Community Arts News
Apply Now for 2010–11 Community Service Fellows Work-Study Jobs
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010, by Jason Engelund
Applications for Community Service Fellows (CSF) positions are being accepted September 3–17
The Community Student Fellows program offers work-study opportunities in arts education and community arts to CCA students across all disciplines. CSFs are trained and work in schools and community organizations throughout the Bay Area. Students—sophomore through graduate level—are eligible to apply. (Second-semester freshmen are eligible to apply for spring semester positions.)
CSF positions pay $13 per hour. Federal work-study allotment is not necessary.
View the CSF map
View the Community Service Fellows map to see community partner sites throughout the Bay Area.
Fall 2010 available positions:
- ArtsChange
- Berkeley Art Center
- Berkeley High School Arts and Humanities Academy
- Center for Art and Public Life
- Chabot Elementary School
- Creative Arts Charter School
- Creativity Explored
- Creative Growth Art Center
- The Crucible
- Far West High School
- The Factory Program at Bay Area Video Coalition
- Fostering Art Program at a Home Within
- The Imagine Bus Project
- Intersection for the Arts
- Kala Art Institute
- La Cocina
- Media Enterprise Alliance—KDOL Television
- The National Institute of Art & Disabilities
- Out of Site Center for Arts Education
- Peralta Elementary School
- Public Architecture
- REBAR—Art, Design, Activism Studios
- Redwood Heights Elementary School
- Richmond Art Center
- Rock Paper Scissors Collective
- Root Division
- SomArts Cultural Center
- Youth Roots Program at ARISE High School
- Zeum: San Francisco’s Children’s Museum
To apply
CCA’s Career Services online job board will list CSF positions starting September 3. A limited number of CSF positions is available. Please get your application in early.
Students interested in applying for a CSF position should email a cover letter, résumé, and CSF application (available at the CCA job board), to csf@cca.edu.
For more information about the program, please visit Community Student Fellows, or email csf@cca.edu.
ShareCategories: Center for Art and Public Life Community Arts Students
Alumna Ebony Iman Dallas Founds the Afrikanation Artists Organization
Posted on Tuesday, July 20, 2010, by Samantha Braman
Since graduating from CCA just one year ago, Ebony Iman Dallas (MFA Design 2009) has already done an immense amount of work promoting social justice through art. Her biggest and most important effort has been the founding of Afrikanation Artists Organization, based in Hargeisa, Somaliland, which empowers artists by building a more grounded foundation for the arts in communities lacking resources or opportunities to do so themselves.
Dallas has always been interested in exploring ways to build human relationships and connections through art and design. Her past projects have included C.L.O.U.D. Speak 3000 (investigating the loss of indigenous languages in the United States) and literally connecting CCA's art and design buildings with ropes as part of a collective community-building effort.
The idea for Afrikanation Artists Organization stemmed from her CCA thesis project, which focused on unifying African immigrants, African Americans, and Afro-Caribbean people in the United States through art and design. "Economic, education, and health challenges disproportionately affect these populations," she says. "By joining minds, solutions can be created. I believe that methods do exist to exploit current systems to create positive change in society. For example we can use the interconnectedness of our world to share voices that often go unheard, and to create opportunities for empowerment where they did not exist previously.
"CCA's Graduate Program in Design does not limit itself to strictly-design courses. It forces students to think beyond the creation of new systems and objects, to the analysis of how they will affect our world in negative as well as positive ways."
Dallas was motivated to establish Afrikanation Artists Organization when she was in Hargeisa last winter visiting family. Although the region hasn't seen war in more than 20 years, the aftereffects of war continue to pose great challenges, including an astronomical unemployment rate (some reports say it has reached 85 percent). She hopes that her organization is the beginning of what will become an international network of artists and community supporters.
The unavailability of art supplies, limited opportunities to showcase and distribute artworks, and lack of educational opportunities in the arts are just some of the barriers that Afrikanation Artists Organization is working to overcome. Dallas is starting with public art workshops, and hopes that soon art will be an integral part of the country's public school curriculum. She observes that there are very few female artists in the region, and that this is partially due to the discomfort of learning in a male-dominated art world. She has several ideas that will help level the playing field and create an educational environment that is conducive to learning and excellence.
