Alumni Success

Pablo Cristi

MFA Fine Arts, 2009

Pablo Cristi is an artist born and raised in Los Angeles. He was born to Chilean parents escaping the Pinochet regime,

Informed by the Los Angeles mural culture, Cristi’s complex paintings often intermix cultural signs and representations with painterly abstraction, connecting the politics of the canvas to the politics of the street.

He is an educator and community organizer, teaching and leading youths in art and mural projects throughout the West Coast.

Cristi received a prestigious ICAN Residency in Derry, Northern Ireland in 2011.

He was featured on KQED and written about in Juxtapoz, the Los Angeles Latino Heritage Month Cultural Guide/Catalog, and Art Practical.

Cristi's exhibitions include the Asian Art Museum, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Intersection for the Arts, Source LA Gallery, Triton Museum of Art, and the Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica.

Visit Pablo Cristi's website »

Media Highlights

Public Art, Public Debate in Northern Ireland with Pablo Cristi
In the Make: Studio Visits with Artists & Designers
KQED Arts: Studio Invasion: Pablo Cristi

Hank Willis Thomas

MA Visual Criticism, 2004

Exhibitions with P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (New York); the Studio Museum in Harlem; Zacheta National Museum of Art (Poland); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); and the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art.

Awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006); the 2007 Renew Media Arts Fellowship (Rockefeller Foundation); and received the Aperture West Book Prize in 2008.

Commissioned with ©ause Collective to create a video installation for the Oakland International Airport.

Produced the monograph Pitch Blackness (Aperture, 2008).

Photography included in Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers (W. W. Norton, 2000); 25 under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers (Power House Books, 2003); Black: A Celebration of a Culture (Hylas Publishing, 2004); and Winter in America (with Kambui Olujimi in 2006).

Visit Hank Willis Thomas's website »

More about Hank Willis Thomas
"Question Bridge," by CCA Alumni and Faculty, Debuts at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier

Maja Ruznic

MFA Painting/Drawing, 2009

Born in Bosnia and Hercegovina, she came to the United States as a refugee, and her paintings, drawings, and performances explore memory and how it shapes our understanding of reality.

Her work has been featured on the cover of New American Paintings, generating significant media buzz, including a significant feature on ABC News and commissions from around the world.

She has exhibited at Trailer Park Proyects (Puerto Rico), Michael Rosenthal Gallery, Southern Exposure Gallery, MicroClimate Collective, and arttransponder in Berlin, among others.

Visit Maja Ruznic's website »

Harrell Fletcher

MFA Photography, 1994

Has 15 years' experience working collaboratively and individually on a variety of socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects.

International showings include Tate Modern in London, SFMOMA; the de Young Museum, ArtPace; The Drawing Center; Socrates Sculpture Park; The Sculpture Center; The Wrong Gallery; White Columns; The Seattle Art Museum; and The Royal College of Art, among others.

Participated in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and his work is in the collections of MoMA, The Whitney Museum, The New Museum, SFMOMA, The Berkeley Art Museum, de Young Museum, and The FRAC Brittany.

His traveling exhibition The American War has been presented at White Columns, New York, the MIT Center For Advanced Visual Studies, among others.

Co-created with Miranda July the Learning to Love You More participatory website, on which a book version was published by Prestel in 2007.

Current professor of art and social practice at Portland State University.

Visit Harrell Fletcher's website »

Rebecca Najdowski

MFA Fine Arts, 2010

A visual artist and writer currently based in the Bay Area. She uses video, photography, and installation in her work to investigate disruptions of logic and time, and the possibility of transformation.

Awarded a 2011 Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil to produce a visual and social art project. Read more »

Numerous national and international exhibitions and video screenings, including The Lab and Queens Nails Projects in San Francisco; Kala Art Gallery in Berkeley; Scala Mata gallery in Venice; Athens Video Art Festival; and she has performed at Oi Futuro in Belo Horizonte in Brazil.

ArtPractical.com and DaWire.com has published her writing, and she contributes regularly to DailyServing.com.

Held artist in residences at CAPACETE in Rio de Janeiro and Signal Fire in Oregon.

Founded the Rochina Foto Project, a digital photography course for youth at Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, where she continues to serve as coordinator.

Visit Rebecca Najdowskia's website »

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