Summer 2008 Extended Education
Ellen Babcock is a fine artist who has exhibited at numerous Bay Area galleries, including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, AOV Gallery, and the Exploratorium. After working as a sculpture-casting technician and assistant to internationally renowned artists, she moved to the Bay Area to attend CCA. A recipient of the Cadogan Fellowship, the Dennis Leon faculty award, and the Headlands Center for the Arts studio award, Babcock was a Headlands Affiliate Artist from 2002–04. She currently teaches sculpture at several Bay Area colleges. MFA, CCA
Shabnam Bahmanian is a fine art jeweler with a focus on one-of-a kind, studio pieces. Her work showcases pure metals by using a variety of methods, such as hammering, fiber techniques, stamping, and fold-forming. BFA, CCA
Lewis Bangham is an adjunct professor in CCA's Industrial Design and First Year programs. He's an award-winning designer and fine artist whose range of experience includes storyboard artist, illustrator, animator, and game designer. He has produced projects for a variety of clients, including NASA, Capitol Records, 20th Century Fox, Siemens, and Apple, Inc. As a fine artist, he has exhibited internationally. Mr. Bangham has taught at the Art Center College of Design, Standford University, and the Art Academy University. BS, Art Center College of Design
Steven Robert Barich is an artist who works and exhibits internationally. He has taught at Vista College in Berkeley, as well as at the Piet Zwart Institute, a postgraduate college in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Working in the self-coined field of "allmedia," he uses drawing and painting, as well as written text and actions that involve the public persona. BFA, CCA; MFA, Mills College
Jamie Brunson is an artist whose paintings have been exhibited nationally. Her work is in the collections of the Crocker Museum in Sacramento and the San Jose Museum of Art, and were included in Being There: 45 Oakland Artists at the Oakland Museum of California in 2002.
She is represented by the Michael Rosenthal Gallery in Redwood City, California, and by Robischon Gallery in Denver. She has previously taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University. Brunson has written for Artweek, Visions, Glass, and various exhibition catalogs.
Jessica Calderwood's work has exhibited throughout the United States and Great Britain in juried and curated shows. She has been an artist in residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and the Mesa Art Center in Arizona. Her installations, sculpture, and jewelry have been featured in Metalsmith, American Craft, and Ornament Magazine. BFA, Cleveland Institute of Art; MFA, Arizona State University
Robert Coogan, whose work is exhibited globally, has been a full professor and head of the metals department at the Tennessee Tech's Appalachian Center for Crafts since 1981. He has also taught workshops throughout the United States, Korea, and England. Mr. Coogan received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1988 to teach in England and has been awarded The Tennessee Artist Craftsman grant for 2008. BA, Humboldt State University; MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art
Luana Coonen is a fine art jeweler who creates production and one-of-kind pieces alike. Known for her work with alternative materials, she often incorporates plastics and organic specimens with silver and gold. Coonen currently shows nationally and her work can be found throughout the Bay Area and in her native home, Hawaii. BFA, CCAC
Isabelle Dervaux is an internationally recognized illustrator. Her work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, and advertising in Europe, the United States, and Japan. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times and has worked with such clients as the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Le Monde, St. Martin's Press, Club Med, MOMA (New York), and Barney's and Bloomingdale's. Ms. Dervaux has published numerous books, including two children's books with HarperCollins. BFA, University of Lille III
Patrick Dintino is a fine artist whose work has been exhibited nationally. He cofounded Artists in Motion art collective, a group of artists who created funk-art fashion, sculpture, and furniture from reclaimed materials. In 2000 he was invited as a guest artist to work with Sol LeWitt to create Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective at SFMOMA. A finalist for SFMOMA's SECA emerging artist award and a recipient of the 2004 Pollack/Krasner Foundation grant, Mr. Dintino teaches drawing and color theory at Diablo Valley College. BA, San Diego State University; BFA, MFA, CCAC
Ashley Eriksmoen is a designer and furniture maker whose work has been exhibited nationally. She has been awarded artist-in-residence positions at the Oregon College of Art & Craft and Anderson Ranch Arts Center.
Eriksmoen has taught at College of the Redwoods and Oregon College of Art & Craft. Graduate, College of the Redwoods, Fine Woodworking Program; MFA, Rhode Island School of Design
Georgia Goldberg is an artist who, having practiced as an architect, is attracted to themes of destruction and reconstruction. Her work includes large-scale oil paintings and drawings, as well as smaller-scale pieces made from wax, metal, paper, fabric, or Plexiglas.
