IN FLUX:
Recalibrating the Unknown
March 21 - May 12 2024
Presented by San Francisco Artists Alumni (SFAA) at the Museum of Northern California Art (monca)
Image credit: Saeri Kiritani
IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
From the SFAA Board
The formation of the San Francisco Artists Alumni (SFAA) marked a pivotal moment in San Francisco Art Institute’s (SFAI) history—a testament to the enduring bond between alumni and their commitment to preserving SFAI's illustrious legacy. SFAA’s mission: to advocate for our alumni, foster a sense of community, and celebrate a century and a half of artistic excellence—and all of this could only be accomplished with the help of many alumni volunteers.
SFAA is entering its fourth year. We can now reflect on the myriad opportunities and experiences with which we, as an organization, have been able to enrich our community. From saving student transcripts to offering monthly artist lectures - we are now showcasing our alumni artwork on a global stage. Our newsletters, alumni social gatherings, and film screenings deepen our connection to one another and to our individual histories with SFAI.
The current exhibit, IN FLUX, of art created by SFAI alumni, faculty and staff at the Museum of Northern California Art is a collection of works on the topic of reimagining and reshaping our understanding of the unknown. Artist, alumnus and former SFAI faculty member Jeremy Morgan curated IN FLUX with the support of Eve Werner and Julie Blankenship.
We extend our gratitude to the Museum of Northern California Art’s Executive Director, Patricia Kemeny Macias, the dedicated staff, and volunteers whose tireless efforts made this exhibition possible. Above all we are deeply grateful for the generous participation of the artists who made this exhibition possible. Together, we celebrate the indomitable spirit of the SFAI community.
This exhibition was made possible by a grant from the Erna Clifford Charitable Fund and by the generous support from John Marx, John Sanger and all SFAA donors.
Welcome to IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown.
Sincerely,
SFAA Board Members
From the monca community
The Museum of Northern California Art (monca) is thrilled to be collaborating with the alumnae of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in a most important and healing exhibition, In Flux: Recalibrating the Unknown, work from past students, faculty and staff through 2022. When approached with a proposal for this exhibition, monca felt it was important to offer a space for these artists to continue to show their work, to gather together and to bring back fond memories.
Since 1871, SFAI has been a revered art school, nurturing artists who have broken barriers, ventured into unknown places and created some of the finest artwork experienced over the past nearly 150 years. This exhibition not only gives us a glance at what was created during those years but also gives the SFAI artists a chance to reconnect, tell stories and look toward the future.
monca is most grateful to have the opportunity to help facilitate this exhibition and to be a part of the healing process for the many alumnae, collectors, faculty and staff. Your creativity was fostered there and will remain with you forever!
Pat Kemeny Macias Executive Director, monca
Curator’s Statement
As the curator of the In Flux exhibition, I've had the privilege of orchestrating a gathering of diverse energies and forces converging at a particular moment in time and space. The word “Flux” itself speaks to reality in motion, change, and transformation, while In Flux signifies the intersection of these dynamic energies.
In our present moment, the world is experiencing unprecedented levels of flux across socio-political, cultural, environmental, and climatological dimensions. It's a time of heightened intensity, marked by uncertainty, anxiety and possibilities. In the midst of this turbulence, art emerges as a vital means of exploring our understanding of reality and grappling with the mysteries at the heart of existence.
Artists function on multiple levels as makers, facilitators, thinkers, and perception-shifters, engaging with the fundamental possibilities of freedom and imagination. I personally believe that artists still retain some aspect of the Shamanic. They work as conduits between the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknowable. Art, at its essence, is the moment where acts of imagination become facts of imagination and where the maker and the audience converge in a shared experience. The beauty of art is in its capacity to remind us of that which is truly significant, engaging, and meaningful.
The theme of "INFLUX" invites us to consider the complexities of our present moment and reflect critically on our experiences. For those of us involved in this exhibition, our connection to the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) runs deep, as students, staff, or faculty. The illustrious history of the school is part of our lived reality, shaping our perspectives and practices. We remember what a wonderful “cauldron of creative activity” San Francisco Art Institute actually was, while celebrating a sense of an unfolding and redefining of SFAI community’s traditions and concomitant visions.
We celebrate the diversity of approaches and processes evident as our artists communicate their observations and experiences. This exhibition serves as a testament to the vibrant creative community that once thrived at SFAI. Despite its closure, the spirit of the institute lives on in this 4
IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
work, reminding us of the power of art to captivate our attention and communicate profound truths.
I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all who have contributed to this exhibition, recognizing the logistical challenges and the collaborative effort required to bring it to fruition. As curator, my goal has been to create the most inclusive space possible, one that celebrates individual expression while fostering a sense of community and collective reflection. May this exhibition serve as a testament to the enduring legacy of SFAI and the transformative power of art.
Jeremy P. Morgan Curator, In Flux: Recalibrating the Unknown March, 2024
IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
Notes on the collaborative installation
The day that I arrived at SFAI, a second-year student announced that my time there would be transformative. Indeed.
Four years later I received my MFA from SFAI as part of the school’s tiny, battered, and final graduating class of 2022. The Covid 19 epidemic and the school’s unraveling informed my experience of the school. The largest class I had was a Zoom class of ten or so other students. In person classes were smaller, consisting of just a few students. I loved most every minute of it: the mind-bending brain stimulation, the freedom to think and make, the location (that view), and most of all my cohort and instructors. Now, as lead coordinator of IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown, I’ve been in touch with the 170 plus artists in the exhibition and feel more a part of SFAI’s legacy than ever before. It’s been wonderful.
The SFAI community suffered the traumatic loss of their school. I live in Chico, California where the Museum of Northern California Art is presenting IN FLUX. The traumas of this region’s destructive wildfires underscore the exhibition’s theme of recalibrating the unknown. You see this playing out worldwide, too. When people lose their communities, whether it's from fire or flood, climate change or war, they are forced to leave what they know. They are forced to face the unknown.
Motivated by these powerful local and global forces, the collaborative project, Articles of Belonging, emerged from the planning stages of the exhibition. Conceived and orchestrated by a cohort of SFAI alumni representing seven distinct nationalities and spanning three continents, the project includes opportunities for local, regional, and world-wide community participation throughout the exhibition’s run.
Eve Werner Curator, Articles of Belonging, collaborative installation
IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
What To Do in Case of Crisis: SFAI Artists Address a World in Flux
Essay written by Margaret Crane
“When there's no roadmap, how do we carry on?” said Eve Werner, one of the last cohort of students to receive degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). In 2022, after years of drama, conflict, and failed rescue attempts, SFAI, the oldest fine art school in the Western United States, closed its doors. “Its geography is gone, but SFAI still exists in many forms,” noted former SFAI painting instructor Jeremy P.H. Morgan. “Everyone that inhabited it carries the experience wherever they go.”
Nearly two years after its demise, SFAI’s resilient culture lives on. Morgan is the curator of the exhibition IN-FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown. The exhibition features work by more than 170 SFAI alumni, ranging from those who attended SFAI in the 1960s to the last graduates of 2022. Morgan chose to accept everyone who applied to exhibit. “Let's not make this a ‘best of’ exhibition,” he said. “Let's make this a show in which everybody counts.”
The exhibition’s organizers regard the end of the school as an opportunity to explore “possibilities within the current dynamic fusion of social, environmental, economic, and epidemiological challenges.” Werner, the exhibition’s lead coordinator, commented, “Tapping into creative energy and using it to confront crises, that’s what the exhibition is all about.”
IN FLUX’s artists are the inheritors of a long tradition of fearless innovation. Throughout its 152-year history, SFAI was at the forefront of new ideas and cultural movements. In 1880, it hosted the first public demonstration of Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope, a precursor of the movie projector. In 1945, Ansel Adams founded the country’s first department of fine art photography. Beginning in the 1970s, artist and instructor Carlos Villa’s series of events and classes, Worlds in Collision, helped ignite the movement for inclusion and diversity in the arts.And the tradition continues. Since the school closed, SFAI’s artists and scholars have pioneered a new decentralized paradigm for the arts and community.
IN FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
Reflecting on SFAI’s legacy, Morgan noted, “The Art Institute's magic, like any great educational institution, was to recognize that education is not training. It requires expanding consciousness and awareness. The artist’s role is to be the lens by which society can look at itself.”
Informed by the loss of the renowned school and events of a radically changing world, IN FLUX is a project of SFAI’s alumni association, San Francisco Artists Alumni (SFAA). It is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition presented by the organization to date. “It’s a behemoth,” said Werner, “a messy volunteer-run process that's also super unifying.”
SFAI’s alumni association has played a crucial role in nurturing its vibrant culture in exile. In the waning days of the school, the organization formed to support students and alumni during the isolation of the Covid pandemic and the school’s financial turmoil. There are now 3000 active members around the world. Online and in-person exhibitions, such as IN FLUX, are among the association’s many projects.
A psychologist as well as an artist, SFAA President Maria Theresa Barbist credits the school’s teaching philosophy for imparting the tools needed to navigate the unknown. “There’s an object lesson here for artists and non-artists. The combination of deep critical thinking, finding your own voice, and creative expression, this is what SFAI taught us—and these are the tools that can carry you through crises of all kinds.”
The exhibition’s location at the Museum of Northern California Art, in Chico, California provides a potent context. In recent years, the nearby Butte County towns of Paradise and Berry Creek were destroyed by devastating wildfires. Close to 50,000 people lost their homes. Climate refugees have migrated to Chico. Many remain unhoused.
“I am not afraid to reveal disaster,” commented IN FLUX artist Patricia Diart. “Within the catastrophic, there is also the chance to repair.”
On a 12-foot black cape, Diart hand-embroidered a letter to her police officer father. It describes the violence suffered by her family at his hands. Chronicling her experiences, she took The Cape across the country, wearing it at police stations, city plazas, museums, and protests. For IN FLUX, a photo shows her dressed in the cape outside San Francisco’s Central Police Station.
Many of the exhibition’s artists confront powerful forces head-on: family abuse, geopolitical conflicts, homelessness, anti-Asian violence, and more.
Maya Smira’s Iran-Israel embodies tensions between interpersonal connections and political realities. In the video of the durational performance, two women (Smira and S.H.) form a triangle, each balancing and pushing against the other’s outstretched hands as, over time, exhaustion sets in.
