Spring News 2011

NEWSspring 2011

California College of the Arts

spring_news_2011 FINAL.indd 1 4/7/11 2:42 PM

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to share some exciting news with you. At the end of February 2011 we purchased the vacant lot adjacent to the main San Francisco campus building. Our wonderful Board of Trustees spearheaded the effort and provided the financing for the acquisition of this two-and-a-half-acre parcel.

We have no immediate plans for developing the lot, but of course there are a number of ideas for temporary uses. Development for long-term use is several years away and will involve extensive research, planning, and community involvement as well as a major fundraising effort. For now, I’m looking forward to creating a process to gather input from the CCA community as well as from the broader Bay Area arts and education community.

Acquiring this property has been a goal of the college for many years, and I am excited to be at the helm at this time. I’ve been extremely fortunate to work

with CCA’s board on the project. I extend my deep appreciation for their excellent generosity, support, and stewardship in ensuring the future of the college.

CCA has been a tremendous success story in the last 15 years, with enrollment increasing by more than 75 percent and demand for our programs continuing to grow. Acquiring this property opens up a world of new potential for CCA to lead the way in delivering the best possible arts education, now and in the future.

Thank you for your continued interest and support.

Sincerely,

Stephen BealPresident

Managing Editor Lindsey Westbrook Contributors Susan Avila, Chris Bliss, Simon Hodgson, Barbara Jones, Jessica Russell, Lindsey Westbrook Design CCA Sputnik / Jen Allender Faculty Advisor Bob Aufuldish Design & Production Manager Steve Spingola Senior Marketing Manager Clay WalshCCA Communications Department 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco CA 94107-2247; 415.703.9542; [email protected] Change of address? Please notify the CCA Advancement Office, 5212 Broadway, Oakland CA 94618; 510.594.3779; [email protected] Printed by Oscar Printing Company, San Francisco

Photo creditsAll artworks are reproduced with the kind permission of the artists and/or their representatives, copyright the artists, unless otherwise noted. Watercolor artwork: Jen Allender; inside front cover: Jim Norrena; p. 1 (left): Charles Villyard, artwork commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with 75 Years of Looking Forward; p. 1 (right): Don Tuttle Photography; p. 2: Jessica Russell; p. 3 (top): James Carrière; p. 3 (bottom): photo provided by the Oakland Museum of California; p. 5 (bottom): collection of the Oakland Museum of California, gift of the artist in memory of Edna Stoddard Siegriest; p. 6: Laura Morton for Drew Altizer Photography; p. 7 (all except bottom right): Nikki Ritcher Photography; p. 7 (bottom right): Jim Norrena; pp. 8–9: Douglas Sandberg Photography.


CCA ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF ITS NEWLY REDESIGNED WEBSITE

If you haven’t already, check out CCA’s recently redesigned website! Many months of research, negotiation, and hard work went into the redesign, the primary goal of which was to display more prominently the wealth of talent contributed to the college by its students, faculty, alumni, and staff. The new site offers drop-down menus from the main navigation on the homepage, an expanded audience-based main menu, larger homepage images with added selection features, more prominent displays of video, and built-in social media features.

SCHOOL NEWS

cca.eduvisit the new

CCA ALUMNA AND FACULTY AMONG WINNERS OF $50,000 FELLOWSHIPS FROM UNITED STATES ARTISTS

In December 2010 United States Artists, a national grant-making and advocacy organiza-tion, announced the recipients of 50 new USA Fellowships, totaling $2.5 million. Winners in the visual arts include CCA faculty member Allison Smith and alumna Anna Von Mertens (MFA 2000). The chair of the architecture and design panel was faculty member Karen Fiss.