Her works have shown all over the United States, and she is the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, including the Fulbright Grant, the Marin Arts Council Foundation Grant, and a full fellowship in sculpture at the Vermont Studio Center. BA, Yale University; MArch, Princeton Universityc
Lynda Grose is an adjunct professor in CCA's Fashion Design Program who has been actively engaged in designing and researching socially and environmentally advanced clothing and textiles for the past 13 years. After receiving a fashion design honors degree from Kingston University in London in 1981, Lynda began a career in fashion design.
In 1988 she joined Esprit as a sweater designer and became head designer for Esprit Collection in 1989. Ten years after starting her career, she began to merge her artistic and commercial skills with her concern for the environment. In 1990 she cofounded Esprit's Ecollection division, a five–year research and development project that helped establish pioneering environmental standards for the clothing industry.
Now an independent designer with a focus on sustainability, Lynda works with companies and organizations around the world, including Aid to Artisans, The Sustainable Cotton Project, IKEA, Patagonia, Aveda, Odwalla, Greenpeace, 13–mile Farm, Marketplace India, and USD A She also has launched a socially responsible children's sweater line, SimpleLife Kids, marketed in the United States.
Lynda is a founding steering committee member for the Organic Trade Associations Organic Fiber Council. Today she teaches sustainable fashion design at CCA and is a guest lecturer at Haas School of Business, Berkeley; Stanford University, Palo Alto; San Francisco State University; Academy of Art University; Central Saint Martins, London; and Royal College of Art, London.
John Sherlock Hersey is an adjunct professor in CCA's Illustration Program. He is considered one of the founders of digital illustration. He is the principal of John Hersey Illustration in Larkspur, California, where his clients include Sony, Bandai, Le Monde, Wired, the Times of London, Swatch, the New York Times, Newsweek, and Benetton. John has designed watch faces for Swatch, an Absolut Vodka ad, pattern designs for Esprit, on-air IDs for Nickelodeon, font designs distributed with Emigre, and various logos. including the XM satellite radio logo. He also wrote and illustrated the 2002 children's book binkobink, and his work has been exhibited at SFMOMA. Hersey studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Suzanna Hess teaches photography in CCA's Extended Education program and has previously taught in the degree program. She was a participant in the international site-specific Cracks in the Pavement event in 2005. She also was selected for inclusion in the Oakland Art Gallery's Bay Area Currents 2004. Her visual art comprises a number of media: photography, sculpture, print, and works on paper. BFA, Cornish College of the Arts; MFA, CCAC
David Karam is usually a programmer, yet sometimes he is a designer, musician, or teacher. His career began in Austin, where he produced the interactive graphic adventure, To Preserve Quandic, which was distributed by Prickly–Pear software in 1984.
After finishing high school in 1987, Mr. Karam moved to San Francisco, where he inadvertently became a desktop publisher. In 1993 he founded Post Tool, a design company, with partner Gigi Obrecht, and began teaching technology to graphic designers at the California College of Arts and Crafts. In the following four years Post Tool's print and interaction design was published in every major graphic design journal worldwide.
By 1997 Karam's focus was diverted from graphic programming to server–side and database. In the last 10 years his clients have included Nokia, Apple, Inc., J. Paul Getty Museum, SFMOMA, Swatch Watch, and The Body Shop. BFA, CCAC
Gretchen Krebs is an interior designer at an architecture and interiors firm in San Francisco. She has experience in residential and commercial design alike and currently is involved in a rooftop sculpture garden addition for SFMOMA. BA, UCLA; BFA, CCA
Christina La Sala is an adjunct professor in CCA's First Year and Interdisciplinary Studies programs. She is an installation artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. She was an artist in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts and at The Hermit Foundation in the Czech Republic. she currently divides her exhibition time between gallery work and film and theater design; she is the set and properties designer with TheatreFIRST at Mills College in Oakland, California.
In Philadelphia she was a member and curator of Nexus Foundation for Today's Art and cofounder and curator of Momenta Art Alternatives. La Sala has been a preparator for the Borovsky Gallery in Philadelphia, the Walter, and McBean Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), The Mexican Museum, and a variety of private collections. BFA, Tyler School of Art, Temple University; MFA, San Francisco Art Institute
Mary Little and Peter Wheeler are partners in the design studio bius (see www.designbius.com), originally established in London in 1997 and then relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, in 2005.
