c a l i f o r n i a c o l l e g e o f t h e a r t ss a n f r a n c i s c o | o a k l a n d

fa l l 2 0 1 2

a p u b l i c a t i o n f o r t h e c c a c o m m u n i t y

dear friends,

In September we received some great news about our alumni.

According to a national survey, California College of the Arts ranks

first among art and design schools in the country for graduates with

the highest-paying jobs. In the Bay Area, CCA is fourth behind

Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and the University of

California, Berkeley. And in California, a state with about 500

colleges and universities, CCA ranks ninth.

This annual survey of those holding undergraduate degrees

(and no higher) was conducted by PayScale, a national compensation

data company. The 2012 study found CCA alumni had a starting

median salary of $43,000 and a median mid-career salary of $96,700.

These are great numbers, and we can all feel proud that CCA

alumni are doing so well in their careers. But salary is just one

measurement of success. Even more meaningful is a look at the

individuals behind the achievements. You can read the stories of

our amazing grads here in Glance and at our website, cca.edu, where

there is a new alumni feature story almost every week.

The accomplishments of our alumni are varied and far-

reaching. Our grads have designed graphics for MTV and VH1,

created characters for animated films by Pixar, illustrated editorials

for major national magazines, and created Emmy-award-winning

motion graphics. They have exhibited their work at the Cannes and

Sundance film festivals and at galleries and museums around the

world. And, true to the CCA mission, they are agents of change,

solving some of the world’s thorniest problems through their work

in art, architecture, design, and writing.

CCA is at the forefront of arts education. Our learning environ-

ment encourages collaboration, innovation, entrepreneurship, and

community engagement. Our students graduate with the ability,

experience, and confidence to thrive in a broad range of professional

endeavors. We don’t really need a survey to tell us the true value of a

CCA education; we see it in practice every day.

Sincerely,

Stephen Beal

President

Letter from the President

Glance Fall 2012 Volume 21, No. 1

editorlindsey westbrook

contributorssusan avila chris bliss allison byerskelly dawson joyce grimm simon hodgson lindsey lyons jim norrenasteve purcell jodi redmon jessica russell matthew harrison tedfordclay walsh rachel walther lindsey westbrook

designcca sputnik, a student design team

faculty advisorbob aufuldish

design & production managersteve spingola

designersganesha balunsatcarolyn cuykendall

Photo credits

All images of student work appear courtesy the students, copyright California College of the Arts, unless

otherwise noted. Images of faculty and alumni work appear courtesy the artists unless otherwise noted. Cover:

Eden Pieper; pp. 8–9, 12–13: courtesy Headlands Center for the Arts; p. 10 and 11 (Franceschini): Andria Lo;

p. 14 (Mende): Cesar Rubio Photography; pp. 16–17: courtesy Mix and Stir; p. 20 and p. 43 (paint store):

Christine Elfman Photography; p. 21 (illustrations): Matt Silady; p. 22 (first three photos): Jim Norrena; p. 22

(bus): Lindsey Lyons; p. 22 (Meckel tour): Jessica Russell; p. 25 (Kaii Tu): Clint Blowers; p. 30 (Simpson): Alison

Yin; p. 30 (Honorary Doctorate): Douglas Sandberg; p. 31, 34–35: Drew Altizer Photography; pp. 32–33:

Nikki Ritcher Photography; p. 42: Kate Glicksberg; p. 43 (shadows): Roddy Schrock; p. 44 (Weisberg): Zach

McCaffree; p. 44 (Becker): Michael Armenta; p. 44 (Ruznic): Kate Contakos; p. 45 (Ward): Ryan Stirtz, Stirtz

New Media; p. 46 (top): courtesy Jack Ford; p. 46 (arch installation): courtesy Eric Clausen; p. 46 (Moggridge):

Stuart Brinin Photography; p. 47: courtesy Chelsea Keenan

Glance is a twice-yearly publication of

California College of the Arts

1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco CA 94107-2247

415.703.9542

lwestbrook@cca.edu

Change of address? Please notify the

CCA Advancement Office

5212 Broadway, Oakland CA 94618

510.594.3779

bjones@cca.edu

Printed by Quad Graphics, Inc., on 10 percent

postconsumer waste paper. Our printer is certified

by the Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC®) and

the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Printed

with inks that contain a minimum (27.3%) by

weight renewable content.

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keeping the creative flame burning: romantic and business partnerships that first flowered at cca

headlands celebrates 30 years and a long love affair with cca

lynn marie kirby: reflections on the art of teaching

cca alumni half-century club: 50 years of living history

unhackathons: tackling real-world problems through

design thinking

college newsnew programs: mfa in film, mfa in comics, master of architecture in urban design and landscape

awards and accolades

bookshelf

join the conversations! (recently overheard on facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin, and youtube)

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philanthropyspotlight

cca meets windgate craft scholarship challenge grant

an evening with david sedaris

alumni storiesbean gilsdorf

andrew georgopoulos & paul trillo

todd shalom

in memoriam joe girard

bill moggridge

larry keenan

backward glancesteve purcell

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Table of Contents

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Keep pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.

Neither one is a Jewelry / Metal Arts major, but current students

christopher baas (Architecture 2013) and carleigh

wamberg (Interior Design 2013) have had great success so far

with Fathom & Form, “our little jewelry experiment that ended

up becoming something quite ambitious.” Their work has been

covered on the blogs Design Milk and DailyCandy.

Carleigh says: “The rigor of both our majors has really

served us well in this undertaking. I’m still a little shocked that I

started my first company at 22 years old, while still in school! It’s

also been a great opportunity to break free of all the restrictions

we have to deal with at our usual, larger scales of operation—the

level of a building (Christopher) or an interior (me).”

Christopher says: “You can never take too many risks in

school. I’ve taken quite a few that ended up paying off. Although

it’s also important to choose your battles, and there’ve been a

few I should have passed on, ha.”

☞ fathomandform.com

Keeping the Creative Flame

Burning:Romantic and Business Partnerships

That First Flowered at CCAby Lindsey Westbrook

what’s it like maintaining two creative careers? Is it a recipe for success, or a recipe for disaster? Here, a dozen couples (some romantic, some business, some all of the above) who met at CCA reveal their secrets to keeping their creativity, and their relationships, going strong.

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Embrace disruption. Be a little disruptive yourself.

will meeker (Architecture 2009) and megan gilman

(Graphic Design 2008) were working on a poster together

at CCA one day, when a studio instructor suddenly charged

over and scolded them for being too noisy. They bonded over

this minor trauma and have been an inseparable pair ever

since. For the record, Will says, they were not actually being

disruptive, although they do like to shake up the status quo in

work and life. Today she’s a senior interactive designer with

Tolleson Design, and he’s a brand strategist and designer

with Astro Studios, both in San Francisco.

Will says: “We are definitely inspired by (and aim to

always create) disruptive products and services that change

the norm and allow for the user to experience something

different. For instance Jack Dorsey’s Square has turned the

credit card processing industry on its head. And the Nike

FuelBand (designed by Astro Studios, where I work) has

created an entirely new metric to help motivate and track the

progress of activity. It’s true that an innovative and disruptive

idea needs to be simple and impeccably executed for it to be

adopted. Megan and I call upon our different backgrounds

and strengths to try to look for the unexpected in each other’s

projects—some interesting, key thing that would otherwise

remain undiscovered.”

☞ meganinc.com

astrostudios.com

Actively seek out ways to make your practices

complementary.tim sharman (Printmaking 1982, MFA 1987, and now

Printmaking faculty) and susan padgham sharman

(Printmaking 1984) met at a CCA print shop “food-in”

potluck. Tim proposed marriage on the observation deck that

used to be on the roof of Macky Hall.

Tim says: “While our artistic disciplines are different—

Susan works in textiles and mixed media, and I’m more mul-

tidisciplinary—we share our processes and bounce ideas off

each other constantly. It helps that we both have studio space

in our home. There is a lot of cross-pollination of ideas. We

also collaborate on developing the exhibition programming at

Studio Quercus in Oakland, where Susan is the director of the

nonprofit exhibition space and I serve on the curatorial team

and on the board of directors. We try for a give-and-take pro-

cess, allowing each of us opportunities to express our ideas

on the problem at hand. Susan is good at organizing and

managing a project so that the details come together, and I’m

adept at envisioning how to curate and install an exhibition to

show off the work most effectively.”

☞ studioquercus.com

below Bracelet by christopher baas and carleigh wamberg as Fathom & Form

above Paper Yarn, a Low-Commitment Project posted by tae kitakata on August 6, 2012

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Commit to creating on a regular schedule.

brittany powell parich and tae kitakata (both MFA

2004) got paired up for a project on their first day at CCA by

stephen goldstein (then CCA’s grad director). “I think

it was his magic alchemy at work,” says Brittany. The project

they devised was Bobland, an alternative theme park in a trailer

park near Walt Disney World where visitors can take photos

of themselves acting out the parts of the residents: cannery

workers, a secretary, a stripper, and so on.

Brittany says: “After graduating, we both returned to our

home states: me to Portland, Oregon, and Tae to Honolulu.

We really missed each other’s creativity, and Hawaii and

Oregon aren’t exactly connected by a teletransporter. So

in 2012 we launched a website called Low-Commitment

Projects. Each Monday of 2012, we post a new artwork. We

alternate weeks, and we discuss our project ideas via phone,

email, and text. The point is to give us opportunities to

experiment without a huge outlay of time, energy, or money.

Now we wish we’d re-instigated our collaboration sooner. It

is a great way for us to stay involved with each other, and it

forces us to keep making new work.”

☞ lowcommitmentprojects.com

When your work is art, you should absolutely

bring it home with you.kieren dutcher (Individualized Major 1984) and daniel

worm (Graphic Design 1985) met in 1982 in a Photography

for Design Majors course led by harry critchfield.

Today, he is the director of visual merchandising at Gump’s

in San Francisco, and she is an art teacher and illustrator.

Their daughter, sophie worm, is now a senior in CCA’s

Animation Program.

Kieren says: “Our greatest collaboration has been our

two fantastic and creative kids. Growing up with a studio in

the middle of our house definitely made an impression on

them. Dinner table discussions about the shape of a lamp or

how to make a better backpack are the norm. We spend a lot

of time visiting museums and junk shops, and generally

viewing the world through a creative lens.”

☞ kierendutcher.com

etsy.com/shop/dutchwormhaus

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Resist the year-after-

graduation doldrums.sophia rowland (Writing and Literature

2011) and caitlin clarkson (Illustration

2011) met serendipitously as roommates while in

school. They bonded over cats, feminism, and Sailor

Moon, and after graduation Caitlin followed Sophia down to

L.A. so they could stick together. “Now we’re pretty

codependent/inseparable,” Sophia says. “Although we are

not romantically together, I can happily say I met a creative

life partner and lifelong friend at CCA.”

Caitlin says: “For a lot of people our age, the year post-

grad is really daunting and also a little empty. You’ve been

running around doing school work, and now it’s time to take

your creative work and ‘go with it.’ For us, the months began

to roll by, and we realized something had to be done; the

ball was in our court. So we came up with The Fear Girls, a

nonprofit feminist blog/website that gives female writers and

artists an uncensored space. Sophia writes articles and corrals

our other writers, and I do the illustrations and manage

the Artist of the Week feature. We give each other critical

feedback, which I’ve really started to miss now that I’m not

in school any more. The project has been overwhelmingly

rewarding. The great responses we’ve received have made it

all the more worthwhile. And it isn’t done growing.”

☞ the feargirls.com

Don’t kill anybody.kristin olson and kevin krueger (both

Individualized Major 2011) have walked down the aisle twice:

once at their Las Vegas wedding, and again at graduation.

Kristin remembers of their initial meeting: “Kevin worked at

a locally infamous last-stop thrift shop in Santa Cruz where

everything was 99 cents a pound. You can unearth some really

amazing treasures if you’re willing to sort through mountains

of urine-soaked muumuus from the 1960s. Luckily a little pee

has never deterred me from a good bargain.” They moved to

San Francisco to attend CCA, and now they run Alter Space,

a local alternative arts space that has exhibitions, a residency

program, and workshops.

Kristin and Kevin say: “We’re pretty thankful that we

haven’t killed each other yet. We live together, eat together,

sleep together, and work together. That’s not always easy, but

we recognize that it’s a rare thing to be able to share as much

as we do. Being in a relationship is already difficult, but we’ve

managed as well to make it through school, start a business,

and support each other throughout our own personal artistic

growth. Now we’re learning how to listen to one another. We

don’t have a strategy per se, but we do have a process. And the

process is not always smooth, but it’s very collaborative.”

☞ alterspace.co

koak.net / kkrueger.net

above MFA Now catalogue designed by heidi meredith and renée walker as the Gold Collective

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Keep inspiration close at hand.

eve steccati-tanovitz and ron tanovitz (both

Graphic Design 1969) met as high school students in the

Pre-College Program and have been married now for 41 years.