ABOVEAnna Von Mertens Frida Kahlo’s Aura, with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 2009

LEFTAllison SmithFancy Work (Scattergood Quilt), 2010


NEW ALUMNI/STUDENT MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

CCA’s new Alumni/Student Mentorship Program connects students with alumni for a semester of one-on-one mentoring sessions. The alumni draw on their own experiences and expertise to provide the students with professional advice, encouragement, inspiration, and realistic critiques. The pilot session began in spring 2010, with 10 fine arts alumni matched with 10 third-year and fourth-year students in fine arts programs. It was so successful that the program has doubled its numbers in spring 2011, matching 20 alumni with 20 students.

The program begins with a kickoff training session for all participants. Mentors and students receive guidance on how to shape their future sessions to best meet their needs and time constraints. Three one-on-one meetings follow over the course of the term, consisting of studio or business tours, job shadowing, mock interviews, portfolio reviews, brainstorming sessions, gallery visits, résumé reviews, or anything else the duo chooses. The semester ends with a group wrap-up session and celebration.

Alumni are invited to be mentors! Email us at [email protected] participate, you must have majored in the fine arts and/or work in a fine arts field, have had a positive experience during your years at CCA, and be currently working in an art-related career or studio practice. Students are nominated by CCA faculty, and then invited to submit an application to the program. Final pairings are made by the Career Services and Alumni Relations offices.

“We did a meaningful critique of my student’s work and restructured her résumé. We attended gallery openings and had substantive discussions about art in general and art as a profession. I also shared many of my resources, such as lists of residencies.” Mentor Iris Charabi-Berggren

“The student demon-strated a devotion to her craft and a grasp of theory that makes me want to work with her on future projects. Our relationship will almost certainly continue after the formal mentorship program ends.” Mentor Kevin Clarke

“It was a very valuable learning experience. I toured my mentor’s studio and discussed methods of working and material acquisition. I showed my own work and talked about my current process, and I was guided to consider materials and resources I hadn’t previously.” Student Nichelle Lee

“My mentor was amazing and so helpful! This is one of the most fundamental programs I have partici-pated in during my time at CCA. I would be more than happy to be a mentor after graduation.” Student Kelly Puleio

LEFTMentor Alicia Escott (MFA 2009) at the spring 2011 kickoff event

BELOWMentor Bryson Ashley Gill (Painting/Drawing 2005) and student Morell Cutler (Painting/Drawing 2013)


ANIMATION CHAIR ANDREW LYNDON CURATES PENCIL TO PIXEL AT OAKLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

Andrew Lyndon is CCA’s chair of Animation, a digital imaging and video instructor at Pixar Animation Studios, and now also a guest curator for the Oakland Museum of California, hav-ing organized the exhibition Pencil to Pixel for the museum’s off-site location at Oakland International Airport. This carefully conceived and beautifully presented show explored the world of contemporary animation via the art-work of four Bay Area studios: DreamWorks, Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar Animation Studios, and Tippett Studio. The exhibition was part of an ongoing partnership between the airport and the Oakland Museum; the shows are viewed by the more than 9.5 million passengers who visit the airport each year.

ALUMNA RUTH LASKEY RECEIVES SECA ART AWARD

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced the recipients of the 2010 SECA Art Award, and CCA alumna Ruth Laskey (Painting/Drawing 1999, MFA 2005) is among the four winners. The SECA Art Award honors Bay Area artists who are working independently at a high level of artistic maturity, but who have yet to receive substantial recognition. Works by Laskey and the other recipients (Mauricio Ancalmo, Colter Jacobsen, and Kamau Amu Patton) will be featured in an exhibition (with accompanying catalog) that will open at SFMOMA in fall 2011. Laskey’s artistic focus is on the relatively unexplored territory that weaving occupies within the context of art history.