Dallas is also working on expanding the organization to countries throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. "This will help to build cross-border relations as well as increase opportunities through partnerships built," she says. "We will create fair-trade economic-development opportunities by enabling online sales and working with individuals, organizations, and galleries internationally to showcase art.
"I believe that art has the power to change society because of its ability to reach the average person in an accessible way. Many people theorize and discuss social and global issues in a manner—and a medium—that is not understood by the majority of the people negatively affected. By educating as well as entertaining through diverse media, art provides an approachable platform that extends its reach to many. For example, Somali, the official language of Somalia, was not written until the 1970s. But through poetry, Somali history has been passed down orally from generation to generation and provided the people with a great foundation to build on. With the knowledge of a great past comes an irrevocable pride that poetry has preserved, even through periods of colonization and war."
With the help of Defne Beyce (MFA Design 2010), Dallas organized an art-supply collection box at CCA's San Francisco campus this past spring. The supplies were used for the youth art station at Afrikanation Artists Organization's Celebration of Art and Culture as well as public art workshops.
Basic art supplies, including paintbrushes, are largely unavailable in Somaliland. Everyone's help is needed to continue artist workshops there and begin art classes for at-risk youth and girls. Any support makes a huge difference! If you are interested in donating art supplies, please email ebonyiman@afrikanationartists.org.
Categories: Alumni Community Arts Design Diversity Featured International
El Salvador to Guatemala: Community Arts Model Replicated
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010, by Jason Engelund
The School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin is a community-based, collaborative art project created in El Salvador that is now expanding to Guatemala, Columbia, and Canada.
Established by Claudia Bernardi, the organization has been using the arts to facilitate healing and diplomacy in Perquin, El Salvador, a community torn apart by 12 years of civil war. Now with support from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the Ford Foundation, the Potrero Nuevo Fund, the San Carlos Foundation and Intersection for the Arts, the its model is being replicated to help victims of political violence in Guatemala, Columbia, and Canada.
This summer Claudia Bernardi, an internationally renowned artist, activist, and CCA faculty member, along with four local Salvadoran artists and teachers, are applying their successful practices from Perquin in the neighboring country of Guatemala. The 1960-96 armed conflict there was particularly brutal for indigenous communities. Claudia and her fellow art teachers are collaborating with the Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial (ECAP) (Community Studies Team of Psychosocial Action) and people in the community to create art and murals based around memories of the victims of the 1978 massacre at Panzos, Alta Verapaz.
It was a priest who initially asked Claudia to paint a mural in Perquin in 1992. At the time she was assisting the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team in El Mozote, a town nearby, in creating archeological maps of the exhumation of hundreds of children and adults who were killed by military troops in a 1981 massacre. In 2001, after having painted many murals, often on walls still scarred and full of bullets, Claudia was asked by the mayor of Perquin to open a school. Walls of Hope, and the School of Art and Open Studio, began.
Claudia's team of artist apprentices have been leading transformative art projects for the people in Perquin. They have also enlisted other artists to visit the town and work at the school and studio. Center Student Grant awardees have completed numerous projects in the town involving oral histories, book making, mural painting, printmaking, design, and implementation of recycling receptacles. CCA students have also been a part of the school and open studio through Claudia's summer study abroad course here at CCA. Artists in residence from the United States and Japan have taught classes and conducted community arts projects through the school.
Walls of Hope: Guatemala is supported in part by the Ford Foundation through a grant from the NALAC Transnational Cultural Remittances Grant Program.
For more information please visit www.wallsofhope.org
Also see:
CCA Diversity Conference Highlights Community-Based Social Justice as Key
Community Arts Professor Claudia Bernardi Wins Major Grant from NALAC
Claudia Bernardi Wins IBAVI's 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award
Categories: Center for Art and Public Life Community Arts International
CCA Diversity Conference Highlights Community-Based Social Justice as Key
Posted on Sunday, June 20, 2010, by Jim Norrena
(l to r) CCA chairs Julian Carter, Melinda L. de Jesús, and Tirza Latimer at the diversity conference [photo: Jim Norrena]
The “Doing ‘Diversity’: Making It or Faking It?” conference was the first-of-its-kind, all-day planning and discussion meeting devoted specifically to the issues of diversity representation and celebration here at California College of the Arts. The discussion panels laid the groundwork for the college to ratchet up its commitment to fostering greater diversity at CCA.
