ecosystem.

Villa, and Wally Hedrick, continued the investigations, becoming the core of the Funk Movement.

RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS 

HYBRIDS, MUTANTS, AND ROBOTS

SFAI faculty, students, and alumni continue to

investigate and further define contemporary

Renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961,

art and the role of artists in today’s global

the school was at the vanguard of an expanded

society. Their accomplishments can be found

vocabulary of art-making that was a hybrid of

in museums and galleries around the world, in

many practices including performance, new

bookstores and movie theaters, online, in the

media, graphic arts, and political and social

civic sphere, and elsewhere: from Annie Leibovitz

documentary. Among the students in the late

at the Smithsonian to Barry McGee at the UC

1960s were photographer Annie Leibovitz,

Berkeley Art Museum to Kehinde Wiley at the

performance artist Paul McCarthy, and Charles

Contemporary Jewish Museum; from Kathryn

Bigelow, who would be among the first typog-

Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty to

raphers to design fonts for computers. Alumni

Laura Poitras’s MacArthur Foundation “genius

Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones were

grant” for her “elegant and illuminating docu-

documenting the early days of the Black Panther

mentaries;” from the participation of graduate

Party in northern California.

artists in the 11th Havana Biennial to Blaze Gonzalez and Jordan Dozzi’s community

Installation art, conceptual art, video, music,

development work in Bangladesh through Davis

and social activism continued to inform much

Projects for Peace; from Carissa Potter Carlson

of the work of faculty and students in the 1970s

and Luca Nino Antonucci’s venture Edicola,

and ’80s, including George Kuchar, Gunvor

selling artists’ books and newspapers out of

Nelson, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Angela Davis,

a former San Francisco Chronicle kiosk on

Kathy Acker, Robert Colescott, and Karen Finley.

Market Street, to the digital, interactive instal-

The school became a hub for the Punk music

lations and performances at the annual Design

scene, with bands The Mutants, The Avengers,

and Technology Salon.

and Romeo Void all started by SFAI students. Technology also became a part of art practice,

Building on this tradition of excellence and

Jay DeFeo's The Rose in

as with Survival Research Laboratory, founded by

innovation, SFAI remains committed to educating

SFAI's McMillan Conference Room

student Mark Pauline, which staged large-scale

artists who will shape the future of art, culture,

performances of ritualized interactions among

and society.

machines, robots, and pyrotechnics.

1973 Photographer unknown George Kuchar in Studio 8 c. 1977 Photographer unknown

9


The opening of Emergency Exit Only in the Swell Gallery Photographed by Elisabeth Atjay (Opposite) Studio of Hanhan Zhang


GRADUATE PROGRAMS

11


MASTER OF FINE ARTS (MFA) The Master of Fine Arts program provides a compelling interdisciplinary context for emerging artists to develop and refine their work while engaging the historical, theoretical, sociopolitical, and creative concerns of the contemporary

Bay Area, a hub of technological innovation— students move beyond the screen into realms of installation, interactive sculpture, sound, electronics, mixed media, and systems and networks. The program is oriented toward broad research strategies that are collaborative and forward looking, bringing together the ideas we live by and the things we live with.

moment. Founded on the principle that critical inquiry and experimentation are at the forefront of contemporary art-making, the program en-

FILM 

courages students to use their own questioning

A pioneering presence in experimental film, SFAI

to generate a sustained and vital creative prac-

continues to value the medium’s possibilities for

tice. The program emphasizes the integration of

individual expression across genres and formats.

both formal and conceptual aspects of produc-

Students develop understanding and ability

tion, while incorporating new technologies as

within the existing film world, but also push the

tools for innovation.

boundaries of the medium by integrating new technologies, exploring alternative contexts of

In addition to maintaining an independent studio

production and distribution, and rethinking re-

practice, students work one-on-one with faculty

lationships between film and other media. Film-

in graduate tutorials; participate in small, discus-

makers are able to pursue various approaches—

sion-based critique seminars; engage with local

narrative, abstract, experimental, documentary,

and international visiting artists and scholars;

commercially based—as well as work with film in

participate in student-led collaborations, collec-

fine art contexts such as site-specific installation.

tives, exhibitions, and curatorial initiatives; and

The program culminates with a public screen-

take critical studies and art history seminars. This

ing that introduces Bay Area audiences to these

cross-disciplinary curriculum prepares students

compelling new filmmakers.

for the demands of art-making in the globalized 21st century. The culmination of the MFA degree is the MFA

NEW GENRES 

Exhibition, which is celebrated for its intellectual

SFAI’s New Genres program has its roots in

rigor and diverse, cutting-edge creative output.

the major conceptual and disciplinary shifts in art during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Studio of Allie Blanchard

Expanding upon the art-historical lineage for the traditional use of a given media, New Genres

references the rich and more recent history of

This program views technology as a platform for

investigational contemporary art that includes

creating works of art and design, focusing on its

Fluxus, Chris Burden, and Marina Abramovic,

potential for innovative application and to com-

as well as SFAI alumni Jason Rhoades, Karen

municate meaning. Students who enter SFAI with

Finley, Paul Kos, and Tony Labat, among many

disciplinary interests including graphic design,

others. New Genres artists often work in video,

web design, interaction design, humanities, and

performance, and intervention, but the practice

science ultimately develop a conceptually driven

of New Genres transcends specific media—

art and design practice that is both experimental

for each project, the concept, intention, and

and experiential. Working at the intersection of

meaning drive the form of expression, making

studio and academic disciplines—and within the

the idea the material from which the art is made.


PAINTING

PRINTMAKING

The Painting program is dynamically situated

SFAI’s Printmaking program challenges artists

between a legacy of important artists and move-

to use processes creatively to translate ideas into

ments that have been based at SFAI and the wide

print. The facilities are equipped for lithography,

range of possibilities available to contemporary

intaglio, screen printing, letterpress, and relief,

painters. Students work to visually articulate

as well as digital printing and the making of

their technical, formal, aesthetic, narrative, and

artists’ books. Artists may work with centuries-

emotional concerns, and are challenged to push

old techniques or new technologies, choosing

the physical and conceptual limits of the painting

between—or mixing—the traditional and experi-

medium. The diversity of practices and the flex-

mental applications of these media. While some

ible structure of the curriculum foster honest and

SFAI artists become master printers, many build

intensive interaction with faculty and peers, while

off the rigor, art, and science of printmaking to

the Winifred Johnson Clive Fellowship for Inter-

utilize the medium in unexpected ways that cross

disciplinary Painting Practices offers students an

disciplines, explore concepts of multiplicity, or

unmatched level of engagement with internation-

question the nature of reproduction.

ally recognized contemporary painters.

PHOTOGRAPHY

SCULPTURE/CERAMICS 

SFAI’s Sculpture/Ceramics program hinges on

The artists involved in the creation of the SFAI

the interplay of the material and the conceptual,

Photography Department—Ansel Adams, Minor

emphasizing investigation, critical thinking, and

White, Dorothea Lange—are the most noted

problem solving as central components of artis-

in photography’s history, and the program still

tic development. The program offers facilities for

carries their legacy of fine art practice engaged

work in ceramics, wood, metal, plaster, fabric,

with environmental and societal conditions.

and electronics, while also encouraging inter-

Understanding that the visual language of pho-

disciplinary experimentation and site-specific

tography is central to the contemporary world,

strategies. The program has a unique emphasis

SFAI’s program addresses photographs both

on systems and environments—sculpture as

as formal objects and as modes of communica-

informed by urban studies, sustainability,

tion, documentation, expression, and critique.

ecology, architecture, public art, and activism—

Students may work in analog or digital formats,

through which artistic practice becomes a model

considering what traditional methods offer

for social engagement.

unexplored potential, as well as how emerging technologies are shaping 21st century imagemaking. Questions of scale, installation, and performative or interactive possibilities are also important parts of the conversations around this evolving medium.

13


MASTER OF ARTS (MA) SFAI’s Master of Arts program asks students to

HISTORY AND THEORY OF CONTEMPORARY ART (HTCA) 

think critically and curiously about art’s place

Emphasizing critical thinking and writing, this

in the world. How do ingrained conditions and

program provides students with an in-depth un-

institutions explicitly and implicitly influence

derstanding of the discourses surrounding global

artistic production? What power does art hold as

contemporary art and culture, and how these

a tool for social and political change? What are

inform the production, exhibition, and interpre-

the values of working to coincide artistic forms

tation of art today. Students are exposed to a

of knowledge with other modes of knowledge

variety of models for analysis, and the curriculum

production? While the MA program prepares

addresses complex issues such as the influence

students to work within established fields as

of media and notions of reproducibility; the role

scholars, critics, and curators, it also encourages

of the artist as social researcher, interventionist,

students to be iconoclastic thinkers who imagine

or activist; the influence of globalization; ques-

possibilities outside of these defined roles and

tions of authorship and appropriation; the legacy

systems, and have the confidence to instigate and

and currency of feminism; and the lineage of

face change.

modernism and postmodernism.

Unique and essential to SFAI’s MA program

Students may also pursue the MA degree in

is its integration into a fine art school. MA

HTCA through the Dual Degree MA/MFA

scholars pursue their academic disciplines in a

program.

laboratory of contemporary art, taking classes alongside, and often working directly with, MFA artists. Exhibitions, public programs, practicum opportunities, and SFAI’s unique dual capstone requirement—an individual written thesis as well as a multifaceted collaborative project—allow MA students to further intertwine academic research and real-world experiences.

URBAN STUDIES (US) 

Poised at the forefront of socially conscious art movements, SFAI’s Urban Studies program addresses the contributions of art, artists, and researchers to the urban domain. The program emerged in response to pressing issues of

EXHIBITION AND MUSEUM STUDIES (EMS) 

The shifting role of art in a broader culture of spectacle poses increasing challenges for artists, theorists, curators, and institutions. Museums and exhibition sites are not only spaces for collecting and displaying objects—they now encompass alternative experiences and environments, and serve as laboratories for artistic experimentation and intervention in the public sphere. More expansive than a curatorial program and international in scope, Exhibition and Museum Studies considers how social, economic, politiStudio of David Janesko (Opposite) Studio of Alfred Vidaurri III

cal, and cultural contexts affect art production and presentation, and how exhibitions hold the potential to redefine contemporary art.

contemporary life (increasing urban populations, inequality, migration, new cultural geographies, the politics of space and the built environment, questions of sustainability, and the effects of a global economy), all of which are radically transforming cities worldwide. Approaching these issues from a fine arts perspective, Urban Studies at SFAI encourages students to develop a synergy between academic and applied practice, creating work that directly engages the urban environment.


DUAL DEGREE MA/MFA

create a comprehensive studio- and research-

The Dual Degree MA/MFA recognizes that the

Summer and Winter Reviews in San Francisco

contemporary moment requires artists who can respond to the world from multiple perspectives and who are equipped to engage the politi-

based curriculum. Students participate in each year, discussing and critiquing their work with faculty and colleagues in the program. The program culminates with the MFA Exhibition.

cal, theoretical, historical, social, and creative spheres in equal measure. A three-year program, the Dual Degree MA/ MFA consists of: • An MA in the History and Theory of Contemporary Art • An MFA from a studio discipline (Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photog-

POST-BACCALAUREATE CERTIFICATE The Post-Baccalaureate program is a one-year, full-time course of study that gives artists the opportunity to strengthen creative work through

raphy, Printmaking, or Sculpture/Ceramics)

studio practice and critical engagement. The

This unique course of study allows students to

develop their body of work for admission to a

synthesize the artistic and intellectual facets of their creative work, and cultivate a large portfolio of tools as cultural producers. The culmination of the program is participation in the MFA Exhibition after the second year, and the completion of a written thesis, as well as a Collaborative Project, by the end of the third year.

program is ideally suited for artists looking to graduate MFA program and positions artists for future success by providing a rigorous yet supportive environment. The studio is the heart of the Post-Baccalaureate program, and artists have access to individual and shared spaces in SFAI’s Graduate Center, as well as to extensive facilities and resources at the historic Chestnut Street campus. Immersed in a

LOW-RESIDENCY MASTER OF FINE ARTS (MFA)

tight-knit community of artists who are challeng-

SFAI’s Low-Residency MFA program offers the

structure of the program can be personalized

rigor and artistic community of the full-time program, in a flexible format ideally suited for artists, teachers, and other art professionals who wish to develop and refine their work without sacrificing a professional career or commitment.

ing the boundaries of contemporary art, PostBaccalaureate students have the opportunity to experiment within a flexible framework, and the based on individual artistic and career goals. Students may apply to the Post-Baccalaureate program in Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, or Sculpture/Ceramics.

Completed over three years, the Low-Residency MFA program allows students to work with SFAI faculty during intensive eight-week summer sessions in San Francisco, and independently— with the guidance of an artist from their home community—during the fall and spring semesters. The summer sessions combine critiques, art history and critical studies seminars, visiting artist lectures, and individualized tutorials to 15


Studio of Ingrid V. Wells (Opposite) Studio of Patti Singer


M ASTER OF FINE ARTS ARTIST PAGES

17


A vault inside the Old Mint Photographed by Trevor Hacker


THE GRANITE LADY Tony Labat Faculty Director of MFA Programs

The exhibition Currency brings together the

Many works on view have germinated out

MFA class of 2013 at San Francisco’s Old Mint,

of a concentrated studio practice; others have

a historical landmark building affectionately

been specifically designed for the site, with all

referred to as "The Granite Lady."

of its historical and architectural challenges and confrontations. Requiring the ability to

When I walked into the Old Mint, I thought of

adapt, address, and exploit given circumstances,

David Ireland. It happens every time I come

the site presented an important exercise for

upon spaces like this. With his installation work

emerging artists in positioning their works,

and architectural transformations, Ireland

ideas, and approach, as well as a foundation for

(himself an alumnus of SFAI’s MFA program)

navigating future contexts and problem-solving

taught a generation of San Francisco artists how

in their careers.

to appreciate time, how to read it, how to feel it. He pointed to what was already there and

Certain questions become unavoidable in this

saw beauty—in old cracked walls, peeling paint,

exhibition: What does the larger context do to

faded colors.

the experience of these works, and how can art address or use this pre-existing context? What

Currency is a sprawling exhibition covering two

happens when the accepted hierarchy of space

floors, and includes painting, sculpture, installa-

is eliminated; when even the restrooms become

tion, performance, photography, film, and print.

potential spaces for contemplation? How does

Part of what makes this exhibition so special is

one question the function of art and artistic

the variety of experiences offered by the space,

gestures in contemporary cultural production?

the constant shifts as one moves from rooms to hallways to vaults to staircases to grand ball-

This exhibition, which showcases the artists

rooms. Some areas remain preserved, hanging

appearing in the following pages, celebrates

on to their original state, while others are oozing

the culmination of two years of investigations,

with decay—the steel walls in the vaults with

commitment, and sacrifice, and the launch of

their green patina, the senses short-circuited

these artists into the next phase of their careers.

as we see and feel the inherited traces of time

It is the important work of this new generation of

recorded. “Currency” in this context becomes

artists—the “currency” of tomorrow—to address

a medium of exchange within cultural values.

and reflect on our current state of affairs; our

Positioning the new in relation to the old.

values and our culture; past, present, and future.

Hosting the exhibition at the Old Mint—the

David Ireland would have been very pleased.

latest in SFAI’s unconventional off-site venues, which have also recently included a motel and a winery—posed challenges to the exhibiting artists, who were forced to think on their feet, push new potentials, and consider the relationship between their art and a potent backdrop. 19


ELISABETH AJTAY BORN Transylvania EDUCATION Diploma in Communication Design/ Photo Design, University of Applied Sciences, Dortmund, Germany, 2006 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Facilitating chaos and allowing mistakes to happen characterizes how I work. My multifaceted practice is a reflection on my translation from life in the east of Europe to the west of America. My early work, mainly dealing with Romania, takes a fragmentary approach. More recent imagery represents an attempt to deal with topics such as mobility, inner/outer communication, and especially the exhaustion of the individual in light of new technologies. I steadily approach, in new ways, human beings’ sensitivity to a dialogue with the broader world. www.elisabethajtay.com

Ginnungagap (Yawning Void) 2012 Photography Dimensions variable


ZACH R. ALSPAUGH BORN Denver, Colorado, 1974 EDUCATION BFA in Filmmaking, School of Visual Arts, 1996 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I endeavor to apply a philosophy of observational cinema to the films that I make. I am interested in sharing stories of ordinary lives in defining moments of challenge, transition, and grace. I view my job to be that of a faithful witness to the subjects and events that I film. For me, the Direct Cinema technique is an interesting and challenging way to make art, depict history, and bring an audience closer to the experiences and truth of actual events.

A Fine Romance 1999–2013 16mm film, DVCAM, and HD video 30 minutes

21


CHANDRA BAERG BORN Nashville, Tennessee EDUCATION BFA in Architectural Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 2001 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Dynamic and experimental processes such as cutting and tearing, painting, drawing and collage, pouring and evaporation are integral to my current work. These methodological vocabularies, as well as the formal qualities of my art, such as the strong presence of line and implied figure, are informed by my interest in how the body experiences the built environment. My work occupies space in a way that references painting, sculpture, and architecture. www.chandrabaerg.com

Avery, #2 2012 Latex paint, gypsum board, and wood 96 x 48 x 3.25 inches


ANDREW BEVINGTON BORN Tucson, Arizona, 1970 EDUCATION MA in Education, University of Arizona BA in Creative Writing, University of Arizona î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The Expatriates series examines the daily lives of construction workers in the United Arab Emirates—their substandard living conditions; the emphasis placed on family within the UAE; and, to some extent, the effects of globalization on the family structure. I photograph the men at work, in their domiciles, and the landscapes that surround them as an attempt to bring to light their systematic exploitation. www.andrewbevingtonfoto.com

Our Father Zayed 2012 Archival inkjet print 30 x 20 inches

23


ALLIE BLANCHARD BORN New Milford, Connecticut, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in Drawing, University of Florida, 2011 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work investigates the fear and vulnerability that we as animals can feel when exposed and the measures that we take in order to combat this feeling. I focus on aspects of shelter and self-protection that reoccur within fairytale narratives and use repeating forms and patterns as a way to translate these ideas. I explore my own connections to these stories by linking themes involving shelter to my past personal history. www.allieblanchard.com

The Forest’s Daughter

The Cause

2012

2012

Linocut prints and photocopy

Charcoal, ink, colored pencil, and

transfer on paper, with davey

acrylic on paper

board, papyrus paper, book cloth,

84 x 60 inches

PVA, and thread 9 x 20 x .75 inches


ALYSSA BLOCK BORN Agoura Hills, California, 1987 EDUCATION BA in Art, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2010 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My paintings, comic books, and digital animations combine the language of the objective world with an abstract material exploration. I tell narratives about small moments in the everyday where landscapes, interior spaces, and ubiquitous household objects are simplified and depicted naively, transforming the world into something more manageable. By combining introspective imagery and a painterly acumen, I am able to tell simple stories about intimacy, anxiety, and domesticity. www.alyssablock.com

New & Used 2013 Acrylic, ink, and collage on paper 14 x 11 inches

25


TRISTAN CAI BORN Singapore, 1985 EDUCATION BFA in Photography and Digital Imaging, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, 2011 Coursework in Photography, School of Art and Design, Aalto University, 2010 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Intrigued by the evolving standards of human normalcy and the relentless investigations of the philosophical branches in human anthropology, I question the role that visual culture has played in the construct of our belief systems in my art. By creating parodies of controversial interactions between science, religion, and culture, I hope to make evident our cultural transition while creating a space for reflecting humanity’s pursuit of progress. www.tristancai.com

From the series A Celebration: The Origin of Life Kenzi, a 12-year-old Bonobo, has been coached

The Primordial Soup, Miller and Urey, 1953;

to cook and control his fear of fire

a key experiment showing how life began

2012

2012

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

40 x 32 inches

16 x 20 inches


ELIZABETH CAYNE BORN Louisville, Kentucky, 1982 EDUCATION BA in Film Studies, Yale University, 2004 î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My shit takes a long, tedious look at how people design, use, consume, and dispose of things. www.elizabethcayne.com

Untitled

Untitled

2012

2012

Archival inkjet print of photomontage

Archival inkjet print of photomontage

27.75 x 39.5 inches

27.75 x 39.5 inches

27


PABI CHULO BORN Avernakø, Denmark, 1978 EDUCATION BA in Visual Art, Zahles Seminarium Copenhagen, 2004  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

- I am probably the best artist in the world! - Yo soy probablemente el mejor artista del mundo - Je suis probablement le meilleur artiste du monde - Ich bin wahrscheinlich der beste Künstler in die Welt - Jeg er nok den bedste kunstner i verden - Я, вероятно, лучший

художник в мире

- 我大概是在世界上最好的藝術家 www.pabi.dk

Silent Reaction

Some Things Never Change

2013

2012

Acrylic on canvas

Video

56 x 78 x 2 inches

2:04 minutes


LYNN COLINGHAM BORN Seattle, Washington, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in Painting and Drawing, Washington State University, 2010 î ? Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

I emphasize the beautifully grotesque qualities of the human form by unraveling the infinite layers that construct and fail the body. Skin, as the boundary between the individual self and the world, is what breaks and metastasizes as my subjects struggle to define what belongs inside or out. In washes of watercolor and the fleeting moments of flipbooks, the destruction of the form is tangible only for a second before fading to memory. www.lynncolingham.com

Peal I

Peal II

2013

2013

Watercolor and glitter on paper

Watercolor and glitter on paper

30 x 22 inches

30 x 22 inches

29


CHRIS CORRENTE BORN New York, New York, 1982 EDUCATION BFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Statements are dangerous linguistic mechanisms that create unjustified intellectual hierarchies. To make statements is to have conviction. To have conviction is to be naive. Human beliefs and values stem from various wellperpetuated myths. Myths are— at their essence—lies. Conviction is a tool with which the desperate self-define and the powerful define the desperate. Definition is unrealistic oversimplification. Art should undermine/transcend all convictions, exposing social reality as a series of mythological constructs. www.chriscorrente.com


ALEXIS COURTNEY BORN Dover, Delaware, 1984 EDUCATION BFA in Professional Photographic Illustration/Advertising Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2006  MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work investigates loneliness, vulnerability, and familiarity through documented and enacted performance. My focus is on the fluctuation between the loss and discovery of one’s self within a desirous search for a sense of belonging by questioning the innate desire for human connection and the search for a “home.” By counterbalancing the state of mind with a physical presence, I intend to portray an environment, both physically and metaphysically, that challenges expectations and perceptions of familiarity within everyday occurrences. www.alexiscourtney.com

Contact, 2

Attempt, 1

2012

2013

Performance/residual installation: white

Single-channel HD video projection

balloons, clear tacks, and red darts

20-minute loop

Dimensions variable

31


AMBER CRABBE BORN St. Louis, Missouri, 1978 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts, UC Berkeley Extension, 2010 Master’s in City Planning and MS in Transportation Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2002 BS in Art and Design and BS in Civil Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000  MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Through photography, video, and installation, I explore anxieties and psychological patterns that manifest in my physical environment and my personal history. My work demonstrates how internalized memories and external social feedback loops influence my experience of the world. I replicate and expand upon unproductive cognitive processes and impose narratives onto everyday objects to transform them into something unexpected. www.ambercrabbe.com

An Honest Conversation

162 Attempts (Detail)

2012

2012

Site-specific installation; grid of archival

Grid of four framed archival inkjet prints

inkjet prints

68 x 84 inches

Dimensions variable


MARCELLA S. DAVIS BORN Harvard, Massachusetts, 1972 EDUCATION BA in Art History, Smith College, 1994 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am interested in the experience of chaos and control in the physical world in which we live. My photographic work investigates the intersections of exposure and composure, strength and vulnerability, the natural and the man-made. www.marcelladavis.com

Tornado

Tornado (Detail)

2012

2012

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

84 x 58 inches

84 x 58 inches

33


JAVIER DE FRUTOS BORN Madrid, Spain, 1979 EDUCATION International Studio & Curatorial Program, 2009 MFA in Photography, EFTI School, Madrid, 2008 Coursework in Philosophy, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2004–2006 BArch in Architecture, IE University, Madrid, 2004  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Structures of power use landscape as a media-institution in the production of their modern selves. They produce, map, and distribute heritage, memory, and cultural difference through it. I am interested in how these media practices found support in public and private institutions, changing the way individuals assign meaning and value to their cultural and spiritual identities. I question the role of landscape as a potential space of social and political conflict where individuals have the opportunity to raise their voices and ask for their say. www.javierdefrutos.com

From the series Structures of Power

From the series Cultural Geography

From the series Imagined Objects of Desire

Domination and Subordination

Rockefeller Center, NYC

Benidorm as a Simulacrum

2012

2011

2012

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

25.5 x 39.75 inches

39.75 x 39.75 inches

39.75 x 39.75 inches


APRIL MARIE DEAN BORN Long Branch, New Jersey, 1986 EDUCATION BFA in Visual Art, Columbus State University, 2009  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

I perform rituals in my search for the sacred. My body is slowed, waiting in rhythms of breathing. In threadlike, thin moments— vaporous seconds—I discover blackberry stains and honeygasps, meditating through milk-fat and the life-blood of onions. The materials are thick with history and ripe with symbolism, lovingly prepared for future demise. The “real presence” of philosopher George Steiner twangs the gut and lights my spirit on fire. The residual gift stains my memory. www.aprilmariedean.com

I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed: Milk and Honey 2012 Performance Dimensions variable Photographed by Elizabeth Cayne

35


U. V. DOGAN BORN Turkey, 1986 EDUCATION BA in Visual Arts and Communication Design, Sabanci University, Istanbul, 2010 î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work invests in the ephemeral infrastructure of the notion of space and the utilization of object physiology through questioning the politics of image-making. By constructing a multilayered exploration in moving and still imagery, the expansive nature of my work results in video, installation, and performance. I am interested in portraying the very idea of authenticity in visual representations by underlining the hiatus between the singular and plural.