They’ve worked together as the advertising and design firm

Steccati-Tanovitz since 1985. Their clients have included

hospitals, banks, luxury resorts, and retail stores. They also

do illustration work for national magazines and publishers.

Eve says: “Ron finds inspiration looking through

Communication Arts magazines. He can spend countless

hours—days, really—poring over back issues. Years ago,

my father, hugo steccati, also a CCA(C) alumnus, gave

Ron his complete collection of Art Directors Club Annual

books, the earliest of which is from the mid-1930s. These

wonderful books fill Ron’s office closet from top to bottom,

providing an additional boost to his creative efforts. (Now

some of Ron’s own work graces the pages of the more recent

volumes!) We also keep one another close by, since we work

together on all kinds of projects. Although we do find that

having a door between our two home office spaces can be a

good thing.”

☞ stcreative.com S tructure your downtime and your

creative time. Work toward a schedule you can live with.sarrita hunn (MFA 2004) and ryan thayer (MFA

2006) are married and divide their time between Berlin and

St. Louis. Sarrita tends toward painting and sculpture (and

sometimes video) and Ryan tends toward photography and

sculpture (and sometimes installation). They’ve collaborated

on some projects, including the Many Mini Residency (which

to date has been held in Berlin, Copenhagen, and Houston),

essays for Temporary Art Review (an art criticism site that

Sarrita cofounded), and their daughter, who is now three.

Ryan says: “Starting when we very first got together, we

decided Saturday was our ‘day off ’ and, with some excep-

tions, we’ve managed to set aside that morning, at least,

to enjoy brunch at our favorite café and catch up on each

other’s activities. Starting a family has been incredibly intense

and demanding, but early on we decided that we wanted to

maintain our goals as artists. So, we keep a strict calendar/

schedule and divide up evenings and weekends so each

person has dedicated studio time. And that time has become

much more efficient! We also try to create equal time for work

(making money to pay the bills) and career (studio practice

and related activities). We’re very mindful of priorities and

balance in forming a life together.”

☞ ryanthayer.net / sarritahunn.com

manymini.org

temporaryartreview.com

on’t fear a little healthy competition.

heidi meredith and renée walker (both MFA Design

2011) met during orientation and founded the design firm

Gold Collective after they graduated. They first got to know

each other, they report, in Design Research class, when they

were paired up to go out and ask strangers how they felt

about their possessions. “One thing we learned is that old

habits die hard,” remembers Renée. “One woman we met

was an avid Backstreet Boys fan and had accumulated a ton of

memorabilia. She finally sold it all to a girl in Mexico for $70,

but then promptly bought a new Backstreet Boys CD.”

Heidi and Renée say: “It’s hard not to be competitive,

even in a partnership. But we think a bit of healthy competi-

tion only makes you a better designer, and a constant student.

We’re always working on finding a balance where we’re both

creatively satisfied. Something that we are getting better at

is allowing one person to shine when it comes naturally, or

when they have a clear vision for how best to execute an idea.

But then occasionally we get a project that requires a particu-

lar graphic illustration that one of us can execute with ease,

while the other struggles. In this case, the one less skilled

pushes herself harder. It can be frustrating, but it ultimately

ends in a sharpening of skills.”

☞ gold-collective.com

right Seed Packs and Headlands Carrier Stools (the latter was a commission for Headlands Center for the Arts) by adam reineck and yvonne mouser as New Factory

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V ertical integration! Design + building skills

= better ability to manage your own destiny. adam reineck (Industrial Design 2005) and yvonne

mouser (Wood/Furniture 2006) had studios next to each

other at CCA. There were many opportunities for passing

smiles in the hallway, one thing led to another, and they

moved in together shortly after Yvonne graduated. They

are currently planning their wedding. She works

independently, designing and building custom

furniture and collaborating on food/design/art

events with Thought for Food. He has worked as

a designer for IDEO since 2005.

Adam says: “We started collaborating, nights

and weekends, around 2006, and quickly found out it

was a lot of fun to work on things together. We’ve done

a number of small projects where we designed and built

products for stores and pop-up shops. When we moved into

our first place on 24th Street in San Francisco, we wanted a

studio where we could tinker and actually prototype ideas,

and we set up an industrial sewing machine and a large draft-

ing table. We’ve since moved to a larger place in SoMa where

the house itself is a project, and we converted our garage into

a shop and studio, New Factory. Now we’re taking a few of

our designs into production and distribution.”

☞ newfactorysf.com

Thou shalt not shaketh the art table when thy partner

is working on something.kelly tunstall (Graphic Design 2004) and ferris plock

both paint and exhibit nationally and internationally, and they

both freelance in illustration, animation, and art direction.

She works in-house as an all-purpose graphic designer at a

Silicon Valley think tank. They met at the GlamMore exhibition

curated by dina pugh (Curatorial Practice 2004) in the CCA

graduate galleries. Ferris said hi and then made what he calls

a “tactical retreat,” as she was busy gold-leafing big letters on

the wall. Staying out of each other’s way and respecting each

other’s quirks are skills they’ve worked hard on.

Kelly says: “Ferris frequently listens to Ken Burns

documentaries while painting.”

Ferris says: “Kelly has lucky shoes that come to her aid

when she is battling a difficult painting.”

Kelly says: “We’d consider moving, if it was the right

thing to do creatively.”

Ferris says: “I would not consider moving unless the

new job came with superpowers.”

☞ ferrisplock.com

kellytunstall.com A

below kelly tunstall’s painting Behind You, 2012, and ferris plock’s Street Hockey T-shirt (the shirt is available in two sizes: the size their son is now, and the size he will be soon)

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HEADLANDS CELEBRATES 30 YEARS & A LONG LOVE AFFAIR WITH CCA

by Matthew Harrison Tedford

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Few settings could be more different than Headlands Center for the Arts and the campuses of CCA. Quietly nestled in the rolling hills of western Marin County, Headlands is quiet and rural—a place to withdraw from the hubbub of contemporary urban life and contemplate the enormity of the ocean, sky, and trees.

In contrast, david maisel describes CCA’s San Francisco campus as “a modern-day Bauhaus.” Just 12 miles away from Headlands, it might as well be in another universe, surrounded by light industrial buildings, live-work spaces, and railroad tracks. Even the gardens and historic buildings of CCA’s Oakland campus feel urban in comparison to Headlands.

But the two organizations have a lot in common. Not only

do they share a strong commitment to contemporary art,

craft, and design, but dozens of individuals who have gradu-

ated from, or taught at, CCA have also participated in one

of Headlands’ many programs for artists. The institutions’

shared history is practically of Kevin Bacon–esque propor-

tions, with David Maisel being a perfect case in point: He is

a CCA alumnus (MFA 2006), a current CCA studio practice

instructor, a former Headlands Artist in Residence (AIR)

(2008), and now a member of the Headlands board of

directors. Both institutions are very prestigious, ranking

highly at the national level in their respective fields. Both

support process-based, cutting-edge work. Both seek to go

beyond traditional genres and disciplinary boundaries. Both

invest deeply in the lives and careers of their artists, and look

to create long-term relationships with their alumni.

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Since its founding in 1982, Headlands has grown

from a fledgling tenant of the National Park Service to an

internationally renowned arts center, hosting artists of all

disciplines for periods of a few months up to a year. Its

programs include:

• Artists in Residence (AIR): fully sponsored residencies

of four to ten weeks, awarded to approximately 45 local,

national, and international artists each year;

• Graduate Fellowships: yearlong residencies awarded to

local graduating MFA students;

• Affiliate Artists: partially subsidized studio residencies

awarded to 20 Bay Area artists each year;

• Workshops: Led by guest artists and creative thinkers,

week-long and project-based;

• and the recently established Alumni New Works program.

Headlands also administers the prestigious Tournesol Award,

which is given to one local painter each year—CCA faculty

member shaun o’dell and alumni leslie shows (MFA

2006) and neil ledoux (MFA 2011) have been Tournesol

awardees—and regular public events such as performances,

readings, lectures, artist-led hikes, open houses, and

exhibitions.

taking the leap post-mfa

CCA and the San Francisco Art Institute were the founding

partners in the Headlands Graduate Fellowship program.

Today, these highly coveted fellowships are awarded to up to

seven newly minted MFA students each year—just one from

each participating MFA program (CCA, SFAI, Mills College,

San Francisco State University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and

UC Davis). Awardees receive a full year of studio space

and participate in the highly popular Headlands Open Houses

and a Graduate Fellow exhibition.

harrell fletcher (MFA 1994, Headlands Graduate

Fellow in 1994–95, and Headlands AIR in 2001) was the first-

ever CCA student to receive the Graduate Fellowship, and he

was the original organizer of the Headlands Library. “It was

a huge honor. I had been a big fan of Headlands since its

founding. I went to the very first Open House and saw mark

thompson and Joanna Haigood’s performance with Mark’s

beehives.” Mark Thompson is a CCA Sculpture faculty

member and worked with David Ireland on important build-

ing renovations in 1986–87 (more on this later). He is also the

author of one of the few permanently installed works at Head-

lands, the Threshold Project, in the main building entrance. In

this piece, the lead in the stoop is ever so slightly imprinted by

every person who walks over it.

Recipients of the Graduate Fellowship consistently

describe the award as instrumental in helping with the transi-

tion from academic life to professional life. Everyone agrees:

the first year after school is the toughest. “You risk losing all

the momentum you’ve built up over the course of two years

as an MFA student, and also the close community of fellow

students who have been your constant companions, night

and day, in the graduate studios,” observes bean gilsdorf

(MFA 2011 and Headlands Graduate Fellow in 2011–12).

“Receiving the fellowship meant that as soon as I was done

with graduate school, I was immediately part of another

community that was just as supportive.” (Gilsdorf is the

subject of a longer profile on page 36.)

“The Graduate Fellowship definitely softens the blow of

that first year,” agrees anna von mertens (MFA 2000 and

Headlands Graduate Fellow in 2000–01). “You go from having

people visiting your studio almost every day—including

above Headlands Studio Building 945

previous page david maisel’s studio at Headlands in 2008, showing work from Library of Dust

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faculty who are getting paid to pay attention to your work and

offer insights—to what is potentially a great void of silence.”

For her, Headlands was an opportunity to explore what she’d

learned in graduate school in a more independent environ-

ment, while still being part of an encouraging community.

While there she established lifelong studio practices that stick

with her to this day—what she calls “patterns of working”

that have kept her going through good times and bad. “Part of

the trick of being an artist is figuring out how to be an artist

for the long haul, not just a short sprint.”

libby black (MFA 2001, Headlands Graduate Fellow

in 2001–2, and current Painting/Drawing faculty) echoes this

sentiment. “The fellowship helped me avoid the potential

post-graduation malaise and keep the ball rolling. It was great

to have the deadlines of the Open Houses, when the public

would arrive and we had to have work ready to show. And it

was amazing to be constantly meeting the new artists who

were arriving to start their residencies.”

clockwise from above left amy franceschini and Michael Swaine’s Reverse Ark Victory Garden, 2008; taha belal’s Untitled (Dimensional Newspaper), 2009; taha belal installing his piece, 2009; a moment captured during the shooting of desirée holman’s Reborn, 2009

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taha belal (MFA 2008, Headlands Graduate Fellow

in 2008–9) points out that for most Fellows, the Headlands

experience is one’s first-ever residency, and something

specific and tangible to look forward to after graduation.

“It was certainly a boost to my artistic confidence. Instead

of getting stuck trying to gather myself, it gave me continuity.

And it grounded me and my work.” At Headlands, Belal

further developed ideas that he’d started thinking about at

CCA and in the end came away reassured that those ideas

were still relevant outside of an academic setting.

those who can, teach

Headlands provides crucial support not only to emerging

artists, but to established ones as well. Residencies play an

important role in the professional life of any working artist,

and each has its own character. In the fall 2011 issue of Glance

we looked at the Recology residency at the San Francisco

dump, a setting quite different from rural Marin County! Yet

both programs have in common that they offer a crucial

opportunity to get away from everyday distractions.

Although this doesn’t mean that residencies are escapes

per se; kota ezawa (Film and Fine Arts faculty and Head-

lands AIR in 2011) says, rather, that “teaching and residencies

are opposite sides of the same coin. Both foster the explora-

tion of ideas in a group setting. Teaching is not a job like

working at a bank or a restaurant.” Ezawa was awarded a

three-month live-work residency at Headlands in spring 2011

and used it to push forward with ongoing projects in all

media, from multichannel installations to a book project,

ink-based animations, and paper collages.

jeanne c. finley (Film and Fine Arts faculty,

Headlands AIR in 2005, and Alumni New Works recipient in

2012) has taught on and off at CCA for 20 years. “During the

academic year I get a lot of work done, but that time is punc-

tuated by responsibilities to my colleagues and my students

that have to be fulfilled. Those are invaluable relationships,

but uninterrupted time in the studio is also very precious.

Both the physical environment as well as the creative

community at Headlands create a kind of time that is unlike

any time during the academic year.”