The conference took place on Saturday, April 3, in Nahl Hall on the Oakland campus and featured faculty and administrative brainstorming sessions, inter-institutional program presentations, and student panels. While notable gains were called out as successfully reflecting the college's diversity mission statement, greater overall involvement of staff and faculty was also called upon.
Organized by Diversity Studies program chair and associate professor Melinda L. de Jesús and sponsored by the President’s Diversity Steering Group, the conference opened up a vital discussion for enhancing diversity representation at CCA: “Overall I was pleased with the conference and its outcomes,” reported de Jesús. “Our goals for this first conference were focused on promoting the Diversity Studies faculty and their work as well as the department as a whole to the greater CCA community."
Panel Discussions Pave Way Toward Diversity
Several panel discussions took place during the conference, which provided compelling information regarding how successful the college has been in upholding its diversity mission, as determined by the President's Diversity Steering Group. While specific areas were identified as requiring additional concerted efforts, successful implementation of the college's diversity mission statement was clearly evident.
Art/Pedagogy/Praxis
This round-table discussion featured Diversity Studies faculty members Tressa Berman, Claudia Bernardi, Lauren Elder, Guillermo Galindo, Amana Harris, Taraneh Hemami, Devorah Major, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Parisa Parnian, and Celia Rodriguez.
Instructors were encouraged to share work that supported project-based learning in social practice, curatorial studies, and interdisciplinary arts. Tressa Berman appreciated the platform: "It was also the first time in my three years as faculty at CCA that I was able to see and engage with colleagues at the level of creative work, which drives our teaching and anchors it in meaningful dialogue—with students and with one another."
Lydia Degarrod, who is adjunct faculty in the Critical Studies and Diversity Studies programs, also found the experience valuable: "I found the experience enriching in that I felt my work as a Diversity Studies faculty is not an isolated activity, but it belongs to a wide range of different and strong voices who share common interests and a passion for creativity."
Integrating Diversity Studies at CCA: Challenges and Initiatives
The panel featured a discussion with CCA administration-level speakers and faculty, each of whom took turns presenting and subsequently fielding questions from the audience: Provost Mark Breitenberg, Associate Provost Melanie Corn, Director of Architecture Ila Berman, Critical Studies chair Julian Carter, Graduate Program in Fine Arts chair Ted Purves, and Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies chair Tirza Latimer.
The discussion vacillated between the college’s success in creating an increasingly diverse student population with each year’s enrollment and the ongoing need to implement recognizable change within the faculty makeup itself. According to panelist Tirza Latimer, “The faculty and student body looks more diverse every year, thanks in part to the commitment of our administrators to diversification.”
Yet Latimer also conceded the representation of diversity from the program chair–level upward remains one of the President’s Diversity Steering Group’s outstanding goals that she admits needs to be addressed.
She recommends additional advocacy, recruiting, and development of more effective support systems, such as scholarships, to address the “somewhat misleading” statistics about faculty diversity (ranked faculty and adjunct faculty), which she points out does not accurately convey the diversity representation of the college’s tenure-track faculty, which due to its less successful overall representation of diversity, remains a targeted goal for improvement moving forward.
Looking Across Models: Diversity and Social Justice Studies in Higher Education
The end-of-the-day panel offered a valuable collaboration with fellow art and social justice practitioners: Carlos Baron, Theater and Ethnic Studies (San Francisco State University); Kristin Kusanovich, Justice and Arts Initiative (Santa Clara University); Roberto Varea, Theater and Social Justice (University of San Francisco); and Visual Arts Director Justin Hoover (SOMArts Cultural Center).
One of the primary goals of the conference, according to de Jesús, was to “forge connections with other arts and social justice programs in the Bay Area, which our third panel accomplished very well.”
Student/Faculty Community-Based Art Projects
The conference was also successful in demonstrating the effectiveness of student and faculty community-based art projects. At the end of the day, a panel of students and alumni presented community-based works in which they investigated diversity via social engagement. In addition to alum Josue Rojas, other students (now all alumni) presented at the conference: Eugene Young (BFA 2001 Graphic Design), Vivian Truong (BFA 2010 Photography), Helena Parriott (BFA 2010 Individualized Major), and Camille Hoffman (BFA 2009 Community Arts).