A harsh security light illuminates a small peaked-roofed house placed on the sidewalk of an industrial neighborhood. The photograph documents a site from Eric Araujo’s The Shelter Project. Beginning in 2015, before the inception of the tiny home movement, he built and positioned small-scale homes in neighborhoods experiencing homelessness. The shelters disappeared from the streets, but their images remain.
Using herself as the stand-in for a multitude of real-life characters, Zimo Zhao’s series of photographs, How I Die During Covid-19, recreates news reports of anti-Asian hate crimes.
Appearing as victim, witness, and investigator, Zhao makes and rephotographs miniature models of the crimes. Her work in IN FLUX depicts the attack of an elderly man in Oakland, California’s Chinatown.
Visitors will also find sites for regeneration and contemplation embedded throughout the exhibition.
The collaborative project, Articles of Belonging explores community as a mode of healing. Around 25 of the exhibition’s artists contributed to the project which activates small spaces in the museum—a closet, two fireplaces, and a library. An aural component is created by an ambient soundtrack.
Articles of Belonging considers the SFAI and Butte County communities, each with their own challenges and losses. At the same time, the project relates to universal concerns. “The intent is to be calming and soothing,” said Werner. “We're trying not to be directive, but simply providing these spaces and seeing what happens.”
FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
Process and materials are important. A closet becomes a meditation area. Visitors can knit blanket squares or assemble squares contributed by members of the SFAI and local communities. They can relax on bean bag chairs made from Tyvek, a material used to make protective garments and safely insulate homes. The sewing team darned and sutured antique quilts to create security blankets. All are welcome to wrap themselves in a quilt while looking at the exhibit.
Widening the perspective, participants around the world are invited to respond to the prompt, “How do you—belong, mend, thrive, survive, live, make sense, cope, struggle—in a world in flux.” The stories shared at SFAA.art are displayed on blanket-swathed monitors tucked into the museum’s fireplaces.
How do we proceed through a world in flux? Creating art as the lens through which we see ourselves, fostering restorative environments, and maintaining vital person-to-person connections—these are strategies for recalibrating the unknown. Just look at SFAI. Its recent arc is the stuff of legend. An extraordinary institution crumbles. Its iconic location is lost. A powerful culture endures, encoded in the actions of those nurtured by the institution. Survivors band together. They move forward into the future.
“SFAI, with its beautiful campus, was like our home,” said Barbist. “The loss was traumatic for us all. For students and those employed by the school, it was even more dramatic. But we are more than a campus. In the end, we transformed. As a community, we are still here. And now, we are ready to do great things.”
This article contains excerpts from the article The Rise, Fall and, Reinvention of The San Francisco Art Institute, to be published this spring by East of Borneo
ARTWORKS
1 DAN AKE
SFAI Alumni MFA
1976-1978
LSD Series #1
2022
Digital Photograph 24" x 36"
This photograph is part of a series I’ve been working on for a few years. The LSD title is a reference to where the photo was taken. The Lower Sunset District but clearly it has a double meaning. There are numerous vehicles in the neighborhood that have fallen to the terms of the environment. Foggy, salty and moist atmosphere. They really don’t have a chance. What they do provide is a virtual sculpture garden of rusted, decayed and dissolving objects of beauty.
2
RICHARD H. ALPERT
SFAI Alumni MFA
1971-1973
https://www.richardalpertartist.com
Earshot 2017 Video 5:03
Earshot (2017), initially performed in 1982, is a cautionary metaphor about seeking to control and influence various political elements. Moving steel spheres representing different elements in a glass container reach a symbolic critical mass, mirroring the delicate balance within our political landscape. This is achieved by placing steel ball bearings into a large glass jar and swirling them around the surface walls of the glass container as fast as possible. Tension builds as all the forces inside clash, and the glass finally shatters. This is followed by an avalanche of steel balls tumbling and bouncing in slow motion toward the camera lens, producing an otherworldly sound that gradually resolves into a distant silence. This film invites viewers to reflect on the unintended repercussions of political interventions and the potential for systemic breakdowns when manipulation reaches a tipping point.
DAWN ANDERSEN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1993-1996
Arctic Echoes 2023
Acrylic on wood
18” x 18”
RYAN ARAGON
SFAI Alumni MFA
2013-2015
https://www.aragonstudios.com
Land’s End 2015
Salvaged rubble, sand & sea
28” x 22"
5 ERIC ARAUJO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
https://ewaraujo.com/
If you lived here you'd be home by now - West Oakland House 2008
Photo on gatorboard 16” x 20"
The Shelter Project, which started in 2005 prior to the Tiny House trend, is a sculptural and social intervention that promotes an exchange between the artist and disenfranchised members of society. With the necessity for refuge and protection from the elements whether in a time of loss, a need for safety, or simply survival, I build small-scale shelters that are inserted in an urban area with evidence of homelessness. The structures are designed after common architecture found within the host city and are large enough to accommodate an average sized human with minimal possessions. These modest constructions are mostly made of salvaged materials and provide a temporary respite from the elements with no expectations for longevity or permanence. They are utilitarian objects that serve to illuminate the notion of stability provided by the image of a house. To date, all houses have disappeared shortly after being placed in the public realm and all that remains are photographs and some video.
6
ALEXIS ARNOLD
SFAI Alumni MFA/Faculty
2008-2010
Lightning at the Tail End of Summer 2022
mesh fabric, gouache, dye, acrylic, spray paint, canvas, artist’s frame 31" x 25" x 2"
A work from a series of light and space wall works that utilize painted and layered mesh fabrics to create experiences of fluctuating moiré patterns activated by viewer’s movements. The works explore perception of color, light, and material across time and space, and continue my exploration of using simple, analog materials to create the appearance of digital, kinetic effects.
7
PHIL ARO
SFAI Alumni MFA
1980-1983
Dieseland Screenshot North Hollywood 2023
Digital print
10.5" x 21"
"Dieseland Screenshot North Hollywood" is a Photoshop collage I made earlier this year. Its base image is from Google street view of a food stand I've known over the years. While it's mostly photo-based, I'm primarily a painter and collage maker. That said, I've also been a (part time) photographer for a good portion of my professional career primarily architecture, construction and work portraits.
Part of growing up in L.A. in the 60's and 70's was the pop-up immigrant communities (my dad was an immigrant too). So the take out restaurant pictured used to be a knock-off Der Wienerschnitzel named "Poochy's", which was around the corner from my family home. One day it unexpectedly changed hands and was the first place I experienced full heat Thai food. It made me want to go see the world.
ANAHID ARSLANIAN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1985-1988
https://anahida-creations.weebly.com
Rivers of Life, Anahida 2020
Acrylics on Canvas 30" x 14"
Surreal
SUE AUTRAND
SFAI Alumni BFA
1990-1997
2023
Encaustic and Collage 10" x 10"
Dreaming
10
CLAIRE BAIN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1985-1989
https://clairebain.com
S’Berries 2024
video with sound 1:45
Household colors, several selves sliding in and out of approximate alignment. A performance video processed with chroma key-a video editing technique that makes selected colors into windows from one layer of imagery to another.
There’s usually a hindrance to my movement in these performative videos, mostly due to my being unable to see, because I prefer to block my face. My preference is to be a figure in a space rather than a specific person performing themself. But of course I’m performing myself, hahaha!
In this piece my balance is challenged by dancing on the bed, lending a particular quality to the movement as inner gravity shifts.
BARBARA BALL
SFAI Alumni BFA
1968-1972
https://marinmoca.org/artist/658/barbara_ball
Still Working
2021 Oil on paper 15" x 22"
A piece from my series “Variations on the Flag” which I am doing for the purpose of inspiring unity in America through our mutual love of our beautiful flag.
12
HECTOR BARAJAS
SFAI Alumni BFA 2016-2020
Winged Querencia 2023
Oil Painting on canvas 20" x 48"
MARIA THERESA BARBIST
SFAI Alumni MFA
2011-2014
https://mariatheresabarbist.com
Fallstudie Trauma 2023
Video 2:48
JERRY
ROSS BARRISH
SFAI Alumni BFA, MFA
1970-75
https://jerrybarrish.com
Really Down 2023
assemblage found materials
32" x 13.5" x 17"
https://jimbarsness.com
The Great Comet 2022
Acrylic Paint 48” x 70”
16
STUART BASS
SFAI Alumni MFA
1977-1980
https://www.stuartbass.pictures
Alcatraz: Wasteland of Broken Lives #1 2023
Giclee Print on Sketch Paper 20" x 24"
Life persists through long-forsaken former prison buildings on the Island of Alcatraz.
BARRY BEACH
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2008
https://www.barrybeach.com
from the Accumulations series 2023 2023
reclaimed woods
68" x 13" x 13"
18 PAUL BENSON
SFAI Alumni BFA
1990-1993
2023
Encaustic on wood 8” x 8”
Untitled
SFAI Alumni BFA/Faculty
2013-2015
https://www.tishabenson.com
Ground Charm 2020 mixed media
1.5" x 22" x 31"
BLANCA BERCIAL
SFAI Alumni MFA 2018-2020
https://blancabercial.com/
ha hahaha 2022
Ink on paper 14" x 8.5"
Letter written in the last days of SFAI.
21
ROBIN L. BERNSTEIN
SFAI Alumni MFA
1987-1989
https://robinlbernstein.com
DePopulation 2021
String and Wax on Wood 45" x 34"
22
BRYAN BIRCH
SFAI Alumni MFA 2019-2022
Articles of Loss: Audubon Passenger Pigeon 2022
Inkjet print, Plexiglass, motor oil and forceps
20" x 20" x 2"
23 JULIE BLANKENSHIP
SFAI Alumni BFA+MFA, Faculty
1982-1987, 1994-2004
http://www.instagram.com/privateyesf/
Brickworks: Pull, Signal, Point Left 2024
Three mixed media works (ink and dust on found 19th century photographs) 6.5" x 4.25"
Responding to ways in which early photographic portraits embody class aspirations and fantasy, I work directly on the surfaces of found photographs, saturating their skin-like emulsions with ink. The images evoke sparks of humanity and ghostly fragments of invented stories, poking through decaying, semi-permeable walls of time and space. Inspired by archives, the work investigates collective amnesia and the changeable nature of identity--alluding to metamorphoses, dark histories and gothic struggles.