Graphic Design faculty member jeremy mende

(Headlands AIR in 2012) puts it succinctly: “As a teacher,

your student’s journey comes first. As a resident, your journey

comes first. Teaching is a very rewarding experience, but you

also have to get away and refocus your own trajectory as a

maker.” Mende, a designer, devoted his two months at

Headlands in summer 2012 to dramatically reexamining his

usual patterns of working. “The piece I made had biorhythmic

sensors, a canary, and the problem of getting people to move

through an installation in a particular sequence. I’d never

worked so directly with technology, nontraditional materials,

spatial dynamics, and the unpredictability of the public. This

is a radically new direction for my work, and the opportunity

to construct and test a full-scale, working prototype was

invaluable.”

space: the final frontier

One of the biggest concerns for artists in a city can be finding

space to create. Headlands studios range in size, but some

are very large—far larger than what many could afford in

San Francisco. Jeanne C. Finley describes her space there as

having been “really, really big.” It was a jump from 500 square

feet in the city to a whopping 3,000 square feet. Not only

that, but the location (across from the Nike Missile Site) and

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the raw, open qualities of the space inspired work that was

specific to Headlands, yet could be seen successfully outside

of that context. One piece, Catapult, literally incorporated

elements of the building—broken window frames and a

chandelier—thus rendering it literally a part of the physical

space and the experience of Headlands.

desirée holman (Sculpture 1999, Fine Arts faculty,

and Headlands AIR in 2009) says her Headlands studio was

so large, she was able to use it as a production stage. Usually

she will rent a stage for a short, concentrated period after

having devised and rehearsed a work elsewhere, “but there,

since my studio literally became the set, I could take my time

and get connected with it. This opened up a lot of creative

possibilities for how I could deal with space sculpturally.”

The experience still reverberates throughout her processes of

thinking and making.

37.8278° n, 122.5061° w

No one undertakes a Headlands residency without being

profoundly affected by their surroundings: the breathtakingly

beautiful—and sometimes foggy and windy and desolate—

hills of Marin County.

“My studio at Headlands faced to the west, and just over

the hill was the ocean, the physical end of America,” says

Bean Gilsdorf. “I spent the whole year mulling over Manifest

Destiny and westward expansion. I built a covered wagon in

my studio and it became a sculpture, a video installation, and

a performance space.”

“Something special happens at Headlands,” Kota Ezawa

agrees. He found that his work changed in unexpected ways

when he moved from an urban environment to a national

park. “I found myself engaging in more risk-taking and

experimentation. Of course these are necessary for any artist

and can happen in any setting, but the quietness of Headlands

affords a special kind of focus.”

Taha Belal also found great value in the quiet of the

national park. “I felt like I was alone quite a bit of the time—

in a good way—and able to focus on ideas for prolonged

periods.” Being able to go for a hike in the hills or to the

beach was great, and the solitude had unanticipated side

effects. “For instance I was limited to materials that I’d

chosen to bring with me. So I was forced to experiment with

what I had available. I found myself looking at newspapers

and language in a number of new ways, and those experi-

ments eventually led to my first performance lecture.”

Harrell Fletcher remembers the open space translating

directly into mental space. “Walking on the beaches and hills

offered me a way to simply think, without the constraint of

needing to make things.” Headlands makes clear to its artists

that their time there is specifically not supposed to be about

completing projects, but rather about process. “It was great

to be a part of the community and participate in the Open

Houses, but in the end it was walking around in the natural

environment that was most important to me.”

you’ve got a friend in me

There is value in solitude, and then there is value in com-

munity, and every Headlands alum mentions the program’s

unique balance of these. The camaraderie that arises among

those living and working there has a great impact on what

they create. Kota Ezawa describes the population numbers as

ideal. “It’s not so small that it turns into family therapy, and

not so big that it becomes a strange quasi–grad school expe-

rience.” Ezawa’s studio, one of the largest, became the site

of the occasional impromptu dance party. “It’s impossible,”

he says, “to hide out in your studio.” Each season there are

several (very popular) Show & Tell Nights, in which a handful

of current artists from all of the programs present their

ongoing work to the others.

The Bay Area is heavily represented, but resident artists

come from all over the world. Many remember their time at

Headlands as a sort of effortless international melting pot

in which the world comes to you, rather than you needing to

seek out the world. And the relationships forged there often

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continue well beyond the terms of a given stay. During his

residency, Harrell Fletcher met one of his early heroes, John

Malpede, founder and director of the Los Angeles Poverty

Department. The two have subsequently worked on a number

of things together. During her 2005 residency at Headlands,

Jeanne C. Finley met fellow resident Mel Day, and together

they videotaped a sailboat that had wrecked on the coast

nearby. They recently resurrected this material as part of a

(successful) application to the Alumni New Works program

for summer 2012.

The poet cooley windsor (Writing faculty and

Headlands AIR in 2000) shared a live-work house with the

writer Sapphire (neé Romona Lofton). The relationship they

developed formed the basis of Windsor’s book Visit Me in

California: Stories. Windsor says the residency was responsible

for his being hired to teach at CCA. And his stories later

became the inspiration for the boat shape of the Reverse Ark

Victory Garden built by amy franceschini (Fine Arts faculty

and Headlands AIR in 2003) and Michael Swaine during their

residency.

breaking bread

One of the best things about Headlands is the food. This may

be surprising to outsiders, for whom “institutional food”

conjures up certain pejorative connotations, but it will ring

true for anyone who’s spent time there. In fact, many of the

cooks are artists themselves, and everyone helps with meal

preparation and cleanup afterward.

“It is impossible to think of Headlands without think-

ing about being incredibly well fed,” remembers Anna Von

Mertens. “It was actually a center point of the experience.”

The anticipation of a warm and delicious meal accompanied

by conversation with her peers made her feel like the work she

was doing in her studio was being respected and honored.

“You break bread together and share stories of your process.

Then, inspired by other people’s stories, you head back into

the studio to work alone again. It is a wonderful ebb and

flow.”

Says Jeremy Mende: “The conversations we had, often in

the kitchen while making dinner—about what makes good

art, the overlaps and divergences between art and design, how

we each deal with the conceptual and metaphorical issues

that define our individual practices—were extremely reveal-

ing and sustaining. After a long day, isolated in your studio

wrestling with your work, this opportunity to discuss, share

concerns, offer potential solutions, get support, and realize

you are part of a community that is actively engaging with

the larger existential issues of lived experience, is a kind of

utopia. It reminds one of the vital human necessity of creative

expression.”

The kitchen and Mess Hall were extensively restored

by the artist Ann Hamilton in 1989. At most public events,

visitors are invited to join in on meals and “break bread” with

the artist community.

here’s to another thirty years

The aforementioned David Maisel is not the only CCA alum

on the Headlands board of directors; another is kathryn

van dyke (Painting 1990). The architect mark jensen,

until recently chair of the Headlands board of directors,

was CCA’s chair of Interior Design for many years. Given

his expertise, Jensen served on the Headlands site commit-

tee, which was always a challenge because of the age of the

buildings; they are remnants of what used to be Fort Barry, a

U.S. Army installation constructed around 1908. One of the

most picturesque and charming of the studio buildings was

rehabilitated in 1986–87 by david ireland, a CCA alumnus

(1953), honorary doctorate recipient (1991), and founder of

Capp Street Project. Ireland executed the project in collabo-

ration with Mark Thompson, Mark Mack, 24 young artist

volunteers, and Headlands board and staff members. The

top jeremy mende’s Narcissus, 2012

bottom libby black’s Life-Size Paper Mercedes 1969 280SL, 2012

previous page kota ezawa at work on his multichannel installation City of Nature, 2011

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undertaking was, by all accounts, almost like an archaeologi-

cal excavation and involved removing decades of paint from

the stamped-tin ceilings and pillars, stairwell, and railings.

Jensen describes Headlands as more than just a support

structure for individual artists. “We’re also supporting new

work that wouldn’t get made otherwise. That’s a pretty

amazing thing, and an ambitious agenda.” He notes that the

overlapping groups of Headlands and CCA artists, alumni,

faculty, staff, board members, and audiences are parts of an

art and design ecosystem that is larger than any of the people

or institutions involved. “One project leads to another; one

artist leads to another. There’s never more than two degrees

of separation.”

David Maisel believes the 30th anniversary of Headlands

represents a very interesting moment for the organization.

“There is enormous creativity on the board, enormous

thinking about what the organization is, and what it might

be, moving forward.” One key challenge, he says, is how to

simultaneously be a local resource and maintain a presence

on the international stage. “You want to be able to reach out

to people in New York or Reykjavík or Tokyo. Applications

come in from across the globe.”

This strong community of artists and scholars from

around the country and the world is another thing the place

has in common with CCA. “The two are very complementary,”

continues Maisel. “In both places you delve into things in a

very open way and get involved with people from everywhere

who are doing amazing things you may never have imagined.

I remember when I was accepted to CCA and first set foot on

the San Francisco campus, I felt surrounded by all this elec-

tricity. Activity was never more than 10 feet away. Everything

was always in process, happening in real time.”

on now, and coming up

At a sprightly 30 and 105 years of age, respectively, Headlands

and CCA continue to intertwine, collide with, and shape

each other. liam everett (MFA 2012) is the current CCA

Graduate Fellow. The 2012 AIRs have included suné woods

(MFA 2010), zachary royer scholz (MFA 2006, MA

Visual and Critical Studies 2009), and jeremy mende

(Graphic Design faculty). An exhibition celebrating the 10th

anniversary of the Tournesol Award is on now through

December 16 and includes work by faculty member shaun

o’dell and alumni leslie shows and neil ledoux.

In fall 2012, anthony discenza (MFA 2000 and Fine

Arts faculty) returned to Headlands for an Alumni New Works

residency; his last stint there was in 2001. And the 2012

Affiliate Artists include victoria gannon (MA Visual and

Critical Studies 2008), christina seely (Photography

faculty), and luke damiani (Sculpture 2004).

Headlands Open Houses take place three times per year.

At the Open House on Sunday, April 28, 2013, the public is

invited to see recent work by Everett, Gannon, Seely, Damiani,

and the 2013 AIRs. A

above anna von mertens in 2001 at work on Migrations, in which she drew an 1,800-square-foot world map on the floor and asked visitors to connect up all the places they had ever lived

Tackling Real-World Problems Through Design Thinking

In April 2012, 80 designers, technologists, and business

strategists convened for a hard-working 24 hours at CCA’s

San Francisco campus. The occasion: the second Mix and Stir

UnHackathon event. The goal: to devise innovative solutions

that will create economic opportunities in underserved

communities and neighborhoods.

As opposed to a typical hackathon, in which program-

mers focus on quickly hammering out code, the UnHack-

athon focuses on the user and the solution—solving the

customer’s need before the first line of “code” is ever written.

With its combination of design, business, and technology,

the UnHackathon under ideal circumstances can produce

practical solutions with broad market appeal.

The April event started with a panel discussion in which

representatives from the San Francisco Small Business

Development Center, the Equal Justice Institute, and the TED

City 2.0 Platform described the struggles of the 57 million

Americans who are living at or just above poverty level. It

ended with the devising of numerous practical solutions to

real-life problems.

mix and stir and cca

San Francisco’s Mix and Stir Studios has been CCA’s partner

in both UnHackathon events thus far. Two of the three

cofounders, mary anne masterson and christopher

ireland, are CCA faculty members. It is a design-driven

startup incubator based on deep user focus and design think-

ing; its funding comes from a mix of partnerships and private

funders.

“We believe the best solutions come from close col-

laborations between design, business, and technology,” says

Masterson. “Our goal is to build collaborative, customer-

focused companies that can stand the test of time.” By

partnering with CCA for these events, Mix and Stir has also

been able to ensure that new voices are heard. “One of the

strengths of the Mix and Stir events is that they partner the

fresh thinking of CCA students with professionals from

throughout the design community. You can see this reflected

in the winning teams from our events.”

The first UnHackathon at CCA was dedicated to finding

viable technological solutions for the city’s problems related

to taxi distribution and communication of public transit

breakdowns. The goals were to devise a system that would

ensure a more effective dissemination of taxis throughout the

city (solving the seemingly unsolvable “why is there never a

taxi when you need one?” question) and to put into place

effective, affordable, real-time communication of Muni and

BART information when delays and disasters strike.

At the event, after hearing from a panel of experts, the 80

participants convened for a cocktail party to mingle and dis-

cuss ideas. The next morning they split into 11 teams, worked

through the day, and at 7 p.m. had visual representations of

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their concepts ready for presentation to the group.

The event produced many more viable ideas than its

organizers had expected, and the judges awarded cash prizes

to the top two teams. On March 26, the winning teams

presented their concepts to city officials from SFMTA, the

Department of Public Works, the Mayor’s Innovation Team,

and city supervisor Scott Wiener. Actual implementation will

of course take time, but city managers have already expressed

how impressed they are with the process and outcome of the

UnHackathon’s design-oriented approach.

innovation for good

The second UnHackathon was inspired by an eye-opening

TED talk by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer and

founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The talk

had two main points: First, we live in a world riddled with

inequality and injustice. Second, we live in a world of bound-

less innovation and creativity. Stevenson’s challenge was to

innovate ideas “born from conviction of the heart,” creating

opportunities for the less advantaged and helping lift people

out of poverty. He implored his TED audience, a group hailing

from the realms of technology, entertainment, and design,

to consider the existing systems that contribute to these

massive, but solvable, problems.