GRAPHIC DESIGN ALUMNA LIA TJANDRA DESIGNS REBECCA SOLNIT’S INFINITE CITY

UC Press designs and publishes an impressive 180 books a year. Of these, 20 or 25 receive special design attention, and of those, art director and

CCA alumna Lia Tjandra (Graphic Design 1997) gets her pick of the plummest projects to design personally. Currently on her 2011 docket are a book on urban farming and a cook-book drawn from 25 years of The Art of Eating magazine. Last year it was Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, a spectacular cartographic ode to San Francisco that was a joint project between UC Press and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The creation of Infinite City involved more than 25 people, and the final product included not just the book but also a series of limited-edition broadsides and numerous lectures and events that ran for six months in conjunction with SFMOMA’s 75th anniversary. Tjandra was responsible for the overall design, liaising with 12 artists and two cartographers to create the dazzling maps.

Before coming to UC Press, Tjandra spent nine years as an in-house designer at SFMOMA. While at CCA she participated in Sputnik, the college’s award-winning undergraduate design studio, and interned with the renowned design team Aufuldish & Warinner.

Tjandra maintains strong links with CCA, notably through the UC Press internship program. “It’s been wonderful to tap into the student talent.” And this hard-working graphic design veteran has some solid advice for the next generation of designers: Keep an open mind about where you want to work, be flexible, and develop a range of skills rather than specializing. As graphic design evolves toward creating templates and standards, she says, “You will, ironically, be working to create methods and systems that will eventually replace you. It’s the reality of things. But there will always be interesting design projects out there. Keep reinventing yourself.”


NATHAN OLIVEIRA 1928–2010

One of CCA’s most illustrious alumni and former faculty members, Nathan Oliveira, died on November 13, 2010. Oliveira received his BFA in 1951 and his MFA in 1952, both from CCA, and he taught at the college from 1952 to 1956. He held a tenured teaching position at Stanford University from 1964 until he retired in 1995. He received many awards during his lifetime, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and honorary doctorates from CCA (1968) and the San Francisco Art Institute (1996). He also served on CCA’s Board of Trustees from 2002 to 2005. Over the course of his career, Oliveira took part in hundreds of important exhibitions at major museums and galleries. He was a pioneer in the return to figuration in American painting; in the 1950s he and several fellow artists originated the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Their group was reacting against nonobjective, abstract painting, in particular Abstract Expressionism. Others in the group included Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, and Manuel Neri.

DENNIS OPPENHEIM 1938–2011

Prominent CCA alumnus Dennis Oppenheim (Painting 1965) passed away on January 22, 2011, at the age of 72. A pioneer of Land art, conceptual art, performance art, and video in the 1960s and 1970s, Oppenheim moved fluidly throughout his career from the macrocosm of the landscape to the microcosm of the body. In the last two decades he concentrated on creat-ing large-scale public artworks that combined aspects of architecture and sculpture. Some of these works proved controversial, for instance Device to Root Out Evil, a church turned upside down, originally presented at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Local audiences may remember his landmark installation Recall (1974), which ap-peared in Artists of Invention: A Century of CCA at the Oakland Museum of California in 2007. Dennis Oppenheim

Device to Root Out Evil, 1997

Nathan OliveiraSpring Nude, 1962

IN MEMORIAM


at the home of Yves Béhar and Sabrina Buell, December 2010CURATOR’S FORUM EVENT

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT• Jeffrey Deitch, Sabrina Buell, Yves Béhar, and Barry McGee• Sarah Buckley and Emma Goltz• Trish Bransten, Alan Stein, and Paul Sack• Matt and Katie Paige

SPOTLIGHT


at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, September 2010OPENING RECEPTION FOR HUCKLEBERRY FINN

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT• Jordan Kantor and Kara Walker

• Shirley Morales, Alka Agrawal, and Ravin Agrawal • Jason Meadows, Hank Willis Thomas, and Stephen Beal

GUS VAN SANTlectures on CCA’s San Francisco campus, January 2011

Stephen Beal, Rob Epstein, and Gus Van Sant


GIFTS AND GRANTSRemarkable learning opportunities are made possible at CCA through gifts and grants from our generous donors. We’d like to thank all the alumni, parents, and friends who made gifts this fall and winter. Many gifts have come in for Mirror Mirror, the fundraising gala organized in partnership with Gump’s that was held on March 31, 2011. A story thank-ing all Mirror Mirror donors and sponsors will appear in the next issue of Glance magazine. The following are highlights of other leadership gifts made from October 2010 through January 2011.

