The next time you butter your bread or pinch some salt or add crème fraîche to your coffee while dining at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, the world-renowned eatery known for using local, organic foods and credited as the inspiration for the style of cooking known as California cuisine, you'll likely be holding a piece of art made by CCA ceramicist Travis McFlynn (Sculpture 2013).
Read the restPosted on Thursday, November 1, 2012 by Jim Norrena
Posted on Monday, October 22, 2012 by Matthew Harrison Tedford
During the height of the Arab Spring, Zena Adhami (MFA Design 2012) was watching from her apartment in San Francisco as revolution erupted back home.
She decided to make it the subject of her CCA graduate thesis: an examination of the specific media and technologies that were making it possible for her to stay informed from halfway around the world.
This time of upheaval also represented a culmination of Adhami's efforts to reconsider graphic design as a more politically engaged pursuit. "Every once in a while there's a degree of social consciousness among designers, but usually I feel that they're talking to themselves, and that's a failure of design intelligence," she opines.
Read the restPosted on Monday, October 15, 2012 by Rachel Walther
Natasha Wheat (MFA 2011) won't let you appreciate her work sitting down. The audience is always required to engage socially in order to fully appreciate it. Wheat's installations and performances are constructed environments that examine the power dynamics inherent in modern society.
You may know Wheat from her contributions to CCA's 2011 Bean-In, an all-day event that involved free bean-based meals, lectures, and conversations centered on the idea of agriculture-as-resistance. She's one of the featured artists in the CCA Wattis Institute's fall show When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, open now through December 1.
Read the restPosted on Monday, October 8, 2012 by Clay Walsh
Congratulations to all the student finalists in CCA’s third annual R.A.W. Photo (real artists @ work) contest, which featured the theme “I Belong at CCA.”
Contestants were challenged to submit images that depict a project, moment, mood, or other quality of CCA life taken from a student perspective. As expected, the results were as varying as the students themselves!
Read the restPosted on Friday, September 28, 2012 by Chris Bliss
A new survey confirms it -- a CCA education leads to career success.
California College of the Arts ranks first among art and design schools in the country for alumni with the highest-paying jobs, according to PayScale, a compensation data company, in its 2012-13 College Salary Report.
Read the restPosted on Monday, September 24, 2012 by Allison Byers
When Illustration chair and Distinguished Professor Dugald Stermer passed away in December 2011, the CCA community experienced a monumental loss. The life and work of Stermer, our “beloved cowboy” chair of the Illustration Program, will be celebrated October 1-12, with the memorial exhibition Drawing the Line.
Read the restPosted on Thursday, September 20, 2012 by Chris Bliss
Sandrine Lebas, creative director at the San Francisco firm LUNAR, has been appointed chair of the Industrial Design Program at California College of the Arts (CCA). The undergraduate program is one of the largest programs at the college with approximately 155 students.
Lebas was selected after an intensive international search. Previous chairs of the program have included fuseproject founder Yves Béhar and design scholar and CCA Distinguished Professor Steven Holt.
Lebas commented, “Drawing from 15 years of core industrial design experience in the Bay Area and Europe, I am thrilled to become a key contributor of the CCA design community. The craft assets of the college resonate with my design beliefs of thinking and making, allowing students to develop their own design voice through experimentation and creative intuition.”
Read the restPosted on Sunday, September 9, 2012 by Allison Byers
"We’re All Here Because We’re Not All There”
September 27 through October 27
This year CCA celebrates 25 years of the Barclay Simpson Award -- a social and historical record of the past quarter of a century -- with a special retrospective exhibition, We’re All Here Because We’re Not All There, and an accompanying catalogue that features works by select recipients.
Read the restPosted on Wednesday, September 5, 2012 by Chris Bliss
California College of the Arts (CCA) is pleased to welcome several new full-time faculty members and four new undergraduate program chairs for 2012-13 academic year.
New Program Chairs
Architecture is now headed by Mark Donohue, principal and cofounder of Visible Research Office; his focus is on researching new fabrication techniques and innovative materials.
Read the restPosted on Tuesday, September 4, 2012 by Allison Byers
An architectural social stage. Whispering walls. A suspended streetscape installation. These are just a few of the innovative and dynamic contributions from CCA faculty and students featured in ZERO1 Biennial, opening September 12, 2012, in San Jose.
Contributors include Architecture faculty members Mona El-Khafif, Jason Kelly Johnson, Nataly Gattegno, and Christopher Haas, alumnus Mark Campos (BArch 2010), and student David Gastaneta (BArch 2013).
Read the rest