Running from the Sun

Are You Sincere?

2012

2012

Brick, mirror, wrapping paper, found

Single-channel video

object, and plastic table cover

2:34 minutes

Dimensions variable


ADA M DONNELLY BORN Media, Pennsylvania, 1982 EDUCATION BA in English Literature, University of Delaware, 2004  MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work is rooted in pinhole photography—a historic process that predates the medium itself and essentially stands as the first technological iteration of photography as a whole. In today’s technologically advanced world, photography has become far more intangible as digital means are utilized to capture and create. Pinhole photography helps me to bring tangibility back into the medium and allows me to use everyday objects to create photographs of the everyday world. www.adonnelly.com

The Amateur Photographer’s Handbook

Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems

To Kill a Mockingbird

2011

2011

2012

Silver gelatin print

Silver gelatin print

Silver gelatin print

16 x 20 inches

16 x 20 inches

16 x 20 inches

37


FR ANCESC A DU BROCK BORN Anchorage, Alaska, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Art History, Bowdoin College, 2007  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work reflects on impermanence and mutability—how objects and gestures deteriorate from a state of usefulness/legibility to a state of failure or displaced meaning. I use explorers’ writings, different forms of coded language, and stories about impossible or dream-like scenarios to articulate the distance between lived experience and its representation or translation. I highlight the futility underlying our attempts to make coherent or permanent the fragmentary texture of the world around us. www.francescadubrock.com

Untitled

Untitled

2013

2013

Video

Video

25-minute loop

30-minute loop


C ATHERINE LYNN ELLER BORN Madison, Wisconsin, 1986 EDUCATION BFA in Film, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2010 BFA in Photography, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2009 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work explores how media affects our perception. I manipulate 16mm films, videos, and digital projections to create a parallel universe that does not physically exist. This is generated through the structure of moving images, and the human eye adapts to the state of the visual phenomenon. The silent and abstract moving images cause cognitive dissonance due to afferent sensory reduction. www.catieeller.com

Inner Peace

The Narrative

2011

2012

16mm film, color, silent

Video, silent

6 minutes

2:30 minutes

39


MISSY ENGELHARDT BORN Lodi, California, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in Studio Art (Sculpture), Sonoma State University, 2011 î ? MFA in Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work is based on the exploration of formal qualities in abstract sculpture using common materials. I challenge the viewer to interact with the everyday materials that transform into something new and to interact with the space physically. My current paper works use marks such as cutting, scoring, and folding to signify concepts of temporality, memory, and perception, while juxtaposing the formal qualities of abstract installations, sculptures, and drawings. www.missyengelhardt.com

Gray 3D

Yellow Horizon

2012

2012

Paper and nails

Paper

120 x 100 inches

152 x 107 inches


IVAN M . FAR MER BORN San Diego, California, 1971 EDUCATION BA in Studio Arts, California State University, Long Beach, 2001 AA in Painting, Grossmont College, 1999  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The controlled form is rendered and sets up the relationship to the surface, edge, and external space. The use of the artist’s mark and gesture is connected to the notion of playful risk, undeterminable outcome, and the movement of the body through space. These forms and marks capture a moment of energy and time while alluding to the illusion of a greater space that extends beyond the picture’s edge. It is this activation of space that creates a reality that the viewer enters with their own understanding of reality.

Activation 1

Activation 2

Activation 4

2012

2013

2012

Graphite, watercolor, and

Graphite, watercolor, and

Graphite, watercolor, and

acrylic on paper

acrylic on paper

acrylic on paper

42 x 50 inches

30 x 22 inches

30 x 22 inches

41


JAIK FAULK BORN Lafayette, Louisiana, 1978 EDUCATION BA in Painting, Portland State University, 2006 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My art practice investigates the pageantry of masculinity through oil painting. I am interested in excavating hierarchies surrounding the construction of contemporary masculinity. I present a fantastical and outmoded world in my paintings in order to better imagine the present and very real 21st century. At times these characters are cowboys; at others, colonial soldiers and the like—hosts of rebels mixed with established men of distinction. They are occupied by empty strategies set against and within layers of facade. They are characters completely unaware of their own extinction. www.jaikfaulk.com

Round Table

Gun-Racks and Denim Slacks

2012

2012

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas

48 x 72 inches

32 x 28 inches


TONI GENTILLI BORN Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1975 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 MA in Anthropology with an Emphasis in Museum Studies, Arizona State University, 2006 BA in Art History and Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1999 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Through an alchemical combination of science and intuition, my work synthesizes photography with studies of external phenomena and subjective experience to explore the interconnectivity of matter and the infinitesimally thin line between chaos and order. Using hand-drawn and other unconventional negatives, camera-less techniques, UV sensitive emulsions, unfixed imagery, and labor-intensive, unpredictable processes, I create multivalent abstractions that evoke essential natural structures and examine implications of their replication and mutation at vastly different scales. From Transmutation Series

www.tonigentilli.com Ferric Ammonium Citrate

Potassium Ferricyanide

Hydroquinone, Potassium

Ferric Amonium Citrate,

and Insulin Glargine

and Zinc-Insulin Lispro

Carbonate, and

Potassium Ferricyanide, Sucrose,

2013

2013

Diethylenetriamine

and Zinc-Insulin Lispro

Gold-toned silver gelatin print

Gold-toned silver gelatin print

Pentaacetic Acid Na5

2013

from camera-less photograph

from camera-less photograph

2013

Gold-toned silver gelatin print

16 x 16 inches

16 x 16 inches

Gold-toned silver gelatin print

from camera-less photograph

from camera-less photograph

16 x 16 inches

16 x 16 inches

43


DANIELLE GR AVON BORN Clovis, New Mexico, 1989 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art and German, Concordia College-Moorhead, 2010 î ? Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

As a printmaker and book maker, I am interested in exploring the history of the book and its consistent social and individual importance as a tool and symbol. Seeing the platform of the book as an entrance to the world, my work invites the viewer to learn through play, imagination, contemplation, and curiosity. www.daniellegravon.com

Skinned 2012 Found book and latex Dimensions variable


REBECC A GRODOFSKY BORN Hartford, Connecticut, 1987 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art, Oberlin College, 2009 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work is a collection of artifacts. They are totemic reliquaries devoid of ceremony, embroidered codes that will never be uttered, and illustrated cartographies that lead to nowhere. The objects emerge from grappling with concepts of metaphysics and mysticism. I am intrigued by ideas of divination, alchemy, and archetypal symbology, as I am simultaneously repelled by New Age praxes. Rather than appropriating existing cultural traditions, my work relies on arbitrary iconography and the poetics of the handmade. www.rebeccagrodofsky.com

Divinaglyphs

Magic Sticks

2012

2013

Thread on linen

Bamboo, beeswax, thread, dried herbs, and beads

2 x 2 inches (each)

Dimensions variable

45


CONR AD GUE VAR A BORN Tacoma, Washington, 1986 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art, College of Charleston, 2008 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My works form constellations of ideas referencing formal visual solutions mined from the everyday, matched with explorations of language and its peculiarities and structures. They are abstractions influenced by the narrative of art history, along with the proliferation of popular culture, as well as the quotidian exposure to materiality, humor, domestic processes and objects, and simple display methods. I see my assemblage sculptures as conduits that hint at an undefinable function outside of their formal invention. www.conradguevara.com

Swing #3 (Rock the Boat) 2013 Pine, rope, Kool-Aid, acrylic, copper wire, and metal Dimensions variable


ERIN R. HALL BORN Sewickley, Pennsylvania, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in Visual Art, Pennsylvania State University, 2010 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

This body of work examines the landscape of Angel Island as a metaphor for the historical events that have occurred there. From the internment of immigrants on the island to the removal of the trees as a life-giving element, the photographs make present the indelible evidence of the social atrocities that have taken place on the island. The juxtaposition of these indelible marks stands in stark contrast to the natural landscape and remains a reminder of our shortcomings as a society. www.erinhallphotography.org

Angel Island 1

Angel Island 2

2011

2011

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

17 x 22 inches

17 x 22 inches

47


CHA SON HUGGINS BORN Lumberton, North Carolina, 1986 EDUCATION BFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Studio Art, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2010 BA in Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2010  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work is invested in ideas around constituents of morality in contemporary society and in opening a dialogue on pleasure and hedonism. I use the human body to stage compositions with desserts, bright colorful “club” lighting, and libations to invite investigation and commentary on the tantalization of living, addressing pleasures of the flesh and consumption.

Confectionary Climax I

Confectionary Climax II

2012

2012

Ink on paper

Ink on paper

24 x 48 inches

24 x 48 inches


NANC Y L. IVANHOE BORN New York, New York EDUCATION BA in Psychology, Pitzer College î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

In the early morning light, I watch objects slowly emerge from the darkness around me. They hover as vague shadows until the shifting light slowly brings them into focus and, like memories, they quietly materialize and disappear. My drawings and sculptures capture and link the movement of shadows while my delicate materials reveal their ephemerality. www.nancyivanhoe.com

Converging Shadows

Thought Pattern

2012

2012

Graphite and charcoal wall

Graphite on paper

installation

30 x 28 inches

120 x 192 x 9 inches

49


DAVID JANESKO BORN Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1982 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BS in Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, 2004 î ? MFA in Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I create conceptually based isomorphic models of the processes of the Earth, evolution, and scientific inquiry. These are rescaled to my body and constructed using found and fabricated objects. www.twitter.com/Total_Tweets

File Mutation

Deep Sky Object – NGC/335E-012

2012

2012

Hard drives, Americium-241 from

Archival inkjet print

an ionization smoke detector, text file

16 x 20 inches

containing the human genome, heat sinks, cooling fan, computer software, laptop computer, and oak desk 20 x 48 x 36 inches


HEEJIN JANG BORN Seoul, Korea, 1985 EDUCATION MFA in Painting, Kookmin University, Seoul, 2011 BFA in Painting, Kookmin University, Seoul, 2007 î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work manifests itself in the form of interactive performances and video installations that include sound objects. The decay of audiovisual geographies dismantles the narrative of sound and image. In the performances, my interactions with the machines turn into a ritual that attacks the flow of time and space. The process of self-cancellation breaks down the common nature of time embedded in the sonic and visual experiences that we negotiate between our senses and reality. www.heejinjang.com

SUMMERIZED

His First and the Last Stage

2013

2012

Video

Performance still

1:30 minutes

7 minutes

51


CHENG JIANG BORN Nanjing, China, 1988 EDUCATION BA in Director of Broadcasting and TV, Nanjing Normal University, China, 2007 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My artwork concentrates on the study of human survival, as well as mentalities and emotions under the influences of the surrounding environment from a global perspective. This area of focus is inspired by my personal experience as an artist studying in the United States. As a film director, I am interested in feature film storytelling, documentary, and experimental film.

Take It Easy 2012 Performance still Dimensions variable


ILCHI KIM BORN Daegu, Korea EDUCATION BA in Fine Art (Painting), Wimbledon College of Art, University of Arts, London, 2011 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

www.ilchikim.com

A Metropolitan Lover

Rescuing the Lost

2012

2012

Acrylic on board

Acrylic on board

12 x 12 inches

15.3 x 27 inches

53


CHAD KIPFER BORN Telluride, Colorado, 1984 EDUCATION BA in Visual Art, University of San Francisco, 2005 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I paint out of a desire to respond, as an individual, and I make paintings that attempt to approach their own individuality. Built out of possibility, my paintings climb out of and interact with the void. Where the broad gesture and intimate mark meet, I hope to uncover unexpected interaction. In seeking chance, through the combination of careful consideration and reckless abandon, I am working to visually and theoretically bring the two approaches closer together. www.chadkipfer.com

Jumps of Misunderstanding

Confidence

2012

2012

Acrylic on panel

Acrylic on panel

48 x 64 inches

48 x 48 inches


M ARIE-LUISE KLOTZ BORN Heidelberg, Germany, 1986 EDUCATION Lazi-Diplom in Photo Design, Lazi Akademie Esslingen, The European School of Film and Design, Germany, 2009 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work investigates how humans impact natural environments and questions human values in regard to nature. I expose the intersections between humans and nature as their borders become visible on small and large scales, to examine the blurred line between the natural and unnatural. Employing documentation, metaphor, and mapping, my work focuses on the visible traces of human intervention, but implies the invisible marks of our deep entwinement with complex ecological interactions. www.marieluiseklotz.com

Behind Pinned Bees

Pollination #4

2011

2012

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

17 x 40 inches

Dimensions variable

55


A MELIA KONOW BORN Taunton, Massachusetts, 1986 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Women’s Studies, Syracuse University, 2008 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

In my current work, I consider the sky as a landscape in itself. This approach has led to a study of color and abstract forms in the context of the ever-changing weather in my immediate environment. While some imagery portrays the sky as a powerful and uncontrollable natural force that stimulates fear of impending dangerous weather, other photographs are a reflection of a meditative state that transcends the physical world into the realms of the sublime and ethereal. www.ameliakonow.com

Cloudscape #29 2010 Two Polaroid emulsion lifts on watercolor paper 10 x 7 inches


HANNA KUNYSZ BORN Wrocław, Poland, 1985 EDUCATION BFA in Painting, York University, Toronto, 2009  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My artistic practice brings attention to current issues of climate change and questions the long-term effects of our planet’s environmental crisis. I create sculptures using found, nonbiodegradable and hazardous materials as a reflection on society’s obsession with commodified plastics. My drawings question what life would be in a world without us. Would the planet be given a chance to recover from humanity’s impact or face catastrophic, unforgiving consequences? www.hannakunysz.com

Geomorphology

Sample 2043, site A

2012

2013

Etching on paper

Found materials in plexiglass encasing

16 x 8 inches

24 x 3 x 3 inches each

57


LI LE BORN Nanjing, China, 1988 EDUCATION BA in Directing and Writing for Broadcasting, Nanjing Normal University, China, 2011 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I come from an Eastern country: China. I believe that art derives not from life but from beyond that; therefore, I don’t attempt to get inspiration from accidental events or situations which only a few people may have ever dealt with. In my work, there is no reason to talk about whether the audience gets my original idea, since what you see and what you feel is the interaction between you and the work. I create a channel for thinking about yourself and your past.

Transmitters

A Time the Flower Opens

2011

2012

Archival inkjet print

HD video

4 x 6 inches

8:24 minutes


OLIVER LE ACH BORN Arlington, Texas, 1983 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2008 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

As a skeptic, I have always felt the sense of a void that might otherwise have been filled with something impossible or supernatural. My work is concerned with the creation of a visual vocabulary with which to describe this sensation of absence, and with using this vocabulary to isolate and recreate a personal conception of the uncanny. www.oliverleach.com

From the series Haunted Spaces Untitled 2013 Altered color reversal slide Dimensions variable

59


DIANNA M . LINDQUIST BORN Burderop Park, England EDUCATION BFA in Painting, Weber State University, 2010 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work draws attention to present-day species, including humans, who are part of the earth’s complex systems and urgently dependent on our renewed consciousness and connection to preserve it. These hybrid forms are engaged in a metamorphosis redefining genetic manipulation, caught in an imagined future chaos and struggling to survive on a compromised planet. www.diannalindquist.com

HSID.G3.2

Seeds of Consciousness

2012

2012

Ink and collage on Duralar

Graphite on Fabriano watercolor paper

42 x 32 inches

55.5 x 87inches


XING LIU (KING) BORN Guangzhou, China, 1987 EDUCATION BFA in Film Directing, Communication University of China, Beijing, 2010 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am always trying to be a good storyteller on my 16:9 screen. The stories that I tell are sometimes depressing, hopeful, furious, or complicated. As a filmmaker, I make every effort to tell stories that will touch the viewer and myself with poignant imagery.

A Song of Despair

Xiao

2011

2012

Video

Video

4:53 minutes

5:03 minutes

61


TOM LOUGHLIN BORN St. Louis, Missouri EDUCATION JD, University of California, Berkeley AB in English Literature, Dartmouth College î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am interested in the ways that our systems fail us. I don’t just mean our technological and social systems; I also mean the languages and narratives we use to make sense of our world. I aim to create unexpected encounters between viewers and art in order to invite contemplation of an alternative reality that sits at a 15-degree angle from the one we see.

Suspended Television 2012 Console television, cable, and video loop 32 x 42 x 36 inches; 80 pounds suspended 78 inches from the floor


QI LUO BORN Wuhan, China, 1989 EDUCATION BE in Digital Media, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, 2011 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

As a filmmaker, I like to observe and think about the ways in which different people act when faced with something seemingly unexpected. My work explores specific moments and statuses of life and amplifies them with images.

My Lisa

A Pre-Existing Condition

2012

2012

HD video

HD video

7:35 minutes

2:53 minutes

63


R AY M ACK BORN Ellensburg, Washington, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Studio Arts, Bard College, 2006 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I think that the most practical function of art is to counteract misery, as opposed to doing the opposite. Accordingly, my paintings employ humor, art history, and universal defeat (getting it wrong, feeling like a weird loser, etc.) to address this aim through images concerning optimism and its failure, both in art and in daily life.

Lovers

Lame Lamentation (after Giotto)

2012

2012

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas

96 x 96 inches

85 x 74 inches


JUSTIN M ARGITICH BORN Claremont, New Hampshire, 1984 EDUCATION BFA in Painting/Drawing, California College of the Arts, 2008 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

This work is about relationships; more specifically, those that are in contrast. I do this with things I am familiar with. Over the past few years, I have been focused on two sets of relationships: the mythological along with art of the moment, as well as navigating the natural together with the digital. To simplify all of this, my work is about the struggle to balance old and new forms of image making. www.justinmargitich.com

Landscape Cache

Disassembling Landscape

2013

2012

Pencil on paper

Pencil on paper

60 x 84 inches

60 x 88 inches

65


TONY M ARIDAKIS BORN Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1961 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts, UC Berkeley Extension, 2010 BS in Computer Science, California State University at Fullerton, 1985 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work explores the idea of eternity as here and now. In this exploration, I play on perceptions of time and substance. Time is cut and segmented in sequential grids, is drawn out in long exposures, and is placed in dialog with substance. I find eternity has a paradoxical quality. Within the great expanse of eternity, I feel insignificant, yet by experiencing eternity here and now, I can connect with the rhythm of the universe. www.tonymaridakis.com

Eternity Here and Now: I 2012 Archival pigment print 60 x 42 inches


ELIZ ABE TH “OSC AR” M AYNARD BORN Columbia, South Carolina, 1979 EDUCATION BA in Visual Art/Psychology/Gender Studies, Antioch College, 2007  MFA in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I use mapping and narratives to explore systemic structures— from the city to institutions to economies. I work primarily in printmaking, including stencils, paper cuts, and drawing. My previous work has been on the intersections of gender and other forms of identity within the queer community.

Ms. Jenkins, after Ellison’s Invisible Man (Detail)

Untitled

2013

2012

Stencil, spray paint, and paper

Mounted blueprints, screenprint, wood,

84 x 44 inches

paint, and crêpe tape Four sections spanning 72 x 168 inches

67


NICOLE MCCLURE BORN Seattle, Washington, 1986 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2010 BA in Fine Art and Psychoanalysis, Hampshire College, 2009 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

People make each other. Before that, or in-between, we are not people. We are something else. Being a person is a game; which is not to say that it is without consequences. Through painting, drawing, performance, video, and sculpture, I fabricate scenarios that invite tension between the body and fictions of the self. While I often use my own body as a vehicle, these are not gestures of self-expression; instead, they demonstrate the contrivance of expression itself.

Go Fuck Yourself 2012 Digital photograph 30 x 20 inches


SA M MELL BORN San Francisco, California, 1987 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Anthropology, Brandeis University, 2009 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

In my drawings, paintings, and installations, I render extensive fields of found patterns by distilling their repetitive geometric designs to systematic formulas of gestural marks of my devising. I use approximation and speed to introduce human error, creating visible distortions and emphasizing the presence of the hand. My goal is to unlock the performative essence of drawing, while staying within the semiotics of the image. www.flickr.com/photos/schamscham

Cane Weave 2

Cane Weave 1 (Detail)

2012

2012

Masking tape on wall

Marker on paper

92 x 96 inches

72 x 48 inches

69


ANDRÉ ANNE MICHON BORN Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada, 1981 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, Concordia University, 2010 BA in Film Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Montreal, 2006 DEC in Creative Arts, Dawson College, Montreal, 2002  MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My artistic practice is based on the expression of human experience through photographic portraiture and landscape, video and sound. My work reflects the human ability to inhabit the inner self in the vast outer world, both physically and psychically. The landscape acts as a metaphor of the self in a precarious environment—a reality that lies between human existence and its own nature, creating a disconcerting exchange that is at times reassuring, at other times dreadful. www.andreannemichon.com

Sequoïa 2012 Archival inkjet print 32 x 40 inches (each)


MIE HØRLYCK MOGENSEN BORN Copenhagen, Denmark EDUCATION MA in Performance Design and Culture Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 2008 BA in Architecture, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, 2003  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Whether in sculpture, drawing, or performance, I seek to explore what happens when you turn familiar situations upside down. On video, I use objects as obstacles for bodily interactions that force me to bend or twist my intended actions. With humor and irony, I expose my fragility, but also the strength in accepting absurd challenges and conquering their obstacles. I like to construct clashes that expose universal questions or simply entertain. www.miemogensen.com

Tooth Brush

My Father Teaches Me

Me, My Bricks, and My Baby

Squeak

2011

How to Do the Tea Cups

2012

2012

Digital inkjet print and video

2012

HD video

HD video

Dimensions variable

HD video

3:41 minutes

1:07 minutes

2:56 minutes

71


C ATE NEL SON BORN Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 1980 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Film Studies, Bard College, 2003 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Through the depiction of intimate spaces and objects, my work is invested in the exploration of history and memory, both personal and collective. I use oil on canvas to investigate how objects and spaces can function as historical markers. They become imbibed with a supposition of meaning and value—ultimately being left to exist as a type of relic. My paintings create a psychological space via the examination of interiors and a variety of mark making. www.catenelsonart.com

Untitled Chair Painting

Dining Room at Scuppo Hill

2013

2013

Oil on linen

Oil on linen

52 x 80 inches

56 x 73 inches


KELLY NE T TLES BORN Houston, Texas, 1986 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 Digital Design Certificate and Web Design for Graphic Professionals Certificate, University of California, San Diego, Digital Arts Center, 2009 BFA in Visual Arts, University of San Diego, 2008 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My artistic practice is focused on exploring societal norms, gender identities, and traditional culture through the use of photographic portraiture. Special attention is concentrated on notions of home and belonging from an insider–outsider perspective. As an artist, I am unfolding the layers of culture in the South by pushing the narratives of domestic and social life. I am describing place, identity, tradition, gender roles, and both domestic and rural areas, and interpreting how they are all interrelated. www.kellynettles.com

Corliss Nettles, Houston, TX

William Davis, Houston, TX

2013

2011

Archival pigment inkjet print

Archival pigment inkjet print

20 x 24 inches

20 x 24 inches

73


JON PADRNOS BORN Omaha, Nebraska, 1979 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art, University of Nebraska, Omaha, 2004 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Worry Colliding Abstraction Isolation Materialized World Non-linearity Perform Gaze Join Fictionalized Intimacy Interweave Touch Unraveling Frenetic Montage Subject Process Distance Liberate Banality Self Correspond Nature Swell Collective Restrict Catalyze Loss Interpellate Contaminated Synthesize Narrative Interstitially Ellipse Decompose Time Faciality Texts Cycle Recant Lost Gesture Linear Constitute Confess Transference Reflect

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled (Detail)

2013

2012

2012

HD video

HD video

HD video

13:56 minutes

2:44-minute loop

2:44-minute loop


ZOE PHILLIPS BORN Iowa City, Iowa, 1987 EDUCATION BFA in Printmaking, University of Iowa, 2010  MFA in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am an interdisciplinary artist working primarily within the realms of printmaking, illustration, and sculpture. Much of my work explores the impact of technological advancements—whether they are real or fictional—on everyday life, and how we choose to adapt during periods of transition. I explore this concept on a formal level, by combining digital and traditional imagegenerating tools. www.zoephillipsart.com

Foamless = Homeless: 925 Evergreen St.