LISA K. BLATT
SFAI Alumni MFA
2004-2006
https://www.instagram.com/lisa_blatt
Corruption 1 2018
Archival Digital Photograph 16" x 20"
Microfiber from mops and glue installation sizes vary depending on the space
SFAI Alumni BFA
1976-1978
https://www.instagram.com/bockmier/
Palace of Fine Arts 2023
Giclee Print
32” x 25” Framed
HILARY BOND
SFAI Alumni MFA
2016-2018
https://www.hilarybond.com/
Chestnut Street III 2023
Dye sublimation print on aluminum 10" x 60"
Chestnut Street III looks at the closing of the San Francisco Art Institute. I wanted to express grief over the loss of a cultural institution, while remembering the school’s beauty and force within the Bay Area art scene.
JACK BOWERS
SFAI Alumni MFA
1979-1984
https://www.instagram.com/jackbowersartist/
Pandora's 1993
Aluminum and paint
15" x 20" x 2"
Now that we know the Viewer Effect appears to be an agreed-on principle in Physics many things change in the nature of reality. We bring our intentions to the table with every moment. How we view the present moment reflects who we are and reality feeds us back who we are. Seeing something in two alternating ways means we are noticing our thoughts and distinguishing between them. This is the intention of the artwork.
SUZIE BUCHHOLZ
SFAI AlumnI BFA
2000-2004
https://suziebuchholz.com/
2022 oil on panel 48" x 48"
Tracery
TRISTAN CAI
SFAI Alumni MFA
2011-2013
https://tristancai.com
If the World is Pink 5 2019
Photography, Archival Giclee on Baryta 28" x 44"
The earth has not always been green. It is thought that early earth was purple and pink due to the presence of retinal, and archea bacteria dated 4-5 billion years old, both of which can metabolize energy from light. In recent years, red algae has also increasingly bloomed in the warmer springs through summers in the European Alps, and sometimes earning common names such as watermelon snow and glacial blood. If conditions favor these microbes over chlorophyll in future, then perhaps we would develop purple and pink cones and everything around us would have to be imagined differently. If the World is Pink, represents the dichotomy of our collective anxieties around the climate change crisis and is also a proposal of hope for the future.
SFAI Alumni MFA
2001-2005
https://penelopecaldwell.com
Romulus and Remus Revisited 2023
Oil on paper
57" x 51 ½"
MIKE CALLAGHAN
SFAI Alumni MFA
2013-2015
https://www.mikecart.com
UN FU (red black white green)
2022
Digital Photo Collage 14" x 18" (framed)
This work focuses on fragmentation, rearrangement and reinterpretation -- considering the intimate cycles of identity, self-preservation and mortality - in a moment when frameworks of relationships are at once prominently visible and exhaustively hidden.
SFAI Alumni
2011-2019
https://rebeccachou.com
Journey1
2021
Acrylic on Canvas 36" x 36"
Artists from SFAI made a meaningful, life changing stop at SFAI, and now continue on in their lives' journey with a full heart.
LANA CITOWSKY
SFAI Alumni BFA
2003-2006
https://www.citowsky.com
Fish out of Water 2012 video 0:47
MONET CLARK
SFAI Alumni BFA
1990-1995
https://www.monetclark.com
Piggy Woman - Femme Fatale series 2022
Performance based photograph 30" x 20"
This piece is from my eco-feminist photography and video art series called Femme Fauna, which I perform in the natural world with my camera on a tripod. The works play off of Old Hollywood and the femme fatale troupe, supermodels, and advertising conflated with animal rights. They draw upon my tri-racial ancestry and my upbringing in the back-to-nature movement, and explore misogynistic cultural biases, exploitation, indigeneity, telepathic communication, mysticism and healing, or what I refer to as ‘holistic intersectionality’ relational to our ailing global biosphere.
MEGHAN OONA CLIFFORD
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
https://www.meghanoonaclifford.com
Loom 2023
acrylic on stretched canvas
30" x 40"
Loom is a vibrant dance of colors and forms, weaving themselves into existence. It's an homage to my Great-Grandmother Josephine, who was often found lost in meditation as she wove on her large basement loom, the shuttle in and out, over and under, again and again. From my Sea of Tranquility collection.
37
JOHN
COGGINS
SFAI Alumni BFA
1973-1975
40" x 26"
Blue Column 2023
Acrylic on paper on board
HOLLY COLEY
SFAI Alumni BFA
2004-2008
https://www.hollycoley.com/
Mistake in Blue 2023
Glazed stoneware 18'' x 14'' x 8''
Mistake in Blue is a picture object of my practice as an artist. Working in clay, there is a large margin for failure and faults in the natural material and user error. This work is a celebration of things gone not as expected, the days off I took when I should have been working, and letting the work grow on its own.
ALICE COMBS
SFAI Alumni MFA
2013-2015
https://alicecombs.com
Lake Street Lane Marker 2021
Graphite, legal pad paper
92" x 8.5"
During the pandemic, slow streets emerged as a widely popular balm to the isolation of staying home. With no cars on Lake street (in SF's Richmond neighborhood), I was able to make rubbings of the eroding lane markers. The drawing is meant to tower high, emphasizing the gulf between our idea of how we delineate and control space and the large, messy physical world those ideas actually play out in.
GARY COMOGLIO
SFAI Alumni BFA
1986-1990
https://www.garycomoglio.com/
Face to Face 2022
Acrylic on canvas 12" x 48"
In Face-to-Face, I am exploring the complexity between human experience and perception at this new frontier where man-made intelligence or artificial intelligence is emulating our natural human intelligence. Art and artificial intelligence are man-made products that provide an object, concept, or abstract that we may interact with and relate to, or evoke an emotion within us. Whether springing from the imagination of an artist’s consciousness or algorithmic calculations, we are not experiencing our world and each other directly, we are experiencing second-hand through the artist’s representation or a digital computation. Regardless of the lens, what an individual feels and perceives is experienced as authentic and real.
41
EMILY JANE CORBETT
SFAI Alumni 1996-99
2023
B & W silver gelatin print 14" x 11"
The View from the Tower
42
CHRISTINA CORFIELD
SFAI Alumni MFA
2008-2010
https://tinacorfield.com
Views of Wayward Conduct: Occupy 2018
Hand marbled paper, ink, gouache, watercolor paper, bookboard, book glue 5" x 7" x 12" (extended)
The peep box was a virtual reality technology from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that generated realistic optical effects. Normally used to promote the sentiments and values of nationalism and Imperialism through wondrous scenes of “exotic” faraway lands, spectacular tourist sites and rousing feats of engineering, I have re-purposed the peep box for this project to instead celebrate and visualize contemporary scenes of political resistance, civil disobedience and pressing social and environmental issues
JAY DAMRON
SFAI Alumni MFA
1996-1998
http://www.thedirtfloorstudio.com
Balance Brace Wrestling Sticks 2023
Sculpture and Photo Documentation: Wood
46" x 26" x 2.5"
44
JOAN CLAIR DI STEFANO
SFAI Alumni BFA
1971-1975
https://artbydistefano.com
https://distefanostudio.com
Where Can i go from here? 2023
Acrylic on canvas 36" x 24"
Where do we all go from here????? OPTIONS ??
WYN DI STEFANO
SFAI Alumni BFA
2014-2017
https://www.wynsart.com
"Cannoli Brothers" 2023
Acrylic on canvas 36" x 36"
This painting is inspired by elements of my small cannoli business, which is a project I started during the pandemic as another avenue to be creative and share one of my favorite desserts with friends and family.
PATRICIA DIART
SFAI Alumni MFA
1998-2001
http://www.diartprojects.com
Central Police Station, 776 Vallejo Street, San Francisco, CA
February 8th, 2021, from 3:00 - 5:00 pm
Photographic Documentation from The Cape see link https://thecape.substack.com
Photograph by Chris Tuite 20” x 36”
This performance project was initiated after seeing the video of George Floyd’s murder. My cape is stitched with a letter to my father who was a white police officer in Baltimore. It is hand-embroidered. It tells of the domestic violence our family suffered while he was a cop. Though it is a personal letter, it is interwoven with various contexts that converge with civic conversations, and with some political events occurring right now and in the long history of America. The law enforcement system gave my father full power to act as he wished with impunity. In large part, because he wore a badge of law, he held immense reign over our lives. I traveled with my cape to police stations, city plazas, museums, and protests around the country to 30 sites.
IZZY DIER
SFAI Alumni BFA
2018-2022
https://www.instagram.com/izzydier
Self Femme-powerment
2022
Ceramic 8" x 8" x 8"
A visualization of something kind and without stigma towards my autistic diagnosis that I was given as a young child in 2002.
TERI DILLON
SFAI Alumni MFA
1991-1993
https://www.instagram.com/teridillonscott/
Multiplication 2023
Mixed Media on Paper 15" x 11"
49
ANNAMARTA DOSTOURIAN
SFAI Alumni
1990-1992
https://annamartadostourian.blogspot.com/
Hanging Gardens: Portals Open with Dissolution of Ideas of Permanence 2023
Metal and copper wire, embroidery floss from France, found objects, chain, crystal beads from Czech Republic, Japan and China, Swarovski Crystals 68" x 14.5" x 15"
Inspired by patterns of Armenian rugs and manuscripts, I have worked to create a language to highlight our colorful history. My artwork seeks to translate practices of crochet, knitting and weaving into a contemporary practice with industrial materials such as copper, bronze and silver wire. As rug motifs delineate sacred space and create magical windows, I work with patterns in three dimensions to create passageways to explore ideas of what is beyond our current context in order to provide a space of hope. I loop and stitch wire, revealing form and emptiness interlaced. This artwork appears and disappears in varying light, it is permeable yet has volume. My delight in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a wonder of the ancient world, felt to be taking shape as I created this. Perhaps endings are not final but what was lost will re-emerge in another space and time.
51
GLENDA DREW & JESSE DREW
SFAI Faculty
1997-1998 (Glenda), 1997-2002 (Jesse) http://www.redrocketmedia.com
Embarkation: Taking Off 2024
Inkjet on paper, QR code embedded in artwork 24" x 37"
Embarkation considers the simple act of “embarking” or the willful movement of people from one place to another. Whether it is for promise or peril, for adventurer or escape, people have embarked on journeys for millennia, but our world is simultaneously shrinking and becoming harder to traverse. Network and cellular technology allow us to effortlessly share our words, voices, and images with people around the world in virtual spaces. At the same time, rising xenophobia and bigotry coupled with the pandemic have shut down borders and restricted human movement to a level unforeseen in our lifetimes. Our conscious minds may travel the globe, but our bodies are under increasing restriction.