CCA Community Arts and Fine Arts professor and conference attendee Claudia Bernardi excels in community-based projects and humanitarian activism. She was recently awarded the International Beliefs and Values Institute (IBAVI) 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award, which recognizes an individual or organization who exemplifies IBAVI's mission through extraordinary research, education, and service.
An Argentinean artist and activist, Bernardi currently collaborates with four directors of Walls of Hope: The School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin, an international art and human rights project of education, diplomacy building, and community development. She presented at the conference what's been coined the Perquin Model as evidence for just how effective art-based education programs can be.
Bernardi's humanitarian outreach efforts inspired CCA alum Josue Rojas (BFA 2003 Painting/Drawing), current senior producer at YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia, to travel to Central America to tackle the Honduran gang problem head on. Rojas organized Arte es la Vida, an all-spray-painted mural project created at the sight of the “most gruesome massacres” in the recent history of Honduras—where a busload of children was gunned down by a gang, instigating the government’s controversial zero-tolerance on gang crime (anyone even suspected of gang involvement can be detained).
The mural, measuring more than 60 feet long, is “not about money . . . but about leaving good things behind,” according to Estria, a Bay Area graffiti muralist who worked with Rojas on the Arte es la Vida mural.
Part of the challenge in strengthening diversity here at CCA lies in the question, how is diversity most effectively measured? Is diversity solely measured by the degree to which the college's student body, faculty, or staff is nonwhite? And if so, is this measured by statistics or overall appearance? One can argue a seemingly all-white student body may in fact be remarkably diverse on paper.
Efforts such as Bernardi's not only cross international boundaries and help children and victims of violence learn ways to express themselves artistically but also inspire other young learners to take on similar educational-outreach projects.
Intended as neither a Band-aid solution nor an instantaneous panacea, community-based outreach and education projects tackle diversity representation from a systemic angle, slowly generating a healthful representation of diversity in a more sustainable manner. In short, fixing the appearance of a problem is never as effective as addressing the problem itself.
Dream Big: Strategic Plan for 2010–15
Associate Provost Melanie Corn is enthusiastic about CCA's diversity efforts: "We have an incredibly diverse community. Our students and faculty come from around the world, bring an amazing array of histories and experiences, and work in a wide variety of media and conceptual frameworks. . . . Supporting and building the cultural diversity of community is key to our success."
According to CCA’s overall undergraduate diversity statistics for 2009–10 enrollment numbers continue to reflect the goal of attracting greater diversity illustrating more "making" than "faking":
- American Indian or Alaskan native — 1 percent
- Asian or Pacific Islander — 17 percent
- black, non-Hispanic — 4 percent
- Hispanic — 11 percent
- nonresident aliens (international) — 9 percent
- unknown — 11 percent
- white (non-Hispanic) — 46 percent
However, Corn also concedes it’s time to go further: “Diversity is integral to academic excellence, and one of our goals for next year is to enhance the diversity of our faculty body.”
She further explains building upon the college's diverse community is more than just shop talk: “Cultivating diversity is a primary theme of CCA’s newly embraced Dream Big: Strategic Plan for 2010–15. On the student side, this means further outreach to students of color, increasing diversity scholarships, maintaining need-based financial aid despite some hard financial times, and improving student services to ensure retention and success.”
Other Initiatives: ENGAGE at CCA
ENGAGE at CCA is an innovative initiative combining CCA's Community Arts Program’s successful model of community engagement with the project-based learning approach of the architecture and design disciplines. The initiative serves as a hub to connect interested faculty and students to community partners and relevant outside experts and dynamically advances CCA’s mission to prepare its students for lifelong creative work and servie to their communities.
Goals
Despite the successes of the conference, de Jesús added, “CCA could be doing much, much better . . .. There is still a clear need for more recruitment and retention of faculty of color, and for stronger institutional support for students of color.” To attain these goals, de Jesús advised: “More discussions about white privilege and its impact on curriculum, hiring, and climate need to happen.”
Yet conferences such as "Doing ‘Diversity’: Making It or Faking It?" ensure voices are heard at every level at the college: student, faculty, staff, administration. It's an opportunity to check in and measure where we're at in terms of our mission statement—to acknowledge the forward strides we've made, as well as identify where we still need to get to, and how to do it.