Naked Mole Rats

2013

2012

Digital inkjet print of mixed-media sculpture

Latex, acrylic fingernails, and robotic

16 x 24 inches

hamster mechanism Photograph: 6.5 x 9inches

75


RUYA QIAN BORN Suzhou, China, 1987 EDUCATION BA in Art & Design, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 2010 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Internal conflict and duality is always a topic in my artwork, and in the series of self-portraits it has become the work’s primary theme. Self-portraiture has always been a way of studying oneself. What does a true person looks like? Is what we see the truth? If the goals of art-making are to reveal, reassemble, shift perspectives, and communicate, then these self-portraits are my best effort to date. www.ruyaqian.tumblr.com

Us-1

Us-2

2012

2012

Silk inkjet print and installation with mirror

Silk inkjet print and installation with mirror

10 x 8 inches

10 x 8 inches


E VAN REISER BORN National City, California EDUCATION BFA in Painting, Syracuse University, 2008  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” —Napoleon www.reiserart.com

Sultanesque 2012 Oil and wax on canvas 34 x 30 inches

77


NA A M AN ROSEN BORN Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, 1977 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, California College of the Arts, 2007 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My interest lies in creating photography that transcends experiential histories. Whether I am archiving the sentiment in objects or photographing the American landscape, my artwork is concerned with the traces of human existence, materiality, and the auto-portrait that lingers between the past and present. www.naamanrosen.com

Zuiss Wayside Pub

Snow Geese

Muir Woods Picnic Day

Thank You

2012

2012

2012

2012

Archival pigment print

Archival pigment print

Archival pigment print

Archival pigment print

34 x 34 inches

40 x 30 inches

47 x 36 inches

47 x 34 inches


R AELYN RUPPEL BORN Mountain View, California, 1980 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, University of Akron, 2011  MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am photographing the only existing community of houseboats within the city of San Francisco. I am attracted to this community as an “in-between” place. It is bordered on both sides by the massive new constructions of the UCSF compound and exclusive high-rise condos. Towering over the top of this bordering-onutopia colony rises the I-280 freeway overpass with its drone of incessant traffic. I am examining the forced gentrification of this location.

Mission Creek Houseboats

Mission Creek Houseboats

2012

2012

Archival inkjet print

Archival inkjet print

32 x 40 inches

32 x 40 inches

79


ROHIT KRISHNAN SABU BORN Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 1989 EDUCATION BS in Visual Communication, University of Madras, 2010 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work is slow; time features heavily in its creation, content, and consumption. It is also transient, oftentimes transitory. It does not intend to inform, but stands instead to introspect. Where it does help me understand the world, and appreciate its various charms and beauties, my work does not stand to merely react or reflect upon such abundant stimuli. My work also intends to exist, on its own, not as a response, but as a stimulus—one that conveys experience while also simultaneously creating it.

www.rohitsabu.com

Untitled

Untitled

2012

2012

Digital inkjet print

Silver gelatin print

16 x 20 inches

16 x 20 inches


OUATER SAND BORN Saigon, Vietnam, 1964 EDUCATION BFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2001 BFA in Culinary Arts, École de Paris des Métiers de la Table, 1990  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

If cultural identity could be seen through food, the rice papers that I used for this sculpture would represent Vietnamese identity because we use them daily for our food. I use the form of a cave because it reminds me of my childhood.

The Rice Cave 2012 Rice paper, speakers, wires, MP3 player, and amplifier 48 x 60 x 24 inches Photographed by Ting Huang

81


TA MR A SE AL BORN Marblehead, Massachusetts EDUCATION Studio Diploma, School of the Museum of Fine Arts BS in Art Education, Tufts University î ? MFA in Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The phenomenon of the object fascinates me: from simple forms (such as balls and cubes) to the complex (rhombohedron and radial symmetry). I maintain awareness of their fundamental essences while I endeavor to transform them into their grand potential—a water ball becomes the cosmos; a color wheel becomes a spectrum of consciousness. I manipulate light to transform commonplace objects into the universal and strange. My work is a search for the mystical through the synthetic. www.tamraseal.com

Childhood (Installation detail) 2012 Resin and wool 12 x 60 x 60 inches


ALE X SHEPARD BORN Mountain View, California, 1974 EDUCATION BA in History, University of Washington, 2005  MFA in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am interested in the relationship between the handmade and the digital or virtual. Technological products, such as digital cameras and computers, appear to be virtual and machine-made things, but the human hand is involved at every stage of production— from mining precious metals, to designing and constructing chips and boards, to writing and testing software. My work explores the way these opposing concepts overlap and intersect. www.alex.meatfreezer.com

Fear of Fog

Pixelated

Northeast’r

2013

2012

2012

iPhone video game

Woodblock print

Woodblock relief print

Dimensions variable

17 x 10 inches

22 x 40 inches

83


DIMITR A SK ANDALI BORN Paros, Greece, 1969 EDUCATION Ptychion (BFA) in Painting, Athens School of Fine Arts, 2010 Ptychion (BA) in Business Administration, Athens Polytechnic University (TEI of Athens), 1993  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The experience of growing up on Paros, an island in the Aegean Sea in Greece, my ties to it, its history and people are central to my work. I carry my island with me everywhere. These themes of the past are reflected in my choice of materials and the ethereal, ephemeral forms I create— reminders of the sea, its open­– ness and possibilities, but also its limitations. www.dimitraskandali.com

Aegean – Pacific: A Dialogue II

SD, In Memory of My Grandmother

(Installation view)

(Detail)

2012

2012

Crocheted seaweed nets, seaweed

Crocheted seaweed and fishing line

sphere, and enamel on walls

Dimensions variable

Dimensions variable

Photographed by Marie-Luise Klotz

Photographed by Tony Maridakis


JAVID SORIANO BORN Long Island, New York EDUCATION BA in Philosophy, New York University, 2006  MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Weather-beaten bones I’ll leave your heart exposed To cold, piercing winds

Factotum of the City

Swan Song

36 Views

2013

2012

2013

HD video

HD video

HD video

25 minutes

11 minutes

15 minutes

85


JOHN STECK JR. BORN Chicago, Illinois, 1980 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 2010 Certificate in the Professional Photography Program, New England School of Photography, 2006 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

By manipulating the imagemaking process so that my photographs slowly disappear, I short-circuit the archival function of photography. This process draws attention to the materiality of memory, allowing me to erase particular images I find disruptive as visual ephemera and within my own embodied memory bank. Considering the fleeting impermanence of objects and life itself, I translate these ideas through images that gradually shift and fade, lamenting their own disappearance, until they are lost completely. www.johnsteckjr.com

Stone window in a cold building,

16th century tower at night,

Pathway to the Shire

cold Ireland

my Ireland

2012

2012

2012

Disappearing photograph

Disappearing photograph

Disappearing photograph

on gelatin silver paper

on gelatin silver paper

on gelatin silver paper

10 x 8 inches

10 x 8 inches

10 x 8 inches


JILL TAFFE T BORN New York, New York EDUCATION BFA in Fine Art, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 1978  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I use digital animation to invent an iconographic language of visual samples. Mixing and remixing the samples, I create immersive video-projection installations and optical experiences that explore time, motion, and consciousness. www.jilltaffet.com

Cosmic Ancestry 2012 Digital animation and multi-channel HD video projection 2-minute loop; dimensions variable

87


SAR AH TELL BORN San Diego, California, 1984 EDUCATION BA in Art Studio, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007  MFA in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I have an affinity for the Soviet Era of Eastern Europe and Russia and draw much of my aesthetic from the stark, controlled climate that existed there. Like Communism, our body’s own defense mechanisms are in place to restore and maintain order, but often fail us. My work embodies the malfunctions of the self-preservationist impulse—when the rational or emotional mind miscalculates— leaving us more vulnerable to physical or emotional pain. www.sarahtell.com

I Don’t Normally Divulge Such Matters of the Heart 2012 Hard-ground etching 12 x 9inches


MIAO TIAN BORN Taiyuan, Shanxi, China, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Broadcasting and Hosting, Sichuan Media College, China, 2009 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Before coming to SFAI, I made music videos, documentaries, and short films. I am currently working on a project about religion and human nature, as well as Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego. I am very interested in exploring the depth of the human heart.

Myself Last Supper

Firefly

2012

2013

Canvas inkjet print

Super 16mm film

15 x 30 inches

20 minutes

89


KE VIN TIJERINA BORN Houston, Texas, 1984 EDUCATION BFA in Fibers and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2011 AAA in Fashion Design, Houston Community College, 2007  MFA in Design and Technology, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I am an artist with a background in fashion, fibers, material studies, and design. I work in a variety of mediums and processes that lie mostly within the realm of surface manipulation and fabric design. Combining textiles and sculpture, and using found materials from my immediate surroundings to create weavings and altars, allows my viewing audience to interact with the ecology of my studio practice, in which the discarded is transformed into an object with dignity. One person’s trash is most certainly another person’s treasure. www.kevn.see.me

VHS Tape-stry 2012 VHS tape 120 x 14 x .25 inches


MOISES LE VI TOLEDANO BORN Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art, Hamilton College, 2010  MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The phrase “desire is freedom” acts as the catalyst for my work. I skew tropes from art history, popular Latino culture, advertising, and cinema as devices for viewers to enter the videos. This method creates structure for the content that requires consideration: a man’s interactions with other men. The stunning, seductive quality of the high-definition image attracts the onlooker. The viewer gains proximity through which I can displace the roles of tradition, sexuality, individuality, and relationships. www.cargocollective.com/ moiseslevitoledano

Vantage Nude (Installation view)

Image-Screen (Installation view)

2012

2011

HD video, silent

HD video, silent

10:26-minute loop; dimensions variable

15:45-minute loop; dimensions variable

91


GEOFFRE Y TR A XLER EDUCATION BFA in Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, 1994 Coursework in Photography, Salzburg College, Austria, 1993 î ? Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

All culture depends on man; in order to preserve a certain culture, not only does the culture have to be protected, but the creators of the culture themselves must be protected. Within the modern Western sociopolitical sphere, my practice is engaged in deconstructing the symbolic representation of our official culture that appears as a natural progression and to translate the ideological surface it presents. www.geofftraxler.wordpress.com

Freedom

Chevron

2012

2012

Photograph, diptych

Object

36 x 48 inches

46 x 46 inches


JOS TRUIT T BORN Boston, Massachusetts, 1984 EDUCATION BA, Hampshire College, 2009 î ? Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

In The Little Mermaid, identity mislocation is linked to a desire for body modification. Using the language of print, I construct tails built onto legs. Monstrous figures emerge in the overlap of fingerprints and fish impressions, swimming in the fantasy realm of fairytales but grounded in the magic of blood rites, which ties them to the body. They dance across the borders of life and death, human and animal, subject and object. www.jostruitt.com

Tail VII

Tail VI

2012

2012

Monoprint on paper

Monoprint on paper

30 x 40 inches

44 x 30 inches

93


LINDSAY TULLY BORN Bremerhaven, Germany, 1984 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Political Science, University of Vermont, 2008 BA in Film Studies, University of Vermont, 2008 î ? MFA in Film, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Chance influences my filmmaking process where the miscalculations of multiple exposures, the performativity of hand processing, and the use of alternative chemistry results in an instantaneous, autonomous creation. It is the physicality of the process and the materiality of film that drives choices resulting in a poetic expression that counters conventional expectations of storytelling, be it through formalism or subjectivity.

In Between

Bonanza

2012

2012

16mm film

16mm film, HD video, and mylar curtains

2:45 minutes

3-minute loops; dimensions variable


ALFRED VIDAURRI III BORN Fort Worth, Texas, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in Painting, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 2010  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

The paintings are an intersection of the actual and the imaginary. My work revisits a world conceived by objects that have filled my unconscious from when I was an adolescent until now. I introduce a saga framed around epic, iconic circumstance only to be confronted with aspects of blemish and stereotype. The characters are inspired by my closest friends and personify aspects of shared culture, interests, and experience exemplified in a graphic dimension. www.alfredvidaurri.com

Yonkers

Poindexter

2012

2013

Gouache, Conté, and gold leaf on paper

Gouache, Conté, and gold leaf on paper

20 x 24 inches

18 x 24 inches

95


L AUREN M . VISCEGLIA BORN New York, New York, 1975 EDUCATION AA in Painting/Drawing, Pratt Institute, 2007 BA in Cultural Anthropology, New York University, 1999  MFA in Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work references cellular and biological structures, patterns of my moving body in dance and yoga, traditional textiles, and folkloric art. I use abstraction and repetition like a code to decipher and distill information. My body of work, like Hieroglyphics, reveals an ordered system that is sciencebased, but that also has a relationship to the spirit world. Tactility, texture, and movement propel the making of my sculptures. By focusing on technique and materials, I search for beauty in the ordered and the chaotic. www.laurenvisceglia.com

Barnacle Cauldron

Bones and Barnacles

2012

2012

Paper-mâché, ink, spray paint,

Paper-mâché, ink, wire, and sequins

sequins, and matte medium

Dimensions variable

24 x 38 x 36 inches


SAR AH VIT TE TOE BORN Merrillville, Indiana, 1981 EDUCATION BFA in Photography, Indiana University, 2007 AA in Visual Arts, Indiana University, 2005 î ? MFA in Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013 www.sarahvittetoe.com

Excessive Anxiety, Worry, or Panic

Unexpected Panic and Concern, Fear, or Discomfort

2012

2012

Acrylic and graphite on drafting vellum

Acrylic and graphite on tracing paper

72 x 24 inches

84 x 24 inches

97


LINSE Y A. WALL ACE BORN Providence, Rhode Island, 1982 EDUCATION BFA in Sculpture, Maine College of Art, 2008 î ? MFA in New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I don’t understand culture, but I can feel it. As spectacular society offers sign after sign, which signifiers beyond commerce drive our desire to connect? My work seeks to create a hyper-reality through installation, performance, and video, where perception is mediated by experience. By redefining cultural artifacts as expressive tools, I hope to merge the emotionality and physicality of cognition. My work explores the enigmatic spirit of culture both toxic and majestic, celebrating both polarities. www.linseywallace.org

Portal III

Gamma Ray

2012

2012

Wood, fabric, video, and audio

Video

72 x 72 x 72 inches

Endless loop


MISSY WEIMER BORN Chicago, Illinois, 1979 EDUCATION BFA in Photography and Printmaking, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2001 î ? Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

Violence, whether physical or metaphysical, is a powerful force shaping our world; it presents opportunities for both suffering and redemption. It is always personal, even when it is public. As an artist working primarily with photographs and text, I am interested in the ways in which photographs and language are employed to depict, mediate, obscure, fabricate, or expose various forms of violence. www.missyweimer.com

Last week when I googled your name, this

Our Tongues Are Knives

mugshot came up. I cried when I saw it, but

2013

it is good to know that you are still alive.

Hand-cut inkjet photograph

2013

21 x 16.5 inches

Photograph and paper 53 x 43 inches

99


INGRID V. WELL S BORN Rockville, Maryland, 1987 EDUCATION BFA in Painting and Art Education, Arizona State University, 2010  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My gestural approach to oil painting contemplates the terms “reality” and “pleasure” as they enter into the discourse of painting. My recent work draws on source material from the reality television star Honey Boo Boo. By pausing the television, I critique the type of image that American viewers have become so attached to. This inquiry into the power dynamics of American culture questions the ethics of fascination. www.ingridvwells.com

Untitled 2013 Oil on panel 9 x 12 inches


L ANA WILLIA M S BORN Little Rock, Arkansas, 1987 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BFA in Painting and Ceramics, University of Oklahoma, 2009 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

Shapes and forms float like frozen moments in time; these weightless gestures mark the ephemerality of the present. The intimacy between the combination of colors and variety of gestures create compositions where each mark is expressive and assertive with distinct articulation. Displaying contradictions between temporality and permanence, the unfinished quality of the paintings raises questions, allowing the viewer to see the patterns and impulses that create the image and, at the same time, the possibility to project alternate endings upon each piece. www.lanawilliamsartist.com

A Dash and a Swoosh 2013 Mixed media on canvas 64 x 54 inches

101


MICHAL WISNIOWSKI BORN Wrocław, Poland, 1980 EDUCATION BFA in Fine Art and Philosophy, Rocky Mountain College, 2004  MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My work combines mixed-media paintings and found-object sculptures into large-scale installations of architectural motifs and minute strategies of survival. As a Polish artist whose formative years were divided between then-communist Poland, refugee camps in Denmark, and a racially hostile, post-unification Germany, memory and trauma are integral to my practice. Within the power structures that create the public and private, I perform small rituals of making that manifest in personal forms of resistance. www.michalwisniowski.com

Monuments II 2012 Acrylic and tempera on wall 192 x 192 inches Immersion Heaters, '85–'87 (In front) 2012 Jars, wire, razor blades, matches, voltage converters, and water Dimensions variable

Monuments

Immersion Heaters, ’85–’87 (Detail)

2012

2012

Acrylic and tempera on wall

Mixed media

120 x 300 inches

Dimensions variable


MOMO YAO BORN Guangzhou, China, 1987 EDUCATION Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2011 BA in Philosophy, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, 2010 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

My works scrutinize the female body within poetic time and space. The problems and possibilities of nostalgia are explored internally through childhood fantasy and externally by way of feminist issues. Through meticulous attention to detail and surface, I invent personal symbols through the rendering of mundane scenes and objects, upon which a discourse of the feminine is stretched and extended. www.momoyao.com

Not Belonging

#2 Papaya and Lace Glove Series

2013

2012

Colored pencil on mylar

Colored pencil on paper

36 x 24 inches

31 x 31 inches

103


HANHAN ZHANG BORN Beijing, China, 1987 EDUCATION BA in Illustration, Beihang University, Beijing, 2010 î ? MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

I always look for the following qualities to appear in my works: rare, sophisticated, convincing, profound, naughty. My watercolor drawings are narrative; each image has multiple figures interacting with each other in a certain environment. After conscious contemplation and interpretation, I transfer my feelings and memories into my subject matter. On the contrary, intuition dominates my ceramic-making process. I prefer movement rather than stillness in terms of appreciating a piece of sculpture; I have a taste for rhythm.

Sushi Restaurant

Ring Down the Curtain

2012

2012

Watercolor on watercolor board

Watercolor on paper

30.5 x 81 inches

15 x 20 inches


SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE

CURRENCY M A Y 1 5 –1 9 , 2 0 1 3 THE OLD MINT 88 5 t h S T R E E T M I S S I O N SAN FRANCISCO

SFAI’s emerging artists juxtapose contemporary expression with a National Historic Landmark in this showcase of provocative new work.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Erin R. Hall

Ruya Qian

MA COLLABORATIVE

Elisabeth Ajtay

Chason Huggins

Evan Reiser

PROJECTS

Zach R. Alspaugh

Nancy L. Ivanhoe

Naaman Rosen

Cultures of the Maker:

Chandra Baerg

David Janesko

Raelyn Ruppel

San Francisco Art Institute

Cory Bates

Heejin Jang

Rohit Krishnan Sabu

And Creative Growth

Andrew Bevington

Cheng Jiang

Ouater Sand

Allie Blanchard

Ilchi Kim

Tamra Seal

Malic Amalya

Alyssa Block

Chad Kipfer

Alex Shepard

Kira A. Dralle

Tristan Cai

Marie-Luise Klotz

Dimitra Skandali

Christina Elliott

Elizabeth Cayne

Amelia Konow

Javid Soriano

Joël Frudden

Pabi Chulo

Hanna Kunysz

John Steck Jr.

Danielle Gravon

Lynn Colingham

Li Le

Jill Taffet

Aimee B. Harlib

Chris Corrente

Oliver Leach

Sarah Tell

Angelica Jardini

Alexis Courtney

Dianna M. Lindquist

Miao Tian

Zoë Martell

Amber Crabbe

Xing Liu (King)

Kevin Tijerina

Carolyn Jean Martin

Marcella S. Davis

Qi Luo

Moises Levi Toledano

Zach Mitlas

Javier De Frutos

Tom Loughlin

Geoffrey Traxler

Amy Mutza

April Marie Dean

Ray Mack

Jos Truitt

Manuela Ochoa Ronderos

U. V. Dogan

Justin Margitich

Lindsay Tully

Saher Sohail

Adam Donnelly

Tony Maridakis

Alfred Vidaurri III

Francesca Du Brock

Elizabeth “Oscar” Maynard

Lauren M. Visceglia

Everything Out There:

Catherine Lynn Eller

Nicole McClure

Sarah Vittetoe

Bay Area’s First Triennial Now

Missy Engelhardt

Sam Mell

Linsey A. Wallace

Ivan M. Farmer

Andréanne Michon

Missy Weimer

Jaik Faulk

Mie Hørlyck Mogensen

Ingrid V. Wells

Toni Gentilli

Cate Nelson

Lana Williams

Danielle Gravon

Kelly Nettles

Michal Wisniowski

Rebecca Grodofsky

Jon Padrnos

Momo Yao

Conrad Guevara

Zoe Phillips

Hanhan Zhang

Regina Velasco Gómez
 Suzanne Minatra
 Carlos Garcia Montero
 Sarah Nantais
 Martin Jay Strickland
 Stephanie Tran
 Ariel Zaccheo 105


Ulrike Palmbach Exodus (Detail) 1997 Re-installed in the Diego Rivera Gallery for Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial Now Photographed by Joshua Band (Opposite) The opening of Everything Out There Photographed by Joshua Band


M ASTER OF ARTS / THESIS PROJEC TS


THE LIST Claire Daigle Faculty Director of MA Programs and Co-Director of Low-Residency Graduate Program

12. “We’re cultures of makers.” –Tom di Maria, Director of Creative Growth 13. “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and

My dear graduating students, here’s your list:

leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters

1. “You can’t use a bulldozer to study orchids.”

they find there.” –Guy Debord

–The Magnetic Fields, “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure”

14. “If on a winter’s night a traveler…” –Italo Calvino

2. “I have nothing to say and I am saying it.” –John Cage

15. “Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition

3. “All great works of [art] either

but of a fundamental encounter.”

dissolve a genre or invent one.”

–Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

–Walter Benjamin on Proust 16. “We need also to allow the notion of the 4. “I will not make any more boring art.”

rhizome to somewhat collapse our art–art histori-

–John Baldessari

cal distinctions, or at least to see each as being in rhizomatic connection with the other.”

5. “Stop whining and get to work.”

–Simon O’Sullivan

–Tony Labat 17. “Most artists need to develop a capacity for 6. “Every object, well contemplated,

sustained frustration.” –Frances McCormack

creates an organ for its perception.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

18. “There is not one, but many silences.” –Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

7. “We comprehend by awe.” –Charles Simic, Dime Store Alchemy

19. “Making a sculpture is the process of conjoining two pieces of material, contemplating

8. “’It’s = it is and its = possessive.”

your choice and then cutting off the ugly part.”

–Strunk and White (more or less)

–Richard Berger

9. “Art comes to you proposing frankly to give

20. “You can’t steal a gift.”

nothing but the highest quality to your moments

–Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence”

as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.” –David Markson, Vanishing Point

21. “Place your best foot awkward.” –Mary Cappello, Awkward, A Detour

10. “The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on

22. “No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experi-

the other side of that transformation.”

ence, language & knowledge.” –Jack Kerouac

–Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost 23. “Sofa, so good.” –Joël Frudden 11. “This advice was imparted to me by my advisors when I was writing my dissertation. It goes

24. “There is no solution because there is no

something like this: ‘Focus on finishing... finishing

problem.” –Marcel Duchamp

is good... finish... try and finish it... just finish it!’” Studio of Lila Maes

–Robin Balliger


25. “The more the other is rich, the more I am

36. “What counts are the ways in which these

rich.” –Hélène Cixous

common copies of creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked,

26. “[Roland Barthes’] is a passion for differ-

translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn

ences as continuous, shimmering gradations of

together in a universal library.”

intensities.” –Gregg and Seigworth, introduction

–David Shields, Reality Hunger

to The Affect Theory Reader 37. “No artist tolerates reality.” 27. “There’s only one rule I know of: You’ve got

–Friedrich Nietzsche

to be kind.” –Kurt Vonnegut 38. “No one has yet determined what the body 28. “…and whatnot.” –Nicole Archer

can do.” –Baruch Spinoza

29. “There are chemists who spend their whole

39. “I am for an art that embroils itself with

lives trying to find out what’s in a lump of sugar.

everyday crap & still comes out on top.”