They return to the Bay Area each summer to teach the upholstery design workshop. Each a former CCA adjunct professor, they share over 20 years' experience in designing and producing unique, high–end furniture for the residential, corporate, and public arts markets.
The studio has recently begun to design innovative furniture for production. At last year's NeoCon, they launched their award-winning design, Pool, a modular bench system, for Brayton International (part of Steelcase Design Group). The system was awarded a 2007 Good Design award by The Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture and Design, and an Interior Design Best of Year Merit award.
Their furniture can be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London); Vitra Design Museum (Basel); the Musée des arts décoratifs (Paris); and the Museo de las Artes Decorativas (Barcelona), among others.
Over the years bius has developed a unique expertise in upholstery derived from contemporary production techniques with an inspirational root in semisoft artifacts from a breadth of cultures, such as ancient Eastern costume, Medieval European headwear, and contemporary sportswear.
Jeanne Lorenz ia an adjunct professor in CCA's Printmaking and degree programs. She is a painter and printmaker who combines digital and traditional media. She has had solo exhibitions at White Columns (New York) and Mixture Contemporary Art (Houston). She also has shown at PS1 Contemporary Art Center (Long Island City, New York) and at the Drawing Center and P.P.O.W. (New York). Her work will be included in upcoming shows at the University of California, Davis; the University of Wales, Bangor; the Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, and Bucheon Gallery, San Francisco.
Jeanne is a member of the Southern Graphics Council. She was recently a visiting artist at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, where she collaborated and created prints with the clients there. In 2002 she was a fellow at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. She received the Helen Watson Winternitz Award for Painting from Yale University. BFA, CCAC; MFA, Yale University
Michael Mabry leads a small graphic design studio that explores brand identity and illustration. He has served on the faculty at California College of the Arts and guest lectures at many universities and various designer / art directors' organizations throughout the country.
Mabry's work has been represented and has received awards in several design competitions, including Communication Arts, The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), The American Center for Design, Graphis, The New York Art Directors Club, and The San Francisco Society for Communicating Arts. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Mabry's work also was featured in a solo exhibition in Osaka, Japan, as well as a group exhibition on California design at the Museo Fortuny in Venice, Italy. His current clients include Chronicle Books, The Land of Nod, Lucas Films, The Mellon Foundation, Netjets Europe, the New York Times, and The Oakland Museum of California. He has served as the president of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, as well as on its national board of trustees. He also is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Mabry earned a BFA (with honors) from the University of Utah.
Charles Matthey has taught in CCA's Young Artist Studio Program and has explored a variety of media, including stone, steel, glass, painting, and ceramics. He has come to see computers as yet another medium to explore. He currently operates Charles Matthey Design, a multimedia design and production collective. BFA, CCA
Miriam Paeslack is a visiting professor in the Visual Studies and Visual & Critical Studies programs. She was the guest editor of Before and After the Wall: German Photography in Discourse and Practice, a special issue of Visual Resources, and author of Creating a Third Space: Contemporary Photographers' Outsider's View of Asian Cities (2006) and Dis–United: Urbane Fotografie im Nachwendedeutschland (2006). She is currently working on a book on photography in post-reunification Germany. BA, MA, PhD, University of Freiburg, Germany
Francesca Pastine is an artist who has shown nationally and internationally alike with numerous exhibitions: Rena Bransten Gallery (San Francisco); The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; Thomas McCormick Gallery (Chicago); and Sofia City Gallery (Bulgaria).
She has curated and juried exhibits, as well as participated in large-scale public art installations. Pastine has previously taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, Diablo Valley College, and in the San Francisco City College Extension Program. BFA, SFAI; MFA, San Francisco Art Institute
Carole Peelhas been an associate professor at California College of the Arts for 31 years. Her portraits are in collections nationwide and in Europe, and her work is on record in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. MFA, UC Berkeley
Craig Petey is the current ceramics studio manager at CCA. He is award-winning ceramics artist whose work, often wood fired, is a mix of rough and smooth textures. His pieces are wheel-formed, but left in their most pure and naturally earthlike stage to best reflect the origins of the clay. He received his bachelor of science degree in premedicine and his masters of science in physiology degrees from Pennsylvania State University.