By including CCA in your estate plan, you can create a significant legacy. Alumna Laureen Landau (MFA 1962) did just that. Ms. Landau, who passed away in August 2009, created a planned gift that resulted in CCA receiving $540,000 from her estate this year. The college is grateful for this very generous legacy, which will strengthen educational resources available to CCA students.

The college received important new gifts for academic and public programs. Trustee Emeritus Carla Emil and her husband Rich Silverstein pledged $75,000 to support three years of the new Visiting Filmmaker Master Class Series. To enhance the accessibility of CCA’s public programs, The Bernard Osher Foundation gave $50,000 for strategic technology upgrades to Timken Lecture Hall. The CCA Center for Art and Public Life received $50,000 from The Walter & Elise Haas Fund in renewed support for the Community Student Fellows program.

The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation awarded CCA’s Graduate Program in Fine Arts a two-year $40,000 grant to expand its profes-sional development course. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded a $22,000 grant in support of the Craft Forward symposium at CCA. The Adobe Foundation made a grant of $16,000 to support theENGAGE at CCA program at the Center for Art and Public Life. The Photography Program was able to expand its visiting artist series in 2010 and 2011 with a $10,000 grant from The Pilara Foundation. The Live Oak Foundation made a gift of $10,000 to the Graduate Program in

F. Noel Perry, Stephen Beal, Tecoah Bruce, and Robert Bechtle


Curatorial Practice graduate exhibition.CCA received several generous gifts to student scholarships. Faculty members Angie Wang and Mark Fox pledged $25,000 to create a new endowed scholarship for graphic design students. The S. Livingston Mather Charitable Trust made gifts totaling $23,750 to be awarded as Vincent Carrasco Memorial Scholarships. The Richard and Jean Coyne Family Foundation gave $20,000 to renew its annual gift to the Richard and Jean Coyne Family Foundation Illustration Scholarship. Fong & Chan Architects renewed their commitment to the Architecture Program with a grant of $15,000 to the Fong & Chan Architects Undergraduate Scholarship Endowment Fund.

The Fund for CCA provides critical support for the core operations of the college. Many generous gifts have come in for this purpose, including $16,700 from Mary and Harold Zlot, $16,000 from Judy and Bill Timken, $15,000 from the Gensler Family Foundation, $13,000 from Nancy and Steven Oliver, $12,000 from Anita and Ronald Wornick, and $10,000 from each of the following donors: Johanna and Tom Baruch, Kimberly and Simon Blattner, Tecoah and Thomas Bruce, C. Diane Christensen and Jean M. Pierret, Nancy and Pat Forster, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, IDEO/Tim Brown, Miranda Leonard, Lorna Meyer and Dennis Calas, MF Foundation/Tim Mott, F. Noel Perry, Rotasa Foundation, Gene Savin and Susan Enzle, Ruth and Alan Stein, Kay Kimpton Walker and Sandy Walker, and Carlie Wilmans.

ABOVEMark Fox and Angie Wang

BELOWDrue Gensler, Gregory Baker, and Art Gensler


1111 Eighth StreetSan Francisco CA 94107-2247

NONPROFITORGANIZATION

U.S. POSTAGEPAID

SAN FRANCISCO, CAPERMIT NO. 271

Sign up at www.cca.edu/subscribe to get CCA news and events delivered by email each month. You can also change your mailing preferences from postal mail to email here.

Printed on 30 percent recycled paper

Join us on Facebook!facebook.com/CaliforniaCollegeoftheArts

Follow us on Twitter!twitter.com/CACollegeofArts


Spring News 2011

Documents

Transcript of Spring News 2011