“We look forward to forging more connections and creating more opportunities for dialogue about diversity issues at CCA,” added de Jesús. “The conversations during the conference and afterward greatly reinforced the need for our continuing our focus on race/racism in higher education and its intersections with privilege and power and social justice.”
Related
CCA Diversity News
Claudia Bernardi Wins IBAVI's 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award
Provost Mark Breitenberg Expands CCA’s Global Outreach
Categories: Alumni Architecture Community Arts Critical Studies Diversity Diversity Studies Faculty Featured Fine Arts International Students Visual Studies Visual and Critical Studies
Claudia Bernardi Wins IBAVI's 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award
Posted on Thursday, June 3, 2010, by Lindsey Westbrook
CCA is happy to congratulate Claudia Bernardi (Community Arts faculty) for winning the International Beliefs and Values Institute (IBAVI) 2009-10 Sustainable Visions and Values Award. This annual award recognizes an individual or organization who exemplifies IBAVI's mission through extraordinary research, education, and service.
Bernardi also recently received a grant of seeds from the Trees of the World organization, and she is reforesting the El Salvador countryside this summer, together with local community members, in conjunction with her School of Art and Open Studio of Perquin. Read more about her many wonderful projects at www.wallsofhope.org.
Categories: Awards and Accolades Community Arts Faculty Fine Arts International Sustainability
ENGAGE at CCA Spring public events
Posted on Thursday, April 29, 2010, by Jason Engelund
"It's about how creative practices can address real-world needs."
-Sanjit Sethi, codirector, Center for Art and Public Life
Activated across CCA's academic programs, ENGAGE at CCA serves as a hub to connect interested faculty and students to community partners and relevant outside experts.
Please join us at public events throughout the Bay Area for presentations and exhibitions of work from some of this spring's ENGAGE at CCA courses.
View the full calendar and more details.
Athena Project
5-7pm Wednesday April 28
Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Avenue, Oakland, CA 94601
Come see the final projects created by 25 Oakland Middle School students and 18 mentors from the California College of the Arts. Bring the family to help break a piñata! Movies, mosaics, piñatas and more
Celebración Final del Proyecto
Athena y exposición de Bellas Artes
Miercoles, 28 de abril, de las 5 a las 7 de la tarde
Venga a ver los proyectos finales creados por
25 estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias de Oakland y 18 mentores de California College of the Arts. Películas, mosaicos y mas. Venga con toda la familia y ayuda a romper una piñata!
Design for Elders: Design Opportunities for Bethany Center
at the Gallery at Bethany Center, 580 Capp Street, San Francisco
Friday, April 30, 6-8 pm
Faculty: Charlie Sheldon and Rachel Robinette
A presentation of students' insights and recommendations regarding design needs and opportunities at Bethany Center Senior Housing.
Soup, Art, and Community
at 18 Reasons, 593 Guerrero, San Francisco
Saturday, May 1, 7-9 pm
Faculty: Melissa Martin and Sanjit Sethi
Visual representations of the stories of five Bay Area women and the soups they love. Both beautiful and utilitarian, the exhibition includes work by CCA students collaborating with La Cocina. See the art, taste the soup, and meet the chefs! $5 members / $10 nonmembers.
Art Education: Teaching Practices
at CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, 5275 Broadway, Oakland
Reception: Monday, May 3, 4-6 pm (exhibition runs April 28-May 10)
Faculty: Trena Noval
In this arts education collaboration, Emery secondary school students and CCA students thought about different levels of community as avenues for self-expression. This exhibition highlights the results of their investigations.
Production Furniture: Lighthouse Charter School Library
at Steelcase Atrium, 475 Brannan, San Francisco
Tuesday, May 4, 6-8 pm
Faculty: Russell Baldon
A reception to celebrate a collaboration among the Furniture Program, industrial designer Justin Champaign of Coalesse, and Oakland's Lighthouse Community Charter School. With Champaign's help, CCA students designed tables for Lighthouse's new K-12 library. One of their designs will be selected, manufactured, and donated to the school.