Emily Pilloton is the founder of Project H Design (www.projecthdesign.com), a charitable organization that supports humanitarian product design initiatives, the managing editor of Inhabitat ( www.inhabitat.com), and a global design nomad.
As a design educator she has taught design theory and studios at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Art. Ms. Pilloton has also written about design for Good, I.D., Treehugger, and ReadyMade magazines, has lectured about humanitarian design strategies at international conferences and events, and is a co–organizer of the HauteGreen exhibition and program during New York Design Week.
She earned her BA and MFA degrees in architecture (the latter including interior architecture and designed objects) and has worked as a designer in multiple scales and champions great design as a tool to influence the world and create change for good. BA, UC Berkeley; MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Laura Plageman is currently a lecturer in CCA's Photography Department. She recently was visiting assistant professor of art at Wesleyan University in spring 2008. Her work involves investigation and transformation of everyday surroundings with an eye toward the overlooked and uncanny.
Laura's work has been shown in New York and San Francisco and was recently included in a group exhibition curated by Lawrence Rinder at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (Portland). Her work will be showing at gallery G126 in Galway, Ireland, this spring. (See also www.photoLP.com.)
John Poole is a sculptor whose work has been exhibited nationally. He has worked at three professional foundries and taught numerous university courses in sculpture and casting. BA, UC Berkeley; MFA, University of Arizona
Molly Reilly is a photographer and installation artist whose work has been shown nationally, with recent exhibitions at the Portland Art Center and the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (Brooklyn, New York). BFA California College of the Arts; MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art
Susan Robinson is a fashion designer who in 1994 started her own business, a San Francisco-based boutique called Penelope Starr that specializes in dresses, coats, and skirts. She has sold her collection to boutiques throughout the United States and Japan.
Marianne Rogoff is an adjunct professor in CCA's Writing and Literature Program. She's also an independent editor for publishers and individuals. She has been teaching writing and literature at CCA since 1994. Rogoff's essay, "Alive in Lisbon," appears in Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. Her true story, "Raven," was selected for The Best Travel Writing 2006. Her biography, Silvie's Life, has been adopted for ethics courses, optioned for movies, and translated in 2006 (Gradiva, Lisbon).
She has published numerous stories, essays, and book reviews. She also has taught at San Francisco State University, New College, Book Passage, and College of Marin. BA, Rutgers University; MA, San Francisco State University
Merl Ross is a painter whose work has been exhibited nationally and is included in numerous public and private collections. She is the recipient of a California Magazine Discovery Award and at present teaches painting at UC Berkeley. BA, MA, MFA, UC Berkeley
Lissa Rovetch has written (and on occasion illustrated) more than 20 children's books, including picture, poetry, and board books; easy readers; and the early chapter series, The Adventures of Hot Dog and Bob (Chronicle Books).
In addition to her children's books, she has written computer games for Mattel, educational passages for McGraw Hill, and published over 250 magazine stories, including the popular Highlights Magazine series, "Ask Arizona." BFA, Parsons School of Design
Diane Dorrans Saeks is the author of 18 books, including her most recent, California Country Style (Chronicle Books), Michael Smith Elements of Style (Rizzoli), and Hollywood Style (Rizzoli).
A noted editor and lecturer, Saeks has written extensively for the New York Times, Departures, Garden Design, and many other design publications around the world. She is the interior design editor of PaperCity, the San Francisco editor at large for C magazine, and the California editor of Metropolitan Home.
Marsha Shaw is an artist who lives and works in Oakland, California. She has lectured and taught courses in bookmaking and printmaking at CCA, San Francisco Center for the Book, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and The Museum of Children's Art (Oakland). Shaw's work has been exhibited regionally and nationally. BA, MA, California State University Northridge; MFA, CCA
K. A. Sheehan is a lecturer for CCA's Printmaking Department who has shown her mixed-media work on paper nationally and internationally. Her work can currently be seen at the Berkeley Civic Center.
Sheehan has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, as well as a recipient of the Buley Full Fellowship Award, the Jentel Artist Residency program, the Ucross Foundation. She is currently an artist in residence at the Kala Institute.
