
SFAA Spotlight is a monthly online talk series featuring an SFAI alumni on the first Monday of the month at 10am PT. The talks are also recorded and available on our youtube channel. The word community is woven as a theme between the artists. Special thank you to all of our donors that fund this program.
CURRENT LECTURE
LECTURE ARCHIVE
2023-11-06
ANDREA NICOLETTE GONZALEZ
MFA Studio Art 2016
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Andrea Nicolette Gonzales now lives and works in San Francisco, California. After completing her bachelors degree from Texas Wesleyan University she worked as a make-up artist and was asked to face paint for a Dia De Los Muertos event; which led to her fascinating and exploration of the three-dimensional surface of the face and body.
2023-10-02
JEFF GUNDERSON & BECKY ALEXANDER
SFAI Legacy Foundation and Archive
The new space for the SFAI archive at the Crown Point Press building 20 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, 94105 is now open for visitors! Becky Alexander and Jeff Gunderson will give us an online tour and share some insights about their work to digitize this wonderful treasure of SFAI history for future generations.
2023-09-11
DOROTHY CROSS
MFA Sculpture 1982
Working in sculpture, film and photography, Dorothy Cross’s work looks at time and transformation …. from shark-skins gilded inside with pure gold, jellyfish drawing themselves on linen, operas in handball alleys and slate quarries, and a kiss cast in silver taken from the inside of two mouths. Unexpected encounters occur between plants, animals and everyday objects resulting in at times, strange, hybrid pairings that range from the lyrical and sublime to the erotic humorous and playful.
2023-08-07
STEVE HURD
BFA Painting 1979
Steve Hurd is a Los Angeles artist that works from found source materials translating them into paintings that bring up and discuss social/political issues relevant to the world we live in. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1979 and later came to Los Angeles where he studied with Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, and Mike Kelley at UCLA. There he received a Master of Fine Arts in the New Genre Department in 1988.
2023-07-10
MARK ALICE DURANT
MFA Photography 1985
Mark Alice Durant is an artist, writer, and publisher living in Baltimore. He is author of Maya Deren, Choreographed for Camera, 27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography, Robert Heinecken: A Material History, and co-author of Blur of the Otherworldly: Contemporary Art, Technology, and the Paranormal.
2023-06-05
WESAAM AL-BADRY
BFA Photography 2018
Wesaam Al-Badry is an investigative journalist, and interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video installation, sculpture, and painting through interconnected themes of identity, migration, simulated wars, and the archives. His work focuses on the social and environmental issues in the U.S. Middle East and the North African diaspora. His current projects investigate how the image-based process and text are complicit in using racialized ethnographic studies in Iraq.
2023-05-08
LARRY REED
MFA Filmmaking 1971
Larry Reed is a nationally and internationally acclaimed artist, and is a trailblazer in the contemporary shadow theatre. He is one of the first Westerners to have trained in the traditional Balinese shadow theatre (wayang kulit) and is a “dalang,” or “shadow master,” who manipulates over 20 carved leather shadow puppets while simultaneously serving as the conductor of the accompanying gamelan orchestra, the director, and the stage manager. Over the years, he has performed over 250 shows in this tradition around the world.
2023-04-03
KEZIA HARRELL
BFA Painting 2017
Kezia Harrell (born 1994 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, illustration, and performance. A graduate of San Francisco Art Institute (Painting BFA ’17) now living in Fresno, California, Harrell paints fantastical, hyperrealistic worlds of Black femme freedom. Her work draws attention to the histories of white supremacist and misogynoir violence while making space for herself and other Black people to heal and define themselves outside of the white gaze.
2023-03-06
KIRK LECLAIRE
BFA Painting 1978, MFA 1983
Kirk LeClair, a multi-disciplinary artist, will talk about his life in Montana & San Francisco and about his two new films So Good I can’t Take it and Every Hundred Miles (Across America with Robert Frank) plus his newly minted two albums recently released in 2022 Many Moons and Without Warning: Early Montana Punk, Postpunk, New Wave + Hardcore 1979 -1991.
2023-02-06
FRANCISCO PINHEIRO
MFA New Genres 2014
Francisco Pinheiro is a visual artist and his practice stems from narratives associated with a particular territory, summoned in installations, videos, texts and performances. Francisco is part of the collective Guarda Rios, from which he has been creating, coordinating and producing different projects. Guarda Rios is a relational art based collective working on riverside territories.
2022-12-05
MERCEDES DORAME
MFA Photography 2010
Mercedes Dorame is a visual artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of visibility and ideas of cultural construction as an outcome of the need to tie one’s existence to the land. In addition to working as a visual artist, she currently is visiting faculty at California Institute of the Arts and acts as a cultural resource consultant on sites where her Tongva ancestors and items are being excavated. This work carries a heavy burden of responsibility which has fueled her artistic exploration and passion for visibility for the Tongva community.
2022-11-07
OLIVER HAWK HOLDEN
BFA Sculpture 2016
Oliver Hawk Holden is a San Francisco-based artist whose work takes a satirical, yet deeply intimate look at the world and pulls mostly figurative imagery of distinct moments into semi autobiographical figurative collage. His practice includes kinetic sculpture, video, painting and installation. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz and he has exhibited at SFMoMA, Evergold gallery, On Approval, Incline Gallery, R/SF Gallery and FaceBook AIR Mural Residency San Francisco.