Ireland and Masterson of Mix and Stir, along with MBA

in Design Strategy program chair nathan shedroff, were

in attendance at that TED talk and took it as a strong call to

action. They contacted the TED team with a proposal to host

what became the second UnHackathon event. Attendees

included CCA students and faculty, professionals from the

Bay Area design community, and representatives from

companies such as Google, Hot Studio, and Apple.

Participants viewed Stevenson’s inspiring talk, heard

from a panel of city experts, and then set to work. Twenty-four

hours later, the three winning teams were Team Ping, which

articulated community leader organization and management;

Pop-Up Skill Shop, whose idea revolved around revitalizing

vacant properties while creating opportunities for low-income

youth; and Mobile Services Mall, who designed a service to

provide low-income communities with access to city, county,

and federal services they might not know about.

incubator for the next step

One of the goals at Mix and Stir is to connect entrepreneurs

with opportunity. Another event, the 10-week 2012 CCA and

Mix and Stir Studio Startup Summer Incubator, was aimed

at talented, collaborative startups who understand the value

of design, believe in the power of deep customer knowledge,

and truly want to build companies. Shedroff says the purpose

of such efforts is twofold: “To foster the creation of solutions

and companies (for-profits and nonprofits) that are enabled

by technology but still focused on people, and to increase

the connections between CCA and Bay Area communities of

engineers, scientists, NGOs, et cetera.”

design mindset across the map

Technology is useful for more than creating smartphone apps;

it can be leveraged to solve the deep social and economic

problems of the world. The difficulty lies not in convincing

people of this, but in showing people how they can use their

own power and knowledge to participate in creating these

solutions. It is much easier to design a nifty water bottle than

to pipe water to remote villages lacking civic infrastructure.

At CCA, social responsibility and community part-

nerships are embedded everywhere, in the studio and the

curriculum. And it is clear that the rest of the world, too,

is finally starting to realize the power of design thinking.

“Designer-founders” are starting businesses, getting the at-

tention of governments, and securing funding to implement

their ideas. Today, Singapore requires design studios as part

of its mandatory K–12 curriculum. Mexico and Colombia have

begun developing national design policies and plans. China

has created a thousand new design schools in the past 15

years, exhibiting the desire not just to manufacture, but also

to innovate.

And in San Francisco, promptly after taking office earlier

this year, Mayor Ed Lee created the position of Chief Innova-

tion Officer and appointed Jay Nath as its first officeholder.

Lee’s call to action was direct: “The need for innovation in

government has never been greater, and we must work with

our greatest resource—our human capital—to find new

solutions to old challenges.” A

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n September 19, 2012, CCA Film and Fine Arts faculty member lynn marie kirby, together with collaborator Alexis Petty, presented The 24th Street Listening Project at the Brava Theater

in San Francisco. The evening’s event included a video exploring the five-block 24th Street site through color and language mapping, a musical performance reflecting the stories and topographies encountered on walks around the neighborhood, a book release, and launch of the project website 24thStreetListeningproject.com.

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Earlier that afternoon the two artists led Laguna Yellow, a

neighborhood walk sponsored by Elastic City in partnership

with the San Francisco Arts Commission (read more about

Elastic City and its founder, CCA alumnus todd shalom,

on page 42). Kirby and Petty guided participants in a medita-

tion on the role of color in the neighborhood: as pigment, as

light, and as history. The walkers were asked to “be present”

to color, to see and hear its frequencies, and to explore the

languages used to describe its refractions and reverberations.

How does Sunbeam play off Fiesta Orange, White Blush, or

Desert Tan? The walk culminated in the creation of a collec-

tive pigment poem.

Todd Shalom is Kirby’s former student. He is one of

many, many students who not only cite her as a key influence

on their creative efforts today, but also have kept in close

touch with her in the years after graduation. Kirby and

Shalom also have in common a deep commitment to art that

uncovers echoes—some present and discernible, and others

no longer quite audible.

As an educator and a practicing artist for more than 30

years, Kirby has developed a keen craftsmanship in the art of

connecting with students. She is great at recognizing and en-

couraging their strengths and skills, and turning classroom

and studio exchanges into long-term connections. Kirby’s

teaching practice and her art practice intertwine seamlessly.

Her passion for uncovering ideas and building relationships

has made her a particularly adept conductor of stories in her

own creative practice.

þorfinnur guðnason (Film/Video 1988), a well-

known Icelandic filmmaker, is one of the students who

has stayed in touch. “Lynn opened doors and gave us the

opportunity to think beyond what we knew,” he says. “She

encouraged us to push boundaries and challenge the me-

dium we were working in. Her enthusiasm was contagious,

and she befriended everyone. No one ever skipped class.”

In July 2011 Guðnason organized a retrospective of Kirby’s

work, Airplanes and Dust, at Bíó Paradís in Reykjavík. Kirby

was flown out for the show and was greeted by four of her

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such as, “What does it mean to be a man?”

Viewers could see the physical manifestations

of approaching manhood in the boys’ posture

and facial hair, and hear it in the fluctuations of

their developing voices. Handwritten pages by

the two young men hung on adjacent walls. Since

the gallery is located on the ground floor of the

San Francisco War Memorial building, Kirby was

inspired by this history to ask the boys to write

their thoughts about war, thus sensitively linking

her project to the site of the exhibition.

The work subsequently “traveled” to China

when Standardized Screen Tests was curated into a

show with the Chinese artist Li Xiaofei. Kirby went

to China to meet Li, and while she was there they undertook

a project together, a 30-day email exchange. This exchange

was featured in the spring 2012 exhibition Descriptive Acts at

SFMOMA. The two artists are now working on The Crystalline

World, a project exploring the effects of salt mining on econo-

mies and sites in the Bay Area and China.

The 24th Street Listening Project is an expansion of a work

Kirby began in 2009 for Triple Base, my former gallery. It

involved Kirby getting to know people at various locations

along 24th Street, focusing on a few sites in particular: the

7th Day Adventist Church, Center Nail Salon, the Brava

Theater, Saint Francis Fountain, the Alcoholics Anonymous

meeting house, and the soccer field at Garfield Square. She

collaborated with Alexis Petty to re-present the various forms

of exchange witnessed at these sites in ways that mimicked

the signs, programs, menus, price lists, and brochures found

there, and then she situated these new materials back in the

landscape from which they had emerged.

return from sabbatical

Kirby returned to CCA this fall after a year-long sabbatical, an

extraordinarily eventful year that included shows and screen-

ings at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum

in Los Angeles, the Berkeley Art Museum, TIFF Toronto, the

Museum of Modern Art in New York, and SFMOMA. She

traveled not only to Iceland for the retrospective, but also to

China and Brazil. In Brazil she worked with the Sisters of the

Holy Cross in São Paulo on Stitching Wishes. Begun as a sewing

project, it has evolved into an ongoing collaboration with

the nuns and continues her interest in alternate narratives,

site-based work, and the role of the artist as a facilitator. She

is currently engaged with several new time-based pieces,

including a large commission in Wuxi, China.

Lynn Marie Kirby is humorous. She is a philosopher, an

avant-garde filmmaker, and an artist. She is a teacher and an

inspiration to many. I am happy to call her my friend, and I

look forward to continuing to collaborate whenever possible

and seeing what new and fascinating projects she undertakes

in the years to come. A

former (Icelandic) students from the late 1980s, all now work-

ing in media in Iceland. While there, she made a video with

Guðnason, How green IS my valley, which was included in the

retrospective show.

traces of the everyday

Kirby is drawn to traces of the everyday—materials, anec-

dotes, knowledge, and stories—as they reflect connections

between experience and place. Her projects are deeply human

in the sense that they are manifestations of life and serve as

evidence that another human—Kirby—is out there: attuned,

listening, collecting.

alexandra grant (MFA 2000), a prominent Los

Angeles painter and also a former student of Kirby’s, says,

“Many of us admire Lynn for taking a stand for things that

are inaudible, not visible, or easily overlooked. Lynn doesn’t

mind being a maverick. First as her student, and now as her

friend and colleague, I admire her patient seeing, her cham-

pioning of the trace, the gesture.”

For years people referred to Kirby as a filmmaker, and

she certainly is one, having had her work showcased at film

festivals around the world, from Oberhausen to Toronto,

London, San Francisco, and Athens. But her investigations

take other forms as well: writing, site-based interventions,

sound, ephemeral objects. Recording technologies them-

selves—interesting to Kirby because of how they create

and mark records of time and place—sometimes feature as

subjects in her explorations.

memorable curator-artist interactions

I have had the pleasure of working with Lynn Marie Kirby for

several years now. For me personally, her work Standardized

Screen Tests, part of an exhibition I co-curated at the San

Francisco Arts Commission Gallery in 2008, stands out

as particularly memorable. In this work she recorded two

adolescent boys responding to questions about manhood,

above Participants in the Laguna Yellow walk chose a color at the paint shop, and here they are singing their color’s frequency

previous page lynn marie kirby at Langjökull Glacier in Iceland

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MFA in FilmThe film world has undergone enor-

mous changes during the last decade.

Today’s filmmaker must be equal parts

artist, craftsperson, and entrepreneur.

The curriculum of the new MFA in Film

program combines intensive focus

on each student’s artistic vision, the

study of media language and form in

historical and contemporary contexts,

and the development of business and

entrepreneurial skills. Classes begin in

fall 2013.

The program

is led by rob

epstein, Academy

Award–winning

director of The Times

of Harvey Milk and

Common Threads:

Stories from the Quilt, and the filmmaker/

composer brook hinton, who

in addition to making his own films

has worked extensively

as a post-production

specialist and consultant

across a wide range of

genres. Hinton says:

“Art, for me, is con-

stant, relentless,

uncompromised

questioning. Maybe it’s my punk roots,

but I always feel a delightful little shiver

at the back of my neck when the estab-

lished way of doing things starts to fall

apart. I have a feeling that the changes

we’re seeing in the film world are just

the kick in the pants the still-very-

young practice of filmmaking needs to

reach its full potential.”

☞ Read more at cca.edu/mfafilm

MFA in ComicsThe MFA in Comics is a 48-unit, three-

year, low-residency program, with the

first classes starting in summer 2013.

Students spend one month each sum-

mer in San Francisco working closely

with faculty from CCA’s writing, illus-

tration, fine arts, and design programs

as well as professionals drawn from

industry. In between these intensive

workshops they have one-on-one, long-

distance mentoring. The curriculum

covers not just writing and drawing

skills but all aspects of comic art and

graphic storytelling, from page layout

to digital coloring, graphic design,

publication, and promotion.

matt silady, a

comic writer and artist

and leader of the new

program, taught his

first workshop

at CCA in 2008

and says he’s very

happy with how the entire school, from

students to faculty and administration,

have embraced the legitimacy of comics

as a fine art and a literary medium.

“Seeing the curriculum grow from that

first workshop into a graduate program

is the culmination of many years of

work for me. I am really enthusiastic

about the future of this field! I can’t

wait to open up the doors to our first

class of artists and writers.”

☞ Read more at cca.edu/mfacomics

New ProgramsCCA will launch three new graduate programs in summer and fall 2013. All of them are accepting applications now! (Illustrations by MFA in Comics chair Matt Silady)

Master of Architecture in Urban Design and LandscapeThe Master of Architecture in Urban

Design and Landscape is a

two-year post-profes-

sional program for

students with previous

degrees in architecture,

landscape architecture,

or planning. Its

interdisciplinary

curriculum integrates organizational,

systemic, and morphological investi-

gations in architecture and urbanism

with urban geography, ecology, and

landscape design. Students will be

exposed to advanced data visualization

techniques and a range of strategies

operating at the local, neighborhood,

metropolitan, and regional scales. The

program officially launches in fall 2013.

mona el-khafif is the chair. She

joined the URBANbuild program at

Tulane University in 2006 in the after-

math of Hurricane Katrina, and in 2008

moved to San Francisco to join CCA’s

faculty. “I believe that we are living in

an incredibly interesting time for archi-

tecture,” she says. “Digital technology

is improving on a daily basis. We collect

more data than any other generation

and are developing tools to better

understand relationships, patterns,

and future scenarios. Issues of global

warming, rapid urbanization, and

sustainability are requiring new design

solutions across disciplines.”

