Stanford University Department of Art & Art History

2023 Winter MFA Documentary Film Screening

Join us tomorrow, March 21st @ 6:00pm | Films by first year MFA students in the Documentary Film Program

▪️Earthling
By Julia Mendoza Friedman and Claire Haughey
An independent aerospace engineer and a crew of dreamers tinker with the airship they hope one day will carry them to the edge of space.

▪️What Cannot Be Seen
By Julie Gaynin and Dominic Yarabe
Real estate agents share their stories navigating housing discrimination in the Bay Area.

▪️Lacuna
By Carlo Nasisse and Shirley He
An ancient lake was drained leaving behind fertile soil. Now, agricultural machinery, animals, and humans search for water in the dry valley left behind.

*Not in screening order

Q&A with filmmakers and reception to immediately follow the screening. Free and open to the public. 🎬

Tomorrow is Open Studios and you are invited! From 3-5pm, classrooms and studios of the McMurtry Building and Stanford Art Gallery open their doors to the public featuring student artwork right where it was created!



In the meantime, enjoy these photos captured during Open Studios this past fall quarter. 💫

Next week! 😼 Screening of films by first year MFA students in the Documentary Film Program—Tuesday, March 21 // 6:00 PM // Oshman Hall

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On the occasion of the publication 𝘈𝘻𝘪𝘻 + 𝘊𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳: 𝘟𝘟𝘟, a 30-year retrospective of their work, Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher will engage in a wide-ranging, public conversation with Richard Meyer, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor of Art History.

5:30 pm | Tuesday, March 7

Register to attend! Link in bio 🔗 or visit art.stanford.edu for more info.

𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 is now on view in the Coulter Art Gallery! Stop by Monday-Friday, 11am-5pm 💫

The MFA Art Practice first year show introduces our incoming cohort of five students to Stanford through an exhibition of new artwork created in the short time since arriving on campus in the fall. This group found a common thread in their diverse practices in reorienting towards and from home. Each of these artists reclaim their identities as they look closely at their places of origin and unpack the oppressive systems and intergenerational trauma that have shaped their experiences. For some, this is a transnational experience of migration, colonialism, assimilation, and language barriers. Materials play an important conceptual role across their practices whether it is adobe used in traditional architecture to heal a haunted house, a pulley that is drawing us towards honoring our chosen home, or a rope that once tied us to historical legacies of marginalization can also ground us in a new sense of peace and belonging. These artists center and give shape to the past by reimagining what home can be today. - Associate Professor Terry Berlier, Curator







Opening reception will be held tomorrow, February 22, 4-6pm.

Behind the scenes installation of the First Year MFA Exhibition: Home Landings! 🔨🧰🖼

This group exhibition will feature works by five first-year MFA students in Art Practice: Joanna Keane Lopez, Wendy Liu, Jessica Monette, Yunfei Ren, and Pablo Tut.

💫 On view February 21 - March 17 in the Coulter Art Gallery

Featured in this compilation is our newly hired Art Preparator, Daniel Brickman! Daniel is originally from Birmingham, Alabama. He studied architecture at Auburn University before switching to sculpture and earning a BFA from Indiana U. of PA. After a study abroad experience, he spent two years exhibiting and teaching in Zagreb, Croatia. He came to California for graduate school and earned an MFA in Studio Art from UC Davis in 2012. Daniel's artwork combines sculpture and painting with an emphasis on process and craftsmanship. He has exhibited regionally in CA, nationally, and internationally.

Brickman’s professional focus leading up to an Art Preparator role at Stanford included teaching art at primary, secondary, and collegiate levels, theater and dance set fabrication and installation, assisting artists, rough and finish carpentry, bronze casting, and metal working. He is keenly interested in finding elegant solutions to material problems and working with artists to realize their vision for an exhibition. If you see him around McMurtry, be sure to say hi! 👋🏼

Bissera V. Pentcheva’s 𝘌𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 interdisciplinary project brings two more public facing events this week, in addition to 𝘈𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘝𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘭𝘦 𝘈𝘨𝘦𝘴: 𝘚𝘵𝘦. 𝘍𝘰𝘺 𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴 on view now through March 17 in the Stanford Art Gallery:

Friday, 2/10: 𝘈𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭 𝘐𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦
7:30pm at Bing Concert Hall

Saturday, 2/11: 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪-𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘚𝘺𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘶𝘮
9am-6pm at McMurtry, Room 350

🔗 Visit link in bio for more information! Stanford Art Gallery will be open outside of normal visiting hours for those on campus attending these events.