Sheehan is an instructor at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, City College of San Francisco, and College of Marin in Kentfield, California. BFA, San Francisco Art Institute; MFA, Arizona State University
Thea Sizemore creates small editions of hand-bound books that incorporate a mixture of processes, such as intaglio, lithography, screen printing, letterpress, and monotyping. Ms. Sizemore's work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington DC. BFA, CCAC
Stacy Speyer is a textile artist whose work challenges the traditional rules of weaving. Her large-scale works of dyed and woven sewing thread recontextualize the space in which they are installed. Her work has been exhibited nationally and is represented in private collections, as well as appearing in several publications, including the Journal of the San Francisco Design Center. BFA, Kansas City Art Institute; MFA, CCAC
Gino Squadrito is a lecturer for CCA's Community Arts Program. He also is president of Laser.Com in San Francisco. Squadrito has been using Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXpress since the first versions appeared on the market. Squadrito has international experience teaching workshops for graphic designers and students. He is the former art director for La Raza Graphics. BS, San Jose State University
Trevor Tubelle has shown his obsessive, hand-crafted drawings, paintings, and prints at various venues throughout the Bay Area. His work is included in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). BA, UC Berkeley; MFA, San Francisco Art Institute
Rick Valicenti is the founder and design director of Thirst/Chicago, a communication design firm devoted to art, function, and human presence. A monograph on the Thirst work Emotion as Promotion was published by Monacelli Press in 2004.
A member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale), Mr. Valicenti was awarded the 2004 AIGA Chicago Chapter Fellow. In 2006 he received the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) Medal for his sustained contribution to design excellence and development of the profession. This medal represents the highest honor in the graphic design profession.
His works are in The Cooper–Hewitt National Design Museum's permanent collection and were included in its 2006 Triennial, Design Life Now. His clients include the leaders of Chicago's design and cultural community. Mr. Valicenti provides inspiration to his colleagues and mentorship to a generation of students. For the past decade, he has lent his time and energies to college and high school students in the form of personal critiques and workshops that address the design industry.
Matt Volla is an artist and musician whose art practice embraces two different pursuits: one is conceptual and absurdist and involves setting up intricate systems in an attempt to quantify everyday actions; the other has recently been documented in the book, Matt Volla's Unruly Drawings (Front 40 Press).
Volla's work has been shown throughout America in solo and group shows at such venues as P.S.1/MOMA, White Columns Gallery, and Harvestworks (New York); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts (San Francisco); Gallery2 and the Betty Rhymer Gallery (Chicago); and the Tangent Gallery (Detroit).
Volla's work also has been screened at the Rotterdam International Film Festival (the Netherlands). Since 2004, Mr. Volla also has been director and curator of Keys That Fit, a project space for artists in the storefront windows of his Oakland studio. BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MFA, Mills College
Christopher West is a painter whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States. His work is included in numerous national and international private collections. BA, Humboldt State University; MFA, Mills College
Peter Wheeler (see Mary Little)
Bijan Yashar is a lecturer for CCA's First Year Program. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and has been living in California since age 10 (he moved with his family in 1979). In addition to pursuing fine art photography and video work, he is a freelance video editor and a digital media consultant. Yashar also teaches digital photography and digital imaging at Berkeley City College, Las Positas College, and UC Berkeley's Academic Talent Development Program. He earned his MFA in new genres and his MA in educational psychology. He also was a visiting artist at Saint Mary's College. MFA, San Francisco Art Institute; MA, University of California at Berkeley
Chadwick Wood works as a freelance web developer/designer who produces websites and web applications for small businesses and nonprofits in the Bay Area, including ongoing work with CCA. (He also is the former web developer for CCA). Additionally, he lends his development skills to Collective Playlist (visit the website for additional information), an ongoing collaboration with the Collective Foundation. BS, UT Austin
Gene Yang began drawing comic books in the fifth grade. In 1997 he received the Xeric Grant, a prestigious comics industry grant, for Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, his first comics work as an adult. He has since written and drawn a number of titles, including Duncan's Kingdom (with art by Derek Kirk Kim) and The Rosary Comic Book. His most recent work, American Born Chinese, is the first graphic novel to be nominated for the National Book Award. It is also the first graphic novel to win the American Library Association's Michael L. Printz Award.
Carolina Zanelli is an Italian mosaicist who taught for six years at the prestigious Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli Irene da Spilimbergo. She has created and produced traditional and modern mosaics for architects and private clients worldwide. Zanelli has collaborated with numerous artists, including Ellen Driscoll (Grand Central Terminal, New York City) and Ann Gardner (Central Waterfront Project, Seattle).