52
ELENI EXARCHOU
SFAI Alumni
1983-1986
https://www.eleniexarchou.art/
Victim Homage - Urban Mythology
2021 video 3:55 min
Eleni Exarchou puts up a map of all inhabited regions stamped by the audience with a "yes" or "no" in reply to the artist's question: Is there space for a life with dignity? At the same time, she uses toe tags to collect signatures for the victims of migration on the other side of the planet. The ongoing work Victim- -Homage comments on violent displacement and the brutal violation of human rights. It aims to cultivate consciousness and empathy for a timeless and universal problem. It is completed with an in-situ installation by Exarchou of a series of little houses -every man’s dream - on a wall full of graffiti. Putting up the ephemeral mythical city is performed under the live sounds of songs of emigration and mourning by the Isokratisses polyphonic ensemble. Bia Papadopoulou Art Historian, curator, under the auspices and financial support of the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports. Link to video
53 DAVY FIVEASH
SFAI Alumni MFA
2007-2009
https://fiveashart.com
The Ascension 2023
charcoal on paper, fabrics on stretched canvas 60" x 72"
My work is inspired by the culture of my youth in a small evangelical community in southern Georgia. I use crafts, fabrics, bible stories, allegory, to recreate symbolic stories of my own in a reflection of our belief structures and notions of self identity.
PETER FOUCAULT
SFAI Alumni MFA
2003-2005
https://peterfoucault.wordpress.com
All Systems Go #2 2022
Multi-color screen print
30" x 22"
SFAI Alumni BFA
2000-2007
https://www.geddesart.com
2020...after Munch
2020
charcoal, oil, acrylic 42" x 32"
Painting 3 of Red|Black|War Series. These paintings are inspired by Goya’s Disasters of War. They represent powerful symbols that are profoundly personal yet universal. They offer catharsis and a way to document the plight of refugees and victims of war.
SHEILA GHIDINI
SFAI Faculty
2000-2001
https://www.sheilaghidiniprojectspace.com
Full circle 2023
Graphite and color pencil with metallic ink
33" x 28"
SFAI Staff
1871-2023
https://www.instagram.com/sfai_ghost/
Hauntings 2022
video and still images 5:00 min
59 PAUL R. GLAVIANO
SFAI Alumni MFA
1984-1989, 2001-2004
https://paulglaviano.com
Giants Killing One Another On The Battlefield With God's Help 2002
Hand Colored Dry Point Etching 18" x 24"
This Artwork is part of The Book Of Giants series of etchings and large scale collage drawings.
RICHARD GOLDBERG
SFAI Alumni MFA
1980-1987
https://rgoldbergartworks.com
Rackets #23 2017
Wood, paint, silk flag, graphite, photograph, epoxy, aluminum
15" x 20" x 6.5"
61
KRISTEN
GUNDLACH
SFAI Alumni
2021-2022
On the Edge of Eve 2022
24" x 18"
Acrylic on canvas panel
62 KEITH HALE
SFAI Alumni/Faculty 1989-1993, 2001-2013
'Tute Steps Forward, One Step Back 2023
Ink on oak board from original Diego Rivera Gallery floor 35.5" x 2.5"
When SFAI replaced the floor of the Diego Rivera Gallery, someone working on the project gave me one of the floor boards as a keepsake. I've had it in my studio over the last 20+ years and often mused that Diego and Frida had once trod on this wood. Perhaps they even danced on it as I and countless other students and artists have. When I got the announcement for In Flux, I decided it was time to turn the board into art.
63
SAMANTHA HANSEN
SFAI Alumni
2017-2019
Thrifting 2017
Photo on Canvas, Acrylic on Canvas
12" x 18"
64
CHARLOTTA HAUKSDOTTIR
SFAI Alumni MFA
2001-2004
https://www.charlottamh.com
Resurgence IV 2023
Archival inkjet prints, hand cut and layered with mixed media 14" x 22"
Witnessing the impact of climate change, my work aims to articulate the evolving landscape. Cutting up and assembling photographs of nature in various patterns encapsulates both the devastation wrought upon nature and the potential for proactive human intervention. This piece was inspired by nature's resilience where grass can often be seen growing out of concrete cracks suggesting renewal and hope.
SFAI Alumni BFA
1998-2001
https://www.instagram.com/clarehebertartist
2023
Acrylic/Wood 10"x10"
Black/White/Grey
MIRA HECHT
SFAI Alumni MFA 1996-2001
https://mirahecht.com
Untitled #8 2004 oil and cold wax on linen 18" x 18"
Using abstract imagery, repetition and layering, I seek to coax meaning out of form and process. This piece which was created right before I moved from SF to DC where I live today, still exemplifies, 19 years later, the focus of my work....the human condition....the predicament we all find ourselves in. In order to sustain the life of our precious planet, and to awaken to the fleeting quality of the present moment, we must acknowledge and honor - in the way that we live - that all of life is fragile, impermanent and interdependent.
67
THOMAS M. HOUSTON
SFAI Alumni BFA
1982-1984
https://houstonscustomframing.com/thomas-m-houston/
Foxglove 1995-2023
Pastel on museum board
14.25" x 8.5"
CYNTHIA ONA INNIS
SFAI Faculty 1995-2006
http://www.cynthiaonainnis.com/
Little Pinnacles
2019
Acrylic paint, ink and fabric on wood panel 11" x 14"
Inspired by geologically dynamic and sublime locations in California, I’m interested in natural forces at work, above and below the earth’s surface, in ways that continue to shape the landscape. Fusing together my observations, including the physical aspects of my compositions, I manipulate various fabrics and paint, and then recombine these materials through sewing and more painted layers to reference natural processes. Painted bands are offset creating fragmented instances, mimicking the kinetic energy of tectonic plates. As with filmstrips that splice together moments, the collision of forms allows for numerous perspectives, capturing varied viewpoints and intertwining multiple moments in time.
69
TUESDAY IVERSON
SFAI Alumni
2019-2021
portrait of phoebe 2023
stoneware, underglaze, gold luster
17" x 18" x 8"
SFAI Alumni MFA
2007-2009
https://clairejackel.com wildfire
2016 oil on panel
12" x 20"
71 MARTINE JARDEL
SFAI Alumni BFA
1992-1994
https://martinejardel.com
Non Lieu 16
2022
acrylic paint on canvas
36" x 48"
A play with colors, marks, and movement in search for harmony and contentment.
72
JEFF B. JOHNSTON
SFAI Alumni MFA 2014-2016
Topographia: Origin of the Continents 2023 Ink on paper
25 1/4” x 19 1/8” x 1.5" (in frame)
TOBY KAHN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1970-1972
https://tobykahnphotography.com
FREEZE! (From the Billboard Series.)
2013
Gelatin silver photographic print
13.25" x 9" Framed 16" x 20"
FREEZE is from a series of photographs co-opting commercial billboards to subvert their messaging. In this case an innocuous advertisement for a police TV series becomes a loaded social commentary.
PATRICK K. KELLY
SFAI Alumni MFA
1997-1999
https://patriciakkelly.com
Now, Navigating Uncertainty 2023
Egg tempera, earth and mineral pigments on khadi paper 12" x 9"
Navigating uncertainty
JEFF KEY
SFAI Alumni MFA
1970-72
https://www.jeffmkey.com
Vessel #56—Release 2016
Wood & Flax
76" x 12" x 17"
Wall piece from "The Vessel Series".
SAERI KIRITANI
SFAI Alumni BFA
1991-1993
http://www.kiritani.com
Rice Myself
2005-2017
Photograph 20" x 21.4"
I look different, I eat rice, I am an Asian. I covered myself with rice. I find myself torn –sometimes deliberately trying to appeal to my natural existence, and sometimes I just want desperately to blend in.
KATHRYN KNIGHTSBY
SFAI Alumni BFA
1981-1986
https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-kathryn-knightsby
In A Fish Bowl 2023
Acrylic and metallic pen on canvas 24" x 24"
A painting about death as it interacts with life as food on a daily basis.
SFAI Alumni MFA
1994-1996
https://www.kuperberg.com/
I Forgot My Question
2020
Giclee Print
30" x 20"
This photo is part of an ongoing series called "Brain Fog" which attempts to recreate my daily mental state as a middle aged person.
80
BIANCA LAGO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2021-2022
In Transit 2023
Acrylic on wood panel
15” x 26”
81
MICHAEL LAROCCO
SFAI Alumni BFA 2017-2019
https://www.mlarocco.com
Lullaby To My Father 2019 video 5:19
A filmmaker pieces together fragments of his father’s military service during the Vietnam War in order to explain his absence.
SFAI Alumni MFA
1977-1978, 1981-83
https://kirkleclaire.com/
"They" 2022
Acrylic on Paper 60" x 45"
From a series of portraits painted during the pandemic.
83
MIDO LEE & BRADLEY HOFFARTH
SFAI Alumni MFA / SFAI Alumni BFA
2010-2012 / 2006-2008
http://www.midoleeart.com
https://vimeo.com/achromaticsolarium
In flux. 2019 video 5:00
in flux. is a collaborative music video project between myself and Achromatic Solarium, co-directed by Bradley Hoffarth. The video endeavors to depict the tumultuous state of the human psyche suspended between realities.
Following my divorce in 2017, I found myself thrust into a surreal realm where the distinction between waking life and dreams dissolved. The narrative unfolds with eerie ambiguity—a funeral cloaked in mystery, the identity of the departed elusive until the unsettling realization dawns that it may be my own. Lost in a forest adorned with leaves akin to fragments of memory, I grapple with the disorientation of my mind. Amidst this turmoil, a woodland creature lurks, a silent witness to my unraveling. As I wake up in my own bed, the creature inexplicably materializes beside me, blurring the line between dream and reality. Through the evocative soundscape crafted by Achromatic Solarium, we strive to convey this psychological discord in a visceral sensory experience. Each frame and note captures the palpable unease and disconnect, mirroring the relentless oscillation between truth and illusion. in flux. transcends mere personal turmoil; it serves as a broader exploration of the fragile boundary between sanity and madness. It invites viewers to confront the visceral nature of existential dread and the enigmatic specter of the unknown that resides within us all.
84
NANNETTE LOVE
SFAI Alumni BFA
1979-1981
online portfolio
Sick Bacchus 2022
Gouache on board
7.25" x 9.25" framed
Saint Jerome 2022
Gouache on board
7.25" x 9.25" framed
Narcissus 2022
Gouache on board
7.25" x 9.25" framed
Darks and lights depict the overindulgent, the spiritualist, and the self-obsessed. A series of three individual gouache paintings framed in gold, hung close in a triptych fashion.