☞ Read more at cca.edu/maudl

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clockwise from top left bruce bignami, arlene streich, doyle foreman, and selma foreman at the entrance to CCA’s Oakland campus; joan machado holds a college archival photo of herself and fellow student john machado (the two later married); CCA’s first inductees into the Alumni Half-Century Club; on the bus between the Oakland and San Francisco campuses; david meckel, CCA’s director of research and planning, gives a tour of the San Francisco campus

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Twenty-one amazing alumni from the classes of 1962 and

earlier showed up to participate in the inaugural event. “We

have such a deep appreciation for all of our alumni,” says

Director of Alumni Relations jessica russell, “but the

Half-Century Club is especially significant. Its members

are the living history of this institution, some of our most

treasured alums, and it’s such an honor to have them here for

this celebration.” One of the eldest club members in atten-

dance was earl f. holt (MFA Advertising 1949), age 91. He

had studied under wolfgang lederer, a master of book

design who was influential in developing the college’s design

curriculum, and went on to found Holt Graphics in Oakland

57 years ago. His son manages the company today.

The weekend kicked off with a breakfast reception on

the Oakland campus with President stephen beal and

honorary event chair richard mclean (Painting 1958),

followed by a tour of the campus’s studio facilities. One

overheard comment: “Where’s the volleyball court?” [Fact:

It is now the site of the A2 Café.]

A shuttle then took the group to the Honorary Doctorate

Luncheon near the San Francisco campus, where club

members had lunch with donors to the college and CCA’s

2012 honorary doctorate recipient, IDEO cofounder

bill moggridge. (Mr. Moggridge passed away in

September; see the “In Memoriam” section on page 46 to

read more about his career.) CCA alumnus and photographer

douglas sandberg (Photography 1997, former Alumni

Council president, and chair of the centennial alumni celebra-

tion in 2007), was heard to observe: “I don’t think artists

should retire. They get good at age 80! It is impossible to do

too much to encourage and honor our distinguished alumni.”

Following the luncheon, the club enjoyed an exclusive

tour of the San Francisco campus, led by CCA’s Director of

Research and Planning david meckel. The weekend

culminated with the 105th commencement ceremony, at

which the honored alumni enjoyed VIP seating. Half a century

may seem like a lifetime to a new graduate, but several of the

Half-Century Club members commented that graduation

didn’t seem like all that long ago.

Alumna and retired book illustrator joan machado

(Advertising 1952) summed it up: “My education itself was

definitely a great success, since I have been able to pursue

art all my life. And one thing that hasn’t changed is the

camaraderie among me and my fellow artists.” Machado has

remained friends with many of her classmates, and has twice

been married (both times to CCA alumni!). A

CCA’s Alumni Association hosted a two-day event over graduation weekend in May 2012 to pay tribute to all alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago, and especially graduates from the class of 1962. Henceforth, every year, alumni who reach the 50-year milestone will be officially inducted into the college’s Half-Century Club and honored with commemorative activities that celebrate their particular chapter in the college’s history.

CCA Alumni Half-Century Club: 50 Years of Living History by Jim Norrena and Jessica Russell

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eric rogers (Interior Design 2013) has won the prestigious Angelo

Donghia Foundation Student Scholarship, which will provide him

with up to $30,000 to complete his senior year. Rogers says of his

winning entry: “This Deleuze-inspired reconceptualization of the

Montgomery transit station in downtown San Francisco is vehement

anti-capitalism wrapped in the rhetoric of urban renewal and archi-

tecture. It just seemed appropriate to design a source of contagious

abundance in the middle of the Financial District, where everything

is artificially made scarce: time, space, sunlight, warmth, clean air,

genuine friendship, pleasant public spaces, free activities. Anyway, in

design, you can’t just say ‘down with capitalism,’ so instead you say

‘up with human beings.’ It’s basically the same thing. Everything we

desire is here already; we just need systems that connect desires to

their fulfillment. Good architecture orients itself to this mandate.

It facilitates connection.”

In July 2012, Anthropologie released

a new clothing collection based on

artwork by mia christopher

(Painting/Drawing 2012) as part of their

Made in Kind project, which is intended

to give mainstream exposure to artists

and designers who are as yet under the

radar. This is Christopher’s first foray

into clothing design, although she

says she had previously experimented

with embroidery as a “slow drawing

process.”

☞ See more at miachristopher.com

Two teams from CCA were recently awarded top prizes at 2x8 taut,

an annual architecture and design student competition sponsored by

the American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles (AIA | LA). Fractals

of Knowledge by osma dossani took second place, and FRESNOW

by alexander decicco, francis silagon, and hugh vanho

took third. The winning students receive scholarship awards and are

featured in an exhibition (which this year was at the Architecture +

Design Museum in Los Angeles).

Awards & Accolades

right two views of eric rogers’s reconceptualization of the Montgomery transit station in San Francisco

above Anthropologie clothing design by mia christopher

These are just a few of the many CCA faculty, student,

and alumni accomplishments of the past several months.

Read further about all of these stories and more at

cca.edu/news/awards-and-accolades.

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kaii tu (Individualized Major 2012) has received

a $15,000 Windgate Fellowship, one of the largest

awards in art and design in the nation. Before com-

ing to CCA, Tu graduated from Harvard University

summa cum laude with a degree in visual and

environmental studies, and he has also studied

at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He was one

of the youngest people ever to reach the level of

brand manager at Procter & Gamble, his employer

from 2005 to 2009. He’s also worked for Peerless

Lighting (2011) and Logitech (2012); at the latter he

helped design iPad and iPhone apps.

Earlier this year, Tu was named the winner

of the Wilsonart Design Challenge, a student

competition held at the annual International

Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York.

Tu’s winning Torrey chair was inspired by the

shapes of the windswept pines on the California

coast. It is built from Wilsonart Laminate, which

is flexible but can bend in only one direction. Tu

applied his engineering skills to artfully demon-

strate that an undulating, three-dimensional form

can be achieved in high-pressure laminate.

erik adigard (Graphic Design 1987), who is

an alum, a lecturer at CCA, and cofounder of the

interdisciplinary design firm M-A-D, has won

a 2012–13 Rome Prize in the design category.

While in Italy he will investigate what he calls

the “iconographic explosion” on social media of

images of the Colosseum, Michelangelo’s Creation

of Adam, and the Pantheon, and how this has

affected broader concepts of image, culture, and

economy.

victoria deblassie (MFA 2011) is currently in Italy on

a Fulbright grant, researching ecological approaches to

the craft of vegetable tanning and felting. For the past

nine years she has been using a variety of craft processes

to transform orange peels into a leather-like material,

which she then uses to make large sculptures. You may

remember DeBlassie’s house made of orange peels from

the 2011 MFA Show. Read a first-person account of the

2010 study-abroad trip to Italy that inspired her successful

Fulbright application (part of mariella poli’s Italian

Art and Contemporary Culture course) at cca.edu/glance.

below victoria deblassie’s Accumulated Matter, a house made of orange peels for the 2011 MFA show

right kaii tu and his Torrey chair

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Pantone is the worldwide color authority. Designed

by brooke johnson (Graphic Design 2003)—

an alumna, faculty member, and senior designer at

Chronicle Books—this book takes you on a visual

tour of 100 amazing years, from the Pale Gold

(15-0927 TPX) and Almost Mauve (12-2103 TPX) of

the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris to the Rust

(18-1248 TPX) and Midnight Navy (19-4110 TPX) of

the countdown to the millennium.

BookshelfThese are a select few of the many books written, designed,

illustrated, and published by CCA faculty and alumni in

the past year. Get the full scoop on these and more at

cca.edu/news/bookshelf. If you are a CCA affiliate and have

worked on a book in the last year, we’d love to hear about it!

Send details to lwestbrook@cca.edu.

Gilgamesh was composed over 2,500 years, then lost

in the deserts of Iraq for 2,000 more. Here, Critical

Studies chair stuart kendall offers a new transla-

tion of the epic, to which he brings a contemporary

poetic sensibility, a deep knowledge of the pagan

worldview, and the latest scholarship, including

transcriptions of all available tablets and stories.

alisa golden (Printmaking faculty) specializes

in the medium of the book. Unlikely objects such as

broken fences, plum pits, discarded papers, and

pigeons seen on walks in Berkeley, New York, and

Santa Monica became the basis for these 26 tiny

stories and accompanying photographs.

If there is, indeed, nothing lovelier than a tree,

the Connecticut-based artist bryan nash gill

(MFA 1988) shows us why. His large-scale relief

prints from the cross-sections of trees reveal the

sublime power locked inside their arboreal rings.

anita amirrezvani (Writing faculty) offers up a

tale of power, loyalty, and love in the royal court of

Iran—of powerful Muslim women who formed

alliances, lobbied for power on behalf of their sons,

and ruled in their own right.

Through creative exercises in paint and mixed media,

the artist and illustrator mati rose mcdonough

(Painting/Drawing 2007) shows artists how to “find

their magic”—the place of confidence from which

they can access the vision of what they want to share

with the world.

daring adventures in paintQuarry Books, 2012

Paperback, 128 pages, $22.99

equal of the sunScribner, 2012

Hardcover, 448 pages, $26

woodcutPrinceton Architectural Press, 2012

Hardcover, 128 pages, $29.95

gilgameshContra Mundum Press, 2012

Paperback, 344 pages, $18

sidewalk storyCreateSpace, 2012

Paperback, 50 pages, $14.95

pantone: the 20th century in color

Chronicle Books, 2011 Hardcover, 204 pages, $40

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Designed by CCA Graphic Design students suzanne

baxter and jason kerr, Refract House explores

the evolution of CCA’s solar-powered house that

competed in the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy

Solar Decathlon, reframing the team’s efforts within a

larger context of contemporary architectural practice.

It features full-color photographs, architectural

renderings, and texts by faculty members peter

anderson, ila berman, nataly gattegno,

matt hutchinson, andrew kudless, and

oblio jenkins.

This catalogue, designed by jon sueda (Graphic

Design faculty), documents a five-year series of

Wattis Institute exhibitions curated by students in

the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. Each

show examined one of the 50 American states,

focusing on artworks, historical artifacts, curiosities,

the often overlooked, and the little known.

Edited and designed by jon sueda (Graphic Design

faculty), this book investigates graphic design’s

evolving relationship with curating and exhibitions.

It features notable designs (in full color) and essays

by CCA faculty members tim belonax, rachel

berger, eric heiman, brett macfadden, emily

mcvarish, and scott thorpe.

CCA Publications

david cole (Jewelry / Metal Arts faculty) spent 13

years and traveled widely to photograph the work of

Marie Zimmermann for this book, which includes

approximately 400 of his images. Zimmermann was a

very colorful character in addition to being one of the

most creative and important makers of metalwork in

early-20th-century America.

What if Darth Vader took an active role in raising his

son? In this comic reimagining, life lessons include

light-saber batting practice, using the Force to raid

the cookie jar, and Take Your Child to Work Day on the

Death Star. The book is designed by michael morris

(Graphic Design 2004). A New York Times best seller!

justin hall (Comics faculty) edited and compiled

this collection of some of the best queer comics

of the last 40 years, whose creators have tackled

complex issues of identity and a changing society

with intelligence, humor, and imagination.

no straight lines: four decades of queer comics

Fantagraphics, 2012 Hardcover, 304, $35

darth vader and sonChronicle Books, 2012

Hardcover, 64 pages, $14.95

the jewelry and metalwork of marie zimmermann

Yale University Press, 2012 Hardcover, 400 pages, $65

the way beyond art: wide white spaceCCA Wattis Institute, 2012 Paperback, 104 pages, $17

americana: 50 states, 50 months, 50 exhibitions

CCA Wattis Institute, 2012 Hardcover, 240 pages, $25

refract houseCCA, 2012

Hardcover, 144 pages, $25

New

Yorker cover by CC

A faculty mem

ber owen smith, June 18, 2012

| Boa

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Join the Conversations!recently overheard on facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin, and youtube

“I loved Pre-College! It intro- duced me to a level of art ap-preciation that I’d only able to find independently in my small high school art department. An experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

“Graduated 18 years ago. Still love the school. And the school is tough.”

“I had the best time at Pre-College and as a camp counselor in the apartments! Good times!”

“Art students at CCA have an advantage in that they are being taught to think, to value their talent, and to hone their skills. An artist is able to ‘think outside the box,’ and that is the greatest job-hunting skill there is.”

facebook.com/C

aliforniaC

ollegeoftheArts

She’s Hooked, by CCA alumna crista reid | Board: For the Love of Craft

randy winslow: “Carin, Vincent’s famous for drawing on butcher paper that went from the floor to the ceiling when teach-ing his class. His arm would be over his head and down to the floor. He drew very fast, fly-ing around like a dancer. Our job was to keep up with him on our sketch boards—too fun.”

glenn sagon: “Hello Vincent, also a past student of yours (class of 1977). Lots of my friends took your classes and, thankfully, we are all still gainfully employed designers, artists, and illustrators!”

peggy post: “Hi Vincent, I had you for Anatomy and I still have all those sketchbooks from your class. When I saw ralph borge a few years back, he went on about how you were his student but you surpassed him.”

vincent perez (MFA 1965): “Thought you might like to hear from an old-timer. Check out perezstudio.com for the usual stuff up to ’07. Right now I’m doing a mural with Vida Blue, Tommy John, Gaylord Perry, and one other HOF pitcher to raise $1 million for the USO. I’m finally getting a line of medical posters out next year. There’s also a fantasy project that’s been ongoing for a couple of years heading toward a children’s book.”

carin christensen: “Hello Vincent! I art-directed five catalogues for Krames Communications back in 1988 and you were the illustrator. I loved it when you told me ‘I like to work from the shoulder and the arm, not the wrist.’ Hence, the originals were really large!”

linkedin.com/com

pany/california-college-of-the-arts

Every summer, 250 high school students converge on CCA’s Oakland campus for the four-week Pre-College Program. We asked our Facebook community: “What advice would you give these young artists, designers, architects, and writers?”