Photos by Susana Barron

That basement POV

📸: Chris Nguyen

Tomorrow! Visiting artist Hito Steyerl will deliver a talk titled “Failed works. Pandemia, energy crisis, inflation, war, 2020-.” 🔗 Visit link in bio to register.

This lecture is made possible by a generous grant from Carmen M. Christensen.

The application deadline for the Metaspore incubator this spring at Stanford is this Friday, February 3rd. Open to all students enrolled .

Metaspore is a student fellowship (including a weekend retreat for all student participants) and a spring course led by and co-instructed by alumni MFA 22.

The course will question how we can augment our own perceptions and intuitions, while also considering the diverse sensory ecologies of other life forms and incorporating these ideas into our immersive technologies and practices.

Visit metaspore.org for more information and to apply.

Hosted by Stanford, the Office of the Vice President for the Arts, in collaboration with Stanford Arts Institute, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and the Human and Planetary Health Working Group.

Congratulations to Amy Elkins (MFA ‘22), Xandra Ibarra (Art Practice Lecturer), Dana Hemenway (Art Practice Lecturer), Rodrigo Reyes (Doc Film Adjunct Faculty), and the 8 other recipients of the 2023-2025 Fleishhacker Foundation’s Eureka Fellowship Program! 👏🏼

Founded in 1986, the Eureka Fellowship Program offers unrestricted financial support for visual artists to continue to live and create in the San Francisco Bay Area. Artists are selected on a three-year cycle, with four fellowships annually. A total of $35,000 is provided to each selected artist, making the Eureka awards among the largest visual arts fellowships in Northern California.

💫 Don’t forget to register for “Unexpected Partners: Self-Taught Art and Modernism in Interwar America” on January 27! ➡️ Link in bio.

In this one-day virtual symposium, Morris Hirshfield’s remarkable production and contentious reception serve as a springboard for a broader consideration of modernism’s complex interchange with self-taught art in the U.S. during the mid-twentieth century. Talks will highlight the important contributions that self-taught artists made to the development of modernism in the U.S., redressing the artists’ gradual exclusion from the art-historical canon in the postwar era and fleshing out a more representative narrative of American Art. List of speakers includes our very own Richard Meyer and Marci Kwon, Professors of Art & Art History.

This symposium is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Left: Hermann Landshoff, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst [standing behind Morris Hirshfield’s N**e at the Window (Hot Night in July)], and Leonora Carrington (seated) at Peggy Guggenheim’s townhouse, Fall 1942, New York, NY, Digital print (original: gelatin silver print, 60 x 60 in.). © bpk. Digital image: bpk-Bildagentur/Münchner Stadtmuseum/Hermann Landshoff/Art Resource, New York

Right: Morris Hirshfield, N**e at the Window (Hot Night in July), 1941, Oil on canvas with collage, 54 1/4 x 30 3/4 inches. © Carroll Janis, licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Where comes the inspiration for art? 🙇‍♂️ Join artist Xu Bing as he explores the boundaries of language, perception, and reality in the digital age.

January 19, 5:30-7pm PST
Oshman Hall, McMurtry Building ✨

Link in bio to reserve a seat! Registration ends soon.

Xu Bing, Phoenix, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divince, New York, 2014.

Congratulations to Greg Rick (MFA '22) and Binto Ayofemi (MFA '07) Art Practice MFA alumni who received the SFMOMA SECA award. Their exhibitions are on view at SFMOMA from now until May 29, 2023. Don't miss their spectacular artwork!

Interested in taking a sculpture course? Consider enrolling in Dana Hemenway’s Social Sculpture class this upcoming Winter Quarter! ❄️

Our first-year MFA students will be sharing their fall films this Tuesday, December 13th at Oshman Hall! It’s free (!) and there will be a Q+A with the filmmakers and light reception afterwards. Come out and support their hard work if you can!