85
KELLEY MAC DONALD
SFAI Alumni BFA
1993-1997
Harmony, Hesitation, Hinder | Larkspur, California 2020
Archival Inkjet Print 30" x 24”
LEAH MACDONALD
https://www.leah-macdonald.com
87
MARSHALL MARICE
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
Entropy viewed as a material collision 2007
Photograph 14” x 11"
The almost culmination of the gravitational series, wherein I explored gravity’s feeling in real time using photographs as documentation. The feeling of gravity is ubiquitous, and most of us take it for granted. With this series I attempted to address that ubiquity with varying results.
SFAI Alumni MFA
1991-1993
https://www.minamarkovich.com/
Markovich_SAD_artwork2
2012
Acrylic, gold leaf, porcelain pieces, sand and PCBs on a puzzle board 9" x 11.5"
JEFF MAYLATH
SFAI Alumni MFA
2017-2020
https://jeffmaylath.com
Passenger Aggregate 2020
Sculpture 47" x 66" x 19"
The combination of disparate materials that form one object, the concrete aggregate is suspended in a wooden structure that suggests movement.
90 COLLIN MCEACHRAN
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018-2020
https://www.collinmceachranart.com
I Heard Singing At Twilight 2023
Acrylic on yupo paper 26" x 40"
Working with acrylic paint on yupo paper, Collin creates imagined landscapes and ethereal abstract spaces that address plasticity, modernity, and climate crisis through a psycho-geographical lens. He works on dozens of paintings at a time, allowing for formal and conceptual relationships to develop between the works. He chooses to work in this industrious approach to painting in order to mirror the pace and abundance of content and materialism in late stage capitalism. Using both additive and subtractive mark- making techniques with self-adapted tools and brushes, his painting practice is engaged in an exploration of light, time, space, color, flatness, and process in an attempt to render the sublime.
DANI MELEN
SFAI Alumni BFA
2014-2020
https://dmelen.weebly.com/
This Is Not A Self Portrait 2020
Charcoal powder on canvas, hand embroidered beads, gold "bitch" necklace, gold shadow box frame, burgundy velvet curtains, LED light strip, red lighting 30" x 40" x 5"
In a study of mediums involving complex juxtapositions and much manual labor, this piece incorporates painted charcoal powder on canvas, embroidered beading, and a constructed stage-like display. The theatrical spectacle implies the performance of gender identity and pushes the boundaries of what a painting is. I collage images of found objects and myself to paint an ephemeral assemblage of collective memory. This process creates an archive of my battered mindscape, blurring the lines between what is real and constructed.
DANIEL MELO MORALES
SFAI Alumni MFA
2013-2015
https://www.danielmelo.com
The Sonorous, Multiple, and Restless Becoming 2020 Video 3:00
93
FIAMMA MONTEZEMOLO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2009-2011
https://www.fiammamontezemolo.com
Traces 2012
Video 5:38 min of 20
In this video-essay contemplative images, confessions, theoretical reflections, and an enigmatic electronic musical motif merge to form a meditation on border life between the United States & Mexico. Based on both years of ethnographic work in Tijuana and an ascetic shooting schedule of 24hrs, the artist and anthropologist refracts her own experience in the region by attempting to sculpt a textured living portrait of the Wall that separates Tijuana and San Diego. Images of a rusty wall, unruly topography, decaying surveillance structures, furtive moments of undocumented migrant crossings, and dystopian landscapes are interwoven with a mournful voice-over enunciated from a different time and place.
The fate of the Wall is sealed: its remains are to be collected like forensic evidence by a visitor, perhaps another anthropologist and artist, perhaps another undocumented migrant, from the future.
LYNETTE MONTGOMERY
SFAI Alumni MFA 1995-1998
Tree Hollow 2 2023
Charcoal on BFK Rives Paper
30” x 40”
SFAI Alumni BFA
1991-1993
https://www.judemooney.com
Leah 2006
Gelatin silver print 10" x 8"
This series is from a collaborative project made with fellow SFAI alum Leah MacDonald, over a period of 20 years of photographing each other.
ROBERT MOYA
SFAI Alumni MFA
2008-2010
https://www.robmoya.com
La Otra Mujer 2023
Dried paint and found textiles inlayed into a found and painted book 6" x 10" x 1”
I’ve been using found materials and paint to make collages and assemblages. I’m interested in transforming these discarded materials so that they are unrecognizable. This book was found in the San Francisco Mission District, so I thought it would be perfect for this exhibition.
97
CORINNE NAKAO
SFAI Alumni BFA
1981-1985
Swimming in GU 2023
Oil on panel 12" x 12"
SFAI Alumni MFA 2005-2008
https://www.emmanuellenamont.com/
2023
Framed Archival Pigment Print
32.5" x 23"
Octavia
99
ELANIA NANOPOULOS
SFAI Alumni BFA
1978-1979
https://elaniananopoulos.art
Picnic With Jamie D. 2023
Acrylic on Plywood 10.75" x 11" x 1"
100
TOBAN NICHOLS
SFAI Alumni MFA
1998-2003
https://www.tobannichols.com/
Saturnine Tassajara
2016
Video
3:00
Toban Nichols video Saturnine Tassajara (2016) tells the tale of two monstrous outcasts, who, in the midst of existential crisis, set out on a hero’s journey to search for what is missing in their respective lives. Intertwining both the narrative structure of an Ancient Greek play and the compositional underpinnings of a pop song, the story alternates between four acts and three response choruses. Like Nichols’ photographic and videographic work, Saturnine Tassajara explores the formal possibilities of digital distortion and the randomness of glitch as an integral process of creation. The loose narrative is displayed through amorphous forms, which transform with each successive act as the video chorus shifts through a distorted wireframe rendering of the campy, cult porn Batdude. With both sections, Nichols may be drawing a connection between the randomness of technical glitch and unforeseen potentialities in life and love.
The video addresses issues of “otherness,” showing how those who do not easily fit into preconceived notions of normalcy are sometimes viewed as monstrous and undeserving of inclusion. As with the song snippet, from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, which opens the video, Saturnine Tassajara emphasizes the importance of love in our daily lives and its influence on transcendence, transformation and the conditions of identity.
101 ARIEL OAKLEY
SFAI Alumni BFA
2002-2006
https://www.arieloakley.com
Hubris and Nemesis 2023
Acrylic on Canvas 30" x 48”
SFAI Alumni MFA
1992-1995
https://yariostovany.com
Poet's Wedding 2021
Oil on canvas 20" x 16"
HENDRICK PAUL
SFAI Alumni MFA
2006-2009
https://www.hendrikpaul.com
2022
Silver Print (Photography) 8" x 10"
Celestial Wave
Gelatin
104
ANDY PEPPER
SFAI Alumni MFA
2016-2019
https://andypepper.art
Enough to Keep a Bird Alive (Great Basin) 2023
Inkjet on organic cotton sateen, salvaged polyester, salvaged elastic, staples, salvaged fishing rod
37" x 31" x 1"
My work connects LGBTQ+ bodies with wild places, making kin between queerness and wildness. I place my body in these works primarily through photos I take at these places, collaged with photos of sculpture. The resulting objects are constructed documentation of the performative act of visiting these sites, which is the backbone of my practice.
105
ROBERT PERKINS
SFAI Alumni BFA
1986-1991
https://robertperkinsstudio.com
say what you will 2021 oil, enamel and tempera 36" x 36"
Best thought of as a snake chasing its own tail.
Circular gestures of botanical and figurative motion, intertwined with layers of straight edged lines and geometric shapes, this lends to building a landscape for these gestures. Within this dance are pinpoints of tension, where the circular and hard line intersect. Color play adds to the tension and volume of the shapes. A push and pull of foreground perception.
BLAIR TYLER PETERS
SFAI Alumni
2020-2021
https://www.blairtylerpeters.com
Silver 2 2023
Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 18"
107
MELANIE PIECH
SFAI Alumni BFA
2008-2018
https://www.melaniepiech.com/
Your choice. Your life. Your rights. Despite what all those white men are saying. 2022 Video 4:07
States’ changing abortion laws in 2021 exposed a "right" people feel they have to make the decision on abortion for others. This piece focuses on the “reason” of “white maleness.” While we all know that males outnumber women in positions of political power, the voting of the white male legislators in this arena drives home the consequences of this power imbalance for women.
Recalibrating
COLLIN POLLARD
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018-2020
https://www.collinpollardphoto.com/
Roadmaps 2023
Acrylic paint, gouache, gloss paint, ink, stucco repair, and acrylpro, on canvas 30” x 24”
109
MICHAEL POLLARD
SFAI Alumni BFA
1994-1997, 2000-2001
https://michaelrobertpollard.net
Bat Salad Bowl Face 2000
Found objects, paint, pencil, marker 13" x 11" x 4"
110 MEL PREST
SFAI Faculty
2009-2010
http://www.melprest.com
Stormwalker 2023
Acrylic and mica on wood panel 60" x 60" x 2”
This title comes from a story told by an older woman who, as a child, was saved from a tornado by a recently deceased neighbor. She was hiding beneath a tree when he approached her and told her to hide in a gully. The tree fell but she was saved. My recent paintings are focused on sensation and vibration. I’ve been mining the inner and invisible, sound and feeling. The color is detached from any physical object and is personal; you are seeing something unknown reveal itself, become a painting in front of you.
SFAI Alumni
2021-2022
https://www.katalinaprince.com
Introflection
2019
Basalt Stone, Charred Old ‘GROTH’ Fir, Copper 9" x 10" x 17"
Weight and sea. Conduit of altar-ing.
SFAI Alumni BFA
1973-1975
https://vimeo.com/channels/guillermopulido/videos
2022
Collage-oil stick, oil paint, acrylic fragments, on canvas
33" x 44"
Untitled
113
GALE QUINSEY
SFAI Alumni MFA
1988
The Critique SFAI 1987 Oil
42" x 54"
SFAI Alumni BFA
2014-2018
https://www.cargocollective.com/alexraines
Gravel I, San Francisco, CA 2022
Ink Jet Print
30" x 24"
115
ROSE ANNE RAPHAEL
SFAI Alumni
2000-2002
Not for Consumption
2012 Ink Jet Print 19" x 13"
From a series of photos taken backstage at a production of Cabaret at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, for which I was scenic designer.
116
MOLLY RAPP
SFAI Alumni MFA
2021-2022
https://www.sadgirlstudio.com
Steel Wool Bed (8 Hours)
2021 Performance still 24" x 18"
I welded round bar into a bed, I wove strips of steel wool in between the bars of the bed. After lying on the bed for 8 hours straight, I began to sweat. The sweat began to rust the steel wool, leaving behind evidence of the body. In return, the bed left bruises on my body. I am interested in this exchange between me and the metal, the limits of the body versus steel.
