CCA MFA Class of 2011 Exhibtion!!! (Part II)

As I mentioned in the previous post below, here are some of the images I took of our CCA MFA Class of 2011 Exhibition, both from the night of the opening on May 12 and from the much quieter days to follow.  My humble apologies to the artists I missed.  (Please double-click on images for larger views).

Angus Haller created a silkscreened printscape of visual noise coupled with a soundscape of musical noise to make an immersive installation for the audience.

Close-up of Haller's screen prints

Julie Henson's super-hard-to-photograph installation room with theater props, mirrors, and lights to reflect her sparkly trees.

Marissa Botelho's equally hard-to-photograph immersive head-goes-in-the-box installation, where she created mini lanscapes.

Inside the box

Marissa also created a video game come to life with her reenactment of Red Dead Redemption's lasso move, and the feeling of disappointment of reality.

Elizabeth Dorbad's epic theater prop/carnival disaster installation

Victoria DeBlassie's intensely laborious sewn orange peel hut

Courtney Johnson's wild child women paintings

Johnson painting

Miss Courtney Johnson herself

Mark Taylor's screen prints of wear patterns on records, along with a box set of prints and a clever projected image on record player. 

The box set, with liner notes and song titles he makes up

Rachel Dawson's classy display of all her various projects in one room- psychic analysis video, lit clay sculptures, and photo realist vessel painting.

Mark Benson's "It's art/it's not art" ready-made sculptures of over-stacked dish rack and towel-strewn drums

Benson's special one-night display of inflatable blue dancing guys

C. Wright Daniel's photograms of crumpled paper

Nancy Nowacek's "Get in this room and walk in fake snow" construction

Sarah Hotchkiss's space data center

Katie Dorame's paintings of Westward expansion

Rachel Foster's lovely screen-prints of mysterious imagery

Rachel in front of her Ouija wall

Natasha Wheat's purposely opaque "situational construction" of  symbols of labor and consumerism with unreadable neon letters and painted palettes

Wheat's digital prints on silk of laborers in Panama

Allison Rowe poses in front of her RV-turned-mobile-environmental-educational tool

Once more, and with feeling:  Congrats to my Class of 2011!  I'll miss you!

Here are some more shots of both our MFA show at CCA, as well as SFAI's MFA show from Art Business, some shots by Meighan at My Love For You is a Stampede of Horses, as well as the JD Beltran article in the SF Gate I previously posted.

Open Studios 2011 Part II

As I mentioned below, CCA recently opened all of its graduate doors for Open Studios this weekend.  I got the chance to snap some photos of many of my awesome friends and their work in between manning my own post.  Here is round two of my quick photos from the day.  

* Please note that we stored most of our furniture and old projects in a classroom prior to the event and were told by the powers that be that we had to move everything back as soon as the Open Studios were over before we could partake in any BBQ celebrations afterward.  This means that in some cases I didn't have a chance to document studios before we moved our things back, and there is a possibility that some studios are not presented in their intended state.

Natasha Wheat outside her studio with curious onlooker inside.  There was a neon palette sculpture, fabricated commodities, and framed prints on silk of Panamanian laborers spraying chemicals to grow the exported agriculture South American countries supply to the United States.

Natasha used an extra atrium space to expand her vision into this installation as well, featuring similar objects and concept, complete with cans of dulche de leche and these palette lounging chairs and Cabana boys, Jim and Sam.

Noah Krell's multi-channel video room of several projects with performance aspects.  I thought the way they were displayed was great, even though it is hard to see the images in photos.

Jake Ziemann is a painter who surprised me with this home on the frontier installation.

Jonathan Runcio's geometric sculptures.

Jonathan Runcio collage and spray paint wall pieces.

Victoria DeBlassie's stitched orange peel architectural structure.

Elizabeth Dorbad's ongoing installation project of a disaster-swept carnival.

There was a curiosity entrapment down the hall from me as people walked up a ladder to peer over Mark Benson's studio wall to discover...

Puppies!  (image taken from Mark's website)

Also a quick reenactment of last year's darling photo of the engaged couple, Mark and Michelle, during Open Studios in my studio.  Here they are one year later, and married.

And this is them before they knew any better.

Here is what my studio looked like.

Maysha Mohamedi and Sarah Hotchkiss created a VIP lounge area in an extra space of their studio building.

Stuff on Manyee Lam's shelf- I love that feather headdress thing!

Manyee's hard-to-photograph string installation.

Stay tuned for Open Studios Part III!

CCA Wattis Shows: "Undisclosed Destination" and "Hammarby!"

The other night I was so excited to celebrate my good friend, Rachel Foster's, inclusion in a show at the Wattis Institute for the Arts at CCA.  Wattis shows are generally touted as a big deal in our smallish city, bringing in artists who are well-known and often unseen beyond in museum exhibitions in the Bay Area.  Last semester boasted the "Huckleberry Finn" exhibition curated by Wattis Director Jens Hoffman, (formerly of the London Institute of Contemporary Arts),  with a commissioned installation by Kara Walker and pieces by two of my favorites, Hank Willis Thomas and Yinka Shonibare.  This semester's exhibition on the bottom floor of the Wattis is called 101 Collection: Route 2 Undisclosed Destination and was curated by Sharon Lerner as a "collection show", meaning that annually a local collector's "101 Collection" is curated by different guests.  Rachel happens to be part of the 101 Collection, and was shown along side some pretty fancy names, including John Baldessari and Todd Hido.

Rachel showing the announcement

Any time there is an opening at school there is food and a swarm of students around the food

Elisheva Biernoff's large landscape panel combining park, beach, volcanos, and basically environmental trouble

Elisheva's hand-painted double-sided imagined postcards from lost explorers

Two of Rachel's (hard-to-photograph) prints

Two more prints from Rachel

A stack of John Baldessari

Upside-down tree photo print- artist unknown

Upstairs was a sort of pre-exhibition of Belgian artist, (and one of the "Magnificent Seven artists scheduled to exhibit solo shows at the Wattis), Kris Martin's, show, Hammarby! in which he asked his project class made up of several of my friends to create work to be exhibited in the space which adds up to his own exhibition.  This is what the Wattis says about it:
"Over the course of this semester, Martin is living in San Francisco and serving as a guest faculty member at CCA. He is leading a class of 13 graduate Fine Arts students in creating new works on the subject of time, a universal truth with which all artists—and of course all people—must contend. Graduate school is a period when art students are developing their own practices, their own career paths. And so, Martin finds it appropriate to transform the private space of the classroom into the public space of an art gallery, with the latter's new set of expectations around finished pieces and the status of the working, professional artist. The gallery is divided into 13 autonomous-but-public spaces, one per student, via a grid of red lines. Martin is working in a 14th space, the entire gallery, and has given himself the same task that he has given his students: to devise new works that investigate issues of time and duration."  There will be a closing reception for the exhibition on March 29.

Gold painting by Liam Everett

Installation of theater props by Elizabeth Dorbad

Collages by Bean Gilsdorf

Dramatically lit installation by Mark Benson, video piece in the background by Steph Halmos

Maysha playing around with Christine Elfman's dress piece

Buddies: Steph, Me, Natasha, Marcella, and Maysha

More on the blog about Rachel Foster, Elisheva Biernoff,  Mark Benson, and Elizabeth Dorbad