2008-2010
TAUBA AUERBACH (San Francisco) makes art about language and logic. Though her work usually takes the form of paintings and drawings, she sees herself as a conceptual artist for whom these formats happen to be most useful. Auerbach’s training as a traditional sign painter cultivated her aesthetic love for words and letters; her work is equally focused on the internal workings of language (and its contractions and continuities), and its formal elements. Recent work has probed the limitations of binary language and the distortive properties of such highly rational structures. Solo shows were mounted at Deitch Projects in New York, and Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco. Her work has been included in group shows at Gagosian Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, among others, and is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Deste Foundation. In 2006 her first book, How to Spell the Alphabet, was published by Deitch Projects. Auerbach received her BA from Stanford University in 2003.
ADRIANE COLBURN (San Francisco) has been working on a series of installations and maps that seek to organize and chart changes in natural and urban landscapes. These constructions, made of layers of hand cut paper, illustrate systems that are submerged underground, in our bodies, or within urban infrastructures. Colburn maps out these “inaccessible” places by systemizing information, often based on landscapes or history, to create an abstraction that can be both informative and ambiguous. Her work has been shown in San Francisco at Gallery 16, Bay Area Now 4 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Stephen Wolf Fine Arts, and The Luggage Store, where she also co-curated the No War show in 2002. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum and her awards and distinctions include a 2005 Artadia Award, 2006/07 MacDowell Colony Residency, and a 2007 Kala Institute Fellowship. Colburn received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and her MFA from Stanford University. She is a visiting lecturer at Stanford University and The San Francisco Art Institute.
BINH DANH (San Jose) invented a process for transferring images onto leaves via photosynthesis, yielding what he terms “chlorophyll prints.” His work has been exhibited nationally at the Asia Society and Drawing Center in New York City, the Orange County Museum of Art, San Francisco Camerawork, San Jose Museum of Art, American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center in Washington D.C., and the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. His work is in the public collections of the M.H. deYoung Museum, Corcoran Art Gallery, Harry Ransom Center, Oakland Museum of California, and William Benton Museum of Art. Danh has had residencies at Light Works in Syracuse, New York, the Artist Diversity Residency Program at the University of Nebraska, and the Cite International Des Artes in Paris. He has lectured at Rutgers College, San Francisco Art Institute, Arizona State University, Alfred University, Cal Arts, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. Danh received his BFA in Photography from San Jose State University and his MFA in Studio Art from Stanford University. He teaches photography around the Bay Area and his work can be seen at Haines Gallery in San Francisco.
AMY ELLINGSON (San Francisco) addresses issues of formal repetition, variation, and mutation within limited serial systems and networks. Using ephemeral, computer-generated images exclusively as her source material, she creates groups of interrelated paintings that physically assert themselves through the materiality and permanence of historical painting media. Her paintings have been shown locally and nationally, most recently at Haines Gallery in San Francisco and Charles Cowles Gallery in New York. Notable group exhibitions include Bay Area Now 3 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and Matter & Matrix at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Ellingson is the recipient of a 2007 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship and a 1999 Artadia Award. Her work is held in various public and corporate collections including the Oakland Museum of California, the U.S. Embassies in Tunisia and Algeria, and the Contemporary Museum in Hawaii. Her paintings have been reviewed in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, NYArts Magazine, Art issues, and Kunstbeeld. Ellingson received her BA in Studio Art from Scripps College and her MFA from CalArts. She is Associate Professor of Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute.
KOTA EZAWA (San Francisco) uses animation and drawing processes to create abstractions of existing films, videos, and photographs. He has had solo exhibitions at The Hayward Projects Space in London, Williams College Museum of Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and New Langton Arts in San Francisco. Recent group exhibitions include On the Scene: Kota Ezawa, Sarah Hobbs, Angela Strassheim at The Art Institute of Chicago, Out of Time at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Down by Law at The Wrong Gallery, Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Seeing Double: Encounters with Warhol at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, 2004 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, 2004 Shanghai Biennial at the Shanghai Art Museum, and Bay Area Now 3 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Ezawa’s work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. He received a 2006 SECA Art Award, 2005 Artadia Award, and a 2003 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from Stanford University. Ezawa is Assistant Professor of Media Arts at California College of the Arts.
KAREN HAMPTON (Woodacre) is a mixed media textile artist whose work is steeped in oral history and is an expression of the narrative. A storyteller at heart, she imparts conceptualized tales about the “other” in society. She views herself as a vehicle for ancestral voices to transcend history and remain as historical memory. The canvas of her work is coarsely woven cloth that is aged and imbued with conceptualized images and text from a forgotten part of the American story. Her intention is to embed the cloth with the hopes and visions of African American lives, telling their stories from a maternal perspective. Hampton has been exhibited since 1993, most recently at Material Matters at the Museum of Folk and Craft Art in San Francisco, and Looming Large: Contemporary Weavers of the Vanguard at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. Hampton received her MFA from the University of California at Davis. She teaches and lectures on Cross Cultural Textiles and Historical Memory in Art at the College of Marin and California College of the Arts.
