Featured News
New York Times: Steven Leiber, Dealer in Artists' Ephemera, Dies at 54
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Allison Byers
Steven Leiber, a San Francisco art dealer and collector who became an expert in artists’ ephemera and built an archive that became an important resource for scholars and curators, died on Jan. 28 at his home there. He was 54.
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 back 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 >>>Graphic Designer Michael Sun Trades CCA for the NBA
Posted on Thursday, February 2, 2012, by Simon Hodgson
"Zero to hero" is a cliché in sports movies, but how does a sports-obsessed graphic designer make the leap from rookie to professional? Growing up outside Detroit, Michael Sun (Graphic Design 2010) was always a fan but never thought of sports as anything more than a hobby or entertainment. Then after attending the University of Michigan and receiving a teaching degree, he came to the sinking realization that teaching might not be for him. He admits he needed some direction.
Read the rest >>>Jonah Ward: Sparking a Process That Burns
Posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2012, by Christina Linden
(This story is by the writer and curator Christina Linden.)
Jonah Ward (Glass 2006) makes his work with molten glass . . . but the glass is absent in the finished pieces. With deft movements he pours the material onto wood panels laid out horizontally on the floor, creating a crystalline tracery. "People are always asking me if Jackson Pollock is my favorite painter," he quips. There's definitely some logic to the comparison: the substrate laid flat, the artist standing above, crouching and extending his arms in sweeping motions. Ward's movements are more like those of someone spreading honey from a dipper on (giant) morning toast, though, and necessarily involve a great deal less spattering and flinging. In the end he removes the solidified glass from the wood, and the burnt patterns left behind constitute the artwork in its final form: ready like a palimpsest, with shadows that trace of the nimble choreography of the artist's actions.
Read the rest >>>Creator Curator: SFMOMA's Joseph Becker on Sets, Space, and Sailing
Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012, by Simon Hodgson
Joseph Becker (BArch 2007) comes from a creative family: In the 1980s, his parents combined their film and education backgrounds to open Southern California's first Gymboree kids' program, and his sister has her own fashion line. His North Hollywood high school actually offered classes in set design, and he further developed what he calls "a taste for space" with classes in architecture and design at UCLA and Art Center College of Design. He arrived at CCA in 2002 to formally begin his undergraduate studies with a plan to become a product designer, but he switched to architecture during his first year. He is now an assistant curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
How would you sum up your CCA experience?
There was a real sense of connection to San Francisco. With the Architecture faculty made up of professors who were also designing independently, I knew I was learning from people who were actually doing things. The studio environment, with late late nights and a palpable energy buzzing around you, was catalytic. You could get everything out of it if you put in the work, and if you were motivated by your own inquisitiveness.
Read the rest >>>Visiting Artist Amy Franceshini's "Not a Trojan Horse" Awarded Inaugural A|W|E Grant ($10,000)
Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012, by Jim Norrena
When is a Trojan horse not a Trojan horse?
The exhibition This is Not a Trojan Horse by Fine Arts visiting faculty member (and founder of the artists’ collective Futurefarmers) Amy Franceschini and writer Michael Taussig, a professor of anthropology at the European Graduate School, earned them the first Artists | Writers | Environments award (the A|W|E Grant) as well as a $10,000 award.
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 >>>Source4Style Tags CCA's Fashion Design Program Among "Top 10 Sustainable Design Universities"
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012, by Jim Norrena
Source4Style, an online marketplace for trendsetting designers who seek cutting-edge materials for their design needs, called out CCA's Fashion Design Program as an innovative leader in the sustainability movement, ranking the college's design program fourth in its "Top 10 Sustainable Design Universities" December post!
Read the rest >>>