“What are you doing now?” This query on the CCA Alumni LinkedIn group page sparked more than 100 responses, including a brief reunion for former faculty member vincent perez and his students:

below eric heiman (left) and Public Bikes founder Rob Forbes at the Public Works exhibition at

#CCArts | via @sfgate

CCA alumna maja ruznic outside her studio, via

@refinery29 | Board: Alumni

Work by CCA artist in residence pablo medina | Board: Inspiration

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“@CACollegeofArts I CAN’T wait for school to start in September!

Really (really) excited!! :)”

“#mydreamcollege California College of the Arts

in San Francisco <3”

“First school I’m applying to after I graduate: @CACollegeofArts. Spending

my last 2 high school years doing everything to get accepted! :)”

“Sometimes I just go to California College of the Arts website to dream a little bit.”

“Words cannot describe how much I want to go to @CACollegeofArts”

twitter.com

/CA

CollegeofA

rts pin

terest.com/C

AC

ollegeofArts

California College of the Arts is where I wanna be.

“When I was in the Marine Corps, I was an artist in the Marine Corps. Now that I’m in art school, I’m a Marine at art school.” —kevin lawrence, Film student

“There’s really no limits when you’re at CCA. When I moved here I knew I wanted to work in design at a global level. And it’s totally happening.” —haley toelle, Industrial Design student

“There’s a lot of freedom of expression in fashion design. It doesn’t necessarily need to surrender itself to utility, and I really dig that.” —james zormeir, Fashion Design student

Incoming students tweet their dreams of CCA education.

All of these images are from recent posts on CCA social media

“Scene” on CCA’s YouTube channel:

youtu

be.com/u

ser/CC

Aarts

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honorary doctorate luncheon with Bill Moggridge, May 11, 2012

the 25th annual barclay simpson awards exhibition reception

April 18, 2012

1 Award winners Katelyn Eichwald, Ali Padgett, Melissa Dickenson, and Cassie Thornton 2 Award winner Melissa

Dickenson, trustee Ann Hatch, and Paul Discoe 3 Barclay Simpson, President Stephen Beal, and Sharon Simpson

1 Paul and Arlene Lieber 2 Honorary Doctorate Recipient Bill

Moggridge 3 Trustee Art Gensler 4 Hank Tarbell, Karin Hibma,

Kay Kimpton Walker, and Daniel Daniloff (Industrial Design 2011)

Spotlight

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2

3

2

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curator’s forum event with Massimiliano Gioni, curator of the 2013 Venice Biennale,

June 26, 2012, at the home of CCA trustee Emma Goltz

1 Fred Guiffrida and Pamela Joyner 2 Jens Hoffmann; trustees and Curator’s Forum co-chairs Emma Goltz and Carlie Wilmans; President Stephen Beal; and featured curator Massimiliano Gioni 3 Monica Fried and Juliet de Baubigny 4 Carley and Paul Rydberg, Afsaneh Akhtari 5 Kelly Burke, Joelle Connolly, and Jessica Silverman (MA Curatorial Practice 2007)

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The Windgate Charitable Foundation Challenge Grant Nets $300,000 for Craft Scholarships at CCA

In the past two years, the Windgate Charitable Foundation

has played a significant leadership role in supporting craft

education at CCA. Since the college’s founding 105 years

ago, craft disciplines have been central to the CCA curricu-

lum. Generations of remarkable faculty and students have

worked in our Ceramics, Jewelry / Metal Arts, Furniture,

Textiles, Wood, and Glass programs, and alumni from these

programs are among some of our most distinguished

graduates: robert arneson (1956), viola frey (1956),

and peter voulkos (1952), to name just a few.

Understanding CCA’s significant history and current

influence in craft, the Windgate Foundation made a generous

grant of $100,000 in October 2010 to create the Craft Forward

Scholarship, an endowed fund supporting talented students

in craft who need financial help to enroll in and earn their

degrees at CCA. But that was just the beginning. Foundation

representatives wanted to catalyze additional support, and

so they offered the CCA community a special challenge. If we

could raise a total of $100,000 in new gifts for craft student

scholarships, the Windgate Foundation would give a second

grant of $100,000 for the Craft Forward Scholarship. That

meant a potential total of $300,000 in new funds for

scholarships.

“We were thrilled by this challenge,” says CCA

President stephen beal. “Securing new gifts for scholar-

ships is our number-one fundraising goal, and we knew that

to have the Windgate Foundation focus energies on our craft

disciplines would be tremendously helpful for students in

these vital CCA programs.”

Throughout 2011 and early 2012, CCA contacted

alumni, parents, friends, faculty, and staff to ask for help

in reaching the challenge grant goal. Fifty generous donors

came forward to make new gifts to endowed or spend-down

funds for craft scholarships. Gifts ranged in size from $5 to

$25,000. Thanks to this incredible support, CCA surpassed

the $100,000 matching-gift goal in spring 2012, and the

Windgate Foundation fulfilled its match with a check for

$100,000 in June 2012.

President Beal says, “We are deeply grateful to the

Windgate Foundation for making this commitment to

educating future leaders in craft. I was elated by the response

of the CCA community, and I extend warm thanks to all the

donors who made an investment in our students.”

CCA appreciates the generosity of the 50 alumni, parents, and friends who made donations totaling

$100,912 to meet the Windgate Charitable Foundation challenge. Following is a list of lead

donors to this important effort:

ms. ann morhauser (glass 1979)timothy howes and

nancy howes (jewelry / metal arts 2005)barclay and sharon simpson

anonymousjohanna and tom baruch

stephen beal and elizabeth hoovertecoah bruce (painting/drawing 1974, maed 1979)

and thomas brucenancy and pat forsteremma and fred goltz

ms. kay kimpton walkerand mr. sandy walker

rotasa foundationjudith and bill timken

susan avila and stephen gongmr. mitchell forster

douglas r. gordon (jewelry / metal arts 1964)mrs. dorothy saxe

$1,000–$9,999

$10,000+

Keeping a high-quality education accessible to

all talented students is a top priority at CCA.

Scholarships are a wonderful way to provide vital

assistance for students who otherwise could not

attend. If you are interested in contributing to or

establishing a scholarship fund, please contact Emma

Sonduck at esonduck@cca.edu or 510.594.3787,

or give online at cca.edu/give. Your gift may be

measured in dollars, but the reward can be seen in

lives forever changed and dreams fulfilled.

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T he best-selling author and NPR humorist david

sedaris shared his sardonic wit and incisive social

critiques with members of the CCA community at

our annual gala on May 3, 2012, to raise funds for student

scholarships. The special evening was made possible through

the generosity of our two presenting sponsors, annieglass

and c. diane christensen and jean m. pierret. The

event was chaired by CCA trustee kay kimpton walker.

The evening began with a cocktail party with the author

at the Berkeley Art Museum. taste catering offered

a bounty of delectable hors d’oeuvres along with clever

cocktails such as the Bitter Squirrel and the Chipmunk-tini,

inspired by Sedaris’s latest book. The guests then made their

way to Zellerbach Auditorium to join the sold-out crowd of

2,000 other adoring fans for a laugh-out-loud program in

which Sedaris read from new and unpublished material.

Following his performance, as is his custom, the author

stayed late into the night graciously signing books and

chatting with guests.

Thanks to tremendous support from the CCA

community, the gala exceeded its goal and in the end raised

$231,000 for CCA’s Scholarship Fund. Event chair Kay

Kimpton Walker was delighted: “We are so grateful to David

Sedaris for giving his time and talent for this event. Through

his generosity and the generosity of our sponsors, we will be

able to help many talented, deserving students obtain a CCA

education.”

☞ For more information about David Sedaris and the

event, visit cca.edu/glance.

An Evening with David Sedaris

Raises $231,000 for CCA Scholarships

1 Agatha Sue Lee, Sharon Simpson, and Donna White

2 Bill Podger, Matt Christensen, Kathleen Brownwell, and David Glotzer

3 Diane Christensen and Karla Savage

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California College of the Arts is pleased to thank the following generous sponsors of An Evening with David Sedaris:

presenting ($25,000)annieglass (ms. ann morhauser, glass 1979)

c. diane christensen and jean m. pierret

leadership ($10,000)nancy howes (jewelry / metal arts 2005) and timothy howesf. noel perrybarclay and sharon simpsonruth and alan stein

patron ($5,000)johanna and tom baruchstephen beal and elizabeth hoovertecoah bruce (painting/drawing 1974, maed 1979) and thomas brucecity national bankpatricia w. fitzpatricknancy and pat forstergensler / gensler family foundationemma and fred goltzgreene van arsdale foundationtina and john kekerkay kimpton walker and sandy walkeranthony and celeste meierlorna meyer calas and dennis calassteve and nancy oliverrotasa foundationbill and judy timkenjack and susy wadsworthcarlie wilmansmary and harold zlotanonymous

supporting ($1,001–$4,999)roselyn c. swigtim mottsara williamsmimi and peter haas fundsusan avila and stephen gongmary foustdavid and deborah l. kirshman

supporting ($1,000)arcdr. thomas and jan boycemaryon davies lewisandrew fisher (jewelry / metal arts 1978) and jeffry weismanmr. and mrs. william hamiltonkate harbin and adam clammercraig hartman and jan o’brienhood & strong llpjohnstone mcauliffe construction inc.miranda leonardfred levin and nancy livingston / the shenson foundationjoyce linkerjennifer steinstephen taylor and lori taylor (painting 2001)

4 Vinitha Watson (MBA in Design Strategy 2010) and David Watson

5 Noel Perry, Annie Morhauser (Glass 1979), Stephen Beal, Michael Krasny, and Kay Kimpton Walker

6 Tim Mott, Pegan Brooke, Henry Urlich, and Brenda Way

4

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What have been the most memorable questions? “One was,

‘I just discovered that my MFA faculty advisor is an adulterer.

I find that morally reprehensible. Should I continue to trust

him in our student-advisor relationship?’”

This dilemma can’t be reduced to a case of people not

living up to expectations, Gilsdorf explains, since your

advisor is your designated critic-advocate, and the nuances

of the trust and the power dynamic are quite specific. In

other words, Dear Abby can’t deal with this one. You really

need the advice of another artist.

What’s been the strangest question so far? “‘What is

the best and most humane way to skin a cat as part of an art

piece, in front of an audience?’ I wrote the guy back privately

and told him I wasn’t qualified to give an answer.”

In each column Gilsdorf usually answers two questions

that are thematically related—dealing with studio visits, for

instance, or politics. ‘How does an artist decide how much a

certain piece is worth, monetarily?’ was paired with ‘I am a

performance artist. I’ve had many invitations lately to show

my work, but I’m worried I won’t have enough money to pay

for all the travel and materials. Is there a way to get an

art loan?’

“I also get a lot of rants. ‘Why does the art world work

this way?’ ‘Why can’t I get my foot in the door?’ I tell them

that the art world is far bigger than just Artforum and

Documenta. Also I get a lot of naive questions, like, ‘Is

showing up at a gallery with my work the best way to get a

gallerist’s attention?’”

What are the most interesting questions? “The ones that

relate to the psychology of the art world: how to ask for help,

how to get what you want, how to voice your opinion. One

curator wrote to ask the best way to tell an artist during a

studio visit that he didn’t like their current work.”

So, what’s the advice? “Be honest that the fit is wrong,

but don’t burn any bridges. A studio visit doesn’t always have

to result in promises. It’s supposed to be an exchange of

ideas. Getting someone’s focused attention is a gift.

“I love to talk about art with articulate people, whoever

they are,” she continues. “One of my favorite advisors at CCA

was frances richard, a poet and writer. She is so smart,

and she articulates her ideas so precisely.” Gilsdorf has a

master’s degree in linguistics and a BA in literature, so she

appreciates a clear thinker who can say what they mean.

from portland to san francisco

Gilsdorf came to CCA from Portland, Oregon. “I can

definitely tell you all the Portland stereotypes are true!

Portlandia is more documentary than satire. But it’s cheaper

to live there, and as an artist I was able to spend more time

in the studio than out making money.”

In the Bay Area, she continues, people are doing things

that create new conversations, and trying new models that

subvert or circumvent traditional gallery systems. Examples?

