CCA to Confer Honorary Doctorates on Rhodessa Jones and James Turrell

San Francisco, April 16, 2004

California College of the Arts (CCA) will confer honorary doctorate degrees on performing artist Rhodessa Jones and artist James Turrell at the 97th Commencement Exercises held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 8, at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. In addition to attending the commencement ceremonies, Jones and Turrell will be honored at a private dinner the night before and will participate in a post-commencement reception on CCA's San Francisco campus. James Turrell will give the commencement address.

Actress, director, dancer, teacher, singer and writer Rhodessa Jones is co-artistic director of the acclaimed San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is the founder and director of the award winning "Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women," a performance workshop for incarcerated women designed to achieve personal and social transformation. She continues to tour her most recent solo performance, "Hot Flashes, Power Surges, and Private Summers." Highlights of the tour include performances at Out North Contemporary Art House in Anchorage, Alaska; the Shimberg Theater in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center; and Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. While in residence at Yale, Jones led workshops and conducted master classes for the MFA students. She also lectured at the African American Cultural Center at Yale University and was honored with a Master's Tea hosted by faculty of the Yale School of Drama. Most recently, she led a series of workshops titled "Creative Performance, Creative Survival" at Stanford's Institute for Diversity in the Arts. Jones is the subject of a recent book by Rena Fraden, "Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women" (University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

James Turrell's work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without words. "I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing," says the artist, "like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire." Whether harnessing the light at sunset or transforming the glow of a television set into a fluctuating portal, Turrell's art places viewers in a realm of pure experience. Informed by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell's work has been described as "allowing us to see ourselves seeing." The recipient of such established awards as the Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships, Turrell has exhibited his work internationally since the late 1960s. His work is included in many public collections including the Guggenheim Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Panza di Biumo Collection in Varese, Italy. Turrell lives and works in Arizona. He last visited CCA in 2003, giving a lecture to a capacity crowd of more than 800 on the San Francisco campus.

Press Contacts

Kim Lessard
415.703.9547
klessard@cca.edu

Chris Bliss
415.703.9545
cbliss@cca.edu

Erica Holt
415.703.9549
eholt@cca.edu