Tara Tucker is a Bay Area-based visual artists. Tucker studied sculpture at California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, receiving both her BFA and MFA from the college.
Read the restPosted on Monday, August 6, 2012 by Matthew Harrison Tedford
Every five years the art world descends on Kassel, Germany, for Documenta. For 100 days, venues across the city present one of the world's largest and most prestigious art events to hundreds of thousands of visitors. The 2012 edition is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and features an all-star list of hundreds of international artists, from William Kentridge to Song Dong.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, July 26, 2012 by Victoria Deblassie
This is a story by CCA alumna Victoria DeBlassie (MFA 2011) recounting her study-abroad trip to Italy in summer 2010. It inspired her to apply for a Fulbright grant to return to Italy, which was accepted!
Learn more about CCA's study-abroad programs, hosted by the Office of Special Programs.
Tuesday, July 14, 2010: I'd been traveling throughout Italy for more than a month and had just arrived in Rome. My eyes, heavy from the long trip from Venice and the dense summer heat, glanced at the marquee of the building where I was staying, one floor of which was the Lilium Hotel. I did a double-take when I saw the neighboring proprietor's name: Di Blasi, the original Italian version of my own last name!
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Allison Byers
San Francisco-based artist Mia Christopher is making leaps and bounds with her new body of work, which includes paintings and drawings made from a range of alternative materials- confetti, glitter, iridescents, eyeshadow, and lipstick. After graduating with a BFA from California College of the Arts in May 2012, Mia’s prolific process of making hasn’t slowed down for a second.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, July 5, 2012 by Allison Byers
Mary Meyer was once a painter whose sartorial ambitions exceeded her wallet’s limitations. Thus, she began making clothes that she wanted to wear. And people just started buying it off of her. She’s still a painter. As a graduate of California College of Arts & Crafts, her fine arts skills take the place of the a design background.
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, July 3, 2012 by Lindsey Westbrook
Woodcut
Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
Hardcover, 128 pages, $29.95
If there is, indeed, nothing lovelier than a tree, the Connecticut-based artist Bryan Nash Gill (MFA 1988) shows us why. Creating large-scale relief prints from the cross-sections of trees, the artist reveals the sublime power locked inside their arboreal rings. Gill creates patterns not only of great beauty but also year-by-year records of the life and times of fallen or damaged logs. He rescues the wood from the property surrounding his studio and neighboring land, extracts and prepares blocks of various species (including ash, maple, oak, spruce, and willow), then makes prints by carefully following and pressing the contours of rings and ridges until the intricate designs transfer from tree to paper.
The results are colored, nuanced shapes -- mesmerizing impressions of the structural integrity hidden inside each tree. These exquisitely detailed prints are collected and published here for the first time, with an introduction by the esteemed nature writer Verlyn Klinkenborg and an interview with the artist describing his labor-intensive printmaking process. Also featured are Gill's series of printed lumber and offcuts, such as burls, branches, knots, and scrubs.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, June 28, 2012 by Amanda E. Gross
Within the next few weeks, the three teams of CCA students who won IMPACT Social Entrepreneurship Awards will be heading to Alaska, Tanzania, and Mexico to attempt innovative social transformations. Bolstered by the support of their $10,000 IMPACT grants and their community partner organizations, the teams -- KVAK TV, JuaBar, and 20/20 FOTO -- will work to empower three different communities to address pressing local concerns. Each team brings together a mix of graduate and undergraduate students from different academic programs.
IMPACT is one of the anchor programs at CCA's Center for Art and Public Life, providing students with opportunities to build relationships for social change. It is about innovation, community, collaboration, and making. It celebrates the entrepreneurial drive of CCA students combined with their desire to create a tangible, positive influence within a specific community.
Read the restPosted on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 by Chris Bliss
Harrell Fletcher (MFA 1994) invites busking musicians to take their performances from the tube stations and streets of London into the gallery to play live and online to the BMW Tate Live Performance Room's global audience on June 28.
Read the restPosted on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 by Allison Byers
East Bay ceramicist Brük Dunbar explores ecological catastrophe of the Southwest in her new show.
A few years ago, when East Bay ceramic sculptor Brük Dunbar was on a trip with her mother through her homeland, deep in the badlands of New Mexico near El Malpais National Monument, she encountered a sheepherder. "This guy was totally off the grid — well, there is no grid out there," Dunbar recalled. "We met him standing under a sign that read, 'I'm an attorney. Were you a miner in the 1960s? I can help you.' The whole place is ruined by uranium mining!"
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 by Rachel Walther
When CCA alumni (and married couple) Kevin Krueger and Kristin Olson (both Individualized Major 2011) were looking around the Bay Area for an affordable studio the year after graduation, they found their dream space at 1158 Howard Street in San Francisco, formerly the home of leather bondage shop Stormy Leather.
There was just one problem: With its multiple ground floor rooms, basement areas, and loft, it was simply too large for their needs. "We didn't know what to do at first with that much space," remembers Krueger. But then the answer presented itself: They opened up their more-than-enough studio to a larger community of friends and colleagues. Staring in January 2012, the newly named Alter Space began hosting a series of exhibitions, workshops, and live performances.
Read the rest