I want to know one thing. What is color?”

–Claes Oldenburg by way of

–Pablo Picasso

Nicole Archer and Mark Van Proyen

30. “I remember when, I remember, I remember

40. “Reading is always a creative act.”

when I lost my mind. There was something so

–Matthew Goulish, 39 Microlectures

pleasant about that place.” –Gnarls Barkley’s

in Proximity of Performance

“Crazy” by way of Carolee Schneemann 41. “If you can’t write, you haven’t read enough.” 31. “Look for a long time at what pleases you,

–Molly Nesbit

and longer still at what pains you.” –Colette 42. “Go ask Zeina.” –Almost everyone 32. “‘What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures and conversations?’”

43. “Let us love this distance, which is

–Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.”

33. “What’s great about this country is that

– Simone Weil

America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the

44. “We are very surprised when we return to

poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-

the old house, after an odyssey of many years, to

Cola, and you know that the President drinks

find that the most delicate gestures, the earliest

Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you

gestures suddenly come alive, are still faultless.”

can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no

–Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the

45. “…It seems they were all cheated of some

Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”

marvelous experience which is not going to go

–Andy Warhol

wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it.” –Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You”

34. “Eat more greens.” –Mark Bittman 46. “There was a star danced, and 35. “Why do we hear the most about the stuff we

under that was I born.”

hear the most about?” –Anna Chave

–William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing Yes, stars, all of you—go shine.

109


MALIC AMALYA BORN Burlington, Vermont, 1980 EDUCATION MFA in Film, Video, and Animation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009 BA in Humanities, Art, and Cultural Studies, Hampshire College, 2003  MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

DIVINE ABJECTION: BODILY TACTICS IN QUEER E XPERIMENTAL FILM Examining work by cult figures George and Mike Kuchar, feminist video artist Jennifer Reeder, and performance artist Zackary Drucker, Divine Abjection traces tactics of revulsion and ecstasy deployed by experimental filmmakers to confront violence targeted at queer bodies. www.malicamalya.com

Zackary Drucker Lost Lake 2010 Video 8 minutes © Zackary Drucker Image courtesy of the artist


KIRA A. DRALLE BORN Geneseo, Illinois, 1985 EDUCATION BS in Studio Art (Photography), Bradley University, 2008  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, 2014

MY BODY KNOWS UNHEARD-OF

compositions are still heavily guided by the struc-

SONGS: THE SE XED BODY IN NEW MUSIC

tural analysis of rhythmic accuracy and music

PERFORMANCE PRACTICE

“theory.” In order to be accepted into this highly male-dominated field, many women performers

This project explores the use and understanding

refuse to engage in discourse around the body

of the body in contemporary New Music prac-

and often highly edit their identities in order to

tice. Historically, music has been evaluated on

hide their gender. But is this the answer to the

a structural level, maintaining a claim to being

problem, or merely circumventing the problem?

abstract and aesthetically autonomous. When

My own performance and experience of

Slovenian-born trombonist and composer

?Corporel will open a dialogue around embodi-

Vinko Globokar opened the dialogue in 1985 to

ment and gender by examining the role desire

question the role of the performer’s body by

plays in both score and performance. By com-

making the body itself the instrument in

paring this piece to performances dealing with

?Corporel: Pour Percussionniste sur Son Corps,

the body in both choreography and performance

he also created a dialogue in which the validity

art, as well as analyzing the piece through affect

of situated experience could enter into academic

theory, this project will show how music can in-

and musicological conversations. So why is the

form and be informed by interdisciplinary studies

conversation of the situated body still absent in

of the lived body.

performances of the piece nearly three decades later? Conversations about this piece and similar Kira A. Dralle Performance of ?Corporel by Vinko Globokar 2012 Performance Photographed by Joshua Band Image courtesy of the artist

111


CHRISTINA ELLIOTT BORN Burlington Vermont, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Art History, State University of New York, Plattsburgh, 2010 AA in Social Sciences, Clinton Community College, 2008  MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

CRACKED AURA:

Cracked Aura: The Delegation of Relics discusses

THE DELEGATION OF RELICS

how these works are simultaneously authentic objects and reproductions, existing in a flu-

The works discussed in Cracked Aura: The

ent aura that circulates with the freedom of a

Delegation of Relics walk the line between what

replica. These objects pose interesting questions

Walter Benjamin calls cult and exhibition values.

as to how contemporary society interfaces with

Antiques Roadshow brings to light the hidden

historic relics and what consequences new media

treasures accumulated by the masses, displaying

platforms have on these encounters.

the variety of inherited history on a syndicated broadcast. Using the elements of film, the Roadshow creates a montage of antiques that reflect America’s material collections, bringing the personal into the public realm. Christian Marclay has salvaged two American relics, the Liberty Bell and Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, and provided them with a new appraisal through the juxtaposition of photographs in The Bell and the Glass. The antique object 1855 Gold Presentation Cane, featured on the Antiques Roadshow, encompasses historic and modern modes of circulation, complicating Benjamin’s theories with both its form and function.


DANIELLE GRAVON BORN Clovis, New Mexico, 1989 EDUCATION BA in Studio Art and German, Concordia College Moorhead, 2010  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/ Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

PLAYING WITH TE X T: TACTILIT Y

Švankmajer, I will argue that the Quay Brothers

AND WONDER IN THE CABINET

are visual art historians using the image of the

OF JAN ŠVANKMAJER

book as an infinite text by rotating, spinning,

c. 1562

and revolving images to produce a life cycle

For their film The Cabinet of Jan

As visual art historians, the Quay Brothers fabri-

of meaning.

cate a film, or text, making use of the historically

Giuseppe Arcimboldo The Librarian

Švankmajer, the Quay Brothers based their main character on this painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo,

rich canon of visual culture in Prague from the

Relying heavily on the practice of footnoting,

16th and 20th centuries. To establish a finite

The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer uses stop-motion

meaning or sense of understanding would be ad-

animation techniques to mobilize the images and

verse to what the Quay Brothers are working to-

ideas of the Quay Brothers’ predecessors, which

ward in their film The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer.

are cited throughout the film. They pay hom-

This is not to imply that meaning is absent in their

age to three key figures: Giuseppe Arcimboldo,

film, rather quite the opposite—meaning is ani-

Rudolf II of Habsburg, and Jan Švankmajer; and

mated, assuming a life of its own in the intertext

their use of the book as the material makeup of

the Quay Brothers have woven.

the body refers to the bringing together of texts in the display of a textual corpus. As this book-

In The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer, objects and

body takes on attributes of the human life cycle,

symbols are given the opportunity to slide and

it circles its subjects rather than repressing their

play between metaphors and metonymies; the

voices with explicit explanations; it leaves room

Quay Brothers use an abundance of literary,

for playful interpretations. The film brings the art

musical, and visual references that work together

historical discourse to life through animation. It

to slip between the spaces (or perhaps, more

provides a different canon of works, encourages

appropriately, between the pages) of signifiers

play as a learning strategy, and challenges the

and signifieds, never quite arriving at a singular

notion of singular knowledge.

who worked in the court of Rudolph II of Hapsburg. Photographed by Skokloster Castle, Sweden © Skokloster Castle, Sweden Image courtesy of Smithsonian Magazine Quay Brothers The Cabinet of Jan Švankmaker 1984 Still image of the main character (a puppet of Jan Švankmajer) from the Quay Brothers’ film © Quay Brothers Image courtesy of the Quay Brothers

meaning. Utilizing the theory of text by Roland Barthes to read the networks of narrative and

www.daniellegravon.com

iconic imagery presented in The Cabinet of Jan 113


AIMEE B. HARLIB BORN Yonkers, New York, 1977 EDUCATION BA in Art History, University of California, San Diego, 2011  MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

INCENDIARY IMAGES: A READING OF

In 1991, Diseased Pariah News, the San Fran-

RADICAL AIDS ACTIVISM THROUGH

cisco–based zine written by and for gay men with

PUNK AESTHE TICS, SAN FRANCISCO,

HIV/AIDS, replaced their usual centerfold of a

1979–PRESENT

well-endowed model with a burning teddy bear. This renegade, cut-and-paste centerfold, Zen

Incendiary Images explores how “the flame” and

and the Art of Teddy Bear Burning, served as an

its image operate both as icon and index of a

instruction manual for burning teddy bears, often

certain kind of insurgent strain within AIDS activ-

sent by well-meaning but utterly disconnected

ism and art. This is not a project about red ribbons

friends and relatives. Some 20 years later, San

and polite, hopeful forms of resistance. Analyz-

Francisco–based artist and community health

ing how events, such as the White Night Riots,

advocate Jason Fritz rekindled this centerfold in

aggressively illuminated the way “certain citizens”

a video installation titled All Better. In his video,

were denied representation within legal discourse

Fritz sets ablaze the now well-established nexus

and deemed expendible, this thesis examines

of self-help, history, the body, and illness that has

how the cop cars ignited in defiance of the clear

come to define what the AIDS industrial complex

disregard the State of California had for the life of

currently looks like. In relation to the Zen cen-

San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk continue to

terfold and burning cop car, this contemporary

ignite critical reflections on the hyperexpendibilty

vision of a distant past ritualistically activates fire

of queer subjects in light of the AIDS epedemic. It

to burn through the historical treatment of people

further considers the way a certain Bay Area–punk

with AIDS as “failures or victims.” Instead, through

ethos was central to the production and distribu-

“acting out” and burning up memory, based on

tion of such counterimages of resistance.

archival ephemera, Fritz strengthens filial ties with previous and future queer generations.

In line with theorists such as Dick Hebdige, who figures “punk” not simply as a form of music or dress but as a critical strategy of semiotic warfare, this project considers the way Bay Area punks came to aim their particular attacks on the significant ways that sex, gender, degeneracy, and disease were yoked together in the years leading up to the AIDS crisis.


ANGELICA JARDINI BORN Los Angeles, California, 1989 EDUCATION BA in Art History and Visual Arts, Occidental College, 2010 î ? MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

THE RHE TORICAL SLUT: POLITICS OF

told to stay hidden, they are able to address issues

SE XUALIT Y AND GENDER IN FEMINIST

of agency, disable conventional categories, and

PERFORMANCE

challenge audiences to observe their own biases. They do so by performing various types of labor.

This thesis is interested in furthering feminist

Annie Sprinkle performs the role of the educator

discourse by examining the complex issues of

and spiritual guru. Kembra Pfahler refuses affec-

representation in the contemporary moment. A

tive labor, and instead uses her body as a material

history of self-produced images of gendered bod-

in acts that are designed to disturb. Community

ies by feminist artists will reveal how the function

Action Center, the film by A. K. Burns and A. L.

of performativity as a critical strategy changes in

Steiner, uses the labor of pornography from a

different cultural moments. When shock fac-

queer lesbian perspective to express a specificity

tor is eliminated as a strategy for resistance to

of desire, rather than perpetuating a universal

normative notions of gender and sexuality, how

notion of sexuality and gender.

do artists maintain an oppositional stance in their work without falling prey to sensationalism or

These works are products of specific temporali-

self-promotion, particularly in a culture that often

ties and communities, and the interpretive shifts

assumes certain issues of social injustice are no

that occur when they are taken out of these

longer relevant? This project highlights the ways

contexts are considered in terms of technology,

in which artists are drawing upon art historical

circulation, and accessibility. Ultimately, I hope to

referents to change this pattern, in hopes for a

contribute to the discourse of performance art by

more integrated future between the digital realm

emphasizing the political potential of the body in

and political artistic strategies.

action and of artists who draw from many aspects of visual culture—a category as multiplicitous and

The close analysis of performance and video art

queer as the web.

by Annie Sprinkle, Kembra Pfahler, and A. K. Burns and A. L. Steiner suggests that the pornographic body can function to challenge heteronormative and sexist representational systems. By using bodies that are at once visibly marked and

115


ZOË M ARTELL

The fashion of Steampunk abounds with instances

BORN

influence at work. Bustles and corsets appear

Mountain View, California, 1967

as utilitarian garments, worn by working-class

of boundary crossing, evidencing the Trickster’s

ruffians. Women don the clothing and assume EDUCATION

the comportment of male dandies. Aristocrats,

Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in

aviators, and pirates stand side by side. Clocks

Painting, San Francisco Art Institute,

and gears—emblematic of the genre—signal the

2009

presence of the Steampunk Trickster, a nomadic time-traveler. Skeleton keys, jingling from key

MS in Clinical Psychology, San

rings, invite metaphoric and metamorphic

Francisco State University, 2003

crossings of thresholds. Visual devices—goggles, masks, and monocles—evoke the Trickster’s

BA in Psychology and English Literature, San Francisco State

ability to jolt ways of seeing and understanding

University, 2000

the world.

 Dual Degree MA/MFA in History

Steampunk fantasy represents an escape hatch

and Theory of Contemporary Art/

from the reality of current and unsettling world

Photography,

events. This may enable re-narrations of the past,

San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

in which history takes a different path toward the present and future. Such re-imaginings are poBRASS MONKEY WRENCH IN THE GEARS: STEAMPUNK’S TRICKSTER This project addresses Steampunk’s retro-futurist sensibilities, specifically focusing on the ways in which Steampunk dress evokes narratives wherein history’s chronological gears are decid-

Untitled 2012

edly out of alignment. Such a disjuncture opens doors to new possibilities in the ways in which

Steampunk Trickster with winged

we see—and map—our conceptions of history,

headpiece, key, pocket watch, and brass

as well as the allure of alternate trajectories for

goggles Photographed by Zoë Martell Image courtesy of Zoë Martell

the future. I cast the mythic “Trickster” figure as central to Steampunk’s transgressive take on conceptions of gender, race, class, and, perhaps most importantly, time. Through the fashion of Steampunk, a new Trickster figure emerges—a “Steampunk Trickster,” who is particularly well suited to the current millennial turn. The past decade, marked by postmillennial disappointment and simultaneously fueled by apocalyptic anxieties about the future, constitutes an era that is perhaps best identified as being “betwixt and between” temporal markers. Given this, it is not surprising that the Steampunk Trickster stands as an enticing avatar, representing a potential guide for navigating this mysterious, liminal space.

tentially productive, allowing for creative ways of approaching a future that is not dictated by the results of past mistakes. A wrench in the gears of time, however, also invites paradox, and the hazard of ending up precisely at the point that one set out to avoid. As such, the Trickster may prove a dubious leader, bringing about its own undoing—too clever by half.


CAROLYN JEAN MARTIN BORN Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania EDUCATION BFA in Painting, John F. Kennedy University, 2010  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

NEGRO E XPOSITIONS: PORTRAIT

tion and class-consciousness. An examination of

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE NINE TEENTH

the motivation for displaying only the best and

AND T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURIES

the brightest of the Black race in 1900 assists in highlighting the present-day reductive visual rep-

What are the contemporary cultural implications

resentations of a people who have been, perhaps

of a photographic exhibition that displays only

unknowingly, packaged and presented to appear

well-known Black Americans similar in pose and

devoid of individuality.

social class? www.carolynjeanmartin.com Using two exhibitions that displayed portrait photography—the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition, curated by W.E.B. Du Bois, and The Black List: Photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, shown at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2011–2012— I examine how photographic exhibition space is utilized as a means of delivering a calculated image of the Black American to the viewing public.

Artist unknown African American Woman, Three-Quarter Length Portrait, Seated with Left Arm over Back of Chair, Facing Front 1899 or 1900 Gelatin silver photographic print from W.E.B. Du Bois’s photography albums of African Americans in Georgia, exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC

The exhibitions feature portrait photography that shares a response to W.E.B. Du Bois’s construc-

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

tion of class and identity, brought forth within his

Thelma Golden

early concept of the “Talented Tenth.” Through Du Bois’s ideals, these exhibits stand as pillars in a timeline holding up strikingly similar portraits of Black Americans, by manipulating the visual language of Black Americans through a strategy of similarity within images highlighting educa-

2008 Large-format digital portrait shown in the exhibition The Black List: Photographs by Timothy GreenfieldSanders at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, 2011–2012 Source: www.npg.si.edu

117


SUZ ANNE MINATR A BORN Fort Worth, Texas, 1987 EDUCATION BA in Art History, Marymount Manhattan College, 2010  MA in Exhibition and Museum Studies, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

THE ARTICULATED BOOK: DISCOVERING

In recent years, a new book form utilizing

A NEW BOOK MEDIUM BASED ON

traditional concepts of artists’ books, but

THE INTERPLAY BE T WEEN PAGE- AND

incorporating screens and digital technologies,

SCREEN-BASED READING

has materialized, creating something new and different. Discussion of these books has, thus far,

We live in an age of digital technology that is

been minimal. Some, as with Amaranth Borsuk

quickly infiltrating every facet of our world. What

and Brad Bouse’s Between Page and Screen, have

is now referred to as a “book” might no longer be

been labeled “artists’ books;” some are simply

the traditional codex; it might be a screen. Screen-

“books,” like Jonsi & Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps; and

based reading has become a popular platform

some have invented a label of their own, as with

for the transmission of information, whether it is

Penny Nii’s “digital over analog book,” Totality.

through e-readers, computers, tablets, or smart

Through close examination of these three objects,

phones. The instantaneous nature of screen-

this thesis will ask the questions: Where do these

based reading can essentially eliminate the need

books belong? Are they a new form of the ever-

for hard copies. However, artists’ books, whose

evolving artist’s book, or are they something new

very existence is based upon the physical object,

entirely? I aim to suggest that, while rooted in the

resist this tilt toward technology.

idea of artists’ books, these books belong to a new category called "Articulated Books."


ZACH MITLAS BORN Portland, Oregon EDUCATION BA in Studio Art, Linfield College, 2009 Coursework in French Studies, American University Center of Provence, 2007  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

PERFORMATIVE PICTURES: E XPERIENCE

a collection of canvases from the Dutch Golden

IN STILL LIFE PAINTING AS A PRODUCT OF

Age. Borrowing from Igor Kopytoff, “biographies”

BEDEVILED TEMPORALIT Y

of objects enact elaborate and personalized narratives. These directly engage the viewer, the

There is an incredible amount of popular imagery

artist, or the canvas itself—thus they perform their

that relies on the age-old genre of still life paint-

meanings, instead of symbolizing them.

ing. Window displays, catalog spreads, and online shopping sites showcase objects to all kinds of au-

This attitude is offered by a reading that relies on

diences, regurgitating the still life style. It comes

the real or imagined lives of objects. Such ideas

as no surprise that historians have made a connec-

are ones that I myself am investigating in my own

tion between Dutch still life and the commodity as

artistic practice. Artists examined in this thesis

the driving force of this genre’s investigations. This

project include Dutch masters such as Ambrosius

is a method that remains problematic because it

Bosschaert. Overall, still life is read not as fixed

compresses the reach of still life painting to being

and unfailing symbolism, but rather as document-

little more than representations of the market-

ed histories that confuse conventional temporali-

place, which makes still life void of critical and

ties. In this way, rigid iconographic interpretations

artistic distinction.

of items, as signs of wealth or religious doctrine, fail to account for these concerns. In effect,

Other writers offer more creative investigations

these methods are painted out to make way for

of still life that breathe life back into this realm of

a broader visual investigation that sees still life

art historical consciousness. It is here where this

paintings as “performative” pictures, reforming

paper begins, as an attempt to re-examine the

the methods in which we interpret this practice

value that Dutch still life painting has to contem-

into more accessible readings.

Before, After, In Between 2013 Oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches

porary art and culture. Specifically, this essay takes the reader on an imaginative ride through

Zach Mitlas

www.zachmitlas.com

Image courtesy of the artist

119


A MY MUTZ A BORN Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 1983 EDUCATION BA in Business Economics and Communications, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2005  MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

UNRULY THREADS, QUEER HANDICRAF TS

metonym of the “hand” of the female craftsperson is signified, but fulsome queer bodies as well.

Unruly Threads, Queer Handicrafts examines

Using code, Sanders brings a material connectiv-

how contemporary queer artists, such as Jeremy

ity to sexual interactions of contemporary online

Chase Sanders, Josh Faught, and Allyson Mitchell,

queer communities, producing the masturbating

mine the performativity of handicrafts in order

hand in digital time. Using text that suggests sup-

to produce a multiplicity of queer bodies that

port systems as well as underlying threats, Faught

trouble the discursive fields that craft typically oc-

tugs on the present by looking back at the past to

cupies. Collectively, these rather different works

investigate complicated feelings with regard to

challenge the tendency to relegate knitting and

the history of the AIDS crisis, thus producing the

crocheting, for example, to explicitly feminine

missing body of the victims of AIDS. And, using

time signatures and heteronormatively domesti-

myth, Mitchell imagines a queer alternative to

cated spaces, thereby making “craft” aesthetically

heteronormative culture, producing her own

available to a certain kind of feminist critique, but

body over and over as a hairy, large mythologi-

seemingly unavailable to more contemporary,

cal woman. In these works, the associations of

queer critiques that are always already founded

marginalized handicraft, including the outdated

on a disavowal of the gender binary and the way it

and nostalgic, are exploited as queer strategies.

has come to support heteronormative visual and

In a culture that is viewed as post-AIDS, postdis-

material cultures.

ciplinary, postfeminism, technology-dependent, and economically defunct, Unruly Threads, Queer

Allyson Mitchell

Beginning with a look back to 1970s feminist art-

Handicrafts looks at the variety of ways that mem-

ists, who reclaimed the femininity and domestic-

bers of the current generation of artists are queer-

ity of handicrafts to create space for the female

ing craft to open up the present and re-imagine

subject, but in leaving out sexuality defaulted

their place within it.

to an essentialized heteronormativity, Unruly

Ladies Sasquatch (Details)

Threads, Queer Handicrafts draws on the ways

2005

the work of artists in the present moment queers

Mixed media with “fun” fur Dimensions variable Photographed by Cat O’Neil © Allyson Mitchell Image courtesy of the artist

handicraft through a camping of the handicraft aesthetic and temporality, in which not merely the


SARAH NANTAIS BORN Brampton, Canada, 1988 EDUCATION BFA in English Language and Literature with Honors Specialization in Studio Arts, University of Western Ontario, 2010  Dual Degree MA/MFA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art/Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

THOMAS KINK ADE AND “THE VILLAGE”

Thomas Kinkade is widely known as the self-pro-

IN VALLE JO, CALIFORNIA: REVITALIZING

claimed Painter of Light™ and although Kinkade

CONTEMPORARY SUBURBS THROUGH

considered himself a serious artist, his work is

BRANDING STRATEGIES AND THE

associated with kitschy Americana because of the

VISUAL ARTS

mass-marketing of Kinkade reproductions in his “malleries” across the country. Opening in 2001,

Homeownership in the United States persists as a

The Village housing development was driven by

common value shared over many generations. The

Kinkade’s corporation, The New Media Group,

desire to own a home is so ingrained in American

and it was created in the likeness of his paintings.

culture that suburban sprawl is starting to define

By considering issues such as composition, styliza-

the national landscape. Since the early 1990s,

tion, and audience through formal visual analysis,

bodies such as the Congress for New Urbanism

I show how Kinkade and his brand are catering to

(CNU) have inspired property development that

a specific fantasy of “home.” Drawing on inter-

emphasizes community, walkability, and sustain-

views with homeowners and developers, my analy-

ability. Specifically, one trend uses corporate

sis of The Village addresses the effectiveness of

branding strategies to produce communities that

the visual arts and popular culture to inspire civic

attempt to separate themselves from stereotypi-

engagement in suburban revitalization efforts.

cal elements of sprawl in both aesthetic and social

The effectiveness of this art-inspired community

arenas. This thesis analyzes the effectiveness of

proves the perfect opportunity for visual scholars

these new trends in suburban design by focusing

to contribute to conversations driving suburban

Entrance to The Village

on the Thomas Kinkade–inspired community in

retrofitting initiatives.