Categories: Center for Art and Public Life Community Arts Teaching Concentration
ENGAGE at CCA Combines Community Outreach with Project-Based Learning
Posted on Tuesday, January 5, 2010, by Brenda Tucker
Sanjit Sethi will head ENGAGE at CCA
CCA's Industrial Design Program partners with Bethany Center Senior Housing as part of ENGAGE at CCA
In 2010, students at California College of the Arts (CCA) will design furniture for Lighthouse Community Charter School, Oakland; help improve communications and systems for seniors at Bethany Center, San Francisco; create protective nesting modules for seabirds on Año Nuevo Island, off the Northern California coast; and work with high school students to publish an anthology of personal essays at 826 Valencia Book Project, San Francisco. These and several other projects are part of ENGAGE at CCA, an innovative initiative that will launch January 11, 2010.
Heading up the initiative is Sanjit Sethi, chair of CCA's Community Arts Program and codirector of CCA's Center for Art and Public Life. "What we're doing is combining the Community Arts Program's successful model of community engagement with the project-based learning approach of the architecture and design disciplines," comments Sethi. "Rather than stand-alone community service projects, these are courses embedded throughout the college's curriculum. ENGAGE at CCA offers students the opportunity to work with outside experts to find solutions to community issues while simultaneously meeting the requirements of their academic programs."
Working across the college's academic programs, ENGAGE at CCA serves as a hub to connect faculty and students to community partners and relevant outside experts. In spring 2010, courses are offered in the Ceramics, Community Arts, Diversity Studies, Furniture, Industrial Design, Sculpture, SMART Teaching Concentration, and Writing and Literature programs. In addition to the organizations mentioned above, other community partners include Attitudinal Healing Connection, Oakland; Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Oakland; John O'Connell High School of Technology, San Francisco; and Mission High School, San Francisco. See also ENGAGE at CCA for complete course descriptions.
About ENGAGE at CCA
Housed at CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, ENGAGE at CCA dynamically advances the college's mission to prepare its students for lifelong creative work and service to their communities through a curriculum in fine art, architecture, design, and writing. Partner organizations are located in diverse, under-resourced neighborhoods.
About the Center for Art and Public Life
The Center for Art and Public Life creates community partnerships using art, design, writing, and architecture to address issues of social justice, diversity, community development, and education. Its programming is woven across disciplines at California College of the Arts and serves the diverse populations of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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.
Categories: Community Arts Press Releases
Allison Smith: Extreme Sculptor
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009, by Lindsey Westbrook
This is only Allison Smith's third semester teaching at CCA—she moved to the Bay Area about a year and a half ago—but she's already hit the art scene here with a powerful dose of positive energy.
She's hosting regular monthly get-togethers in her Oakland studio/home/storefront space SMITHS, inviting makers of all sorts—"from tinsmiths to tunesmiths" as she likes to put it—to share their skills and engage in conversations about the social aspects of craft. SMITHS is inspired by the history of general stores as intimate spaces of public exchange. The intent is to find useful models for creative practice, especially in times of war and economic uncertainty.
On the day I visited in early November, the theme was "Letterpress Broadsides and Beercraft." As I entered, more than a dozen local letterpress artists were displaying their work and engaging in a free exchange of prints. Subsequently, the Bay Area art critic and independent curator Patricia Maloney, her partner Smitty Weygant, and their friend Brian Andrews explained the history and chemistry of beer making (then sequestered themselves in the kitchen to brew a new batch). The rest of us gathered around a long table, and several local letterpress luminaries, among them CCA's beloved professor emerita Betsy Davids, led a roundtable discussion on the history of the medium, its special importance in Bay Area radical politics, and where it's going in today's increasingly digital world.
Courtney Dailey, a CCA Curatorial Practice graduate student and cofounder of Projet Mobilivre-Bookmobile, an annual touring library/gallery/exhibition, predicted with confidence the continued rise of letterpress in popularity and usefulness. Blogs may be picking up where the old, photocopied zines left off, she said, but individuals who still have the urge to create objects, to put text on a page in a personal, handmade way, are turning to letterpress and finding it a beautiful and elegant mode of self-expression.
After the discussion there was free handcrafted Smiths beer. Named for Smitty [Smith] Weygant, each batch is dedicated to an artist friend. Thus, Allison Smith Red Ale was served with pizza from the local worker-owned cooperative Arizmendi Bakery. And everyone got to take home a letterpress broadside made by CCA graduate students in Smith's Material Practice project seminar.