The bruises were temporary, the bed continues to rust.
117
JOHN ROLOFF
SFAI Faculty
1973-1974, 1978-2017
https://www.johnroloff.com
Magma Chambers (Corvus/Orchidacaea/Kolumbus)
2016
Video 3:55
Video documentation of Magma Chambers (Corvus/Orchidacaea/Kolumbo), a site-specific project, for the exhibition Contemporary Scarecrows, Domaine Sigalas, Oia, Thera, Santorini, Greece, sited on the broad volcanic plateau at the northern end of the Greek island of Thera, part of the archipelago, Santorini, of the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean Sea. The reference to the crow (genus Corvus) in the title is as witness to the volcanic history of Santorini.The project is a ship-like structure, composed of 6 articulated, black ‘sails/wings/orchids’ mounted on 3 ‘masts,’ aligned to the prevailing winds as if ‘tacking’ a route against the flows of subterranean magma along the Kolumbo (Columbo) fault running between the main caldera of Santorini and the submerged volcanic center of Kolumbo to the north east of the island. The volcanic system of Santorini is part of the Hellenic Arc, a curved line of volcanic centers generated by the subduction of the African Plate beneath the Aegean micro-Plate beneath the Aegean Sea.
118 BRIAN ROTHSTEIN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1993-1995
https://www.brianrothsteinart.com
Be Gentle 3 2019 Oil on canvas 33" x 45"
Part of the on-going exploration of my relationship with the "Inner Child". A meditation on self-love and compassion and vulnerability.
119
DAVID RUIZ
SFAI Alumni BFA
1985-1989
24" x 20"
Polyphemus 2022 Oil
120
LYLA RYE & CHRISTINA LASALA
SFAI Alumni MFA
1992-1994
https://www.lylarye.com
https://www.christinalasala.com
Catch and Release, a collaboration 2018
Mixed Media - paper, rubber, acetate, copper tape 8.5" x 17” each (4 pages from 2 sketchbooks)
Catch and Release is a sketchbook exchange project that was a way to visually communicate over long distances. The exchange began with two identical sketchbooks and each of us responded to the environment of the grid and initiated an idea through drawing or collage. The sketchbooks were then exchanged and the other artist tried to catch the concepts evoked and resolve the drawing. We each released our drawings completely to the other to alter, extend or obliterate entirely. Christina noted that the process was like learning another person's way of speaking and developing a hybrid language, while Lyla thought of it like telepathy; as a way to try to read another’s thoughts.
https://www.michalsagar.com
Monie in the Mission 1993
Oil on canvas
40" x 30"
LEXYGIUS SANCHEZ CALIP
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018, 2020-2021
http://www.lexygiuscalipart.com/
Three Actions
2021 Video Performance 3:24
123
DARRYL SAPIEN
SFAI Alumni MFA
1971-1976
http://sapienfinearts.com
Worn Out Welcome
2006
Acrylic painted on hydrocal cast of found object, mounted on board. 24" x 17"
A painting of the torch held by the statue of liberty executed on a plaster cast of a doormat reading "Welcome". The cast broke during the drying process before painting, however in such a way that it suggested a title pertaining to the politics of immigration.
124
NAOMI ALESSANDRA SCHULTZ
SFAI Alumni MFA
2021-2022
https://www.naomialessandra.com
Bound I 2022
Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper 80" x 45"
This young tree delivery is depicted as a bound and enclosed body, a witch’s poppet, a fetish object. It is an absurd and unsettling marriage of organic plant matter with plastic packaging, rope, and tape. This hybrid object-creature encapsulates a corner of my current research at the intersection of new materialism, ecofeminist/queer ecology, and spellcraft; as well as my considerations of monumentality, the body as packaging, and the borderlands between “The Wild” and the human-built environment.
125
AHNA SERENDREN
SFAI Alumni BFA
2012-2014
https://www.ahnaserendren.com
Acrylic and sand on canvas 20” x 16”
I began this body of work during the pandemic, when I took a hiatus from my regular studio practice in order to care full-time for our two year old daughter, Eleanora. With parks, playdates and museums unavailable during quarantine, we ended up making regular pilgrimages to the beaches near our home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I see these paintings as records of how nature moves around and through us. The tides, changing conditions and ephemeral compositions of the shore mirror the endless flux and flow of our human lives, with their cycles of loss, grief, release and rebirth.
Grand Idle 2022
YAN SHAO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018-2020
https://shaoyan.art
Lived In A Sea
2020 Video
4:45
JIWOO SHIN
SFAI Alumni
2017-2018
amorcaeliveritas.com
kingdom come 2023
Video 3:09
128
UJJAYINI
SIKHA
SFAI Alumni MFA 2021-2022
36" x24"
An indigenous woman from Jharkhand, India, stands protector of the sal tree forests that have been around her family for generations and that provide sustenance and livelihood to her community even today.
Sal tree warrior 2024 Oil on canvas panel
SFAI Alumni BFA
2011-2022
https://www.cheo.me
Strangers 2023
Metal print with back frame 8" x 10"
The mute numbness of our existence.
SIMONE SIMON
SFAI Alumni MFA
1978-1980, 2010-2012
https://simonesimonart.com
the hue of air 2023
Acrylic on canvas 48" x 48"
This current series embodies meshing blobs of color, (frequencies) together to elicit different potentials. There are plans in the patterns and things are not what they seem. Look underneath, look to the side, look up.
JOEL SINGER
SFAI Alumni MFA 1974-1977
Adieu Beausejour 1975 Video 2:58
A farewell to the family home in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, Canada.
RENETTA SITOY
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
https://rsitoy.com/
The Shape Of You Too (Nuts! Coconut!) 2022 Video 3:16
The Shape of You Too (Nuts! Coconut!), explores the myriad meanings of love through Google-generated search results of the phrase, “I am in love with.” The anonymity of those who contribute to the results of this phrase and their expansive declarations of love for something or someone–ranging from a food item to the act of giving birth to a healthcare provider–reveals that in our solitude, what connects us are our secret desires, fears, weaknesses, and appreciation for the mundane pleasures in life.
SFAI Alumni BFA 1977-1979
https://www.500watts.com/paintings/
On my way... 2022
Acrylic 48" x 48" x 3"
MAYA SMIRA & S.H.
SFAI Alumni MFA
2012-2014
https://www.mayasmira.com/
Iran-Israel
Artwork Year
Video
5:00
Iran-Israel video and live performance show two young female artists leaning onto each other, pushing and holding at the same time. One is from Iran and the other from Israel, nowadays enemy countries. The scene takes place in a deserted landscape, which is similar both to the Israeli & Iranian remote landscapes. The women use their bodies to create a simple shape of a triangle which they tend to keep stable even when their bodies start to exhaust and shake. The artists try to manifest the interpersonal tension that is generated by their bodies, as well as the political situation. This feminine manifestation of coexistence, depicts how bodies interact with each other in a situation of dependance & conflict.
SIANA SMITH
SFAI Alumni
2019-2020
https://www.sianasmith.com
Divergence
2022
Oil on canvas
48" x 24" x 1.5"
"Divergence" encapsulates a visual narrative of dual worlds in transformation and decay. In this dichotomy, the essence of life and death converges, creating a poignant commentary on the cyclical nature of existence.
On the right, a dead tree stands as a silhouette, its lifeless branches illuminated by the rising sun's radiant rays. The glow from the barren limbs signifies the transcendence of death as an integral part of the Circle of Life. This portrayal of the dying tree marks the inception of new lives and possibilities.
Contrasting, on the left, the harsh contours of an industrial ruin unfold. Graffiti-covered walls bear witness to the heavy footprint of human activities on the environment. Amidst the desolation, two teenagers navigate the decaying landscape, embodying the paradox of the sunrise within the ruin. Their exploration signifies the burden we pass to the next generation—the remnants of our actions etched in concrete.
JAMIE SPINELLO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
https://www.jamiespinello.com
Kaledioptera 2023
Reclaimed polyester and nylon fabric, plastic and steel armature 21" x 16" x 5"
“Kaledioptera” is a fabric sculpture that is constructed using reverse appliqué and cutwork techniques. It is machine-sewn and stretched over a steel armature. The patterns, shapes, and colors are inspired by plants, insects and fungi.
137
ALEXANDRA SPROWLS
SFAI Alumni MFA
2004-2008
https://alexandrasprowls.com
Undaunted 2023
Acrylic on paper
8.25" x 13.25" (framed)
Sierra foothills are where I live, inspire what I paint — often from memory. The imagery connects to emotive states and my experience walking through the land forms
FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
138
GEORGE STEINMANN
SFAI Alumni BFA
1978-1980
https://www.george-steinmann.ch
Blues for the Glaciers 2015
Video with Sound 5:40
The Video "Blues for the Glaciers" was originally recorded live on the Glacier Rhone in the Swiss Alps for the UN Climate Conference COP21 in Paris, France 2015.
139 MILES STEMP
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018-2020
https://www.milesstemp.com
Hierophany 2023
Colored pencil on paper 30" x 22"
Hierophany involves becoming aware of the sacred through the everyday elements of our world and universe. It manifests as a mountain or a stream; as a tree or the blue sky on a warm summer's day. It is an aspect of our natural environment that allows us to understand the beauty in the universe. Hierophany is also a transformative journey towards the divine, reflecting the subtle, often unnoticed transitions in our understanding and being. The sky exemplifies this transformation, constantly changing, whether it's shifting from day to night or from an oxygen-rich atmosphere to the vacuum of space. The sky is an intangible concept we perceive as an object, but it is a collection of molecules that only change color when photons collide with it. We can move through it, but we never reach it. It serves as a metaphor for divinity as it is belief without proof.
140
LESLIE STRAW
SFAI Alumni MFA
1980-1983
https://lesliestraw.com/
Groomsman, Even-study 2 2022
Gouache on paper
7.5" x 6"
Often, I use as a painting source photo printouts of 3D objects placed directly on a scanner bed. This small gouache painting is from the ‘Groomsmen, Even’ series, based on dimestore level plastic figurines of groomsmen individually wrapped in plastic and scanned. At the other end of the scale, I’m currently working on a large oil painting of multiple wrapped groomsmen in their original plastic bag. While the large scale, added complexity, and natural reflection of the medium in the oil painting creates a shinier, darker, more structural work, these small studies in gouache are more intimate and ghostly. The reflected plastic starts to look more like a shroud, and the figurine loses its hard-edged mass-produced features to become more vulnerable and unearthly.