2013 This sign lies outside of the

Vallejo, California, named “The Village.” www.sarahnantais.com

gated entrance to The Village Photographed by Sarah Nantais © Sarah Nantais

121


M ANUEL A OCHOA RONDEROS BORN Bogotá, Colombia, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Fine Arts, Universidad de los Andes, 2003  MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

THE UNINHABITED STAGES/LOS

thoughtful criticism of the Colombian social and

ESCENARIOS INHABITADOS: STEPPING

political context from 1960 to 1980. After being

INTO FELIZA BURSZ T YN’S HOUSE

persecuted and criminalized by the Colombian government, she left the country and died in Paris

Through a fragmented and asynchronous nar-

in 1982. Her presence in the art scene was brief,

rative, this project analyzes three spaces inside

and her importance in Latin American art history

the house of Colombian artist Feliza Bursztyn

is barely mentioned. Therefore, her work and her

in Bogotá: her husband’s room (or, the archive),

figure remain a quizzical and ungraspable object

the garden, and the studio. A pioneer of instal-

of study. This research will discuss spaces, people,

lation art, or Environmental Spaces in Latin

animals, and objects inside her house, an unin-

America, Bursztyn worked with unconventional

habited place working as a private and complex

materials such as scrap metal, ragged fabrics,

archive through the contradictions and the unwrit-

stainless steel, and engines to create sculptures

ten layers of knowledge that vibrate within.

accompanied by sound, light, and short films. She was an active member of Bogotá’s intellectual spheres and was part of the discussions and


M ARTIN JAY STRICKL AND BORN Montgomery, Alabama, 1985 EDUCATION BA in Advertising and Art History, The University of Alabama, 2008  MA in Exhibition and Museum Studies, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES:

NOMA acts as the established organization that

DIALOGUE CREATED THROUGH

has been using social media to reinvent its identity

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND MEDIA

within the community to reach a broader audi-

WITHIN MUSEUMS

ence. YBCA serves as the newer, more alternative, space that reaches and engages its audience

My thesis examines how new trends in market-

through social media based on the audience’s

ing and communications are affecting museums’

pre-existing desires for digital content. By examin-

engagement with their public at the present

ing these two museums, I hope to understand

moment. As museums use the Internet and social

how organizations with different missions and

media to expand the number of performances

content can rely on the same forms of technologi-

and exhibitions to an online platform, there

cal engagement to not only grow their audiences

comes a point when this new engagement by

in a fiscal sense, but to engage in a deeper and

technology helps create an entirely new dialogue

more meaningful conversation about the art each

for the audience to connect with. Due to the

organization presents to its communities, whether

boom of new museums all over the world, even

through free digital content or incentives to visit

the more established institutions have to come

the museum and experience the art in person.

up with creative ways of getting the public—their

What sort of tone does each institution take on to

audience—to notice them. I explore how social

represent itself in the world of social media? How

media is helping to change the way a museum

does each museum measure success within this

brands itself. By looking specifically at two muse-

realm? What will the long-term effects of this new

ums, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA)

wave of media be on long-standing institutional

and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA),

brands like NOMA and, likewise, how will the

in San Francisco, I explore how the Internet has

relatively new branding of YBCA stand up in the

placed new value systems on audience expecta-

long run?

Image courtesy of

trends in communication and mass media are

www.conversationscontinues.wordpress.com

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA),

shifting the institutions’ existing audiences.

www.everythingouttheresf.wordpress.com

San Francisco

tions and participation. I also explore how new

New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) 2012 Photographed by NOMA staff © New Orleans Museum of Art New Orleans Museum of Art

2012 Photographed by Phocaso © Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Image courtesy of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

123


REGINA VEL A SCO GÓME Z BORN Mexico City, Mexico, 1986 EDUCATION BA in Communication, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, 2008  MA in Urban Studies, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

MOBILE MEXICO:

highways (Ecobici); a temporary artistic gesture

STREET-LEVEL CITIZENSHIP

addresses issues of urban malnutrition (COMA); and a social think tank solves long-term problems

In the pressure cooker of contemporary urbaniza-

of a bureaucratic urban policy through the every-

tion, the problems of the city take on proportions

day experience of nonexperts (Yo Propongo).

that are not only a detriment to human aspects of the urban experience, but are already unsus-

Drawing from human-scale interaction and tan-

tainable. This has been the case in Mexico City

gible daily experience, this project underlines how

where—despite the hopes that came with the

el Changarro, Ecobici, COMA, and Yo Propongo

arrival of democracy (President Fox, 2010)—

embrace conflict, reclaim space, and fight social

steady economic upheaval, the constant efforts to

alienation through the practice of street mobil-

become a “global city” (Sassen, 2005), and ur-

ity. With localized, temporary actions driven by

ban sprawl bound to limited resources and deep

people upon their immediate space, street mobil-

social disparities have brought dystopic spatial

ity introduces a new approach to urban politics

and social prospects upon the city.

and the possibility of a new kind of citizenship.

Through a Lefebvrian reading of space and an

By retrofitting urbanization to human scale

ethnographic approach, this project analyzes spe-

through street mobility, this project reintroduces

cific spaces within Mexico City that have evolved

what Lefebvre and Harvey described as the “right

from contraction and that are currently destabiliz-

of the city.” Operating at street level, the prob-

ing social processes and inciting social change.

lems of the urbanized environment not only be-

Condesa Lifestyle

Within Mexico City’s dystopia, positive social

come evident and reachable, but the “day-to-day”

2012

encounters emerge from the alluring illegality

citizen becomes a key agent for their solution.

One of the few neighborhoods that still

of informal street food stands (“el Changarro”);

Street mobility enables access, and accessibility

a sense of play takes over government through a

fosters agency; the power to change immediate

bike-sharing system that drastically re-imagines

space encourages a new kind of citizenship driven

the streets to make pedestrians and cyclists a

by action.

enjoys street life within Mexico City Photographed by Fernando Velasco Image courtesy of Fernando Velasco The Corner Changarro 2012 Street food stand occupying the sidewalk Photographed by Fernando Velasco Image courtesy of Fernando Velasco

better investment than automobiles and super


ARIEL Z ACCHEO BORN Salt Lake City, Utah, 1988 EDUCATION BA in Art History, University of Utah, 2011  MA in Exhibition and Museum Studies, San Francisco Art Institute, 2013

IN THE TEMPLE OF THE SCREEN:

Investigating the creation and subsequent recep-

RELIGIOSIT Y AND RITUAL IN

tion of cinema cults, this research discovers ritual,

CULT CINEMA

identity, and community formation in media fandom. As communities organize more frequently

Cult cinema is spoken of in slippages, as between

within virtual spaces, the repertory cinema has

genres, temporalities and spatialities, inclu-

paradoxically enjoyed revitalized relevance as a

sions and exclusions, transgressions and rituals.

physical gathering space for cult communities.

Unlike other cinematic genres, defined by form

From midnight movie screenings in 1970’s New

and content, cult cinema defines itself entirely

York to Peaches Christ’s “Midnight Mass” presen-

by its relationship with its audience. Cult cinema

tations in present-day San Francisco, this thesis

is a practice. It separates itself from traditional

traces different cult formations and the cultural

notions of fandom through its linguistic and

strategies they employ.

symbolic alliance to ritual and inexplicable devotion. This thesis tests conceptions of the “cult” of cinema, through its etymologies in ritual, religion, and popular culture. Cult cinema appropriates the language of religious devotion to describe a strategy of cinema viewership, venerating cinematic transgression as a formation of individual and communal subjectivity. The appropriation of the term from religious connotations self-reflexively illustrates the strategy of cult film practice. It rests on pedagogical training through esotericism, camp strategies, and ironic appropriation. Cult cinema is taught.

125


CULTURES OF THE MAKER: SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE AND CREATIVE GROWTH

MASTER OF ARTS COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS The MA Collaborative Projects, in conjunction with each student's individual thesis, form the capstone of the MA program at SFAI. Students from all three MA programs work together to define, research, and present a multifaceted public work focusing on a crucial aspect of contemporary art and its critical contexts.

The book project Cultures of the Maker: An

fraught categorizations and the heated debates

Anthology of Subjectivities, Dis/abilities, and

surrounding them were rethought in the broader

Desires was undertaken as a partnership

context of contemporary art.

between the Master of Arts program in History FACULTY

and Theory of Contemporary Art (HTCA) at SFAI

From a well-informed position, the collaborative

Claire Daigle

and the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland,

group developed a methodological framework,

California. Participating MA students in their

then selected and refined individual topics.

degree capstone course, Thesis II: Collaborative

The result was a set of interlinked essays and

Projects, worked with Faculty Director of MA

interviews providing historical context and

Programs, Claire Daigle. An entire academic

engaging arguments about the specificity and

year was devoted to a series of investigations

importance of the Creative Growth paradigm.

that took place on multiple levels. A portion

Topics include: Malic Amalya on John Martin’s

Aimee B. Harlib

of the students’ time was spent on-site at

sculptures, Kira A. Dralle on Ramon Avalos’s

Angelica Jardini

Creative Growth, which offers artist studio and

drawings and dress, Christina Elliott on the

Zoë Martell

exhibition opportunities for people with

self-reflexive nature of Nick Pagan’s work, Joël

Carolyn Jean Martin

disabilities. Students engaged with the Center

Frudden on installing inside the outsider gallery,

Zach Mitlas

by developing relationships with resident artists

Danielle Gravon on William Tyler’s drawings of

Amy Mutza

and teachers, doing archive-based research,

text and image as styles of storytelling, Aimee

conducting interviews, and pursuing other

B. Harlib on the collaborative project between

relevant investigations. These activities were

Creative Growth and the New Parkway Theater

supplemented by a series of readings, lectures,

(Oakland), Angelica Jardini on the collaborative

and discussions on the history of the genres of

furniture-making process at Creative Growth,

art brut, craft, folk art, and “outsider art.” These

Zoë Martell on garment-making processes and

MA STUDENTS Malic Amalya Kira A. Dralle Christina Elliott Joël Frudden Danielle Gravon

Manuela Ochoa Ronderos Saher Sohail

Cultures of the Maker: An Anthology of Subjectivities, Dis/abilities, and Desires Publication Release  March 2013

Convergence: San Francisco Art Institute and Creative Growth Creative Growth Art Center Gallery, Oakland, California  March 14–22, 2013

Almost Home: Community and Collaboration at Creative Growth Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  April 22–27, 2013


Creative Growth’s fashion show, Carolyn Jean Martin’s comparison of the show Unraveled and the Frieze Art Fair in New York, Zach Mitlas on the development of “travel” as creative trope, Amy Mutza on the cultural understandings of the intersections of “disability” and “sex,” Manuela Ochoa Ronderos on the sculptures of Lulu Sotero and their connection to space and memory, and Saher Sohail on Merritt Wallace’s “Dream Maps” from an art historical and psychoanalytical point of view. In addition to the book project, the group undertook two exhibitions dealing with some of the themes outlined above. The first exhibition, Convergence: San Francisco Art Institute and Creative Growth, which took place at the Creative Growth Gallery during the second week of March, displayed artwork written about in 13 essays featured in the publication. The students chose the work of several artists in order to highlight the topics discussed in the book. Through public programming, the exhibition brought together Creative Growth artists and SFAI students in a larger collaboration. The second exhibition, Almost Home: Community and Collaboration at Creative Growth, brought work from the artists at Creative Growth to the Diego Rivera Gallery at SFAI, further connecting the neighboring artistic communities. The pieces chosen for this show exemplified the ethos of the synergetic community encountered during the research for this project. In addition to artworks that were the product of the collaborative process, artists whose work expressed their own personal notions of “home” were exhibited to remind the viewer that individual subjectivity contributes to the interwoven whole. Through this publication and successive exhibitions, the MA Collaborative worked to develop new levels of thinking in respect to the models

(Opposite)

(Above)

and practices put forth by Creative Growth,

Creative Growth Exterior

Creative Growth Gallery

2013

2013

Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, California

Creative Growth Art Center, Oakland, California

Photographed by the MA Collaborative Project

Photographed by the MA Collaborative Project

Image courtesy of the San Francisco Art Institute

Image courtesy of the San Francisco Art Institute

and the MA Collaborative Project

and the MA Collaborative Project

including working against insider/outsider categorizations in the broader contemporary art world.

127


EVERYTHING OUT THERE: BAY AREA’S FIRST TRIENNIAL NOW FACULTY Betti-Sue Hertz MA STUDENTS

Over the last academic year, led by faculty

Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial

member and curator Betti-Sue Hertz (Director

Now exhibited the original work from artists

of Visual Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,

featured in BAN, including Rigo 23, D-L Alva-

San Francisco), a group of seven visual scholars

rez, Cliff Hengst, Scott Hewicker, Todd Hido,

from SFAI’s Master of Arts program have been

Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton, Jon Moritsugu, Ulrike

researching art exhibition history as part of the

Palmbach, Melissa Pokorny, J. John Priola, Isis

MA capstone course Thesis II: Collaborative

Rodriguez, Kathryn Spence, and Gail Wight. The

Projects, in order to conceptualize the Museum

project was presented to the public in two ven-

of Exhibition History (MoX) and its inaugural

ues: in the historic Diego Rivera Gallery at SFAI,

exhibition: Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First

and at The Old Mint in conjunction with SFAI’s

Triennial Now.

MFA Exhibition Currency.

MoX is conceived as a curatorial collaboration

In addition to these two presentations, a

Suzanne Minatra

that positions art exhibitions as major devices of

symposium was held chronicling the first two

Carlos Garcia Montero

social and cultural value, with their own logic and

years of projected programming for the MoX.

Sarah Nantais

structure external to the art objects they contain.

Each member of the collaborative thesis class

Martin Jay Strickland

Through remounting internationally notable exhi-

presented on an exhibition deemed relevant to

Stephanie Tran

bitions from 1960 to the present, MoX invites its

the history of art. The symposium took place on

Ariel Zaccheo

audience to access, experience, and reexamine

Thursday, April 18, in SFAI’s Lecture Hall.

Regina Velasco Gómez

significant displays from the past. Although the Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  April 15–20, 2013

museum is, at present, a purely theoretical proj-

Through this project, the collaborative group

ect, the exhibition Everything Out There exists as

hopes to recharge archival histories into

a real interpretation of the re-exhibition strategy

contemporary conversations. The revisiting

that MoX proposes.

of notable exhibitions is meant to bring to life, for a contemporary public, the cultural significance

Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial

that was experienced in a moment in the

the MFA Exhibition Currency),

Now is a re-mounting of the influential Bay Area

past, now.

San Francisco

Now (BAN) exhibition, originally presented by

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (then Center for

May 16–19, 2013

the Arts) in June 1997 in San Francisco. Recog-

The Old Mint (in conjunction with

nized as an exhibition that supports local emerging talent, this model has proven successful in showcasing artistic movements within the San Francisco Bay Area. Now in its sixth ramification, its alumni are represented by galleries throughout San Francisco and internationally. Many of these artists also have strong links to Bay Area Museum of Exhibition History Logo Conceptualized as an institution with

art institutions as faculty and visiting artists. This first exhibition, curated by Renny Pritikin, Arnold

the purpose of re-exhibiting notable

J. Kemp, and René de Guzman, also had a sig-

contemporary art exhibitions from the

nificant connection to the establishment of Yerba

past, the Museum of Exhibition History (MoX) reinforces art exhibitions as being major devices of social and cultural value. Through re-mounting historical exhibitions, audiences are able to access and experience these significant displays from the past that took place internationally. Image courtesy of the San Francisco Art Institute and the MA Collaborative Project

Buena Center for the Arts in the San Francisco arts community.

www.moxsf.org


Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial Now Exhibition Poster 2013 Presented in the Diego Rivera Gallery, April 15–20, this was the first exhibition the MA Thesis Collaborative chose to re-exhibit at their Museum of Exhibition History (MoX), which is a theoretical model for an institution that exhibits notable art exhibitions from 1960– present. The poster features the original logo for Bay Area Now (1997) by artist Barry McGee. Original logo © Barry McGee Image courtesy of Barry McGee

129


The opening of Marking(s) in the Swell Gallery Alexis Courtney and Lindsay Tully


SELEC TED PROJEC TS

These selected projects record and document the numerous accomplishments, exhibitions, on- and offcampus events, curricular and extracurricular endeavors, and collaborations of SFAI’s graduating MFA, MA, and Dual Degree students over the course of the academic year. Through these diverse and compelling initiatives, the students not only shape the graduate community at SFAI, they also influence the local, national, and international art communities at large.

131


ART BY TELEPHONE… RECALLED: AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION REIMAGINING A SEMINAL 1969 EXHIBITION

NO RESERVATIONS ART

ARTISTS

have also included the course Art Worlds: His-

Working in different time zones and under vari-

Elisabeth Ajtay

tory, Theory, and Practice, co-taught by Jennifer

ous constraints, students from École Supérieure

Lynn Colingham

Rissler (Acting Vice President and Dean of Aca-

des Beaux-Arts d’Angers (ESBA TALM), San Fran-

Francesca Du Brock

demic Affairs) and Zeina Barakeh. From group

cisco Art Institute (SFAI), École d’Enseignement

Carlos Franco

exhibitions and international collaborations to

Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux (EBABX), Bar-

Samira Hashemi

student-led publications, No Reservations Art

nard College, and Centre National de Danse

brings the creative work of SFAI’s graduate stu-

Contemporaine–Angers (CNDC) recreated this

dents into the public arena.

provocative collaboration. The final works were

Tom Loughlin Monika Lukowska Mary Corey March Cate Nelson Francisco Pinheiro Rebecca Rau Nathan Rosquist

No Reservations Art is a platform that provides

The historical Art by Telephone exhibition at the

emerging artists at SFAI with opportunities to

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago—in

collaborate and gain professional experience

which artists such as John Baldessari, Mel Boch-

outside of the classroom through interdisciplin-

ner, Hans Haacke, Ed Kienholz, Joseph Kosuth,

ary projects. No Reservations Art was founded by

Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg,

Zeina Barakeh (Director of Graduate Admin-

and Robert Smithson participated—questioned

istration) and is funded in part by a generous

the nature of the art object and individual

grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

authorship by asking participants to create an original work of art from instructions given over

The program is part of SFAI’s professional practices initiatives for graduate students, which

shown in exhibitions in Angers, Bordeaux, New The most significant No Reservations Art project undertaken during the 2012–2013 academic year was the international collabora-

Ouater Sand

tion Art by Telephone… Recalled, which brought

Dimitra Skandali

together students from five prominent institu-

Maya Smira

tions to recreate the historical 1969 exhibition

Lauren Visceglia

Art by Telephone.

Michal Wisniowski STAFF Zeina Barakeh, Director of Graduate Administration Vera Kachouh, Graduate Administration Manager CURATORS Sébastien Pluot and Fabien Vallos SFAI EXHIBITION COORDINATOR Michal Wisniowski

Swell Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  November 20–December 6, 2012

the telephone.

York, Paris/Chatou, and San Francisco.


PARTNERING INSTITUTIONS San Francisco Art Institute École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Angers Centre National Édition Art Image, Chatou Centre d’Arts Plastiques Contemporains, Bordeaux The Emily Harvey Foundation, New York École d’Enseignement Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Barnard College, New York (Opposite) Michal Wisniowski and Rebecca Rau

(Above)

reenacting Dennis Oppenheim

Carlos Franco and Dimitra Skandali

Decomposition

reenacting Katie Lee

1969/2012

Cook Something You Cannot Eat

Sawdust, gypsum, steel, glass, and cement

2012

Dimensions variable

Furniture, tablecloth, plates, glasses, forks,

Five materials prominent in the construction of the SFAI Graduate Center

knives, wine, salad, glue, keyboard buttons

building—sawdust, gypsum, steel, glass, and cement—were distributed on the

and cables, and vase with flowers

exhibition space floor in piles equal to the body weight (117 pounds) of Dennis

Dimensions variable

Oppenheim’s wife, Amy Van Winkle Plumb

Photographed by Elisabeth Ajtay

Photographed by Michal Wisniowski

Image courtesy of the artists

Columbia University, New York Centre National de Danse Contemporaine–Angers Ministère de la Culture, France Region Pays de la Loire

Image courtesy of the artists

133


INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE OF SANTORINI ARTIST Dimitra Skandali

INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS MFA student Dimitra Skandali was selected to participate in the prestigious International Biennale of Santorini in Greece. The theme of the biennial was “The Past.” Skandali contributed an installation related to her experience of growing up on Paros, an island in the Aegean Sea in Greece.

The Pool House, Pyrgos, Santorini, Greece

From the artist’s statement: “My ties to [the island

of Paros], its history and people are central to my

August 1–September 30, 2012

work. I carry my island with me everywhere; these themes of the past are reflected in my choice of materials and the ethereal, ephemeral forms I create—reminders of the sea, its openness and possibilities, but also its limitations. The fragility and the displacement of the materials also reference the instability of the current political and financial situation worldwide, but most specifically, the situation of my country, Greece, at present.” www.santorinibiennale.gr www.dimitraskandali.com

Dimitra Skandali Aegean – Pacific: A Dialogue (Installation view) 2012 Crocheted seaweed nets Dimensions variable Photographed by Christophe Piallat Image courtesy of the artist Dimitra Skandali Aegean – Pacific: A Dialogue 2012 Crocheted seaweed nets Dimensions variable Image courtesy of the artist


CITY SOUL FACULTY Mike Kuchar Hiro Narita ARTISTS Cheng Jiang Li Le

Nanjing, Jiangsu, China San Francisco  December 5, 2012–April 2013 (pre- to postproduction dates)

City Soul is a feature film by MFA student Cheng Jiang. Filmed in both the United States and China, City Soul centers on the story of an artist who returns to his home country following a specific incident. After a series of events, he is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not he should remain in the country of his birth or return to the United States. The film raises the question of whether it is the city itself that changes the main character, or the people who surround him. The main character’s process of exploring the city throughout the film reflects the character’s exploration of his inner self. Through this interior and exterior exploration, the film examines modern urban

City Soul

life in China, making comparisons between

2013

art and the environment in both China and the United States.

A scene from the film Image courtesy of Cheng Jiang City Soul

City Soul has gained media attention since preproduction. The film has received the cooperation of Nanjing Normal University and Nanjing Institute of Visual Arts, and it will be widely broadcast by ICN TV Network (a North Ameri-

2013 Images from the filming of City Soul, taken during production Photographed by the City Soul film crew and Luo Weiwei Images courtesy of Cheng Jiang

can broadcasting network) and Asia Television

City Soul

Limited (Hong Kong).

2012–2013 Press about the film and an interview with Cheng Jiang Image courtesy of NanJing Daily Reporter

135


YOU ARE BE AUTIFUL – FARSI EDITION SFAI ARTISTS Missy Weimer Farhad Bahram OTHER PARTICIPANTS Mahmoodreza Nourbakhsh (Photographer in Iran)

Tehran, Iran Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco  January 2012

You Are Beautiful – Farsi Edition 2012 A coffee shop patron in Tehran poses with an English “You Are Beautiful” sign Photographed by Mahmoodreza Nourbakhsh Image courtesy of Mahmoodreza Nourbakhsh You Are Beautiful – Farsi Edition 2012 Two Farsi-speaking tourists interact with Weimer and Bahram on the Golden Gate Bridge Photographed by Farhad Bahram Image courtesy of Farhad Bahram Missy Weimer Hand-painted You Are Beautiful signs, in progress 2012 Acrylic paint and wood Image courtesy of the artist

You Are Beautiful – Farsi Edition was a collabora-

With their synchronous expeditions to pro-

tion between Missy Weimer, Farhad Bahram,

mote good will, the team spread an apolitical

and Mahmoodreza Nourbakhsh. Invited by the

message—a message that was simply an act of

You Are Beautiful project to participate in an up-

kindness. The aim was to connect the people of

coming show at the Mission Cultural Center for

these two diverse cultures in a positive way and to

Latino Arts in San Francisco, Weimer, Bahram,

experience both communities in a new light.

and Nourbakhsh teamed up in a collaborative project to spread the message “You Are Beauti-

The project was exhibited in the group show You

ful” via prominent hand-painted signs in public

Are Beautiful at the Mission Cultural Center for

places. Bahram and Weimer worked in San Fran-

Latino Arts in San Francisco.

cisco, and Nourbakhsh in Tehran, to simultaneously post this message across both cities. In San

www.you-are-beautiful.com

Francisco, the message was recorded in Farsi; in

www.missionculturalcenter.org

Tehran, the message was in English.

www.missyweimer.com


LOCAL PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS

PERIPHERIES

Peripheries was a photography exhibition that

ARTISTS

explored the specific and intangible boundar-

Raelyn Ruppel

ies of place. Three photographers forged visual investigations into the metaphysical, geographic,

John Steck Jr. Missy Weimer

racial, physical, economic, and psychic borders of specific sites. Each artist in this exhibition brought a unique eye to the themes of horizonlines, in-between places, limits of locale, and the margins of landscape.

Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  September 2–8, 2012

Raelyn Ruppel’s series On the Edge of Utopia examines the last existing community of houseboats within the city of San Francisco, as a means to explore the relationship between the natural and the man-made, as well as the formal relationships between the houseboats and the freeways and overpasses that have been constructed around them. John Steck Jr.’s photographic installation Seacoast examines the liminal and infinite space of the horizon line and contemplates various ways to look at the vastness of this space. Steck’s images offer different ways in which to think about the physicality of the horizon line, and employ various methods of photographic arts toward this end. Missy Weimer’s series Dreams at the City Limits investigates the history of violence, both real and imagined, that has historically loomed over San Francisco’s John McLaren Park. Through exten-

John Steck Jr. Seacoast (Detail) 2012 Inkjet prints, photograms, and C-prints Dimensions variable Photographed by Missy Weimer Image courtesy of the artist Missy Weimer Dreams at the City Limits

sive research at local records offices, police sta-

2012

tions, and libraries, Weimer examines the facts,

Inkjet print mounted on foam core

fictions, and mythologies that form the story of the park and the community at its borders.

Dimensions variable Image courtesy of the artist Raelyn Ruppel Mission Creek Houseboats 2012 Archival inkjet print mounted on aluminum 32 x 40 inches Image courtesy of the artist Peripheries 2012 Raelyn Ruppel, Missy Weimer, and John Steck Jr. at the exhibition opening Image courtesy of the artists

137


SE VERED AND STITCHED

In Severed and Stitched, the exhibiting artists entered many social and political discourses, all through the act of reengaging their own situated bodies in their work. This collective show utilized

ARTISTS

multiple mediums and pushed individual artistic

Elisabeth Ajtay

boundaries, exploring the spaces and linkages

Alexis Courtney

between mind and body, control and chaos,

Amber Crabbe

theory and practice. The conversations between

Kira A. Dralle

these works of art demonstrated the artists’

Marcella S. Davis

experiences of experimentation, vulnerability,

Ingrid V. Wells Sarah Tell CURATOR Carlos Garcia Montero

and risk. The works engaged ideas of failed expectations of bodies in numerous ways, positing the concept that it is only through true vulnerability that a full range of possibilities in both art and life may be experienced. This exhibition boldly engaged uncertainty, and asked the

Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  September 10–15, 2012

Severed and Stitched 2012 Installation view of Ginnungagap (Yawning Void) by Elizabeth Ajtay Photographed by Joshua Band Image courtesy of the artist Severed and Stitched 2012 Installation view of Béton Brut by Sarah Tell Photographed by Joshua Band Image courtesy of the artist Severed and Stitched 2012 Installation view of 162 Attempts by Amber Crabbe Photographed by Joshua Band Image courtesy of the artist Severed and Stitched 2012 Promotional material Photographed by Joshua Band Image courtesy of the artists

audience to follow.


Emergency Exit Only, curated by Christina

In another piece, Loughlin read from his novel

Elliott, featured work by Tom Loughlin, including

Mr. To-day, wherein the text from The Great

sculpture, performance, and constructed

Gatsby has been arranged in reverse order.

E MERGENC Y E XIT ONLY

meaning, including economic, linguistic, and

In the constructed situation VIP Room, a buxom

ARTIST

ideological systems, and examined the ways

hostess allowed visitors to enter a private room

Tom Loughlin

in which these systems represent—and fail to

one by one, where another provocatively dressed

represent—the real.

woman invited them to lie in bed as she read

CURATOR

them a children’s story.

Christina Elliott

situations. The exhibition explored systems of

One work from the exhibition, Suspended Television, consisted of a 100-pound console

Loughlin and Elliott also collaborated on a show

television from 1979 hung six feet from the floor

catalogue, and Loughlin created T-shirts and

with the screen facing downward. Viewers brave

postcards promoting the exhibition. These mate-

enough to stand under the television could look

rials were placed in SFMOMA’s museum shop,

up and see the face of a 1970s flight attendant

complete with barcodes that functioned with the

as she repeated her preflight safety briefing in a

shop’s cash registers.

Swell Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  September 13–21, 2012

disinterested monotone.

Emergency Exit Only 2012 Exhibition poster Photographed by Tom Loughlin Image courtesy of Tom Loughlin

139


THEN AND NOW: PHOTOGR APHY AT THE SAN FR ANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, 1945 –2013

Then and Now: Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, 1945–2013 2012 Installation view of exhibition

FACULTY

showing original silver gelatin

J. John Priola

prints by various alumni Photographed by Toni Gentilli Image courtesy of Toni Gentilli

STAFF Jeff Gunderson ARTISTS Elisabeth Ajtay Tristan Cai Alexis Courtney Amber Crabb Samantha Lynn Croteau

Then and Now: Photography at the San Francisco

alumni—striking yet restrained and somewhat

Art Institute, 1945–2013 was a landmark exhibi-

prescribed, highly formal, and almost exclusively

tion showcasing the work of 24 current graduate

black-and-white—contrasted with the wide range

photography students, created in response to

of approaches and interpretations of current stu-

alumni work from the early years of the school’s

dents. The show featured varied techniques and

photography program. Under the guidance of

approaches to the medium, including pinhole

curator and MFA student Toni Gentilli, and with

photographs made from cameras crafted out of

Adam Donnelly

the assistance of SFAI Librarian Jeff Gunderson,

books, large-format cyanotypes, camera-less

Caity Fares

students consulted primary source materials held

images created by mixing photochemistry in

Toni Gentilli

in the Anne Bremer Memorial Library, includ-

petri dishes, digitally and manually distorted

Courtney Ann Greenlee

ing several original silver gelatin prints. Current

images, photographs accompanied by text, Po-

Erin R. Hall

student work and selected alumni work from the

laroid prints, and images printed on alternative

Grace Kim

school’s archives were displayed together.

materials such as silk.

The exhibition reflected on the continuities and

More than 30 original alumni photographs,

differences in the conceptualization and practice

including work by such seminal figures as Minor

of fine art photography from the beginnings

White, Frederick W. Quandt, William Heick,

of the country’s earliest fine art photography

Ruth-Marion Baruch, David Johnson, Robert A.

Marcella S. Davis

Marie-Luise Klotz Amelia Konow Oliver Leach Tony Maridakis Claudia Martin Andréanne Michon

program to present day. It revealed persistent

Hollingsworth, and Helen Howell, were pre-

Naaman Rosen

interest in street photography, environmental

served and displayed through this exhibition,

Dara Rossenwasser

portraiture, landscapes, and night photography,

with archival mounting and framing by J. John

Rohit Krishnan Sabu

as well as abstraction, documentation, satire, the

Priola and materials donated by Tamara Freed-

Maya Smira

use of visual metaphors for emotional content,

man of Spot Design Custom Framing. A book

John Steck, Jr.

and an appreciation of beauty and the sublime.

project associated with the exhibition is

Despite numerous similarities, the prints by

currently underway.

Kelly Nettles

CURATOR Toni Gentilli

Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  October 21–27, 2012

SFAI ALUMNI*

William Heick

William A. Lynch Jr.

Blair Stapp

Ruth-Marion Baruch

Robert A. Hollingsworth

Raymond W. Piercy

Walter Stoy

John Bertolino

Helen Howell

Frederick W. Quandt

Minor White

Jerry Burchard

Philip Hyde

Gerald Ratto

Dwain C. Faubion

David Johnson

Paul Rundall

Albert Gay

Philip Kemp

Geraldine A. Sharp

*Works from the SFAI archives by unidentified alumni were also included


ROB THE NOISE BANK FACULTY Laetitia Sonomi ARTISTS Elisabeth Ajtay Cory Bates U. V. Dogan Jaik Faulk Carlos Franco Carlos Garcia Montero Samira Hashemi Heejin Jang Tom Loughlin Nicole McClure Andréanne Michon Francisco Pinheiro

Rob the Noise Bank was a group exhibition of

Nathan Rosquist

work by students in the Studio for Sound Strate-

Ouater Sand

gies graduate course, taught by Laetitia Sonami.

Dimitra Skandali

The course offered students a critical platform for investigating sound as an extension of their artistic practice. Students explored theoretical frameworks in reference/opposition to historical and contemporary aspects of sonic art, including

Lindsay Tully Linsey A. Wallace CURATOR Carlos Garcia Montero

Futurism, Fluxus, and Situationism, interactivity and the politics of participation, silence vs. noise,

The Lab, San Francisco

post-digital aesthetics, utterance and text-sound

composition, psycho-acoustics and architecture,

December 8–12, 2012

and electronic music and muzak. The culmination of Studio for Sound Strategies was the collaborative exhibition Rob the Noise Bank at The Lab in San Francisco. For this exhibition, students created works reflecting diverse manifestations of sound art, including sound as an expression of site, as a trajectory for understanding cities, as a political expression of power, and as a sensual immersive space, among other concepts. The work in the exhibition included interactive audio circuitry, sound sculptures, light-activated objects, videos, tents, ladders, and sound-activated seaweed.

Rob the Noise Bank 2012 View of the exhibition Photographed by Dimitra Skandali and Elisabeth Ajtay Image courtesy of the artists

141


SLEDGEHA M MER CONSTITUTION ARTISTS Elisabeth Ajtay Shay Arick Pabi Chulo Amber Crabbe Alexis Courtney Marshall Elliott Carolyn Jean Martin Anthony A. Russell Lana Williams Simon Wolf CURATOR Christina Elliott

Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  February 18–23, 2013

Burnt, popped, busted, smashed, defaced, and Collision Crush Cacophony 2013 Documentation of Anthony A. Russell’s

demolished, the art chosen for Sledgehammer Constitution enabled destruction as a point of

performance during opening night

sublime creativity. Consisting of installations,

Photographed by Amy Mutza

auto-destructive sculptures, film projections,

Image courtesy of the artist

nontraditional paintings, sound manipulations,

Smoke Out

montage, assemblage, literary design, and

2013

performances, Sledgehammer Constitution

Lana Williams’s piece, Smoke Out,

provided a breadth of creative destruction.

involved group participation in lighting over 100 smoke bombs outside of the

Manipulation and annihilation allowed these art-

gallery space

ists to “hammer” not only the material properties

Photographed by Amber Crabbe

of the works, but the associated concepts as well.

Image courtesy of the artist


THE BREE ZE YOU C AN’T HOLD FACULTY Mike Kuchar Kerry Laitala ARTISTS Zach R. Alspaugh Chris Corrente Cheng Jiang Li Le Qi Luo Miao Tian

San Francisco  February 26–March 4, 2013 (production dates)

The film The Breeze You Can’t Hold, created and directed by Li Le, is the story of two close friends

The Breeze You Can’t Hold

who have been out of touch for many years. One

2013

of the friends, Brice, tries to reconnect with his

Filming with Mike Kuchar

friend over a long period of time, but, after years of difficulty and misunderstanding, finally realizes

Photographed by Zihan Zhu Image courtesy of Li Le

that the form of brotherhood that they once

The Breeze You Can’t Hold

shared is inexplicably lost.

2013 The crew and actors come together to begin planning Photographed by Zihan Zhu Image courtesy of Li Le The Breeze You Can’t Hold 2013 A photograph used as a key prop in the making of the film Photographed by Cheng Jiang Image courtesy of Li Le

143


TERRE INTÉRIEURE L ANDLOCKED

Landlocked was a three-person exhibition deal-

Courtney Ann Greenlee is a darkroom advo-

ing with themes of family, land, and confrontation

cate who documents her extended family and

through bodies of work by Courtney Ann Green-

the places she calls home. The images from the

lee, Andréanne Michon, and Samira Hashemi.

series Welcome Home were taken with a view camera in Alabama, Tennessee, and California.

Andréanne Michon’s series La Présentation of ARTISTS

the Fracture Dura Mater is a reflection on the

Samira Hashemi’s work Mum and Dad Protest is

Courtney Ann Greenlee

passage of time and inheritance with portraits

a video/sound installation that created a physical

Samira Hashemi

of her family, ancestors, and the landscape of

and psychological space in which to explore

Andréanne Michon

La Présentation, a village in Quebec, Canada,

the relationship between a father and daughter.

where she is from. In 2007, hydraulic fracking

Hashemi’s video work used Skype to capture

to extract shale gas from La Vallée du St-Laurent

footage of her family in Iran, while she directed

began in this region.

them from San Francisco.

Swell Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute  March 24–April 6, 2013

2013

–Terre Intérieure – Landlocked

Partial view of the exhibition Photographed by Andréanne Michon Image courtesy of Andréanne Michon


ART COMPETITIONS AND AWARDS

THE ANNUAL MURPHY AND C ADOGAN CONTE MPOR ARY ART AWARDS E XHIBITION SFAI ARTISTS Mika Boyd Tristan Cai Amber Crabbe Missy Engelhardt Nancy L. Ivanhoe Dimitra Skandali Michal Wisniowski Momo Yao

SOMArts Cultural Center,

The Annual Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary

Fellowship recipients for 2012 were selected by

Art Awards exhibitions showcase the work of

Adrian Arias, mixed-media artist and Multimedia

promising visual artists from Bay Area MFA pro-

Coordinator at the Mission Cultural Center for

September 4–October 2, 2012

grams (the San Francisco Art Institute, California

the Latino Arts; Mildred Howard, sculptor and

College of the Arts, Mills College, Stanford Uni-

installation artist; and Justin Hoover, Curator and

Delta Center for the Arts: L. H. Horton

versity, and the University of California, Berkeley)

Gallery Director at SOMArts Cultural Center.

Jr. Gallery, Stockton, California

and identify young artists whose work connects

After careful evaluation of the 121 portfolios

with emerging trends in contemporary art.

submitted, the panel recommended 23 out-

San Francisco

January 17–February 8, 2013

standing MFA visual art students to receive The exhibitions survey new work from the recipi-

awards; 8 were from SFAI

ents of the competitive Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and Edwin Anthony and

www.somarts.org/murphycadogan

Adelaide Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarships, funded by The San Francisco Foundation and administered by SOMArts Cultural Center. The Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards provide annual partial tuition to support the artistic development of promising MFA candidates.

The Annual Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition 2012 Installation views of the exhibition at SOMArts Photographed by J. Astra Brinkmann Images courtesy of SOMArts Cultural Center

145


THE ART OF PHOTOGR APHY SHOW SFAI ARTISTS Caity Fares Andréanne Michon SFAI ALUMNI Celia Lara

San Diego Art Institute: Museum of the Living Artist  September 29–November 11, 2012

The Art of Photography Show is renowned for its thoughtful and rigorous presentation of the best new work in contemporary photography from photographers all over the world. The 2012 exhibition was juried by Julian Cox, Founding Curator of Photography and Chief Curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The exhibition received 16,905 submissions from 77 countries. Of this astounding number of entries, only 200 works were selected for the exhibition, including 2 current SFAI MFA students and an SFAI MFA alumna.

The Art of Photography Show 2012 Partial view of the exhibition on opening night Photographed by Andréanne Michon Image courtesy of Andréanne Michon


FUTURES SFAI ARTISTS Amber Crabbe Michal Wisniowski CURATORS Jack Fischer (Jack Fischer Gallery) Michael Yochum (Arc Gallery)

Arc Gallery, San Francisco  February 2–March 23, 2013

Curated by Jack Fischer of Jack Fischer Gallery and Michael Yochum of Arc Gallery, Futures was conceived as a showcase for promising local MFA candidates. Artists were chosen from the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, and Mills College. Each of the artists selected by the curators had a coherent body of work that was judged to be “gallery ready,” and that articulated a clear artistic vision. The selected artists each created a micro-exhibition that could be read as a proposal for a larger gallery exhibition or installation. Amber Crabbe’s Exposure Album explored the act of keeping and exposing secrets, both wrought with toxicities of shame, jealousy, endangerment, and revenge. Michal Wisniowski’s Re-flection investigated object-making as a survival strategy under oppressive power structures and explored tensions between the private and public. www.arc-sf.com/futures.html www.ambercrabbe.com www.michalwisniowski.com Futures

Exposure Album

2013

2013

Installation view of the exhibition

Installation view of Amber Crabbe’s Exposure

Photographed by Michal Wisniowski

Album project at Futures

Image courtesy of Michal Wisniowski

Photographed by Michal Wisniowski Image courtesy of Michal Wisniowski

147


MFA NOW 2013 – ROOT DIVISION SFAI ARTISTS Missy Engelhardt Marie-Luise Klotz Sarah Nantais Tamra Seal Dimitra Skandali Sarah Tell Kevin Tijerina

Root Division, San Francisco  February 6–23, 2012

The MFA NOW 2013 juried exhibition at Root Division, curated by Brian Karl, Program Director at the Headlands Center for the Arts, celebrated new talent emerging from the Bay Area’s seven prominent MFA programs (the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley). Of the numerous artists who submitted work, only 26 were invited to exhibit in Root Division’s gallery; 7 of those artists were SFAI MFA candidates. The juried exhibition was accompanied by an archive project—a comprehensive catalogue that collected images from all of the artists who submitted work for consideration. www.rootdivision.org/020913.html

The opening of MFA NOW 2013

Dimitra Skandali

Work by Tamra Seal

SD. In Memory of My Grandmother (Installation view)

Photographed by Alex Hernandez

2013

Image courtesy of Root Division

Crocheted seaweed nets and fishing line 99 x 276 x 150 inches Image courtesy of the artist


ON- C A MPUS E XHIBITIONS AND E VENTS

The opening of Experimental Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Mid-Winter Burning Sun: Gutai Historical Survey and Contemporary Response Photographed by Joshua Band

149


RETURN TO SFAI ALUMNI CELEBRATION + WINTER ART FESTIVAL November 3–4, 2012 In the fall, SFAI welcomed more than 2,000 alumni and art enthusiasts to campus for a weekend extravaganza—and new annual event—that embodied
the verve and nerve of SFAI’s art community.

Return to SFAI Photographed by Thor Swift Winter Art Festival Photographed by Joshua Band

On November 3, SFAI hosted its first ALUMNI

On November 4, hundreds more people

CELEBRATION in nearly 15 years on the Rus-

attended the WINTER ART FESTIVAL to view

sian Hill campus, featuring a party that celebrat-

and buy new art by 170 students and alumni.

ed the strong community of alumni and friends.

The event also included live music, food trucks,

The evening included an alumni exhibition in the

interactive installations from the cutting-edge

Diego Rivera Gallery, specialty cocktails by The

Design and Technology Department, and special

Bon Vivants, food by renowned Bay Area chefs,

performances by the infamous New Genres

an exclusive performance by SFAI alumna Karen

Department. Works on display included painting,

Finley, and live music by Bay Area punk icons and

drawing, collage, photography, printmaking,

SFAI alumni Penelope Houston of The Aveng-

sculpture, mixed media, video, performance, and

ers and Debora Iyall of Romeo Void. Alumnus,

fiber art, with all proceeds from the sale of work

faculty member, and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow

supporting the students directly.

Carlos Villa was honored with a tribute.


ALUMNI EXHIBITION î ?

By the Skin of our Teeth Diego Rivera Gallery This exhibition featured artwork by alumni Ellen Marie Curley, John de Fazio, Jeremy Fish, Jeremiah Jenkins, David Johnson, Charles Linder, Amanaa Rendall, Jeffrey Augustine Songco, Cat U-Thasoonthorn, Carlos Villa, Ben Wood, and Amber Jean Young.

By the Skin of our Teeth Installation view of the exhibition Photographed by Joshua Band Ben Wood Restoration 2002 Stereoscopic video, looped Projected video installation on rear projection screen Photographed by Joshua Band

151


SWELL GALLERY The Swell Gallery is a graduate student–run art space dedicated to the examination of the role of the gallery in an educational sphere. The mission of the Swell Gallery is to provide a venue for the exploration and discussion of varying artistic perspectives from the student body, operating as a platform for exhibition, events, and dialogue. The Swell Gallery is located on the second floor of SFAI’s Graduate Center at 2565 Third Street, and is open to the public.

flashlight, blanket, box of matches, journal, rope, bucket, magnifying glass, whistle 2013 Installation view of the exhibition Photographed by Reagan Davis Pufall Holy Smokes 2012 Installation view of the exhibition Photographed by Elisabeth Ajtay


FALL 2012 EXHIBITIONS

SPRING 2013 EXHIBITIONS

Bonanza!

To whomever it may concern: I am concerned

Conrad Guevara, Li Ma, Lana Williams

Adam Donnelly, Claudia Martin,

August 22–27

Rohit Krishnan Sabu January 20–February 2

Opening Reception Nicole McClure and Moises Levi Toledano

Rememory: Infused Presence

August 27–September 7

April Marie Dean, Cate Nelson, Ling-Chia Tsai February 3–16

Emergency Exit Only Tom Loughlin

flashlight, blanket, box of matches, journal, rope,

September 13–21

bucket, magnifying glass, whistle Francesca Du Brock, David Janesko, Francisco

Holy Smokes

Pinheiro, Nathan Rosquist, Dimitra Skandali

Jaik Faulk and Evan Reiser

February 18–March 2

September 24–October 6 Exposed Geoffrey Traxler Solo Show

Chandra Baerg, Lynn Colingham,

Geoffrey Traxler

Danielle Gravon

October 6–21

March 3–16

We Still Read Fairytales

Landlocked

Jos Truitt, Momo Yao, SeoKyeong Lee Yoon

Courtney Ann Greenlee, Samira Hashemi,

Curated by Aimee B. Harlib and Ariel Zaccheo

Andréanne Michon

October 22–November 2

March 24–April 6

Marking(s)

Unmediated

Alexis Courtney and Lindsay Tully

Sam Mell and John Steck Jr.

November 4–17

April 7–13

Art by Telephone… Recalled

Iconofauxbia

Curated by Sébastien Pluot

Spencer Holloway

Organized by Zeina Barakeh

April 20–26

November 20–December 6 Mesa Shay Arick and Marshall Elliott April 28–May 11

153


DIEGO RIVERA GALLERY The Diego Rivera Gallery on the Chestnut Street campus, home to SFAI’s historic Diego Rivera Mural, is a studentdirected exhibition space for work by SFAI students. The gallery provides an opportunity for artists from all academic programs to present their work or curate in a gallery setting; to use the space for large-scale installations; or to experiment with artistic concepts and concerns in a public venue.

FALL 2012 EXHIBITIONS

Glass, Metal & Wood, Melanie Piech

Peripheries

Impermanence, Ramona Stoianova

Raelyn Ruppel, John Steck Jr., Missy Weimer September 2–8 Severed and Stitched Elisabeth Ajtay, Alexis Courtney, Amber Crabbe, Kira A. Dralle, Marcella S. Davis, Sarah Tell, Ingrid V. Wells Curated by Carlos Garcia Montero

Glow, Tamra Segall October 14–20 Then & Now: Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, 1945–2013 Elisabeth Ajtay, Tristan Cai, Alexis Courtney, Amber Crabb, Samantha Lynn Croteau, Marcella S. Davis, Adam Donnelly, Caity Fares, Toni Gentilli, Courtney Ann Greenlee, Erin R.

September 10–15

Hall, Grace Kim, Marie-Luise Klotz, Amelia

Nicely, Mary Alyssa Block

Martin, Andréanne Michon, Kelly Nettles,

McMaison, Elizabeth Cayne

Naaman Rosen, Dara Rossenwasser, Rohit

2012 Darren Cultural Exchange, Evan Moring

Krishnan Sabu, Maya Smira, John Steck Jr.

September 17–29

Curated by Toni Gentilli

Konow, Oliver Leach, Tony Maridakis, Claudia

October 21–27 Seeds of Consciousness

Opening reception for The Transcendent Photographed by Joshua Band

Dianna M. Lindquist, Momo Yao,

Dangerous Feelings

SeoKyeong Lee Yoon

Benjamin Ashlock, Hannah Kirby,

Curated by Aimee B. Harlib

Diego Villalobos

September 30–October 6

October 28–November 3

The Transcendent

Threshold

Chandra Baerg, Ana Paula Fonseca, Li Ma

Tristan Cai and Andréanne Michon

October 7–13

November 5–10


Nomads

Possessive Obsession

Elisabeth Ajtay, Javier Arbizu, Shay Arick, Monika

Seth Camp, Camille Reyes, Kerbi Urbanowski

Lukowska, Golbanou Moghaddas, Ruya Qian,

February 25–March 2

Ida Roscher, Eden Sarna Curated by Carlos Garcia Montero, Jessica

Body Rhetoric

Montgomery, Saher Sohail

Pabi Chulo, Lynn Colingham, Chason Huggins

November 12–17

March 4–9

Opalescent Flesh

2.5D, Shay Arick

Ayuna Collins, Will Grogan, Donald Hicks

Contact, Alexis Courtney

November 25–December 1

City of Gold, Land of Promise, Meredith Leich March 11–16

In the Room Kellie Flint, Felicita Norris, Lindsay Stripling

Oh, Ah, Heejin Jang

December 2–8

The Colors of Things to Come, Sho Tsunoda March 18–23

SPRING 2013 EXHIBITIONS

Wild Beasts, Magic Magic Marshall Elliott, Hanna Kunysz, Justin Margitich,

På Dypt Vann

Stephanie Rohlfs, Linsey A. Wallace

Shiela Diolosa, Raul Lira, Mikaela McLeish,

March 25–30

Annette Elverum Østby January 13–19

BADD Paint-Benjamin Ashlock, Jonathan Bicos, Thack Olsen

The Haunting

April 1–6

April Marie Dean, Tony Maridakis, Cate Nelson, Thea Juliette Stevenson, Ling-Chia Tsai

On Water and Dreams, Tony Maridakis

January 20–26

The First Man, Julie Sadowski Creative Language, Ouater Sand

Our Art Show!

