Diversity News
Jacqueline Francis: Making Race: Modernism and "Racial Art" in America
Posted on Tuesday, February 7, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Making Race: Modernism and "Racial Art" in America
University of Washington Press, 2011
Paperback, 256 pages, $40
Jacqueline Francis (Visual and Critical Studies and Painting/Drawing faculty) explores the flowering of racial art rhetoric in criticism and history published in the 1920s and 1930s, and analyzes its underlying presence in contemporary discussions of artists of color. She specifically looks at the cases of Malvin Gray Johnson, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Max Weber, three New York artists whose work was popularly assigned to the category of "racial art" in the interwar years of the 20th century. The term was widely used by critics and the public at the time, and was an unexamined, unquestioned category for the work of non-whites (such as Johnson, an African American), non-Westerners (such as Kuniyoshi, a Japanese-born American), and ethnicized non-Christians (such as Weber, a Russian-born Jewish American). The discourse on racial art is a troubling chapter in the history of early American modernism that has not, until now, been sufficiently documented. Francis juxtaposes the work of these three artists in order to consider their understanding of the category and their stylistic responses to the expectations created by it, in the process revealing much about the nature of modernist art practices.
Read the rest >>>Kota Ezawa: Upstairs, Downstairs
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Kota Ezawa: Upstairs, Downstairs
University of Idaho, 2010
Paperback, 36 pages
This is the catalogue for Film faculty member Kota Ezawa's exhibition Upstairs, downstairs at the University of Idaho, Prichard Art Gallery in 2010. The catalogue was cowritten by Ezawa, CCA Writing and Visual and Critical Studies faculty member Kevin Killian, and Roger Rowley. It presents work in a number of different forms using older technologies as well as new media. The artist selects from sources such as news stories, lectures by prominent figures, fiction and nonfiction film, and even the history of photography for particular elements that comment on our media overloaded environment.
Read the rest >>>NY Daily News: 'Question Bridge: Black Males' at Brooklyn Museum
Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012, by Allison Byers
It’s not easy to get 160 black men from 11 American cities in one room to talk about their identity.
So the four collaborators who created “Question Bridge: Black Males,” the latest multimedia exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, did the next best thing.
Read the rest >>>SheWired: California College of the Arts Debuts Official It Gets Better Video
Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2012, by Allison Byers
California College of the Arts (CCA) has joined the It Gets Better Project, an online video campaign aimed at eliminating suicide among LGBTQ people by providing real-world testimonials illustrating hope.
CCA is the first arts college in the US to submit an official college-wide It Gets Better video. The video features students, alumni, faculty and staff who volunteered to share their life experiences regarding coming out and living openly as a member of the LGBTQ community.
Read the rest >>>Student-Made "It Gets Better: CCA" Exemplifies Making Art that Matters
Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, by Jim Norrena
California College of the Arts proudly announces the release of It Gets Better: CCA, the official college submission in the It Gets Better Project, a national gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth suicide-prevention campaign. CCA is among the first art colleges to create an institutional video for the internationally recognized project.
Read the rest >>>Queer Comic Artists ENGAGE a "New" Writing Genre
Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012, by Jim Norrena
CCA is no stranger to branching out in various genres when it comes to the arts. The college's undergraduate Writing and Literature curriculum is no exception. In spring, the ENGAGE: Queer Comics Project course provided graphic novel enthusiasts the unique opportunity to not only study writing and graphic design but also to do so within a queer perspective!
Read the rest >>>An Evening with David Sedaris to Benefit CCA Scholarships
Posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, by Chris Bliss
Best-selling author and NPR humorist David Sedaris will appear at a special benefit reading for California College of the Arts (CCA) on May 3, 2012, at Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. The evening will include a reading from new and unpublished material, a book signing, and, for sponsorship donors, a VIP cocktail party with the author at Berkeley Art Museum. Proceeds will benefit the CCA Scholarship Fund.
Read the rest >>>"Question Bridge," by CCA Alumni and Faculty, Debuts at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier
Posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, by Allison Byers
On any given day we encounter dozens, even hundreds, of people who are different from us: a different race, a different gender, a different class, a different age . . . We intellectually understand that our own identity is multifaceted, yet sometimes we cannot help grouping people into stereotypes, even within what others would consider a diverse demographic.
A team of four artists—CCA Photography faculty Chris Johnson, two CCA alumni, Hank Willis Thomas (MFA and MA Visual Criticism 2004) and Bayeté Ross Smith (MFA 2004), and Kamal Sinclair—have begun a far-reaching conversation on this topic, engaging a diverse group of African American males in a question-and-answer exchange. Their innovative trans-media project is entitled Question Bridge: Black Males, and it seeks to represent and redefine black male identity in America.
Read the rest >>>Two CCA Finalists Soak Up Some Visibility in Design*Sponge Scholarships
Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, by Clay Walsh
Congratulations to Justin Carlisle-Andgrand and Kate Nartker, each a finalist in the 2011 Design*Sponge Student Scholarship!
About the Design*Sponge Scholarship
Now in its fourth year, the Design*Sponge Scholarship is $10,000 in awards for full-time undergraduate and graduate students studying art and design. The scholarship was created to support the creative endeavors of the awardees and can be spent without restriction to support their pursuits (internship abroad, tuition, technology, supplies, etc.).
Read the rest >>>SF Gate: Taha Belal: Newsprint, revolution inspire artist
Posted on Monday, January 9, 2012, by Allison Byers
Taha Belal was educated in Europe and the United States, but he chanced on the most exciting moment to move back to his native country and be schooled on the making of revolution. Just months after he relocated to Cairo, where he was born, from the Bay Area, where he received his master of fine arts at California College of the Arts, the first protesters of the Egyptian uprising began taking to the streets, eventually toppling the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
Read the rest >>>