Kara Walker's art has been described in the New York Times as "mocking," "shaming," "startlingly poignant," "absorbing," "excruciatingly personal," "magnetic," and "brilliant." California College of the Arts (CCA) will recognize this extraordinary artist with an honorary doctorate degree at its 102nd commencement exercises, to be held Saturday, May 9, at 2 p.m. at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco. Walker will deliver the commencement address to the 417 graduates and their families. In addition, she will be honored at a private event the preceding evening and will participate in the post-commencement reception at CCA's San Francisco campus.

Walker is no stranger to CCA. She was the Capp Street Project artist in residence in spring 1999, during which time the CCA Wattis Institute presented Kara Walker: No mere words can Adequately reflect the Remorse this Negress feels at having been Cast into such a lowly state by her former Masters and so it is with a Humble heart that she brings about their physical Ruin and earthly Demise, which then toured to the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

About Kara Walker
Kara Walker created a sensation with her New York debut at the Drawing Center in 1994. There she presented a powerful and poignant mural in which she used the genteel 18th-century medium of cut-paper silhouette to explore racism, oppression, sex, violence, and slavery. Since then she has created more than 30 room-size installations and hundreds of drawings and watercolors, and she has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions, including Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, which was organized in 2007 by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and traveled to ARC / Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Walker was born in Stockton, California, in 1969. She received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Venice Biennale. She has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1997), the Deutsche Bank Prize (2004), and the Larry Aldrich Award (2005). She was the United States representative for the São Paulo Biennial in 2002. She currently lives in New York, where she is a professor of visual arts at Columbia University.

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 San Francisco and Oakland, CCA currently enrolls 1,740 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. For more information about CCA's 2009 commencement exercises, please call the college's Student Affairs Office at 510.594.3666.