OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A trio of recognized California artists has been selected to take part in a new artist-in-residence program courtesy of Mills College. The Art + Process + Ideas (A+P+I) residency, which launches this spring, offers the artists private studios and access to the Studio Art Department’s lab facilities to produce new work at a time when artists are struggling with skyrocketing Bay Area housing and studio costs.
The A+P+I residency is designed as a laboratory for creativity and will serve as a springboard for artistic innovation across campus departments. Mills has a long tradition of supporting interesting artists, and this residency continues the campus' important role as a site for exploring new ideas in the arts.
The artists, Zarouhie Abdalian, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon, and Weston Teruya, will also receive honoraria during their residency.
The residency program at Mills is the brainchild of Professor of Studio Art Catherine Wagner, a renowned California conceptual artist, who, through a variety of media, has for more than 30 years been exploring the built environment as a metaphor for how we construct our cultural identities. The residency was inspired by her experience as a Rome Prize fellow while participating in a similar program at the American Academy in Rome.
“Residencies exist to allow artists to focus for a time on exploration and art making away from the usual environment, obligations, and pressures they face every day,” said Wagner. “In the Bay Area, one of the leading pressures is the high cost of living. The Mills College residency is a way we can respond to that pressure, offering at least a few deserving artists a chance to continue their thoughtful, productive work uninterrupted.”
The five-month A+P+I residency is a collaboration between the Mills College Studio Art Department and the Mills College Art Museum. The residency will foster interdisciplinary collaboration across departments and will provide numerous opportunities for the students, faculty, and staff of the College as well as the larger Bay Area arts community to interact, learn, and work with the visiting artists. Throughout their residency, the artists will engage with the community by providing public lectures, leading workshops, and participating in open studios. The A+P+I residency will culminate in a summer exhibition at the Mills College Art Museum which will feature the new work created by these artists while in residence.
The inaugural group of artists was invited to the residency after being selected by a committee of Studio Art Department and Art Museum faculty and staff. The residency is the newest chapter in Mills’ long-standing tradition of being a haven for the arts beginning in the 1930s, prior to the outbreak of World War II, when it initiated the Summer Sessions which brought a pioneering group of internationally distinguished artists and musicians to campus to teach, exhibit, and perform.
“The creation of this residency is Mills’ unique response to the newest crisis facing artists—being priced out of work space and home,” said Stephanie Hanor director of the Mills College Art Museum. “Artists have always lived on the edge of the economy, but the Bay Area in particular has become an exorbitantly expensive place for artists to live and work. In line with our tradition of supporting artists of all kinds, Mills is proud to take this new step in the right direction by providing a safe harbor to nurture artists that contribute so much to our culture.”
About the Artists
Working in a variety of media and styles, the three artists chosen for the inaugural residency represent diverse artistic points of view:
- Zarouhie Abdalian (site-oriented installations and sculptures) is a New Orleans native who lives and works in Oakland and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum. Recent exhibitions include Prospect.3, New Orleans; "Audible Spaces," David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence, RI; Eighth Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany; "Nothing Beside Remains," Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Australia; CAFAM Biennale, Beijing, China; "Shanghai Biennial: Reactivation," Shanghai, China; "When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes," CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia; "Rendez-vous 12," South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa; and the Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey. Her solo exhibition "An Overture” was recently shown at Altman Siegel in San Francisco.
- Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon (sound, installation, and sculpture) is based in Los Angeles. She is particularly interested in the history of cybernetics and its relation to regulation and control. Gordon’s work is often systems-based and it incorporates the physical and sonic qualities of surrounding architecture to engage the viewer’s senses. She has exhibited at Eli Ridgway Gallery, Queens Nails Annex, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Sonoma State University, and the CUE Art Foundation. She received an MFA from Stanford University in 2011.
- Weston Teruya (drawings and sculpture examining the history of the built environment) was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and is currently residing in the Bay Area. He has had solo exhibitions at Intersection for the Arts and Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco and Pro Arts in Oakland. He has also exhibited at Southern Exposure and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; Longhouse Projects and the NYC Fire Museum in New York; Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Tokyo; the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; and the Palo Alto Art Center. Teruya was an Irvine Fellow at the Lucas Artist Residency of the Montalvo Arts Center, a recipient of a 2009 Artadia grant, and a recipient of a 2014 Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. He received an MFA in painting and drawing and MA in visual and critical studies from California College of the Arts.
About Mills College
Located in Oakland, California, in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area, Mills College is a nationally renowned independent liberal arts college for women with graduate programs for women and men. Ranked one of the top-tier regional universities in the West by U.S. News & World Report, Mills is also recognized as one of The Best 379 Colleges in the nation by The Princeton Review. Since 1852, we’ve been empowering students to become creative, independent thinkers who take and inspire action. For more information, visit www.mills.edu.