Plenty more is afoot at the SMITHS compound: Artadia just announced its 2009 San Francisco Bay Area awardees, and Smith (along with James Gobel of CCA's Painting/Drawing faculty) were the two big $15,000 winners. SMITHS was recently awarded a Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure grant. And Smith will be a Headlands Center for the Arts artist in residence in 2010.
Even more exciting, SFMOMA has invited Smith to set up a SMITHS "outpost" in the museum as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. On the big kickoff day, Saturday, January 16 from noon to 10 p.m., visitors to the museum's fifth floor will experience an immersive installation titled Fancy Work. Fancy Work looks back to an exuberant pre-modern moment in craft history known as American Fancy, which encompassed everything from patchwork quilts inspired by the 1816 invention of the kaleidoscope to punched-tin lanterns that created glittering patterns of projected light.
Smith's presentation will be a unique combination of psychedelic light show and quilting bee. She's working with more than 25 local makers to create a monumental patchwork quilt composed of more than 2,400 hand-printed linen diamonds. This vibrant, dizzying wall work will serve as a projection screen for an electrified candle in a giant mirrored sconce, scattering kaleidoscopic light in a thousand directions. Visitors will navigate the space holding punched-tin lanterns, turning light and shadow into moving patterns. Meanwhile, Smith and others will provide a hauntingly beautiful auditory atmosphere on musical saws.
Fancy Work is the first in a whole series of SMITHS-SFMOMA participatory programs and projects, continuing for the rest of that weekend and then monthly throughout the spring, culminating Memorial Day weekend.
Smith's interest in the convergence of art and war is inspired in part by SFMOMA's original location in the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue. There, during World War II, the Red Cross Arts and Skills Service taught some 14 different arts and crafts skills, including metalwork, needlework, and ceramics, to wounded veterans. The SMITHS-SFMOMA projects are part of a CCA studio course titled Extreme Sculpture, in which a group of students will work with the museum's education department to revive some of these semi-lost arts via a series of "skill-sharing" events that involve both civilians and soldiers. The series, Smith hopes, will help deepen the public's understanding of contemporary conflicts and how we envision ourselves in relation to "the war effort" today.
The Extreme Sculpture course is part of a new CCA initiative called ENGAGE at CCA, which combines the Community Arts Program's successful model of community involvement with the project-based learning approach of the architecture and design disciplines. Each course connects interested faculty (in this case, Allison Smith) and academic programs (Sculpture and graduate Fine Arts) with community partners (SFMOMA and local veterans' organizations) and relevant outside experts (historians, art therapists, et cetera). View a map of all the spring 2010 ENGAGE at CCA sites.
Details of the SFMOMA programs are still firming up, so check SFMOMA's site or www.allisonsmithstudio.com for more info in the spring!
Sign up for Allison Smith's mailing list by emailing smithsgeneral@gmail.com.
Categories: Community Arts Featured Fine Arts Sculpture
Common Cents: CCA Students Take on Predatory Lending in Oakland
Posted on Thursday, June 4, 2009, by Kim Lessard
Struck by the devastating impact of the current economic recession on lower-income communities, CCA students Arya Cayton and Yennika Ekstrand decided to make their senior thesis project about the issue of predatory lending, a practice known to be a major culprit in the global economic crisis. Both students graduated this past May, Cayton from the Community Arts program with a concentration in sculpture and ceramics, and Ekstrand with an Individualized Major with a focus in animation and screenprinting.
They approached the issue on a micro level, focusing specifically on the check-cashing and "payday" stores that primarily do business in lower-income, minority communities. "Because we are artists, not economists," said Cayton, "we viewed our activities as a creative investigation. Our goal was to better understand and share with others how predatory lending affects people in Oakland. We wanted to narrate the voices of the community."
The two students interviewed more than 25 people, including several who have become trapped in a cycle of debt due to these businesses' extraordinarily high interest rates and hidden fees. The interviewees shared personal stories about their experiences, their thoughts on class divisions and equal opportunity in Oakland, their subjective definitions of the American dream, and their opinions on the changes they've observed locally since the onset of the recession.