Bean Gilsdorf: Help Deskby Lindsey Westbrook

Bean Gilsdorf (MFA 2012) never imagined herself as a professional advice columnist. But in a moment of levity at an editorial meeting of the art blog Daily Serving, she tossed out the idea of an art advice column, and the others wouldn’t let it drop. And once she launched the thing, it really took off. She posted her first “Help Desk” column in January 2012, and it was almost immediately picked up by KQED.org and the Huffington Post.

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above Flag for Westward Expansion, 2011, and Flag for New Frontiers, 2012

“Will Brown, Alter Space, Queen’s Nails, MacArthur B.

Arthur. Even YBCA and SFMOMA are really inclusive.” And

since the Bay Area is a hotbed of activity in all spheres,

“people who are not in the art world per se still generate energy

that permeates the art world. There’s a lot of overlap.”

leaving the nest

What was the toughest thing about the CCA MFA program?

“The prospect of leaving and the challenge of how to con-

tinue the sense of simpatico community, mutual support,

and idea exchange that we had built together in the grad Fine

Arts studios. It’s so crucial after school not to immediately

plunge into isolation.”

Gilsdorf was the one student selected out of her

entire MFA class (about 35 in total, in 2011) for the presti-

gious Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellowship.

The residency was a terrific honor, and it came with the

added benefit of thrusting her into another nest of creative

people—artists, architects, and writers.

the artist’s journey

For the last couple of years, Gilsdorf ’s own creative work

has been a series of experimental flags bearing images

drawn from U.S. media, pop culture, and history. Lately the

subject matter has been inspired by national attention on

politics, economics, and the Occupy movement, and bodies

of imagery related to expansion, capitalism, and progress.

“I like to look backward to get a handle on where we’re at

today as a culture.”

She recently returned from a prestigious seven-week

residency at the Banff Centre in Canada, and in summer 2012

she did a short residency at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley.

“The point of the Kala residency was not to produce a lot of

finished work, but to experiment in ways that will lead to

future bodies of work. I worked on a series of prints related to

old-fashioned textile sampler books. The sample, as

an idea, is really interesting. A part that claims to represent a

whole.”

Also among her recent projects was a curatorial gig

for ArtPadSF: a series of “pool performances” that involved

synchronized swimmers, an a cappella singing group called

the Loose Interpretations, a troupe of CCA performance

artists who operate under a name that is only a symbol, and

a recorded tour of the fair by Gilsdorf herself in which she

combined two well-known audio styles: the museum audio

tour and the guided meditation. A

☞ Read more at beangilsdorf.com and DailyServing.com

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Andrew Georgopoulos

There’s nowhere that andrew georgopoulos (Individualized Major 2007)

won’t go to get his image. He’s photographed a nude woman in the middle of

Lombard Street and documented the day-to-day exploits of Snoop Dogg and

other hip-hop legends. Recently he grabbed his first big-budget Hollywood

studio experience working on a film you may have heard of: The Artist, which

won the 2011 Oscar for Best Picture.

“It’s all about access,” Georgopoulos explains, of how to get the story you

want. “It’s the defining factor that separates you from the next person.” His

introduction to hip-hop musicians and lifestyles started by answering an ad

soliciting photojournalists for a neighborhood magazine in the East Bay. “My

body of work grew, from the next artist to the next. I was always looking to get

the next big name.” Eventually he spent a full year capturing the life of Snoop

Dogg. This was during his sophomore year at CCA, when he was 20 years old.

Georgopoulos’s work can be in-your-face, but his technique never over-

shadows his subject. His most engaging photos of musicians are often

paul trillo (Film 2007) is a filmmaker, an illustrator, and, above all, a story-

teller. Since graduating in 2007 he’s been blazing a unique path—first in the

Bay Area, and lately in New York—with a prodigious output of dynamic,

experimental short films and music videos.

His collaboration with andrew georgopoulos, Happy Birthday

Mr. Bracewell, screened at the Cannes Film Festival’s Short Film Corner in May.

It is a matter-of-fact fictional piece about a man named Gray Bracewell whose

birthday is also the anniversary of the day his wife left him three years

earlier. It involves a long-lost brother, a bit of time travel, and the

possibility of recapturing a love lost.

“Mr. Bracewell was inspired by a few lonely and disorganized

storefront offices in San Francisco,” he explains. “The ones with just

a single person working inside—an insurance agent or a realtor. It’s

so striking to see! I built the character around that image of a man

overwhelmed by paperwork, a sort of archaic symbol today. From

there I started playing with this anxiety of time, which became a

theme throughout the film. Bracewell is haunted by the past, terribly

burdened by it.”

Trillo arrived at CCA already knowing he wanted to study film. He

credits Film faculty members rob epstein and jeanne c. finley

as the biggest influences on his development in college. “Rob taught

me how to approach a subject in my own way, how to develop my own

voice as a director.

“I liked the fact that CCA enabled me to focus more on the concep-

tual than on the technical—learning who I was as an artist, and having

that as a core foundation to build on. The school’s interdisciplinary

Careers and Collaborations in Filmby Rachel Walther

Paul Trillo

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below Stills from paul trillo’s Bela: L’homme chat

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features

approach allowed me to dabble in other interests. Most of

my friends were not even involved in the Film Program.”

Trillo was intensely productive in school, motivated by

his own curiosity . . . and easy access to equipment, thanks

to his campus job in the Media Center. “I worked on a lot

of stuff that wasn’t necessarily for classes. Another student,

noah cunningham (Film/Video 2006), and I would

make about a video a week, whether it was for an assign-

ment or not. We were creating stuff nonstop! It was great

to explore various weird ideas and spend a day making

something strange. One of our videos, Disaster Series, ended

up winning the first season of the VH1 Web Junk 2.0 Award

for Best Viral Video. It was pretty exciting to get that kind of

national acknowledgment while we were still in school.”

After graduation, Trillo reports, the first year was tough.

He and Cunningham were roommates but their collabora-

tions were not as frequent, since their work took them in

different directions. He worked in advertising doing editing,

motion graphics, and writing. “It was fun, yet frustrating.

There wasn’t enough of my own personal work happening,

and at the office, ideas would get compromised, projects

would get canceled. But I honed my pitch, how to present my

ideas to someone and make them interesting. It was a reality check of sorts, to

understand what you have to go through to get your ideas made.”

He moved to New York in 2011 and began working mostly on freelance proj-

ects. “I’m glad to be back doing my own work, (continued on the next page)

candid shots of their more mundane,

day-to-day moments, and his travel

photography is as contemplative as it

is exotic. His personal work, on the other hand, captures for posterity

those larger-than-life moments of your most vivid dreams.

“I always wanted to go to CCA,” he says. He enrolled in the

summer Pre-College Program after his junior year of high school,

spending the four weeks studying a little of everything: painting,

sculpture, metalworking, photography. “My father attended CCA(C)

in the 1960s. When my high school art teachers asked me to make a

list of my possible college choices, CCA was always at the top.”

He initially enrolled as an Architecture major, then switched to

Photography and in the end graduated as an Individualized Major. He

found himself constantly encouraged by his professors to push his

ideas and comfort level. (continued on the next page)

right andrew georgopoulos, Black Versus White, 2012

below right andrew georgopoulos, photo of Jean Dujardin on the set of The Artist, 2011

above Stills from paul trillo’s How to Fly a Kite

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chris johnson helped him improve his

technical skills and authorized his extracurricular

excursions into the music world, even though they

often kept him out of class. “Chris gave me total

freedom, but also kept me in line. He will support

your vision, but he is also not afraid to tell you

when something’s terrible!” Also memorable was

his work with the award-winning filmmaker and

professor rob epstein.

At CCA Georgopoulos began collaborating

with another student, paul trillo. “We did a

lot of funny projects together. He’s the storyteller,

and I’m the radical. We are still working together.”

Their short film Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell was

written and directed by Trillo with Georgopoulos serving as coproducer and

cinematographer.

After college, Georgopoulos became disillusioned with working in the

music industry. He found that music video projects usually meant long hours,

maximum effort, and little pay. As a correspondent for the magazines Spin and

The Source, he photographed and interviewed artists. “I would struggle to get

access and work with them. It had been so exciting just a few years before, since

often they were artists I listened to in high school. But I was trying to find bigger,

more exciting things to work on, projects where I could collaborate all the time,

not just document someone else’s vision.”

but it’s a hard lifestyle to maintain!” When we spoke for this interview, he had

spent the day shooting some pick-up shots for a new corporate-sponsored short

film. The company had approached him and a few other directors to do a series

of shorts revolving around the idea of an “everyday adventure.” “It’s an awesome

opportunity. I have complete creative control. It’s about looking at a single day,

and the infinite variations within that day, through a kaleidoscopic lens.”

Trillo also spends much of his time lately working on music videos. He’s

always got a new idea, or a song that has been haunting him, and the video

commissions provide a constant stream of opportunities to execute on these

ideas. “For the Peach Kings video, I was experimenting with shutter bursts of

still images. In post-production I slowed the image sequences down, forcing the

computer to morph each frame into the next. You get what feels like seamless

transitions. In the Teebs ‘Moments’ video I was experimenting with the Chroma

above andrew georgopoulos (second from the left) on the set of The Artist

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He moved to Los Angeles and sought out union work at the major film

studios. He landed a gig working as a production assistant on a black-and-

white Warner Bros. film and shot some footage while on the set, which he later

showed to an executive producer from France. On the strength of this, he was

offered a job as a cameraman on The Artist.

“I never knew how crazy a $14 million budget movie was, how serious it was.

But it was also a really fun film. There were so many great, personable people

involved in that movie. We all knew there was something special about it, we just

didn’t know what at first.”

They found out soon enough. But even before The Artist debuted in theaters

to wild acclaim and went on to win the Academy Award for best picture of

2011, Georgopoulos’s life was already altered by the experience. “My work life

changed completely. If I hadn’t had that opportunity, I wouldn’t be constantly

busy like I am now.” Being a union member gives

him the security of steady work, along with health

and pension benefits. “Every week is different. I can

get a call at 6 a.m. and have to go somewhere.” The

gig that day can be anything from a new prime-time

pilot to the Oscars show (which he indeed worked

on!) to The Price Is Right. A

☞ Read (and watch) more at ajg1985.com

and jg1985.blogspot.com

Key effect used for green screen, but instead of

using colored smoke I used something like 200

smoke bombs to blend one visual element into

another.”

His Teebs video has been recently featured at

the Vimeo Awards + Festival and in IdN magazine.

Meanwhile, Trillo and Georgopoulos have

been busy submitting Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell to festivals, and they are

hoping to start work soon on a feature-length production. “We’re focusing our

energies right now on raising funds. A feature always seems a bit like a fantasy,

although I’m realizing it’s not so grandiose. But we’ve got a long road ahead.” A

☞ Read (and watch) more at paultrillo.com

below Stills from paul trillo and andrew georgopoulos’s Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell

above andrew georgopoulos (center, with camera) and paul trillo (right) at work on Happy Birthday Mr. Bracewell

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In a New York borough, a group of people meander through

the city. They stop and look around. They close their eyes.

They listen. They are participants on an artist-led Elastic City

walk.

Elastic City is a conceptual walk organization founded by

CCA alumnus todd shalom (MFA Writing 2004). Lauded

by the New York Times and the Economist and even illustrated in

the New Yorker, Elastic City has organized walks from Brooklyn

to Brazil. Shalom’s title at Elastic City is producer and direc-

tor. He designs and leads some walks, and also commissions

other artists to create walks. The walks focus less on providing

factual information and more on heightening the senses, un-

covering the poetry of everyday places, and creating new group

rituals in dialogue with public space. Each walk is an artwork.

Lucky Walk, by Shalom in collaboration with Juan

Betancurth, encouraged participants to engage in rituals to

eliminate bad luck and bring forth good luck. Homesickness by

the urbanist Einat Manoff offered theoretical perspectives in

urbanism and environmental psychology. Other walks have

included City Island Hop by Andrea Polli, Love Spells by Emily

Tepper, and Total Detroit by Niegel Smith. In this last, partici-

pants started out walking in LaGuardia Airport in New York

and then took a plane to the Motor City, where they continued

the 56-hour performance.

The expectation when he was growing up, Shalom re-

ports, was that he’d enter the family business—steel. But after

a marketing degree at Boston University and a brief stint at the

legendary indie record label Rykodisc, he moved to San Fran-

cisco and enrolled in CCA’s MFA Program in Writing. He dove

into poetry classes with kathleen fraser, performance

studies with lynn marie kirby, courses in technology and

new media with barney haynes, and video making. (Read

more about Kirby and her latest Elastic City walk on page 18.)

“It was my first experience with art school. The program

was new and there were a couple of moments when I felt my

New Yorkerness—specifically I worried that, in an effort to

create good community, some people weren’t telling me what

they really thought in critiques—but overall I credit the

program with giving me the flexibility to find my way.

“There was real freedom to work within and outside of

the school to connect with people who’d be most helpful to

my practice. For my thesis, I wanted an interdisciplinary com-

mittee, so I chose Lynn Marie Kirby, who works in perfor-

mance and film; roy tomlinson, a painter; and joseph

lease, a poet, who was also a helpful reader of my work.”