April 8–13

Mary Alyssa Block, Conrad Guevara, Ray Mack January 27–February 2

Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial Now

Whimsical Sister Group

MA Collaborative Project

Emily Bayless, Li Ma, Ingrid V. Wells, Momo Yao

April 15–20

Curated by Ariel Zaccheo February 4–9

Almost Home: Community and Collaboration at Creative Growth

3 Girls, 1 Show

MA Collaborative Project

Lanee Bird, Emily Gorman, Stephanie Pence

April 22–27

February 11–16 Interwoven Connections – Contemporary Fibers Sledgehammer Constitution

Jacqueline Buttice, Heather Jones, Mary Corey

Elisabeth Ajtay, Shay Arick, Pabi Chulo,

March, Dara Rosenwasser

Amber Crabbe, Alexis Courtney, Marshall Elliott,

April 29–May 4 Melanie Piech

Carolyn Jean Martin, Anthony A. Russell, Lana Williams, Simon Wolf

Untenable Dynamism

Curated by Christina Elliott

Monika Łukowska and Maya Smira

February 18–23

Curated by Monica Vazquez May 4–11

Wooden Circles (From Glass, Metal & Wood) 2012 Photographed by Trevor Hacker

155


WALTER AND MCBEAN GALLERIES

TEMPORARY STRUCTURES 

September 14–December 15, 2012 Curated by Glen Helfand and Cydney Payton

EXPERIMENTAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART TO CHALLENGE THE MID-WINTER BURNING SUN: GUTAI HISTORICAL SURVEY AND CONTEMPORARY RESPONSE

Temporary Structures was an interdisciplinary

group exhibition featuring artists who explore

February 8–March 30, 2013

the allure of temporary architecture as a site

Curated by John Held, Jr. and

of human interaction, spectacle, and fun.

Andrew McClintock

Inspired by San Francisco’s colorful history of World’s Fairs and expositions, the exhibition

This exhibition was the first West Coast survey

included works—many of them site-specific to

exhibition of Gutai (1954–1972), a significant

the Walter and McBean Galleries—concerned

avant-garde artist collective in postwar Japan that

with architectural aspirations, follies, and

was founded by Jiro Yoshihara under a primary

momentary acts of cultural transformation.

directive: “Do something no one’s ever done

Encompassing sculpture, drawing, film, video,

before.” Showcasing nearly two dozen paintings

installation, and public programming, the

from private collections, original video and pho-

exhibition created an open platform that consid-

tographs, mail art from more than 30 countries,

ered how spaces are claimed, however briefly,

and local artists’ responses to groundbreaking

by artists and communities.

performances, the exhibition created a dialogue with classic Gutai works while demonstrating

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

the lasting significance and radical energy of the

movement.

Pawel Althamer Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt

Special thanks to the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History

David Gissen

and the Museum of Osaka University

Amy M. Ho Paul Kos Roy McMakin Christian Nagler and Azin Seraj Ben Peterson Michael Robinson Jonathan Runcio Mungo Thomson Together We Can Defeat Capitalism

Jeremiah Jenkins performing Challenging Mud—2013 during Installation view of Temporary Structures

the Gutai opening reception

A performance reenacting Paul Kos’

Guy Overfelt performing Passing

Gargoyle VIII during the

Through Moto Redux during the

opening reception

Gutai opening reception


¡OYE, MIRA! REFLECTIVE APPROACHES IN CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN VIDEO ART

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS  Edgardo Aragón (Mexico)

Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba)

April 19–June 8, 2013

Miguel Calderón (Mexico)

Curated by Tony Labat

Sergio De La Torre (Mexico) Humberto Díaz (Cuba)

Befitting SFAI’s role as a pioneer in performance,

Felipe Dulzaides (Cuba)

moving image, and installation through the

Ana Teresa Fernandez (Mexico)

New Genres program, this exhibition brought

Luis Gárciga (Cuba)

together artists from Latin America who use

Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia)

video as a tool for reflection and contemplation,

leonardogillesfleur (Argentina)

exploring relationships of identity to site, history,

Julio Cesar Morales (Mexico)

and memory. Working with varied approaches

Yoshua Okón (Mexico)

to production and display, these artists—from

Eamon Ore-Giron (Peru)

Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia—

Amapola Prada (Peru)

play an important role as mediators in the geo-

Maya Watanabe (Peru)

political landscape, focusing on themes ranging from place-specific issues of social justice and

Special thanks to the Kadist Art Foundation

political oppression to the universal concerns of love and family.

A performance by Los Jaichackers during the opening reception for ¡Oye Mira! SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs are supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

All photographed by Joshua Band

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GRADUATE LECTURE SERIES The Graduate Lecture Series (GLS) enables students and the general public to engage with emerging and established artists, curators, critics, and historians working in both local and global art communities.

FALL 2012 WILFREDO PRIETO More with Less September 14 J. JOHN PRIOLA Form | Idea October 5 MARK PAULINE Trick Others into Accepting Your Sick Schemes as an Exciting Source for Personal Success and Acceptance October 19 THOMAS ZUMMER On the Notion of “Capture”— Mediality and the Problematic Dispositions of the Image October 26 JOHN ROLOFF Sentient Terrains: Selected Works November 2

SIMON O’SULLIVAN On the Production of Subjectivity November 9 LIZ COHEN Bod Mods, Chick Dicks, and Cars November 16 CORNELIA BUTLER Lygia Clark: From Painting to Participation November 30

SPRING 2013 PAUL KOS Allegories and Metaphors January 25 DAN CAMERON Racing to Catch Up February 1 SERGIO DE LA TORRE Labor February 15

RADICAL DIRECTING LECTURE SERIES In fitting with SFAI’s pioneering presence in experimental film, this series emphasizes cinematic approaches that veer from traditional narratives, along with the conceptual frameworks filmmakers use to articulate characters, plot, subtext, tension, and drama. The series was organized to complement a course taught by Lynn Hershman Leeson for SFAI’s Film program.

SPRING 2013 RICHARD BEGGS Sound Designer February 6 CONNIE FIELD Social Documentary Filmmaker February 13

SFAI Lecture Hall Photographed by Trevor Hacker

JARON LANIER Scientist, Musician, Visual Artist, and Author February 27

MAUREEN GOSLING Documentary Filmmaker March 6 DENNIS MUREN Visual Effects Artist April 10 THE ROXIE THEATER LEADERSHIP TEAM April 17

CLAUDIA JOSKOWICZ Landscape and Memory in the Work of Claudia Joskowicz February 22 ANNA CHAVE High Tide: Fluidity in Women’s Art Practice March 29 FRANCES MCCORMACK The Constant Gardener April 12 MEREDITH TROMBLE Nothing Means Anything April 26 JOHANNA DRUCKER Aesthesis: Does Aesthetic Knowledge Matter in Current Culture? May 3


VISITING ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS LECTURE SERIES SFAI’s Visiting Artists and Scholars (VAS) lecture series provides students, faculty, and the wider Bay Area public with direct exposure to major figures in contemporary global art and culture.

FALL 2012 BRENT GREEN September 17 RASHAAD NEWSOME September 19 JUDIE BAMBER Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellow September 24

PAUL SIETSEMA Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices November 12

DOUG RICKARD March 13

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN November 14

LINDA BESEMER Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices April 8

URS FISCHER DOCUMENTARY SCREENING* November 19

CYNTHIA CARR IN CONVERSATION WITH AMY SCHOLDER Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz October 3 MUNGO THOMSON* October 8 SUE WILLIAMS Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices October 22 MICHAEL ROBINSON* October 29

SPRING 2013 RUBY NERI February 4 PABLO HELGUERA Seed Fund Teaching Fellow in Urban Studies February 18 ROY MCMAKIN February 20

TOM SACHS April 3

TRENTON DOYLE HANCOCK Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices April 15 TAKESHI MURATA May 1 *These events were part of Temporary Structures, Walter and McBean Galleries, September 14–December 15, 2012.

CHRIS JOHANSON Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices March 4

PHOTOALLIANCE LECTURE SERIES PhotoAlliance, an affiliate of SFAI, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the understanding, appreciation, and creation of contemporary photography. PhotoAlliance fosters connections within the Bay Area photography community through public programs and educational activities including workshops, lecture series, and portfolio reviews.

SPRING 2013

JAMES HENKEL January 25 KAEL ALFORD AND THORNE ANDERSON February 15

LEO RUBINFIEN Sixth Annual Our World Portfolio Lecture: The View from the Street March 15

RICHARD MISRACH April 19

SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs— a component of which is the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series—are supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. The Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellowships for Interdisciplinary Painting Practices are funded by the Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation. The Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship is funded by the generosity of the family of Richard Diebenkorn. The Seed Fund Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies is supported by the generosity of the Seed Fund.

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SFAI REMEMBERS CARLOS VILLA, 1936–2013 The SFAI community was deeply saddened by the death of renowned artist, educator, multicultural activist, and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow Carlos Villa on March 23, 2013, following a battle with cancer. A beloved teacher and mentor to generations of artists, Villa had been a faculty member in SFAI’s Painting Department since 1969; he also earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the school.

On April 25, 2013, SFAI held a public memorial service celebrating Villa’s life, work, and memory. The service featured the following tributes: CHARLES DESMARAIS, on behalf of SFAI
 RIO VALLEDOR , on behalf of the family
 MANUEL NERI, speaking as a fellow artist

and friend Carlos Villa for San Francisco Arts Quarterly 2011 Photographed by Andrew McClintock

AMALIA MESA-BAINS, on behalf of

theorizing multiculturalism

The door of Carlos Villa's honors studio

KEITH MORRISON, speaking to his

at the California School of Fine Arts

national profile as an artist

(now SFAI) c. 1959 Photographed by Jerry Burchard Courtesy of the Burchard Estate

RIGO 23, on behalf of artists he has mentored

JENIFER WOFFORD (Mail Order Brides), on behalf

of students and collaborators

KEVIN CHEN (Intersection for the Arts),

on behalf of arts organizations he has mentored
 LAURIE LAZER AND DARRYL SMITH

(The Luggage Store), on behalf of community organizations OWEN TAKABAYASHI, on behalf of students

he has mentored THEO GONZALVEZ, speaking to his profile

as a Filipino American artist
 MOIRA ROTH, speaking to his profile

as an American artist BILL BERKSON, on behalf of the SFAI faculty


SFAI PRESIDENT CHARLES DESMARAIS

“Carlos’s death is a loss not only to the San Francisco Art Institute—a place that he made his home for five decades, first as a student and then as a beloved teacher and mentor— but to the broader network of artists, activists, and community organizers with whom he worked to expand society’s understanding of the rich rewards of cultural diversity. His work and life serve as a powerful model of art’s ability to challenge social conditions, and his generosity of spirit will continue to inspire the innumerable people whose lives he impacted.” MACARTHUR AWARD-WINNING ARTIST AND SCHOLAR AMALIA MESA-BAINS

“Carlos Villa will remain an irreplaceable figure in the multicultural movement. Starting from his own cultural heritage as a Filipino American he brought a broader vision to the struggle for cultural rights. As an artist and cultural worker he was a leader in bringing together a new community of some of the greatest thinkers, writers, artists, and educators of our age to share their knowledge and passion. He was a generous and humble activist and brilliant artist who changed the face of multiculturalism and educated a new generation of artists through inspiration and practice.” SFAI PROFESSOR EMERITUS BILL BERKSON

“It was inspiring to see how much he took on—the astonishing synthesis of his own late work; his teaching, always intense, affirmative and to the point; his activism on behalf of a bigger art history. With all that, he had a light touch, always a sweet music about him. Dancing to his memory seems more appropriate than anything else.” OWEN TAKABAYASHI, BFA PAINTING, 2007,

Carlos Villa at CSFA

AND FORMER ARTIST ASSISTANT TO VILLA

c. 1959

“Carlos had complete dedication and love for the artistic process. He lived for and through his work. Working in the studio for him was a joy. I will miss his strength, grace, his ‘way,’ and most of all his smile and laugh.”

Photographed by Jerry Burchard Courtesy of the Burchard Estate Manongs, Some Doors, and a Bouquet of Crates 2011 Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco Installation view of the exhibition Photographed by Rafael Vieira

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GR ADUATE FACULT Y

Studio of Patti Singer


KATIE ANANIA is a historian of postwar American and European art. Her doctoral dissertation, which has earned awards from the Getty Research Institute, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, examines the confluence of new drawing strategies and expanding notions of interpersonal communication and disclosure in 1960s urban America. Her criticism has appeared in Artweek, American Craft, Pastelegram, ...might be good, and Artforum.com.

NICOLE ARCHER, PhD, Chair of History and Theory of Contemporary Art. Archer researches contemporary art and material culture, with an emphasis in modern textile and garment histories. She also concentrates on critical and psychoanalytic theory, corporeal feminism, and performance studies. In her teaching, she explores the relations of politics and aesthetics through close examinations of style, embodiment, and desire. Archer’s work has appeared in Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture and Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy.

ROBIN BALLIGER, PhD, Chair of Urban Studies. Balliger is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include globalization, geography, media and popular culture, music/sound, postcolonial theory, political economy, the Caribbean, and Latin America. She has received fellowships from Fulbright, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and was awarded the Textor Award for Outstanding Anthropological Creativity. Balliger’s recent publications appear in The Global Resistance Reader, Trinidad Carnival: The Cultural Politics of a Transnational Festival, Anthropological Forum, and Media Fields Journal.

JUDIE BAMBER came to SFAI as the Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellow. Her meticulously rendered drawings and paintings explore issues of gender representation and personal biography through a photo-realistic visual language. Her recent exhibition Are You My Mother?, at Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, featured work based on Polaroid snapshots of her mother taken by her father in the 1960s, including nudes and images inspired by fashion magazines. Bamber’s work has been included in exhibitions such as The Visible Vagina at David Nolan Gallery and Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York; Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and In a Different Light, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She is the recipient of a California Community Foundation Fellowship and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship.

ZEINA BARAKEH’s artwork examines how people and spaces become polarized during binary divisions. Through animation, digital media, and archival installations, she interrogates constructions of identity, history, memory, and territory. Selected exhibitions include Women Redrawing the World Stage, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York; The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society, Bernstein Gallery, Princeton University; Facettes, Espace SD, Beirut; Internal Exile: From Palestine to the USA to Mexico, SOMArts Bay Gallery, San Francisco; Passages, Theater Artaud, San Francisco; The ThirdHalf, The Public Theater, New York; and Jaffa Mangoes, Ictus Gallery, San Francisco. In 2012, Barakeh spoke at the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art and at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in conjunction with the exhibition The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society.

JD BELTRAN’s multidisciplinary work bridges the narrative and abstract while investigating the manner in which materials convey stories. She was awarded the Artadia Grant and Skowhegan Residency and has exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the 2006 and 2008 01SJ New Media Biennials, San Jose, California. Her San Jose artwork, Downtown Mirror, was recognized as one of the most outstanding public artworks in the United States in 2009. In 2012, she was appointed President of the San Francisco Arts Commission.

RICHARD BERGER has taught at SFAI since 1971. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Award in 1980 and the Adeline Kent Award in 2004. Primarily a sculptor, he has recently added video and digital fabrication processes to his production and is currently engaged in research and a scale-model reconstruction of the Sun Temple at Konarak in the Indian state of Orissa.

TIMOTHY BERRY, Chair of Printmaking. Berry’s hybrid paintings/prints reflect, through both process and content, his decision to enter into a visual inquiry using such symbolically loaded material as nature provides, as a way to take past experience and expand upon it in a larger context that is resonant for our times. Recent projects include the exhibition Timothy Berry: The Aftermath Paintings, Clark Gallery, Lincoln, Massachusetts, and a publication of mixed-media prints, published by Magnolia Editions in 2012.

MATT BORRUSO is a visual artist and San Francisco native. His work draws from a wide variety of source material, including science fiction and horror film, the baroque and the grotesque, modernist color theory, cults and subcultures, utopias and dystopias, as well as radical ideologies and conspiracy theory. His recent solo shows include The Hermit’s Revenge Fantasy, Steven Wolf Fine Arts, and Return to Holy Mountain, 2nd Floor Projects, both in San Francisco.

PEGAN BROOKE makes paintings and video/poems inspired by the Aven River in Pont-Aven, France, and the Pacific Ocean near her home in Bolinas. Her interest is in the fleeting quality of experience and our own individual and collective responses to that experience. Brooke has exhibited extensively, and her work is owned by the Guggenheim, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Des Moines Art Museum; the Swig Collection, San Francisco; and the Anderson Collection, Menlo Park, California. Her work has been widely reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, and Artweek.

DALE CARRICO, PhD, teaches technocritical theory, focusing on the planetarity of both environmental concerns and peer-to-peer media formations. Recently, Carrico organized conferences on feminist bioethics at the University of California, Berkeley, and on human “enhancement” and human rights at Stanford. His writings have appeared in Re-Public, Worldchanging, and The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives. He writes about the politics of technoscience, developmentalist ideology, futurological subcultures, and the suffusion of public life by marketing norms on his blog Amor Mundi.

ANNE COLVIN is a Scottish artist based in San Francisco who works primarily with the moving image. Working with a combination of found footage and her own filmic observations, Colvin’s work has a heightened awareness of time, frame, texture, and gesture. Recent exhibitions include The Very Eye of Night, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles; Fits and Starts, Agency, Los Angeles; System Operations, in conjunction with the ZERO1 Biennial, Eli Ridgway Gallery, San Francisco; As Yet Untitled, SF Camerawork; and Long Play: Bruce Conner and The Singles Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Upcoming projects include the exhibitions Modern Edinburgh Film School, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Scotland; One Minute Film Festival: 10 Years, MASS MoCA; a commission and two-person show with Margaret Tait at Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; and a residency at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

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LINDA CONNOR is a photographer and dedicated educator who approaches both roles by enlisting the power of images—the ways they communicate, their unique properties, and how they interrelate. She has exhibited widely for the last four decades, both internationally and nationally, and is the recipient of many awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple National Endowment for the Arts grants. She has been a driving force in the Bay Area’s photographic community and has helped to make that community accessible to her students.

KEVIN E. CONSEY’s research interests are in the leadership, business, and ethical practices of art museums and art institutions. Consey has been a museum curator or director for 35 years, and has held positions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, among other institutions. He is interested in issues related to freedom of expression, the business and organization of art museums, and film as art. Consey is currently Executive Vice President of the Harriet and Esteban Vicente Foundation, New York and Madrid.

DEWEY CRUMPLER’s work examines issues of globalization and cultural co-modification through the integration of digital imagery, video, and traditional painting techniques. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is featured in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles. Crumpler has received a Flintridge Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship.

CLAIRE DAIGLE, PhD, Faculty Director of MA Programs and Co-Director of Low-Residency Graduate Program. Daigle is a writer, art historian, and critic whose work has appeared in New Art Examiner, X-tra, Art Papers, Sculpture, Brooklyn Rail, and Tate, etc. She was a Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and holds a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her dissertation, Reading Barthes/Writing Twombly, was received with distinction. Her interests form a constellation around word and image relationships (between theory and practice, experience and verbal articulation—particularly as related to color; documentation; archival and everyday practices; between contemporary literature and art; and among marks, script, and signs).

SERGIO DE LA TORRE is a visual artist based in San Francisco. His work focuses on issues of diaspora, tourism, labor, and surveillance technologies, and has been exhibited at the 10th International Istanbul Biennial; Atelier Frankfurt, Germany; the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Tribeca Film Festival, New York; and El Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, Mexico. He has received grants from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Sundance Documentary Fund, and he was a recipient of the Artadia Award in 2007.

JERAMY DECRISTO writes about and researches the aesthetics and representational politics of hip hop, trip-hop dub, electronica, and black experimental musical forms, as well as black literary and visual art. In pursuing this line of study, he pays particular attention to the racial dimensions of form and the formal dimensions of race. He is currently working on his dissertation, which thinks about the legacy of black experimental musical forms and their technological imaginaries in the Arabic musical and artistic avant-garde. He has presented at several conferences and published an article about the Egyptian artist Hassan Khan for Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.

JOHN DE FAZIO’s recent work involves the creation of “super objects”—handmade objects of desire that encode layers of meaning through the obsessive processes involved in their conception and production. These forms have included ceramic funerary urns, distorted mannequins, clay pipes and hookahs, toilet fountains, and conference-room tables. In 2012, de Fazio’s work was featured in the exhibition Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary Ceramics at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with a catalogue published by Yale University Press. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, New York; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; and MTV Networks, New York.

ALLAN DESOUZA, Chair of New Genres, CoDirector of Low-Residency Graduate Program. DeSouza’s conceptual photography, installation, digital painting, text, and performance works are derived from documentary methodologies and counterstrategies of fiction, erasure, and (mis)translation. DeSouza was recently awarded a residency at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, and has exhibited extensively, including recently at Talwar Gallery, Delhi; SF Camerawork; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; and Guangzhou Triennial, China.

ANDREA DOOLEY is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies with a Designated Emphasis in African Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her work is concerned with the role of the public memorial and museum in post-conflict societies. Her current work focuses on genocide memorials in Rwanda with a consideration of the intersections of landscape and the geographies of genocide in an emerging lexicon of the unimaginable. Her essay “We are All Rwandans: Repatriation, National Identity, and the Plight of Rwanda’s Children” is forthcoming in fall 2013 in the Journal of Human Rights. She is the recipient of the President’s Predoctoral Fellowship from the Davis Humanities Institute (2008–2012) and the UC Davis African Studies Research Fellowship (2013). CAROLYN DUFFEY, PhD, works in literary cultural studies. Her research interests include the Caribbean and the Maghreb; race, ethnicity, and gender in literature of the Americas; the history of Islam in Europe; French medieval poetry; and postcolonial and feminist theory. She has received a French Government Scholarship, UC Berkeley and Columbia University research grants, and was named a Knight Fellows Favorite Professor at Stanford University. Her recent publications appear in Ma Comère, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, Women in French Studies, and Pacific Coast Philology.

AMY ELLINGSON’s work explores methodologies of abstraction and the dichotomy between the lightning-fast process of digital rendering and traditional methods of execution through historic oil and encaustic painting techniques. Her paintings have been exhibited nationally. She is the recipient of a 2009 Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship and a 1999 Artadia Grant to Individual Artists. Ellingson’s paintings have been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, NY Arts, and Art issues.

LAURA FANTONE, PhD, is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Her past work, funded by Fulbright and Spencer grants, addresses gender and visual politics, digital cultures, postcoloniality, urbanism, and globalization. Fantone is currently researching Asian diasporas in California and Roma Gypsies in Italy. Her writing has been published in Feminist Theory, Digital Creativity, and FR, and her documentary, Re-Sisters, has recently been distributed in the United States. Her new book, edited with Paola Bacchetta, TRANS Q FEM (essays on queer and transnational feminisms) is being published in Italian in 2013.


LUCAS FOGLIA makes photographs about places where wilderness and culture intersect. A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Art, Lucas exhibits and publishes his photographs internationally. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. His photographs have been published in Aperture, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Contact Sheet, and PDN’s 30. His first book, A Natural Order, was published by Nazraeli Press in 2012.

RUDOLF FRIELING, PhD, is Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and is currently working on the impact of the museum expansion and new curatorial models on the media arts program. His curatorial projects include the online archive Media Art Net and The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, a major survey of the history of contemporary participatory practice at SFMOMA.

JACK FULTON’s studio practice engages art history and culture, literature and poetry, and is illuminated by science and ecology. Current projects include Suite Nevada, Odes of Pablo Neruda, Britain to Morocco, Home as Place, and Peru & Ladakh: High Altitude. His work has recently been shown at the Menil Collection, Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; and Gemini GEL, Los Angeles. Fulton’s publications have stressed alternative living and architecture from the 1960s and 1970s and include Shelter, Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties, and Praxis (Issue #13).