The films include:

Wood Street Afternoon by Julie Gaynin
A group of Oakland residents find home in an unlikely place.

Another Day by Claire Haughey
An unlikely open water swimmer finds community, connection, and ritual by communing with the San Francisco Bay.

Uncanny Earth by Carlo Nasisse
A filmmaker attempts to make a film about a changing planet with an artificial intelligence.

Headshot by Dominic Yarabe
A filmmaker explores the director-subject relationship while processing their first film.

Fortune Alley by Shirley He
An experiential sight/site-seeing that meanders through Ross Alley, the oldest alleyway in San Francisco Chinatown.

parklunchgod by Julia Mendoza Friedman
A meditation on Privately Owned Public Parks and the power structures that exist within them.

‘Tis the season ✨

If you haven’t already, stop by SAG to view the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition—on view now through the end of this week!

After a two-year hiatus, the exhibition is back, displaying the exceptional creativity of some of Stanford’s most artistically talented undergraduates.

✨Curated by Terry Berlier & Katie Dieter

Back to an in-person commencement in the McMurtry atrium. Wonderful to welcome back the class of 2020 for their chance to participate, too! Many thanks to the staff for all the effort that goes into these events, and congratulations to our graduating students! 🎓

OK Co**se, the 2022 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Exhibition, is the culmination of the yearlong honors thesis program in art practice. This group exhibition showcases works by Alyssa Diaz, Gunner Dongieux, Kaylee Nok, and Cathy Yang. Congratulations to the artists!

OK Co**se is on view through April 22 at the Coulter Art Gallery.


kaylee jpg

Professor Emanuele Lugli discusses what it’s like to be credited with inspiring a fashion line that blurs the boundaries between sexual and gender binaries.

"To influence artists is not something that happens often in an academic’s life: We are often told to write for other scholars. So to see that my research can get out of academic boundaries to inspire creatives is exhilarating."

Four questions for Emanuele Lugli | Stanford News The Stanford art historian discusses what it’s like to be credited with inspiring a fashion line that blurs the boundaries between sexual and gender binaries.

Professor Xiaoze Xie’s paintings from the Nocturnes series present theatrical light, stage-like spaces, and ambiguous atmosphere, suggesting some kind of social condition while documenting transition and transformation in China and beyond. Seen here are three paintings from the Nocturnes series, currently displayed in the vitrine of the McMurtry Building.

The scenes of everyday life in cities, and on the edges between urban spaces and the countryside, are at once familiar and strange, betraying economic and social contexts yet presenting a compassionate, sensitive perspective.

Stylistically, these paintings resonate with Xie’s other works as he captures the subtle color variations found in the low light of the evening hours.

Alongside the vitrine, paintings from Xie's Chinese Library series are also on view in the foyer of the McMurtry Building.
xiaoze

Works:
Edge of the City (Beijing), 2016, oil on linen, 64 x 109 in.
Anticipation (Bucharest), 2016, oil on linen, 72 x 105 in.
On the Sidewalk (Guangzhou), 2016, oil on linen, 72 x 118 in.

Thank you to all who joined us for yesterday’s opening reception for Mediated Lines, the second-year MFA exhibition! This group show, now on view at the Coulter Art Gallery, showcases works by Andrew Catanese, Tina Kashiwagi, Liz Maelane, Krystal Ramirez, and Oleg Savunov.

In these photos, Professor Paul DeMarinis observes an installation by Tina Kashiwagi; Miguel Novelo captures a work by Krystal Ramirez; and Andrew Catanese poses in front of his paintings.

Congratulations to all, including curator Professor Enrique Chagoya and our exhibitions team Gabriel Harrison and Garth Fry!

Mediated Lines at Coulter Art Gallery is open to Stanford affiliates through March 11.

Day for Night by artist Jim Campbell is a permanent LED installation that circles the top of San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower, and soon, video works by MFA students Tina Kashiwagi, Liz Maelane, and Miguel Novelo will be projected onto this large-scale sculpture.