DAVID HUFFMAN (Oakland) is a narrative painter whose practice is drawing and painting. His technique involves laying down a wash populated with drawing, collage, and paint that chronicles a story. The paintings include both formal considerations and social/political sci-fi. Huffman’s work gained attention during the The Studio Museum in Harlem’s noted 2001 Freestyle exhibition. Other exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Institute of Visual Arts in London, the Wattis Institute at the CCA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Luggage Store Gallery, and New Langton Arts in San Francisco, Santa Monica Museum of Art; de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, and the Crocker Museum in Sacramento. Huffman’s work has been reviewed and written about in Frieze, Artforum, Art Papers, Flash Art, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The International Review of African American Art, NY Arts, Art Journal, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He received a 2005 Artadia Award. Huffman received his BFA and MFA from California College of the Arts. He is currently an instructor at California College of the Arts.
MARTIN MCMURRAY (Berkeley) is a painter whose most recent project, The Procession, features over forty paintings of former heads of state and exiled or dethroned leaders. They are portrayed squeezed into their stately automobiles and taking part in a ceremonial procession. Accompanying the paintings is a series of faux books titled The Order of Succession where McMurray conflates the role of tyrant and author. He has had solo exhibitions of his drawings and paintings at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York, Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Projects in Toronto, and Gallery 16 in San Francisco. His paintings have been featured in group exhibitions at LFL/Zach Feuer, Greenberg Van Doren, and Freight & Volume galleries in New York. His work was included in the 2006 California Biennale at the Orange County Museum of Art. McMurray’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, ArtWeek, Artnet, Time Out New York and LA Weekly. His works are in numerous private collections throughout the U.S and Europe. He received his BFA from the Center for Creative Studies in 1983.
KATE POCRASS (San Francisco) produces both independent and collaborative projects dealing with pedestrian culture and social sculpture. She draws on the anonymity of daily experience, reveling in common moments that randomly happen to us each day. Pocrass develops systematic interaction through socially attuned and ephemeral projects in the public sphere. Her work is often encountered outside the gallery via hotlines, bus tours, audio tours, and participatory websites. She received two Cultural Equity Fund grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission to help self publish the books Mundane Journeys and Mundane Field Guide to Color. She has exhibited work at Southern Exposure, Rena Bransten Gallery, AIA, Spanganga, Pond, New Langton Arts, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Nelson Gallery at University of California, Davis, Artists Space in New York City, Foundation De Appel in Amsterdam, Rooseum in Malmo, Sweden, and in the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Artforum.com, 7X7 Magazine, and ArtWeek. Pocrass received her BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and her MFA from the California College of the Arts.
JUNE SCHWARCZ (Sausalito) is a sculptor who works with vitreous enamel to create three dimensional objects and wall pieces. Known as an innovator for her emphasis on technical process and alternative methods of fabrication, she has the distinction of being part of the 1956 inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York. She received three solo exhibitions from The American Crafts Museum in New York. Other notable solo shows were at the Museum Bellrive in Zurich, Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, Germany; and June Schwarcz: Forty Years and Forty Pieces at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum. Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Art and Design in New York, the M.H. deYoung Museum in San Francisco; Kunstgewebermuseum in Zurich, and the Detroit Museum of Art, among others. Schwarcz’s work has been written about in American Craft Magazine, Metalsmith, Glass on Medal, L’Atelier, Goldschmiede Zeitung, and Journal of the Electroplaters Society. She is a Fellow of the American Craft Council, as well as a recipient of their gold medal, and was given a Living Treasure of California award from the Crocker Museum in Sacramento. She studied Industrial Design at Pratt Institute in New York.
LESLIE SHOWS (San Francisco) is a painter who uses collage and mixed media in her work, which investigates the dynamic relationships between landscape, geology, and culture. She has had solo shows at Jack Hanley Gallery, both in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Shows has recently exhibited at Murray Guy in New York, the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2006 SECA Awards Show. She was the 2006 Tournesol Artist in Residence at the Headlands Art Center in Marin County, and published a book, Heap of Elements, in conjunction with her residency. Snows received a 2007-2008 Fellowship from the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Her work has been written about in ArtReview, Artforum.com, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the LA Weekly, among others. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from California College of the Arts.
JENIFER K WOFFORD (Oakland) encompasses installation, painting, drawing, photo, video, performance, teaching, and curating in her creative practice. She has exhibited locally at the Berkeley Art Museum, Richmond Art Center, Babilonia 1808, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her work has also been seen at New Image Art in Los Angeles, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum in Salt Lake City, thirtynine hotel in Honolulu, Future Prospects in the Philippines, and Galerie Blanche in France. Her awards include grants from the Art Matters Foundation, UCIRA, the Pacific Rim Research Program, and a Murphy Fellowship. Woffard has had artist residencies at The Living Room in the Philippines, Skidmore College in New York, and Chateau de la Napoule in France. She is the primary organizer of Galleon Trade, a multi-year international arts exchange project focusing on California, Mexico and the Philippines and is part of the artist collaboration Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. She serves as adjunct faculty at Diablo Valley College, California College of the Arts, and the University of San Francisco. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from University of California, Berkeley.