CCA Students Collaborate for What's the Big Idea? at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, May 14, 2008
The Center for Art and Public Life (CAPL) at California College of the Arts (CCA), in conjunction with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), presents What's the Big Idea?: Identity Shifts—CCA Students Collaborate with Bay Area Youth and Community, an exhibition exploring concepts of identity, culture, and humanity, May 22 through June 16, 2008, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 22, at 6:30 p.m. The exhibition and reception are both free and open to the public. They take place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco.
The exhibition features work created through CCA's Community Student Fellows program, which is facilitated by CAPL and places CCA students in Bay Area public (K–12) schools and other community organizations. The students work side by side with artists and arts administrators and take an active role in the development of new models of practice in community-based arts, cultural diversity, learning, and youth development through the arts. During the 2007–8 academic year, 34 Community Student Fellows worked with 23 different organizations.
The presentation takes place in YBCA's Room for Big Ideas. YBCA invites artists, curators, and collectives from across the Bay Area to use the Room for Big Ideas to showcase innovative and interactive art practices that support emerging local artists and promote intersections among community, civic engagement, and arts education. Each year YBCA poses a selection of "Big Ideas" to artists and the community at large. This exhibition
responds to one of the current "Big Ideas"—identity shifts—which asks participants to rethink how we know who we are, now that traditional definitions of race, gender, and nationality are breaking down and becoming open to interpretation.
"The idea of identity resonates throughout these projects, and the outcome is revealing," observes Susan McMahon, CAPL program associate. One group of students at Far West High School in Oakland expressed their ideas about identity through fashion design. At Washington High School in Fremont, students explored the concept of identity through abstraction and geography by making their own cartographic interpretations of their physical environment.
About the Center for Art and Public Life
The Center for Art and Public Life (CAPL) was founded by California College of the Arts (CCA) in 1998 for the purpose of creating and facilitating programs that provide and enhance arts education in underserved communities within and beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. CAPL fosters opportunities for CCA students and working artists to partner with public schools and community organizations, where they use their talents to make a difference as mentors for youth and leaders in community development. CAPL administers CCA's Community Arts Program as well as the art teacher pre-credential program and courses in diversity studies. It also offers intensive programs in arts education and integration for K–12 educators through the Art in Education Teaching Institute.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) is noted for the interdisciplinarity and breadth of its programs. It offers studies in 20 undergraduate and seven graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of arts, master of fine arts, and master of business administration degrees. With campuses in Oakland and San Francisco, CCA currently enrolls more than 1,650 full-time students. Noted alumni include the painters Nathan Oliveira and Raymond Saunders; the ceramicists Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, and Peter Voulkos; the filmmaker Wayne Wang; the conceptual artists David Ireland and Dennis Oppenheim; and the designers Lucille Tenazas and Michael Vanderbyl.