Here they are seen during last week’s first test run with Campbell, accompanied by project advisor Professor Gail Wight. Remote tests continue this week, and the next in-person tests will take place along the Embarcadero. The official run of the videos is scheduled for mid-March, stay tuned for details!

Thank you to for sharing these images and the details of this one-of-a-kind project!

"The nine filmmakers featured at the event created strong, relatable films. I was exposed to a myriad of perspectives, cultures and experiences that were all connected by hopes of sharing a community. The films masterfully captured the human experience, letting the audience feel seen. The outstanding film selection left me wanting more; for a moment, the world felt full of possibilities, if given enough time."

Read a wonderful review by Bhumikorn Kongtaveelert of The Stanford Daily on Nine Thesis Films, a screening of films by the 2021 graduates of the MFA Program in Documentary Film at the historic Roxie Theater on Sunday, Jan. 30.

https://stanforddaily.com/2022/01/31/mfa-documentary-students-screen-hopeful-poignant-films/

MFA documentary students screen hopeful, poignant films Bhumikorn Kongtaveelert writes about the intimacy and hope within nine thesis films by Stanford MFA documentary students.

Tonight! Join us for seven 16mm black-and-white films by first-year students in the MFA Program in Documentary Film. Seen here is a still from each film, in screening order, by:

Rowan Ings
Lauren Howell
Faye Tsakas
Sruti Visweswaran
Enrique Pedráza-Botero
Susana Barrón
Dorian Munroe

The screening takes place tonight, Friday, December 10, at 7 pm PT, online via Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/event/1635727

Q&A with the filmmakers to follow. Join us!

Ephemerality: Time in Sculpture and Digital Media (ARTSTUDI 158M) is an upcoming winter 2022 course taught by Miguel Novelo and Gabriella Grill.

This course is a survey of ephemeral art within the context of sculpture and digital media. Students consider the art object made to last forever, in contrast with the object meant to disintegrate, decompose, or fall apart.

Students create ephemeral work in a range of techniques including food, found objects, mold making and casting, photography, digital media, and performance.

Learn more: https://art.stanford.edu/courses

Students of Sarah Peck’s Foundations I, a course based on the central role of interdisciplinary connections and exchanges in artistic practice, install their work in the Mohr Student Gallery, located on the ground floor of the McMurtry Building.

Also seen here are works from Photography I, taught by Kari Orvik and Jamil Hellu.

These works are on view as part of Open Studios, an afternoon event that invites the Stanford community to explore the classrooms and studios of the McMurtry Building and Stanford Art Gallery, where works by undergraduate students are displayed.

Open Studios takes place this Friday afternoon, 3-5 pm, join us! Open to Stanford affiliates only.

Thank you to Sommer Wood, photography lab manager, for sharing these photos!

Students of fall quarter’s Sculpture I, taught by Dana Hemenway, present their second project “Connections In Wood” in the McMurtry Building’s Ground Floor Crit Space, now on view through November 15.

Students work in groups of three or four to create wooden sculptures. The project has several goals: to introduce students to wood fabrication, to explore working in collaboration with others, and to make a piece that is interactive, kinetic, and/or modular in nature. Students come away with technical woodworking skills while also diving into realms of social practice and interactivity in art.

Featured works are Independent Collaboration by Amy, Ben and Sebastian; Room by Aylee, Brooklyn, Grace and Zecheng; and A City Rises by Elisa, Irving, Tenzin and Valentine.

Thank you to for sharing these images and offering a glimpse into the department’s sculpture course.

Since 2009, the Bowes Art & Architecture Library has acquired the annual printmaking portfolios of graduating students of Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan.

These portfolios feature print mediums such as etching, lithography, and woodblock, and represent some of the best works by young printers trained in Japan, where printmaking enjoys a venerable and illustrious history.

Full of Autumnal Scent, now on view at the Stanford Art Gallery, showcases a selection of 130 prints that are beautiful, technically flawless, and a reflection of contemporary Japanese sensibilities.

On view through December 3, Monday-Friday, 11 am-5 pm; open to Stanford affiliates only.

Learn more: https://art.stanford.edu/exhibitions/full-autumnal-scent-10-years-graduate-printmaking-tama-art-university-tokyo-japan