Outside CCA, Shalom enrolled in classes in poetry and sound;

his mentors included the composers John Bischoff, Laetitia

Sonami, and Pamela Z.

In Search of Todd Shalomby Simon Hodgson

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It was in San Francisco’s Mission District that Shalom

led his first walk. “It grew out of my interests in poetry,

performance, and sound. How can I make a sound poem?

Using sound, I thought, could bring out the poetry of a walk.”

Shalom repeated the experiment in the Castro neigh-

borhood of San Francisco, and then in Tel Aviv during a

nine-month stay in Israel. Finally, on a trip to Peru in 2007,

he realized that the walks could become a vocation. “I wanted

to get the same sense of exploration and wonder at home as I

did in traveling.” Elastic City walks are designed to highlight

conscious or unconscious coincidences. They are structured

to be political and poetic, educational and experiential, to

make participants feel vulnerable and then empowered.

The walks mirror Shalom’s discovery of his own path

over the last 15 years. Along the way he has turned missteps

into rehearsals and mistakes into refinements, welding

together his various interests to pioneer a new genre dedi-

cated to changing people’s perceptive capabilities.

Shalom has just received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status

for Elastic City. In addition to running the organization and

leading walks in various locations around the world, he also

holds a teaching position at Pratt Institute, where he leads

an undergraduate poetry class called The Walk as Poem.

“Now is the time to throw everything out there,” he tells his

students. “In five years, you’re not going to like the work

you’re doing now. Might as well explore and see all the

different possibilities that are available.” A

clockwise from left Todd Shalom on Niegel Smith’s Monumental Walk, New York, 2010; Chiara Bernasconi’s walk We and our Shaaadows, Brooklyn, July 2011; participants in lynn marie kirby’s Laguna Yellow walk in September 2012, saying in their native languages color names they saw at the paint store; sign at Brooklyn Flea, July 2010; Juan Betancurth and todd shalom’s Lucky Walk, New York, October 2010

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More Alumni Stories

natasha wheat (mfa 2011)

Natasha Wheat was a key contributor to CCA’s 2010 Bean-In, an all-day

event involving free bean-based meals and discussions about agriculture

as a form of resistance. She’s also one of the featured artists in the Wattis

Institute’s fall show When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes.

joseph becker (architecture 2007)

Joseph Becker, assistant curator of architecture and design at

SFMOMA, got his foot in the door at the museum via a part-time

position coordinating the design and production of the 800-square-

foot walk-in freezer that housed a car artwork by Olafur Eliasson.

maja ruznic (mfa 2009)

When one of Maja Ruznic’s works was featured on the cover of New American

Paintings earlier this year, a sudden flurry of activity ensued, including a hefty

feature on ABC news and commissions from the likes of Patch Adams.

derek weisberg (ceramics 2005)

Derek Weisberg talks about being a full-time artist, cofounding

Oakland Art Murmur, his job in New York at Greenwich House Pottery,

and his current projects, which include ceramic-based collaborations

with tattoo artists.

erinn clancy (media arts 2010)

Erinn Clancy and his longtime friend and creative collaborator Justin

Nunnink, cofounders of Shot & Cut Productions in New York, are

working on projects that range from day-in-the-life documentaries to

cutting-edge experiments.

susan miller (ma visual and critical studies 2012)

Susan Miller co-curated Modern Cartoonist: The Art of Daniel Clowes, a major

2012 exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California.

☞ Visit cca.edu/news and search for the full versions of these stories about CCA alumni and their latest projects:

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jonah ward (glass 2006)

With an approach that has inspired comparisons to Jackson Pollock,

Jonah Ward pours molten glass onto wood panels laid out horizontally

on the floor. The finished artworks are the tracery of burns that the

glass leaves behind.

pablo cardoza (art education 1982)

After art school at CCA, Pablo Cardoza

went on to a career in forensics. “Looking at a crime scene is

all about creative visual thinking,” he says. “You just imagine a

narrative for the scene in front of you.”

alison bailey (photography 2003)

Alison Bailey is an associate producer for the

Travel Channel TV show Bizarre Foods, which

introduces audiences to exotic and regional

foods of the world.

kevin krueger and kristin olson (both individualized major 2011)

Kevin Krueger and Kristin Olson are the cofounders of

Alter Space in San Francisco, a local alternative arts space

that has exhibitions, a residency program, and workshops.

david kasprzak (ma curatorial practice 2011) and lindsey white (mfa 2007)

David Kasprzak and Lindsey White are two of the three directors of

Will Brown in San Francisco, a much-talked-about new art space that

is as much a conceptual performance piece as a gallery.

michael sun (graphic design 2010)

“I’m actually living my dream,” says

Michael Sun of his new job as a graphic designer for the Houston

Rockets. It is not easy to achieve success in the highly competitive

world of graphic design for professional sports.

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In MemoriamJoe Girard

Alumnus, staff member, and longtime faculty member Joe

Girard died of cancer on May 12, 2012.

In 1966 Girard was both a student and the shopmaster’s

assistant in the Sculpture Program. He obtained a BFA with

distinction in Sculpture in 1970 and an MFA in 1971. dennis

leon, elah hale hays, and hugh wiley were among

his teachers and mentors over the years.

He then served on the faculty from 1972 to 1987. He

taught classes in metal technology, foundry, and alternative

survival technology. He oversaw the design and construction

of the Sculpture facilities and served as shopmaster of the

Sculpture Program. In 1984 he was appointed director of

the Facilities Management Division, a position he held until

his retirement. In 1993, together with visiting lecturer eric

clausen, he built the arch over the Broadway entrance to the

Oakland campus.

Girard retired in 1993 at the age of 53, having spent nearly

27 years—more than half his life at that point—dedicated to

CCA. He then enjoyed a productive and happy 20 years on his

ranch in Manton, California, continuing to make art in his

metals studio, mentoring alums who kept in touch, and

partaking in the local social life, which included Civil War

reenactments and cannon shoots. He was an active board

member of the Lassen Chapter of E Clampus Vitus.

Girard will be remembered for his many contributions

to CCA as a faculty and staff member, a mentor, and a friend.

His lively wit, personal warmth, and enthusiasm for metal

arts and casting motivated scores of students during his

tenure at the college.

top joe girard (right) with his good friend and mentor dennis leon. They created outdoor works all over the Bay Area. Leon died in 1998.

bottom joe girard and eric clausen install the arch over the Broadway entrance to the Oakland campus, 1993

Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge, who received an honorary doctorate

from CCA this past May, died on September 8,

2012, after a battle with cancer. He was 69.

Moggridge was an international leader in

design and is credited with designing the first

laptop computer. He was a cofounder of IDEO,

an innovation and design firm with offices

worldwide. Since 2010 he had been director of

the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt,

National Design Museum in New York. He was the

first-ever design practitioner to hold that position.

In recent years, he helped create and promote the

field of interaction design. His views informed our

new Interaction Design Program at CCA.

below bill moggridge delivers his speech at CCA’s commencement ceremony, May 12, 2012

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Alumni

kenneth alexanderMay 9, 2012

Advertising 1949San Francisco, California

roger h. bolomeyJuly 26, 2011

BFA 1950Boulder, Colorado

sharon forsmanNovember 24, 2011

Acampo, California

peter m. goddardMarch 22, 2012

Photography 1974Graton, California

myles (mike) jamesMay 28, 2012

Art Education 1950Paradise, California

drake l. jordanJune 14, 2012

Advertising 1958Duncans Mills, California

mary l. katzSeptember 13, 2011

Graphic Design 1981Strong, Maine

gholamossain (gholam) molavi

2012Interior Design Certificate

Laguna Niguel, California

lily ordwayJuly 27, 2012

Jewelry / Metal Arts 1997Canyon Country, California

robert (bob) postFebruary 7, 2012

Great Bend, Kansas

mary l. spencerMarch 22, 2012

Art Education 1945Springfield, Oregon

debra j. woodApril 3, 2012

Interdisciplinary Fine Arts 1979Missouri Valley, Iowa

jim zimmermanMay 30, 2011

Advertising Arts 1972Santa Rosa, California

left larry keenan as a CCA student (note Bob Dylan T-shirt), ca. 1965

Larry Keenan

Famed photographer and CCA alumnus Larry Keenan (Interior Design 1965,

Applied Art 1967) died on August 12, 2012, in Emeryville at age 68.

He gained fame at age 22, while he was still a CCA student, when he photo-

graphed the famous “last gathering of the Beats” at City Lights Books on December 5,

1965. His classic photograph included Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Robert

La Vigne, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Richard Brautigan, and others.

They’d all come over that day to watch the photo shoot for the cover of Bob Dylan’s

upcoming album Blonde on Blonde. (Dylan didn’t end up using Keenan’s photos for

Blonde on Blonde, but the pictures did become album art 20 years later as part of his

boxed set titled Biograph.)

Keenan’s picture of the Beats, which became known as The Last Gathering, was

blown up to wall size for the exhibition Beat Culture and the New America: 1950–1965

at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1995. It has been a mural

outside the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Keenan’s Dylan photographs,

the Beat picture, and several more pictures by him are hanging in a gallery dedicated

to his work at City Lights. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of

American Art.

Keenan made a 40-year career of photographing the counterculture while simul-

taneously maintaining a career as a commercial photographer; his clients included

Levi Strauss, Blue Cross, Del Monte, and Bank of America. He became known for

a particular stop-action style, and he was a very early pioneer in the realm of digital

imagery.

Keenan was born in San Francisco and attended Alameda High School. He grew

up in a 32-room mansion; his father was a mortician and the family business was the

Chapel of the Chimes. When Keenan announced his intent to be an artist, rather than

an undertaker, he was momentarily disowned, but he still drove a Rolls-Royce from

his father’s fleet to CCA’s Oakland campus.

At CCA he became friendly with the poet michael mcclure, who was on the

faculty and noticed pictures he’d taken for the college yearbook. “I asked him if he’d

like to shoot some friends of mine,” McClure recalls, “and that is how he ended up in

front of City Lights that December day.”

““I was in need of humanities credits, and the college news-

paper sounded like an interesting choice. I wrote art reviews

and did some spot illustrations, but I most enjoyed making

strips for the comics page. I tried a few different subjects.

One was about a job I had as a donut delivery driver, and

another one showed how to make a kite out of the news-

paper. But Sam & Max resonated with readers the most.

A few years later, a friend of mine was self-publishing

his comic and wanted to add a title to his imprint. He asked

about Sam & Max. I took my time and figured out exactly how

I wanted to do it. I ended up with fans in high places who

would ask to license Sam & Max for games, a TV series, and

more games. I always made sure to never give up the owner-

ship of them so I could start over after each adaptation.

I really enjoy writing conversations between Sam & Max.

My comics letterer used to tell me the scripts sound like me

talking to myself. I can drop them into any situation, and I

know how they’ll react. But they are adaptable because the

audience understands the basic equation of their friendship.

The folks I’ve worked with on the adaptations to games and

above The first Sam & Max comic strip in the Spectrum

Backward Glance

steve purcell (Interdisciplinary Fine Arts 1982) is a cartoonist, animator, director, game designer, and Eisner Award recipient. He works at Pixar, and was a writer and codirector of the 2012 feature film Brave. While at CCA he contributed comic strips to the college newspaper, Spectrum, and these were the first public appearances of his characters known as Sam & Max Freelance Police, a duo of anthropomorphic animal vigilantes and private investigators who have subsequently enjoyed great success in comic, TV show, and game formats. One of Purcell’s friends and fellow students at CCA was mike mignola (Illustration 1982), who went on to become the creator of Hellboy. They both studied under vince perez and gary ruddell. After graduation Purcell freelanced for Marvel Comics and spent some years at LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic before landing his current job at Pixar.

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TV seem to understand Sam & Max and appreciate the wide

range of situations one can create for them. Their personali-

ties anchor them in whatever lunacy they find themselves in

the middle of.

I’ve created some characters that I’ve subsequently

barely touched, and others that I still like but haven’t quite

cracked. I never throw them away because there might be

something there, and it’s just eluding me. Sometimes they

sort themselves out over time, like they are being developed in

the back recesses of my brain while I’m not paying attention.

The good ones make themselves heard.

Shortly after I graduated, I was making my living as a

freelance illustrator. It wasn’t always easy, and I spent my

share of time scraping by. The jobs ranged from technical

illustrations for computer manuals to covers for video game

packages. I would take on anything, but looked for chances

to do the work I enjoyed—something that was funny or that

I could put my personality into. Eventually that brought me

more opportunities to do what I liked. I was always interested

in filmmaking, but ended up sneaking up on it through

being an artist.” A

above Suda from the comic Toybox, and a character concept for Fergus from the Pixar film Brave

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The photograph on the cover of this issue, Eden Fire Hooping, is by student eden pieper (Photography 2014). It was this year’s R.A.W. Photo (cca.edu/rawphoto) audience award winner. Pieper says, “This is a long-exposure shot that I took of myself ‘fire hooping.’ It’s a hula hoop with attachments that you light on fire.”

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