SZABO
SFAI Alumni MFA/Faculty
2018-2021
https://www.laurenjadeszabo.com
2022 Oil on canvas
24" x 24"
Bittersweet
JESSICA TANZER
SFAI Alumni
1987-1991
https://www.tanzerphoto.com
Bear & Aphra, Studio 16, San Francisco, 1989
1989
Photograph 60" x 40"
This work was made in Studio 16 during the AIDS crisis to promote safe sex and address rampant homophobia. It is currently in archives, exhibits, documentaries, etc recognizing art as activism through a queer movement.
SFAI Alumni MFA
2005-2007
https://Kathleenthompsonart.com
Caverna 2024
Acrylic on panel 36" x 48"
144
CLAIRE HANSON TOM
SFAI Alumni MFA/Faculty
1984-1992, 1999
https://clairehtom.com
A Bird is not A Fish 2022
Paper, colored pencils and mud
48" x 48"
This drawing evolves out of a conversation, an activity between myself and the drawing mediums. Drawing is the act of uncovering images with pencil and with layers of mud, swept off when dry. The images appear as if they have always been there. The dialogue between color upon the physical surface of the paper and the chimerical nature forms are created out of my direct experience of the drawing in real time.
The abstraction and layering of the composition create connections between the layers of my subconscious and conscious mind.
The title A Bird is Not a Fish came to me in the middle of the drawing. Then I discovered that there is a myth related to this title called PENG – which is an ancient Chinese myth.
The myth relates to the narrative of this drawing personally as it resonates with changes and challenges in the bi-racial intersections of domestic life.
“What do these two creatures understand? . . . How is it that little understanding can come up to great understanding; How can the short-lived come up to the long-lived?” . . . These are questions posed in the PENG myth, mentioned above.
145
MEREDITH TROMBLE
SFAI Alumni/Faculty
1974, 1980-81, 1999-2022
https://www.meredithtromble.net
Eating Light 2021 Video 4:16
"Eating Light" is an artist’s take on the process that supports all life on earth, the transformation of energy called “photosynthesis.” The video follows a common convention from science videos explaining photosynthesis, starting with the cosmic scale of the sun and moving to the molecular or nanoscale of photosynthesis in the cell. I used photographic imaging for the scales that we could see with human eyes—fudging a bit by including an electron microscope image—but at nanoscale, which we will never “see,” I turned to drawing. I am fascinated by the ways we think through drawing; the drawing in "Eating Light" is loosely inspired by two earlier drawings that aid thought — one from artist, Joseph Beuys, who spoke and drew his mystical philosophies of energy on a blackboard in performance, and one from a different kind of artist, an uncredited scientific illustrator. The repetitions in the work point to the relentless on-goingness of this life-giving process, which begins anew every sunrise, repeating with a precision far beyond what most humans can comprehend.
SFAI Alumni MFA
2004-2006
https://lindatrunzo.com
Don't Look Back
2020
Oil on linen mounted on doorskin 60” x 48" x 3”
The self portrait is a stand in for reflections of the times, of human emotion; trying to capture a moment with a look.
SFAI Alumni MFA 2009-2011
https://www.hweili.com
Remembrance 2023 Oil on canvas 48" x 30"
Fading energy transforms into something new -- a hope for a better tomorrow.
148 KATHERINE UNFUG
SFAI Alumni
2018-2020
https://www.behance.net/kaupaint
Yellow Room 2023
Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 30"
SFAI Alumni MFA 2015-2017 https://www.yagmuruyanik.com
Recurrent II
2016 Print on metal
16" x 24"
150 DIANE VADINO
SFAI Alumni BFA 2005-2021
Artwork Title 2023
Artwork Medium 11" X 17" (each tile)
"Dipping a toe in the new economy" examines the true and historical nature of "sex work" in its most expansive sense: as a transactional service that has pervaded interpersonal relationships since the dawn of humanity, from the marital bed and student dorm to the city boulevard and grandest palace.
151 CRISTINA VELAZQUEZ
SFAI Alumni MA, MFA 2014-2017
https://cristinavelazquez2.com/index.html
These Flags 2017 Photograph 10" x 8"
These Flags is a performance piece that plays with the idea of togetherness, with the use of different entities, the United States, the Mexican, and the peace flags. These two countries that often behave as separate worlds will be merged together with hand sewn stitches. Through this performance all three flags become a single one, which brings these bordering countries to an implicit peaceful agreement with the use of the white flag, a symbol of peace or defeat. The material adorned with their patriotic emblems are used to dress, care, and punish my body. I am Mexican born Naturalized American, my allegiance is to both countries, as a Mexican-American. Most of my current existence is to navigate the in-between, the white material represents the union of both countries. This allows for a place of peaceful gathering, as neighbors that get along. Unfortunately this is not the reality that we live, but surely the desire by millions of people in both countries.
https://www.chrisvenaart.com/
Jessica at the Door 2021 Oil on canvas 36" x 28"
SFAI Alumni BFA
1997-2002
https://www.rafaelvieira.com
Lion-Human, Hollywood Viral Challenges
2022
Mixed media
25" x 36"
154
SANJAY VORA
SFAI Alumni MFA
2003-2005
https://www.sanjayvora.com
Two of us Once 2023
Oil, acrylic and gel medium on canvas 32" x 48"
My paintings are layered, experiential constructions of personal story and history, attempting to dissolve social, political and economic barriers towards the human reckoning with our mortality. As both Hindu and Atheistic principles from my bicultural origins pervade my continuous wonder, it is through my spiritualized visions of memory, buried and then remembered, where I confront time, loss, and the unattainable. With tender and familiar representations painted beneath, a physical built veil rests atop each painting as a result of an ongoing psychic archeological excavation, a textural residue left by my endless seeking for meaning, truth and comfort.
JAY WAGGONER
SFAI Alumni BFA
1976-1979
https://jay-waggoner-k2ym.squarespace.com
New Worlds 2 2020
Acrylic resin
6” x 12” x 4"
Part of on-going installation “The Artist Creates the Universe from the Studio Floor”
BETH DAVILA WALDMAN
SFAI Alumni BFA
2001-2005
http://www.bethwaldman.com
Disequilibrium No. 1
2018
Archival Pigment Print on 66 lb Polar Pearl Metallic Paper 14.75" x 22" (Framed 17.75" x 25")
Scouting sites was once a regular practice for me from 2003-2007 as I was working on public art installations. However, this time, the intent was video performance & photographic work. A developing voyeuristic perspective of my body representing something beyond “the me” allowed me to step beyond all my individual identities to embrace the one most powerful one for this body of work, the role of America. Having printed two 40x60in photographs on Plexiglas from the island of Lamma in Hong Kong, I sought to find connection to sites in the Bay Area to speak to the shifting relations between China & Hong Kong as a result in light of the economic trickle down effect on small businesses and individuals. For this project, I chose China Camp Village in San Rafael & alleyways in San Francisco’s Chinatown as platforms with their deep local historic narratives with their once vibrant economies that were shifted due to government sanctions.
157
MARIAN
WALLACE
SFAI Alumni MFA/Faculty 1976-1981, 2018-2020
Joey & Mick green 2014
Screen print 30" x 22"
Re-presented page from Punk history, Search & Destroy 1978
INGRID V. WELLS
SFAI Alumni MFA/Faculty
2011-2013, 2015-2022
https://www.ingridvwells.com/
You're Here and I'm Here and That's Worth Celebrating 2022 Oil on linen 60" x 40"
With this collection I am painting about the journey of radical self-compassion. It is a fierce rebellion, I consider it pretty punk rock, to stay in your joy when blanketed in seemingly depressing circumstances. With this body of work I am responding to my personal puzzles with the aim of inspiring you to greet your challenges with curiosity. My paintings serve as a visual respite for joyful rebellion in the face of obstacles.
159 EVE WERNER
SFAI Alumni MFA
2018-2022
https://evewerner.com
Apparition 3 2022
Embossment with charcoal, ash, graphite, charring, smoke on paper 30" x 22"
Through an interplay of materiality and absence shaped by the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire, I intend to convey the vulnerability of interdependent human and natural systems and question the notion of refuge on our warming planet.
160
H. ANSEL WETTERSTEN
SFAI Alumni MFA
1968-1972
Organon 2017
Mixed media / Douglas fir / found metallics
20.25” x 20.25” x 2.5”
A machine for learning
LAWRENCE WHITE
SFAI Alumni MFA
1970-1975
https://www.lawrencewhiteartwork.com
Police boat runs over houseboat resident 1978
Black and White Photographic Print 10" x 24"
An entire San Francisco Bay floating community of mostly poor people and artists has been under siege by California state and local authorities for decades. My photos represent the years in the 1970s when the area was in a renaissance with Shel Silverstein, Alan Watts, and Jean Varda among many others, were neighbors. Unfortunately, the assaults by authorities turned ultra-violent and resulted in the ultimate destruction of the entire community of floating homes creating a condition of family homelessness that continues and worsens today. This particular photo is of friend and neighbor Jon Bradley whose body was run over by a police boat during one of the most violent attacks on December 12, 1977.
JOHN S. WHITEHEAD
SFAI Alumni MFA
1977-1981
https://www.johnwhitehead-art.com
Epidemiology 101 2021 Oil on masonite 68" x 42"
AGNES WIDBOM
SFAI Alumni
2011-2014
https://www.agneswidbom.com
Untitled (sunset/sunrise)
2022
Video 2:40
The video explores how body movements affect the image by having the camera close to the body, essentially becoming an extension of it. The body, however, remains outside the image frame. By the camera’s position on the ribcage it is instead felt in the image’s movement, guided by breathing. Directed towards an ocean-scape, we simultaneously move with the waves.
KRISTIN WINTERS
SFAI Alumni BFA
2005-2007
https://www.kristinwintersartist.com/
SOLAR CIRCLE: My Life in the COVID Era 2023
Installation: Sculpture and Mixed Media 3’ x 3’
"SOLAR CIRCLE: My Life in the COVID Era”, is an art installation and multi-media work that chronicles my personal life from 2019 to the current year 2023. The events depicted are the advent of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the dissolution of my romantic relationship, and the aggression of my illness, onset by the COVID-19 viral infection. My story is told through the arrangement of sculptures, tarot cards, nature elements, and medical Rx debris.
