International News
Maja Ruznic's Big Break: "Intimate Scale Belies Powerful Punch," says New American Paintings
Posted on Saturday, May 5, 2012, by Christina Linden
Maja Ruznic's painting Self Portrait as Mother of All Evil was recently featured on the cover of New American Paintings. That, plus the sudden flurry of activity that has followed (including a hefty feature on ABC news and commissions from around the world, have been extraordinary and gratifying, and the biggest break thus far since her graduation in 2009 from CCA's Graduate Program in Fine Arts. The acclaim is certainly well-deserved for this busy and driven artist, athlete, activist, social worker, and dedicated family member, whose practice and personality reflect her unflagging optimism and perseverance -- and the conviction to keep making work that feels urgent, instinctual, and necessary.
"When I found out that I made the cover, I was ecstatic!" Ruznic exclaims. "When the edition came out and I saw it, I started crying. I could not believe it. And it has been completely transformative. People have contacted me from all over the world -- Puerto Rico, Japan, Croatia -- to buy my work. I definitely feel that the cover has somehow 'legitimized' me as an artist." She is particularly excited about a commission from the medical doctor, clown, performer, and social activist Patch Adams to create a painting for his hospital.
Read the rest >>>CCA Faculty Brian Conley Delves into the Iraqi Contemporary Art Scene
Posted on Friday, April 13, 2012, by Simon Hodgson
Fine Arts faculty member Brian Conley spent part of his fall 2011 sabbatical in the Middle East assisting in the launch of a new nonprofit organization, Sada (Echo) for Contemporary Iraqi Art. Sada was founded just last year by the Baghdad-born curator and Fulbright fellow Rijin Sahakian, who saw a critical need for support in the creation, presentation, and preservation of contemporary art in Iraq.
Read the rest >>>2012 International Education Week
Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2012, by Joyna Heinz
November 12–16, 2012
Download the International Education Week schedule »
A joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to recognize the global exchange environment between the United States and other countries, International Education Week (IEW) is a celebration and promotion of international education and exchange.
Read the rest >>>CCA’s Summer International Programs Build Skills and Community
Posted on Tuesday, March 6, 2012, by Allison Byers
Starting at a new school can be an exciting yet nerve-wracking experience. Will I like my teachers? Will I do well in my classes? Will I be able to talk about my ideas and be understood? Will I be able to find my way around? Will I make friends? What about my roommate?
Read the rest >>>In Search of Todd Shalom
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Simon Hodgson
In a New York borough, a group of walkers meanders through the city. They stop and look around. They close their eyes. They listen. They are participants on a walk with artists from Elastic City, a conceptual walk organization founded by CCA alumnus Todd Shalom (MFA Writing 2004). Lauded by the New York Times, the Economist, and even illustrated in the New Yorker (that's how you know you've really arrived!), Elastic City has organized walks from Brooklyn to Brazil.
Shalom's title at Elastic City is producer and director. He designs and leads some walks, and also commissions other artists to create walks. The walks focus less on providing factual information and more on heightening the senses, uncovering the poetry of everyday places, and creating new group rituals in dialogue with public space. Each walk is an artwork. Lucky Walk, by Shalom in collaboration with Juan Betancurth, revealed lucky and unlucky traits within New York architecture. It encouraged participants to engage in rituals to eliminate bad luck and bring forth good luck. Homesickness by the urbanist Einat Manoff examined the group's physical surroundings as a mirror into its collective homesickness, testing possible interventions in space and discussing the theoretical perspectives offered by urban theory and environmental psychology. Other 2011 walks included City Island Hop by Andrea Polli, Love Spells by Emily Tepper, and Total Detroit by Niegel Smith. In this last, participants started out walking in LaGuardia Airport in New York and then took a plane to the Motor City, where they continued the 56-hour performance.
Read the rest >>>California College of the Arts Presents Place=Basho: Osaka/CCA Printmaking and Graphic Design Exchange Exhibition
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012, by Allison Byers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
California College of the Arts presents
Place=Basho: Osaka/CCA Printmaking and Graphic Design Exchange Exhibition
February 15-22, 2012
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 >>>Despite Challenges, International Students Offer Diverse Perspectives and Unique Opportunities for Cross-Cultural Learning
Posted on Thursday, December 15, 2011, by Allison Byers
The number of international students at California College of the Arts has significantly increased in the past few years. For the fall 2011 semester alone, the college welcomed 123 new degree-seeking international students, and seven exchange students.
For some of these students, English is not their first language, they have never set foot in San Francisco, and are completely foreign to the culture typically found at an American art college. These students come to CCA to learn English as a second language (ESL), engage, and create, but often must overcome quite a few daunting challenges.
Read the rest >>>San Francisco Sister City Visiting Artist Chiharu Shiota Featured in Special Exhibition
Posted on Wednesday, December 7, 2011, by Jim Norrena
California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Protocol, and the San Francisco‐Osaka Sister City Association are pleased to present a special exhibition by San Francisco sister cities visiting artist Chiharu Shiota. Shiota is currently teaching at CCA as a Graduate Program in Fine Arts visiting faculty member, and was recently a guest lecturer for CCA's Design and Craft Lecture Series.
Shiota is a Japanese performance and installation artist now living in Berlin. She is best known for creating environments that are room-filling and monumental, yet delicate and poetic. She focuses on themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood, and dealing with anxieties. Many of her installations involve impenetrable webs of black thread that enclose household and everyday objects: a burned-out piano, a wedding dress, a lady's mackintosh, sometimes even the sleeping artist herself.
Read the rest >>>Public Art, Public Debate in Northern Ireland with Pablo Cristi
Posted on Thursday, December 1, 2011, by Christina Linden
“In Northern Ireland,” says Pablo Cristi (MFA 2010), “everything is overtly political. If you want to know what a large percentage of the people think, read the walls.”
Anyone involved in cultural production today -- but especially those in public art -- hope more than anything that their work will be noticed and elicit meaningful audience reactions. In the case of a commissioned mural painted by Cristi and a few collaborators in Derry, Northern Ireland, the work fueled a vivid public debate. When petitions start circulating, well -- there’s your noticeable and meaningful reaction. And while the experience certainly put Cristi in the hot seat for a few tense weeks, he also deeply valued the public discussion and dissent motivated by the project.
Artists Collaborate
Cristi was one of four American artists -- the others were Sidd Joag (New York), Ernel Martinez (Philadelphia), and Man One (Los Angeles)—invited to Derry to do the mural commission and lead a series of classes and workshops in four different communities, each of which then had its own additional mural project. The Playhouse Derry-Londonderry organized their activity as part of an urban arts program called the What If? Project, which is part of a three-year initiative funded by the European Union Regional Development Fund called the International Culture Arts Network (ICAN). ICAN’s ambition is to bring “world-renowned artists to the counties at the interface of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic” in order to “bridge barriers between current and formerly conflicted areas worldwide.”
Read the rest >>>