Newsroom

Read why the eight-foot-tall sculpture depicting an Afro pick with a Black Power fist raised to the sky—created by Hank Willis Thomas (MFA Photography, MA Visual Criticism 2003)—is being called one of the most influential works of American protest art.

Alum Diedrick Brackens (MFA Fine Arts 2014) told Vogue that his exhibition, 'Darling Divined,' at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin in October, “feels like a homecoming.”

Read how Victoria Wagner, a senior adjunct faculty member in CCA’s First Year Core Studio program, became inspired to work with salvaged redwood for the sculptures in her solo show, Everglow, at the Maybaum Gallery.

Architects from CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab are helping the Presidio Trust and National Park Service restore native oyster habitats at Crissy Field by installing specially designed fiberglass panels. Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

CCA alum Tosha Stimage (MFA Interdisciplinary Studies 2016) is the first artist featured in YBCA’s new Lawn Art Project, which presents colorful social distancing artwork by local artists to reimagine how we can safely gather in person once again.

CCA students Parker Crumley and Sarah Jane Walcutt’s project, “Wearable Labeling Technology for the 21st Century,” was awarded an honorable mention in the Innovation by Design Awards, recognizing the best student-designed projects of 2020.

Painter Robert Bechtle was a cherished member of the CCA community for nearly 70 years, as a student (BAA Interdisciplinary Design 1954, MFA Painting 1958), longtime faculty member (1957–1985), and Honorary Doctorate recipient (2007).

In spring 2020, Sayer Al Sayer (BArch 2020) examined the spatial, social, and political properties of communal utopias, seeking to understand the relationship between ideology and form. Read more on Scaffold, CCA Architecture’s website.

"Race and Modern Architecture" challenges the architecture field to write race back into its history by confronting how racial thinking has intimately shaped some of the key concepts of modern architecture and culture over time.

Ceramics Monthly highlights the work of Shalene Valenzuela (MFA Ceramics 1997), who uses trompe l’oeil “with a twist,” reimaging everyday objects into more than meets the eye.

In A Countervailing Theory, Toyin Ojih Odutola (MFA Painting & Drawing 2012) tells the story of “two lovers caught up in a matriarchal society” through 40 illustrated black canvases.

Patricia G. Lange wins the 2020 Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression.

Indigenous designers and designers of color in academia are laying the foundations for new design methods that decenter white European-based visual culture. Communication Arts features practitioners and educators decolonizing design in its latest issue.

CCA Dean of Design Helen Maria Nugent spoke with Pier 70’s Marcy Coburn for the organization’s weekly conversation series “Pier 2 Peer” about CCA’s campus unification, Founders Hall, and how creativity and design can help people be resilient.

Lava Thomas (BFA Ceramics 1999) and Marcela Pardo Ariza were named the recipients of the 13th annual San Francisco Artadia Awards, which includes $10,000 in unrestricted funds and access to Artadia’s artistic programs.

Tunstall visited CCA in February before COVID-19 hit and said her “mind was blown away by the passion and the meaningfulness of the projects” that students were doing through the Decolonial School.

Miramax TV has optioned the rights for CCA alum Alka Joshi’s (MFA Writing 2011) best-selling debut novel, The Henna Artist, for a TV series produced by and starring Freida Pinto.

Nastaran Mousavi (MArch 2013) talked to Design Milk about growing up in Iran and the places, people, and things that inspire her.

Sofía Córdova (MFA 2010), Chanell Stone (BFA Photography 2019), and Lava Thomas (BFA Ceramics 1999) were announced as finalists for this year’s Artadia Awards. (Photo of Lava Thomas by Justine Danielle Marasigan.)

Art critic Barry Schwabsky examines “how the act of scrutinizing art online has changed the role of the critic” and draws attention to CCA alum Maja Ruznic’s (MFA Fine Arts 2009) work.