SHARON GRACE works in analog/digital installation, performance/video, and sculpture in stone and steel. Grace’s concept-driven work engages explorations of presence and absence. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Award, an Award of Honor for Outstanding Achievement from the City of San Francisco, a Rockefeller Foundation Award, and a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Grant. At NASA/AMES, she was artist/project leader for SEND/RECEIVE, the first satellite artists’ network. She has exhibited at the Metro Opera, Madrid; in Informatique at the Venice Biennale; and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

ALEXANDER GREENHOUGH is a filmmaker and doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University. His research interests include classical and contemporary film theory, postwar French and Italian art films, and contemporary New Zealand cinema. Greenhough’s writing has appeared in Metro and Film Criticism, and is forthcoming in Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Greenhough has received grants from Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission.

LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON pioneered new technologies to investigate identity and the interfacing of humans and machines. Four of her feature-length films were screened at the Toronto, Sundance, and Berlin film festivals. Grants include Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Prix Ars Electronica, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize. Her work is in the Hess Collection, Napa, California; the Tate Modern, London; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England; the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; and many other international museums.

BETTI-SUE HERTZ is a contemporary art curator and currently Director of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Her curatorial and scholarly projects are fueled by the intersection of visual aesthetics and socially relevant ideas, where emotional content is filtered through intellectual machinations. Recent exhibitions and catalogues include The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India (2011); Song Dong: Dad and Mom, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well (2011); Renée Green: Endless Dreams and Time-Based Streams (2010); and Yoshua Okón: 2007–2010 (2010).

FIONA HOVENDEN, PhD, is a scholar of the dynamics of change. Her research interests include the psychology of transformation, critical analysis of the role of the future, and the use of art to create social and personal change. With her company, Collective Invention, she creates immersive visions of the future to help provoke a reassessment of possibility through lived experience. As a veteran ethnographer, Hovenden values attention to the personal, political choices of the everyday, and the ways in which these mediate social and political visions. She is Co-Editor of The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader.

MILDRED HOWARD’s work draws from historical and contemporary experience. Her “architecture for the remainder” series questions various perceptions of how the world is viewed. Her work is an ongoing inquiry, considering identity and meaning and the relationship of these ideas to objects on various planes—from the personal to the universal. Howard exhibits internationally and has received numerous awards. In 2011, two major public works were unveiled on the plaza at the Palo Alto City Hall and at the Sacramento International Airport. She is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco.

PAUL KLEIN, Chair of Design and Technology. Klein’s teaching and collaborative studio practices foster understandings of how viewers, media, and society create meaning in specific and cross-cultural contexts. Klein also works concurrently as a design strategist and research developer. He has presented his work in the 2012 International Conference on Design Principles and Practices in Los Angeles, and was recently included in In Transition Russia: Cultural Identities in the Age of Transnational and Transcultural Flux, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow. He was also the recipient of an NEH Summer Institute Residency in Italy.

EMMANUELLE NAMONT KOUZNETSOV is an artist, curator, and educator whose work marries sculpture, photography, and performance in an exploration of the ever-shifting concepts of identity and portraiture. Her work reclaims the corporeal presence and reveals the crude state of our closest relationships. Kouznetsov co-directs OFF Space— a nomadic curatorial organization exploring real world site-specificity and the relationship of site, object, action, and curation. In this capacity, she has curated eight exhibitions with more than 100 local and international artists.

CHRIS KUBICK is an artist, composer, and sound designer who works under a variety of pseudonyms, including Language Removal Services and Many Many More Than One. Kubick frequently collaborates with Anne Walsh, and together they have created ARCHIVE, whose best-known project, entitled Art After Death, consists of interviews with artists who have died conducted through spirit mediums. Together their work has appeared in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, New York; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Royal College of Art, London. Kubick has been heard on public radio in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.

TONY LABAT, Faculty Director of MFA Programs. Since the early eighties, Labat has developed a body of work in performance, video, sculpture, and installation. His work has dealt with the body, popular culture, identity, urban relations, politics, and the media. A pioneer of video installations, Labat has exhibited internationally over the last 30 years, received numerous awards and grants, and his work is in many private and public collections. Recent exhibitions include the 11th Havana Biennial; Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

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JOVI SCHNELL’s work explores the metaphorical intersections between diverse fields of knowledge. Her idiosyncratic process attempts to reflect the psychology of living within the complex spectrum of the Information Age. Schnell’s recent imagery integrates color systems, cosmology, chance operations, language, technology, and subjects that examine our relationships to nature. Recently, she has created large-scale public artworks for the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Art in Embassies program. She is presently working on a solo show for the Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco.

ALICE SHAW’s background and focus is photography-based, but she has recently incorporated other media into her exhibitions. She is currently looking at the tradition of landscape photography and revisiting it with a contemporary eye. Shaw’s work has been exhibited most recently at di Rosa, Napa, California; Gallery 16, San Francisco; and Minshar for Art, Tel Aviv; and has been written about in Artforum.

LESLIE SHOWS incorporates diverse media such as aluminum, plexiglass, flags, sand, ink, paint, collaged imagery, and cast sulfur in works that explore connections between geology and landscape, scales of time and size, philosophies of matter, and the materiality of painting. She has exhibited her work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and the 8th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

SUSAN SILTON works across media, including photography/video, installation, performance, text, audio, lithography, and internet technologies, and within diverse contexts such as public sites, social network platforms, and traditional galleries and institutions. Her practice engages multiple aesthetic strategies to mine the complexity of perception and to interrupt—through combinations of humor, discomfort, and subterfuge—the “othering” that often results from distorted perception. Silton has exhibited at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and has received fellowships and awards from the Getty/California Community Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.

FRANK SMIGIEL, PhD, is Associate Curator of Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he designs and implements live events, from artists’ talks and public projects to visual arts–based performance and film. He has realized live work with Martha Colburn, William Kentridge, OPENrestaurant, Rebecca Solnit, Eve Sussman & the Rufus Corporation, Stephanie Syjuco, and Mika Tajima/New Humans, among many others.

LAETITIA SONAMI is a sound artist and performer. She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and uses new technologies and appropriated media to emphasize live interaction and an awareness of the sonic environment. She performs worldwide and has received numerous awards, including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Award.

TIM SULLIVAN is a multimedia artist working primarily in video, photography, performance, and installation. Sullivan has spent the last five years completing a series of works exploring the myths and stereotypes of California as informed by television, film, music, and literature. He has had solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore, Ireland, and Poland, and has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2006 California Biennial.

THEA QUIRAY TAGLE researches Filipino/American social movements and the production of postcolonial subjectivities in visual cultural productions, performance, and literature. She also specializes in Third World and women of color feminisms, critical geography, film studies, and queer theory. Quiray Tagle is currently completing her dissertation, an exploration of contemporary Filipino/American cultural works that materially and metaphorically remap networks of kinship and identity in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Race & Gender at UC Berkeley.

TARAVAT TALEPASAND is a conglomerate of equal yet irreconcilable cultural forces. Her work challenges plebeian notions of acceptable behavior. Exhibitions include the 2010 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, among other venues. Talepasand is a recipient of the SFAI Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship, a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and a Murphy Cadogan Fellowship. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Art Papers, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, and New American Paintings.

AARON ELIAH TERRY’s practice consists of mixedmedia projects utilizing printmaking, photography, installation, and performance. His work explores mythologies drawn from contemporary media and cultural references considering the boundaries between mankind and nature. Through the lens of a Westernized sociopolitical need for control in the face of an unknown future, his work plays with the potential to suspend reality and transform individual identity, ultimately questioning our society’s capability to create a contemporary narrative. Terry has recently shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and Ever Gold Gallery, all in San Francisco.

LARRY THOMAS’s studio interests include printmaking, drawing, and calligraphy. His work primarily concentrates on combining and synthesizing aspects of these media, often in book or folio format. His teaching approach is one of experimentation and exploration, with a historical overview as a foundation for studio practice. His work has been widely exhibited regionally and nationally and is included in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; the Oakland Museum of California; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among others.

AMY TODD’s photographically based works, that use imagery derived from video, are landscapes that expand and contract with the habitation and relationships of people and the actions of culture, as a visual representation of temporally based psychological/emotional states. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at a variety of art venues, including the California Museum of Photography, Riverside, and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, among others.

MEREDITH TROMBLE is an artist and writer with a specialization in art, science, and technology. Her areas of interest include creative process and cultural histories of creativity; protocols for interdisciplinary research; collaboration and group dynamics (including interspecies relationships); energy; and women in new media. From 2000–2010, she worked with the artist collective Stretcher, publishing an online magazine and creating performative events. Her recent projects include a long-term collaboration on an immersive virtual reality installation, a series of performance/lectures, and the blog Art and Shadows, funded by a grant from the Arts Writers Grant Program of the Andy Warhol Foundation. She was honored by SFAI graduate students with the Faculty Award in 2005.


KERRY LAITALA, Chair of Film. Laitala is an awardwinning, moving-image artist who uses analog, digital, and hybrid forms to investigate the ways in which media influences culture at large. Laitala’s work resides at the intersections between science, technology, and her uncanny approach to evolving systems of belief through installation, photography, performance, kinetic sculpture, and single-channel forms. She continues to explore expanded cinema territories to create cinematic sculptures that extend into space.

JENNIFER LOCKE composes physically intense actions in relation to the camera and specific architecture in order to explore hierarchies between artist, model, camera, and audience. Working in video and installation-based performance, her actions focus on cycles of physicality, duration, and visibility. Recent exhibition venues include the 2010 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Exile, Berlin; the UC Berkeley Art Museum; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Locke was recently awarded a Eureka Fellowship by the Fleishhacker Foundation.

REAGAN LOUIE, Chair of Photography. Louie’s photography and installations explore global transformation and cultural identity. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Gwangju Biennale, Korea; the Asia Society, New York; and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. His books include Toward a Truer Life and Orientalia. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship.

MADS LYNNERUP was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has a BFA in New Genres from SFAI and an MFA from Columbia University. Lynnerup has shown his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; MoMA PS1, New York; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. Lynnerup is in numerous public collections, including the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; Miami Art Museum; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; and the San Jose Museum of Modern Art. Lynnerup was recently commissioned to produce a video for Creative Time and MoMA PS1 in New York in collaboration with MTV, which was aired on MTV’s network globally as part of the Art Breaks series.

CAMERON MACKENZIE, PhD, works with psychoanalytic, aesthetic, and mathematical models in conjunction with literary texts to explore universal understandings of the subject. His teaching investigates the interface of philosophy, critical theory, and artistic practice. His critical work has appeared in The Waste Land at 90: A Retrospective and Edward P. Jones: New Essays. His fiction has appeared in Permafrost and Michigan Quarterly Review.

FRANCES MCCORMACK, Chair of Painting. McCormack is an abstract painter whose work draws on the history of gardens and landscape design. She was the recipient of the first SFAI faculty residency at the American Academy in Rome and recently curated the exhibition Silence, Exile, and Cunning for the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. McCormack is currently collaborating with the San Francisco composer Kurt Rohde and the writer Susan Moon, producing a series of videos for the multimedia work Artifacts. She is represented by the Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, and the R. B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, California.

IAN MCDONALD’s work addresses the relationships and mechanics between cultural characteristics and design and craft characteristics. Playing with issues of usability, durability, and worth, McDonald’s projects address cultural attitudes, the ubiquity of everyday objects, and an overall attraction to everyday goods. He has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including solo exhibitions at Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, and Play Mountain, Tokyo. In 2007, he was awarded the Premio Faenza by the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Artforum, Art Week, and Brutus magazine, Japan.

SEAN MCFARLAND is an artist whose work explores the relationships between the process of image making, artifice, photographic truth, and the representation of landscape. He is the recipient of the 2009 Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer, the 2009 John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, and a 2011 Eureka Fellowship. He has exhibited locally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at Eli Ridgway Gallery, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work is in the collections of the Oakland Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Library.

BRUCE MCGAW is a painter who was included in the 1957 seminal exhibition Bay Area Figurative Painters. His outlook has always been based on the multiformity of visual possibilities, which continue to make painting a critical form of human expression. Always totally present, for McGaw, painting is a poetry of sight, which taps the deepest and most considered resources of its maker. His work has recently been exhibited at SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries and at the Fresno Art Museum, California.

CAITLIN MITCHELL-DAYTON’s large-scale paintings hew closely to the formal parameters of traditional portraiture, informed by tropes drawn from comic books, illustration, and fashion advertising. Her subjects function simultaneously as individuals and as blends of cultural types drawn from fictional narratives, lived experience, and an ideal concept of personality. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, John Berggruen Gallery, and Gallery Paule Anglim, all in San Francisco; at the Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery and Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles; and at The Drawing Center in New York.

JEREMY MORGAN’s paintings are investigations into both Western and Asian landscape traditions as they relate to notions of abstraction and philosophical-spiritual contexts. His work is in the collections of the China National Academy, Beijing; Lucent Technologies, California; and Beringer Wineries, St. Helena, California. He is represented by Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco.

HIRO NARITA has spent the past 35 years exploring the interaction of light, color, and composition as carriers of emotion and story. His work ranges from the small and experimental to the epic and commercial. A 1984 Fellow in Culture and Communication at the East-West Center, he lectures, mentors, and juries widely for such institutions as the Sundance Institute and the Hawaiian International Film Festival. The recipient of many awards, he is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

TAKEYOSHI NISHIUCHI, PhD, pursues teaching/research interests in comparative philosophy: the aesthetic issues of poetry, drama, ritual, and architecture in connection with Taoism (Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu), Zen Buddhism (Dogen and Zeami), and modern German philosophy (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Gadamer). Recent work includes the design of Mein Memorial Meditation Garden at Menlo College.

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J. JOHN PRIOLA’s photography and video work reveals the subtle details of built and natural landscapes, depicting what presence and absence look like, while vibrating in the space between art and idea. His work has been published and exhibited widely; selected collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, California; and Weston Gallery, Carmel, California.

BRETT REICHMAN’s approach to realism addresses the complexities of identity politics. His labor-intensive paintings and drawings question societal norms by constructing images of exaggeration and artifice. This inquiry into the politics of gay culture critiques political correctness and cultural assimilation through images that convey a range of subtexts exemplified through personal and political concerns. Reichman’s work is in many public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UC Berkeley Art Museum, and the Orange County Museum of Art. Recent exhibitions include Contemporary Painting, 1960 to the Present, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; All I Want Is a Picture of You, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles; and a solo exhibition, Simulations, at Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco.

LAURIE REID’s work is an exploration of the coming together of the intellect, the psyche, and the physical world she inhabits. Her explorations are openended and intentionally inconclusive. She enjoys collaborating with other artists and in the spring of 2013 will be collaborating with Chris Johanson and Barry McGee at City College Art Gallery. Reid’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. Reid was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and was a SECA awardee in 1999.

MEGHANN RIEPENHOFF makes large-scale chromogenic photograms, compositions made in pitch darkness, that investigate the relationship between the insignificant and the immense. Her exhibition record includes solo shows at El Museo de la Ciudad, Mexico; Duncan Miller Gallery, Los Angeles; and the University of Missouri. Her work has been published in Zyzzyva, Harper’s Magazine, BOMB Magazine, B&W, and Color. She was recently selected for the Affiliate Artist Program at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Rayko Photo Center, as well as the Banff Centre

for the Arts, where she was also the recipient of the Darwall Scholarship. Riepenhoff has lectured at Brown University, the San Francisco PhotoAlliance, and the Headlands Center for Research, and has hosted workshops on the value of photography for at-risk youth.

Museum, California; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Modern Art, London; Deitch Projects, New York; and Kavi Gupta, Chicago. Rojas is the recipient of a Project Space Residency and Tournesol Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, Joan Brown Grant, Eureka Fellowship Award, and an Artadia Award.

RIGO 23’s work increasingly moves across media and cultural contexts to produce site-specific projects, often in collaboration with others. Long interested in showing and making art in environments not entirely designed for these functions, his work looks to reconnect artistic production and fruition with daily life. Recent projects include participation in the Kochi-Muziris Biennial, Kerala, India, and the collaborative project Autonomous InterGalactic Space Program—a multi-year project developed in Chiapas, Mexico, which premiered at REDCAT, Los Angeles, and is currently at the Times Museum, Guangzhou, China. In 2013, Rigo 23’s work will appear in the 5th Auckland Triennial, New Zealand, and the 2nd Aichi Triennial, Japan. He is currently working on a public art commission for UCSF’s new hospital in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco.

JOHN ROLOFF, Chair of Sculpture/Ceramics. Roloff’s recent work includes public projects in Oakland, Minneapolis, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as exhibitions for the Denver Art Museum, and Habitats at the Presidio, San Francisco. He has shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the UC Berkeley Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Venice Architectural and Art Biennales; and The Snow Show in Kemi, Finland. He is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Bernard Osher Foundation.

JENNIFER RISSLER, Acting Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Rissler’s research on fine art curricular histories includes “Shared Legacies: Black Mountain College and Its Influence on Post-Studio Art Education,” presented at Re-Viewing Black Mountain College: An International Conference, at the University of North Carolina, Asheville (2009). Her photographic work Self-Served was published in Aroused: A Collection of Erotic Writing, edited by Karen Finley (2001). She is currently President of ArtTable, Inc., a New York–based membership organization for women leaders in the visual arts.

FRANCESCA ROMEO lives and works between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Her research interest is in global documentary photography and film. She has self-published two books of photographs, entitled Mars and Elegy. Mars chronicles her years working as a bartender during which she interviewed, photographed, and filmed her patrons struggling with severe addictions. Elegy extends outward into her subject’s homes while looking at the nature of pathos and intimacy within various subcultures. She also writes photography criticism, reviews exhibitions, and is currently working on a documentary film on Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Her work has recently been shown at Daniel Cooney Fine Art and Art in General, both in New York.

WILL ROGAN is a sculptor and photographer. His work deals with the passing of time, the materiality and history of objects, and our relationship to matter and images. Rogan’s work has been shown internationally; he currently shows with Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York, and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco. He is a past recipient of the SECA Award and a MacArthur Foundation Media Arts Fellowship.

CLARE ROJAS’s paintings concentrate on abstract space and the blurring between architectural dimensionality and geometric flatness. Rojas intentionally generates surfaces that describe both an architectural and psychological site of interiority―a pictorial space that is indeterminate enough to operate on an emotive and sensory level. She has held solo exhibitions at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, León, Spain; Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands; San Francisco Art Institute and Riverside Art

KATE RUDDLE’s sculptural work uses fabric, video, and architectural elements to create objects and environments that describe the complex influence that the trappings of our surroundings have on the psyche. In 1999, she interned at a company producing ship sails in Alameda to gain an understanding of large-scale fabric manipulation to augment her sculptural installations. Ruddle has exhibited at many Bay Area venues. Her current projects are inspired by research into the power dynamics of dress of Marie Antoinette and endangered species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.


MARK BREST VAN KEMPEN’s work, drawing from both Land Art and performance practices, uses the landscape itself as sculptural material. From the Free Speech Monument on the UC Berkeley campus to Land Exchange at the National Academy of Art in China, his work intervenes in the processes (both human and natural) that shape our world. He has received numerous commissions for permanent public art projects, including a recent invitation by the German government to design a reunification monument in Leipzig. His work has been presented in several books, including Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local and Peter Selz’s Art of Engagement, as well as many publications including TIME Magazine, The New York Times, Art in America, and the The Los Angeles Times.

MARK VAN PROYEN’s visual work and written commentaries focus on satirizing the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. Since 2003, he has been a corresponding editor for Art in America, and his other recent publications include Facing Innocence: The Art of Gottfried Helnwein (2011), and Cirian Logic and the Painting of Preconstruction (2010). He is the coordinator of the annual Art Criticism Conference of SFAI’s Summer Institute.

MARY WARDEN is an instructor of English Composition and English as a Second Language. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an MA TESOL from San Francisco State University.

HENRY WESSEL is an American photographer noted for his descriptive yet poetic photographs of the vernacular landscape found in Southern California and the West. Wessel has been honored with two Guggenheim grants and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Five Books, a collection of his work, was published by Steidl in 2006. In 2007, a monograph of his work was published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and, in 2011, his latest book WAIKIKI was published.

JENIFER K. WOFFORD’s creative practice encompasses installation, painting, drawing, photography, video, performance, teaching, and curating, often playing with notions of culture, difference, liminality, and authenticity, and leveraged with a healthy dose of humor. She has exhibited locally at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop; nationally at New Image Art, Los Angeles, and thirtynine hotel, Honolulu; and internationally at Manila Contemporary, Philippines, and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong, Hong Kong. Wofford’s awards include grants from the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Art Matters Foundation, and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts; and artist’s residencies at Solyst AIR Center, Denmark; The Living Room, Philippines; and the Liguria Study Center, Italy.

PAMELA Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture-activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at exhibitions and events, including Bang on a Can, New York; the Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds, San Francisco; the Venice Biennale; and the Dakar Biennale. Pamela Z’s numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Grant, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, The MAP Fund, the ASCAP Award, a Prix Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the NEA/ JUSFC Fellowship.

GINGER WOLFE-SUAREZ’s work explores bodyobject relationships, the sensory field, and the psychological meanings and metaphors of the built environment. Her writings and sculptures often investigate forming a non-Westernized worldview of how we value objects and experiences in our society. This year, she had exhibitions in Los Angeles, Vienna, San Francisco, and Berlin. Ginger was the CoFounder and Editor of InterReview Journal, whose archive of conceptual documents is currently housed at the Harvard Fine Arts Library.

GREG YOUMANS is a film scholar and video maker. His research focuses on the politics and aesthetics of queer activist and experimental filmmaking in the 1970s. In 2011, he published a book about the pioneering Bay Area documentary Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (Mariposa Film Group, 1977), as part of Arsenal Pulp Press’s Queer Film Classics series. He is now at work on a larger book project about 1970s queer cinema. With Chris Vargas, he makes short experimental narrative videos, many of them part of the ongoing series Falling In Love… with Chris and Greg. His work has recently been shown at the Tate Modern, London; Krowswork, Oakland; and SF Camerawork.

EDDIE YUEN is a contributing producer to Against the Grain, a radio program on KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. He is Co-Editor, with Daniel Burton-Rose and George Katsiaficas, of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement (Soft Skull Press, 2003), and The Battle of Seattle: The New Challenge to Capitalist Globalization (Soft Skull Press, 2002). He is Co-Author of Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth (PM Press, 2012). Yuen is on the editorial board of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, and he is currently working on a book about the political economy of extinction.

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SAN FR ANCISCO ART INSTITUTE BOARD OF TRUSTEES & SENIOR STAFF 2012-2013

OFFICERS

TRUSTEE-AT-LARGE

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES

Diane Frankel

Annie Leibovitz

Lana Williams

Chair

Graduate Representative 

Cynthia Plevin Vice Chair

Emily M. Gorman TRUSTEES EMERITI

Undergraduate Representative

Paule Anglim Penelope Finnie

Gardiner Hempel

Secretary

Beverly James

Howard Oringer

SENIOR STAFF

Chris Tellis

Paul Sack

Charles Desmarais

Treasurer

Jack Schafer

President

Roselyne C. Swig 

TRUSTEES Sandra de Saint Phalle Jennifer Emerson Penelope Finnie Hank Feir Diane Frankel Candace Gaudiani Lee Gregory Lara Ritch Michael Jackson Bonnie Levinson Jamie Lunder Dusan Mills Cynthia Plevin Mary Robinson John Sanger Jeremy Stone Chris Tellis

Studio of Stephanie Rohlfs

William Zellerbach

Cynthia Colebrook Vice President for Institutional

Advancement

FACULT Y REPRESENTATIVES

Elizabeth O’Brien

Dewey Crumpler

Vice President for Enrollment

Charles Hobson Jennifer Rissler Acting Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs Espi Sanjana Chief Operating Officer


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Produced by the SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE Janette Andrawes, Art Director and Production Manager Zeina Barakeh, Content Editor Vera Kachouh, Associate Editor Anne Shulock, Associate Editor 

Design by Trevor Hacker Printed by Smythe & Son, San Francisco, CA All artist studio photographs by Joshua Band 

Special thanks to: Kathleen Fetner Gordon Smythe Tom Loughlin, Student Representative for the Graduate Exhibition Tony Maridakis, Student Representative for the Graduate Exhibition Linsey A. Wallace, Student Representative for the Graduate Exhibition 

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE (Main Campus) 800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133 415.771.7020 

SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE (Graduate Center) 2565 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94107 415.641.1241 WWW.SFAI.EDU

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$ 20 . 0 0 | I S BN : 978 - 0 - 930 495 - 03 - 9


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