During their research, Cayton and Ekstrand learned that these stores are a $400 billion industry in the United States. With more than 33,000 locations nationwide, they outnumber Starbucks and McDonald's combined, and they are eight times more prevalent in communities with predominantly black or Latino populations. Very few customers pay off their loans by their first pay period. Most never get caught up; in fact, close to 90 percent continue indefinitely in a cycle of borrowing and then owing more and more fees and interest. In California alone, payday and check-cashing stores take in approximately $450 million in fees every year.
Cayton and Ekstrand incorporated their interviews and research into a written thesis and a mixed-media interactive sculpture called Common Cents, which included posters, ceramic figures, a map of store locations in Oakland, piggy banks, photographs of the interviewees, and four video monitors that played the interviews. The work was exhibited in April on CCA's Oakland campus, and then again in May on CCA's San Francisco campus as part of the year-end Baccalaureate Exhibition.
Cayton hopes that giving voice to the community will inspire some kind of action toward finding a better, fairer solution, perhaps the formation of check cashing cooperatives. "But it's complicated," she observes. "The problem is that local cooperative banks would have to compete with payday stores. I've noticed that check cashing and payday stores are strategically placed in lower-income neighborhoods so that people don't have to walk far to find one. In some areas there are multiple stores on the same block. For local cooperative banks to really be beneficial, they would need to be just as accessible."
About CCA's Community Arts Program
CCA's Community Arts Program is an interdisciplinary BFA program devoted to creative practice in the public sphere. It focuses on the ways artists and designers interact, collaborate, and intervene in a variety of social networks in order to build sustainable community relationships, engage cultural diversity, and stimulate social transformation.
CCA encourages students in all programs to explore ways in which they can use their skills and training to be of service to their communities. This is evident in the college's long history of engaging students in studio collaborations that aim to find creative solutions to society's most pressing problems on the local and the global levels.
Students are also encouraged to participate in programs offered through CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, which organizes community partnerships, emphasizing service learning, civic engagement, and diversity. The Center also provides students with funding opportunities for art and design projects that address issues of social justice, diversity, community development, and education.
Categories: Community Arts Featured Individualized Major
CCA Students Give Oakland Landmark a Facelift with Murals
Posted on Friday, March 13, 2009, by Kim Lessard
Community Arts student Camille Hoffman painted this mural that depicts welcoming, diversity, history, and Temescal Creek
CCA students Camille Hoffman (Community Arts) and Vanessa Ayala (Animation) received an enthusiastic reception from City of Oakland residents and business owners, as well as officials from PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric Company), for four new murals that have brightened the staid facade of the substation in the Temescal and Telegraph Avenue Business District.
With bold colors and lively subjects, the murals celebrate the culture of the neighborhood, which is growing and revitalizing. Hoffman and Ayala each painted two murals on large-scale wood panels that are now affixed to the PG&E building, which is located at Shattuck Avenue and 52nd Street. They are the first in a series of 49 panels planned for the landmark building's two-block span of exterior, as part of the Temescal Mural Project.
The murals convey a sense of welcoming, depicting images that focus on the diversity and history of the Temescal area. In one of her works Ayala juxtaposes figures of Native Americans surrounded by open land with a steam locomotive and what appears to be an early municipal building, creating a visual past-to-present narrative.
In one of Hoffman's murals, four figures—representing African, Asian, Hispanic, and European descent—stand with their hands interlocked. It is an homage to noted muralist William Walker's All of Mankind, a high-profile mural painted during the 1970s on a church in Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project. The building is currently under threat of demolition due to the ongoing redevelopment of the area (see related links below).
Hoffman and Ayala created the murals as part of CCA Community Arts faculty member and artist Ray Patlan's mural class. As his students continue to design and paint the additional panels, he will oversee the project to completion.
The Temescal Mural Project is a collaborative effort among CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, the Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District (Temescal Telegraph BID), and PG&E. The BID approached the Center for Art and Public Life in 2005 with the idea to beautify a building that stands at the gateway to the fast-developing neighborhood. It's location is prominently visible from Highway 24.
The project endured a three-year bureaucratic approval process alone, but according to the organizers the successful outcome has inspired PG&E to pursue similar community art projects in other California locations.
Related Articles
- Ray Patlan teaches Public Art Collaboration in the Community
(Center for Art in Public Life news) - Save the All of Mankind Mural
(Chicago Public Art Group)
Categories: Animation Community Arts Diversity Featured
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