The outer rim with the 4 geoduck shells and flowers acknowledge the 4 directions, as the salt circle creates a sacred space: a place that opens the portal of the psychic realm where the artwork and viewers’ interaction takes place, and to honor the passage of events of my personal trials.
165
MARTIN WOHLWEND
SFAI Alumni BFA
1991-1995
https://martinwohlwend.kleio.com/
Cheorwon, Suwon, South Korea 09/2019 2019-2020
Video 3:13
In April and October 2019, Martin Remigius Wohlwend traveled with Nine Dragon Heads, an international artist collective, to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone along the border between North and South Korea. Cheorwon is a geographical location where one of South Korea's many military bases are situated. Besides touristically developed attractions such as a peace memorial site and a crane museum, there are two of the four infamous tunnels to visit. These were allegedly dug by the enemy in the North in the 1970s to infiltrate South Korea. They created tunnels up to three and a half kilometers long at a depth of over 70 meters.
With this work, Wohlwend aims to focus on the handling of the topic of "borders." His concern is with man-made borders, national borders. Borders are erected and controlled. However, they can also be minimized, disregarded, crossed, destroyed, and overcome. Both South and North Koreans perceive the border drawing as a tragedy. It has etched itself as a festering wound into the national psyche. It pains when Wohlwend speaks with the locals. He senses melancholy in their words, sadness in their faces, a great misunderstanding. The people feel lost and powerless in the face of the separation imposed from outside in 1953. They do not find answers to their decades-long questions, leaving them even more frustrated.
166
CHRISTINE WOLHEIM
SFAI Alumni BFA
1996-2001
https://www.wolheim.com/
Without Authority
2021
Oil on Canvas 48" x 36"
The Inspiration for this piece was shadow and light streaming down on trees. With this spare and monochromatic body of work (normally, my abstracts use color almost as a subject!), I pared down to essentials: seeking composition, line, silhouette and gesture. The series was done during a time of personal transformation and recovery from an illness. Painting was a way of accessing myself, as my body was rebelling and felt alien. There is a stillness here. Most are based on trees, water, and shapes found in the natural world. Nature is adaptive and regenerative, and always changing: growing, thrusting, soothing, flowing, flooding, erupting, blooming. We are nature. In its destruction, decay, beauty and voluptuous wonder. Remembering this lessens my anxiety and sadness about earth's ability to sustain us and our transgressions against the environment....and if it does not, and cannot–my belief is that it will morph into something even more beautiful without us.
167
HOLLY WONG
SFAI Alumni MFA
1989-1995
https://hollywongart.com/
Mending Body/Mending Mind 2023
Digital video with sound 3:00
This is a collaborative multimedia work of fiber, video, and sound which was created as a form of truth-telling about my mother’s traumatic experiences and the larger issue of sexual assault and domestic violence. The foundation of the work is an environment of suspended cotton, silk, organza and antique lace that has been sewn into improvised quilt configurations. The denser panels of cotton serve as the surface of a 2 channel video projection screen with layers of the more transparent quilt sections masking the images. At once a work of memory and recollection of stories, the poem and sound composition was created by New York-based artist Aya Karpinska. The poem is the words of my mother to me, if she were alive today and could tell me her secrets. The cinematography was created by SFAI alumni and faculty member Al Wong and depict images of braiding of hair, cutting and sewing of fabric, and wrapping and repair of the self both figuratively and literally. The video images are edited in a light/shadow rhythm that emphasizes breath and the passage of time. Given space limitations for the “In Flux” exhibition, the work is being presented here as a 3 minute standalone video for audience viewing.
168
ANTOINETTE WYSOCKI
SFAI Alumni BFA
1996-2000
https://www.antoinettewysocki.com
The Fire 2019
Acrylic, ink, charcoal, graphite, pigments made from forged material on-site, wine, on rag 42" x 30"
This piece was created during the artist residency at Chalk Hill. I was selected by SFAI to represent as the alumni during a two week residency. This piece was created as a site specific piece commenting on the wild fires that had recently burned through Sonoma. Elements of pigments made and found materials on site complete the piece, including staining with wine which was made on the land.
HYEWON YOON
SFAI Alumni MFA
2003-2005
Mountains in Korea 2022-05 2022
Pen on Panel 10” x 10” x 0.75” (each piece)
170 BING ZHANG
SFAI Alumni MFA
2009-2011
https://bingzhang.net
Boy on a Train 2019 Oil on Canvas
20" x 29" (on two canvases)
ZIMO ZHAO
SFAI Alumni MFA
2017-2019
https://www.zimozhao.net
How I Die During COVID-19 2022
Inkjet Print Photo 24" x 36’’
An Asian old man was attacked in Oakland Chinatown street on February 4, 2021. I recreate scenes of anti-Asian hate crimes from recent online news reports. Using my body to act in different roles in the event, I am simultaneously the victim, witness, and investigator. I make hand-made miniature models, replacing the actual people with a cut-out photo version of myself, which I then re-photograph. Through sarcasm and satire, I hope to understand these complex situations by interjecting myself into these scenarios as a way to connect the possibility of danger around me.
DION ZWIRNER
SFAI Alumni MFA
1992-1994
https://dionpickeringzwirner.com
Stratum.4, 2018 2022
Mixed Media on Paper 10.75" x 30"
LUBA ZYGAREWICZ
SFAI Alumni MFA
1992-1994
https://lubazygarewicz.com/
measured / [un]measured 2024
38.5 diameter x 3 in altered tea bags with found objects and mixed media
JEREMY P.H. MORGAN
SFAI Alumni MFA, Faculty 1983-1985, 1989-2022 https://www.jeremyphmorgan.com/
The unseen …sensed 2021
Acrylic on canvas
30" x 26"
175 ARTICLES OF BELONGING
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Eve Werner
Articles of Belonging is a multi-media installation within the In Flux exhibition that proposes collaboration – coming together for mutual benefit - as a hopeful and cogent antidote to complex challenges.
The theme is healing. Articles of Belonging offers no solutions except to say, “let's turn towards each other.” A group of 10 to 15 SFAI alumni met twice a week to create a series of installations and experiences. The underlying idea is that community building and problem solving together is more fruitful than pointing fingers.
Articles of Belonging takes place in interstitial spaces—a closet, fireplaces, a small library— within the museum. Visitors to the exhibition can use these sites for restoration and reclamation or take part in collective community building projects.
ARTICLES OF BELONGING: How do you … in a world IN FLUX?
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Martin Wohlwend & Lior Bar
How do you … in a world In Flux? extends the collaborative element of Articles of Belonging beyond the physical space of monca. Anyone with internet access is invited to respond to the prompt online at sfaa.art. Responses will scroll on TV monitors in the museum throughout the exhibition and will be accompanied by the Waves soundtrack.
ARTICLES OF BELONGING: Community Security Blanket
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Ujjayini Sikha
In Community Security Blanket, the actions of knitting and sewing serve as both metaphor and motivator for interconnection. Anyone who wishes may participate in the making of a blanket composed of small, individually knitted squares. Knitting may be done remotely and sent in to monca or may be done at a communal table in the monca library. Throughout the duration of the In Flux exhibition, community participants are invited to come to the monca table to sew the squares together into a blanket (Image credit: Eleni Exarchou).
175.3
ARTICLES OF BELONGING: Mending
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Emily Jane Corbett, Annamarta Dostourian & Melanie Piech
Mending is the act of repairing or restoring something to its original state or a functioning, adapted state. In an actual and metaphorical sense, mending is used in this installation to create a space of healing and refuge. Tyvek, a fire-retardant membrane that self-extinguishes when ignited and is also used in Haz-mat suits for post-fire decontamination, is featured throughout Mending to reflect the longing for protection felt in the aftermath of the Camp and North Complex fires that ravaged Butte County. Vintage quilts “mended” using Tyvek patches embellished with regional typographic details and images of local flora are available for attendees to use for comfort and warmth while visiting the galleries. Handmade Tyvek bean bag chairs offer a soft perch from which to contemplate the exhibits.
ARTICLES OF BELONGING: Play-Station:
Sensory Integration
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Bianca Lago, Kristen Gundlach, Luba Zygarewicz & Pete Werner
Step into our psychological healing closet to uncover your unconscious mind through Jungian inspired Sand Play Therapy. The interactive piece encourages attendees to look up at the light for a hidden creative gem while hanging photographs of their creation. Play-Station utilizes sensory experiences for healing, neural integration and an all around good time (Image Credit: Stuart Bass).
FLUX: Recalibrating the Unknown
175.5
ARTICLES OF
BELONGING: Waves
Collaborative Installation
Curated by Guillermo Pulido
Waves is an audio track heard throughout the physical space of the Articles of Belonging installation that is also embedded in How are you … in a world In Flux?, the installation’s online messaging element. Varied sounds made by water – the roar of ocean waves, tricking streams, and the rush of a waterfall – are layered with whispering voices, music, and the calls of exotic birds.
Special Thanks
SFAA Curatorial Team
Jeremy P.H. Morgan
Eve Werner
Julie Blankenship
monca
Pat Kemeny Macias
Pennie Baxter
Sally Ginochio
Shari Hopper
Ruth Hall
Chris Yates
Rick Vertolli
Christine Rowe
josh whittinghill
Volunteers
Beth Davila Waldman (Press)
Diane Vadino (Press)
Kevin Cornejo (Design)
Teri Dillon (Catalog)
Tom Patton (Photography)
Installation Team:
Richard Goldberg
Hillary Bond
Brian Byrch
Rafael Vieira
Davy Fiveash
Alexandra Sprowls
John Coggins
David Ruiz
Pete Werner
Geoffrey Quinsey
Margaret Crane
Expert Art Workers
Christopher Paddock
Wilson Printing and Signs
Donors
John Marx
John Sanger
Erna Clifford Charitable Fund
Robert Perkins (Skylark Wine Company)
Suzie Buchholz
Rebecca Chou
Antoinette Wysocki and all SFAA Donors
SFAA Liaison Team
SFAA Board
Maria Theresa Barbist (President)
Annie Reiniger-Holleb (Vice-President)
Marian Wallace (interim Treasurer)
Toban Nichols (Co-Secretary)
Brianna Hyneman (Co-Secretary)
Cristina Velazquez
Jackie Buttice
Linda Connor
Lior Bar
SFAA Advisory Board
April Martin
Becky Alexander
Jeff Gunderson
Rye Purvis
and all participating SFAI artists!
Published by SF Artists Alumni 2024