Ripple Effect: Celebrating the Teaching Artist Community

Biography

Mário Pires Cordeiro is a San Francisco-based artist born in Lisbon, Portugal. He received his MFA at the University of London and completed three years of a PhD researching color trends in fine arts. He has been commissioned by the Olympic and Paralympic Games Committee and the Cape Farewell Foundation and has put on several solo and group exhibitions. MPC’s art develops the relationship between fine art and design, commenting on the interaction between visual art and functional objects through experimentation in media and color. Color is his main focus, unpacking the symbolic and cultural meanings imposed on it in contemporary society by sourcing colors from trends and design forecasts as well as from particular environments or publications. He often uses color as an entry point into understanding and establishing identity, whether it be of a given space, time, object, attitude, etc. He finds inspiration in modern architecture, engineering, and geometry, distilling extremely intricate concepts into distinct shapes. He works with a variety of media, from painting and sculpture to film and clothing.

 

"My paintings are inspired by nature, which is always changing. I highlight these ephemeral moments in my paintings by using fluorescent, metallic, or phosphorescent paint and mica that flickers, glows or is shadowed in different light conditions. The feeling of slipping time and optical confusion remind the viewer that you are seeing something unknown reveal itself, become a painting in front of you."

- Mel Prest

Biography

Mel Prest is an American abstract artist whose work is focused on color and perceptual visual relationships. Her work is held in private and public collections internationally. As an independent curator, Prest has organized shows across California and New York, and from Amsterdam to Zagreb.

Biography

Asako Shimazaki was born in Tokyo, Japan. In 1984, she left Japan and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1991, she completed her BFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. Shimazaki exhibits her work in the US and Japan and is represented in the permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In Ayu no Kaze, published by TBW Books in 2019, Shimazaki returns to the scenery of Japan with pictures that “grab us by their distinctive and particular vision and persuade us that what this photographer saw was both marvelous and true” (Sandra S. Phillips). Ayu No Kaze was selected for the Thomas J. Watson Library collection. In 2020, Shimazaki’s photography was published by Drop Leaf Press in a curated poetic narrative, All of It, Tinged, with author Diana Fisher.

Notable among Shimazaki’s collections are Marcus’ Single Digits, a series documenting the first ten years of her son’s life, and Untitled, an intimate and moving glimpse into a family gathered to mourn the loss of Shimazaki’s nephew in a 1990s drive-by shooting in LA. Shimazaki’s work seeks to capture light through spontaneous and intimate portraits and shifting landscapes.

Shimazaki lives in San Francisco and just retired from Montessori preschool.

 

Biography

Lisa Solomon was born in Tucson Arizona, but has lived most of her life in California. She currently resides in Oakland with her husband, kiddo, a 3 legged pit bull, a small scruffy dachshund/terrier mutt, a 3 legged cat, a fluffy gray kitty, a bearded dragon and many, many spools of thread [Gutterman is her favorite brand]. She received her BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 1995 and her MFA from Mills College in 2003. Her work is shown internationally and is in numerous public and private collections.

Profoundly interested in the idea of hybridization [sparked from her Hapa heritage – she is ½ Japanese and ½ Caucasian], Solomon’s mixed media works revolve thematically around discovering her heritage, the notion of domesticity, craft, feminism, and the pursuit of art as science/research. She is frankly obsessed with color/color theory and is drawn to found objects, tending to alter them conceptually so that their meanings and original uses or intents are re-purposed. She often fuses “wrong” things together – recontextualizing their original purposes, and incorporating materials that inherently question and skirt the line between ART and CRAFT.

 

Biography

Jennifer Stuart’s art investigates our understanding of matter, energy, growth, decay, life and death. Stuart finds meaning and solace in the things we cannot see without looking closely.These worlds and systems offer us a chance to be conscious of ourselves as part of an everlasting pattern, echoing out beyond our capacity to conceive.

Working with spontaneity and control, chaos and order, she lets each work grow organically allowing for entropy and reflecting a range of processes and patterns. She studies various aspects of the natural world by observing,researching, and journaling. She takes inspiration from botany, ecology, geology, microbiology,and cosmology. In journals, paintings, sculptures, and installations, she uses automatic mark-making and controlled, almost obsessive patterning to create abstract interpretations of her ever evolving knowledge and questions.

Her journals are an important part of her work. They are intimate and allow the viewer to hold the universe in their hands, as well as see the artist’s train of thought, welcoming them into the dialogue. They include observational drawings, and paintings,quotes and information, as well as her own musings.

Biography

Using a range of materials and methods, Chris Thorson remakes and represents everyday objects to explore themes including consumption, illusion, and vulnerability. Her work has been presented in solo and two person exhibitions at Quint Gallery in San Diego, CA; Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, CA; Mama’s in Vallejo, CA; and the Des Lee Gallery at Washington University in St. Louis, among others. Group exhibitions include Personal Space, Vallejo,CA,  Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Subsidiary Projects, London, UK; The Hessel Museum at Bard College; and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. She lives and works in Vallejo, CA.

"I create colorful, abstract works utilizing hand embroidery, mixed media, second hand textiles, and found objects to explore themes of consumption, labor, waste, and identity within our capitalist society. My process is deeply experimental, focusing on manipulating materials to create patterns and forms that echo the natural world and the human body. By juxtaposing the man-made, discarded, and forgotten with the enduring beauty of nature, I encourage viewers to reflect on our roles as consumers, creators, and stewards of the Earth."

 

"Rarely do I wear dresses, but I like to create art about them. The meeting place of shape, color, design and texture is an ideal venue for visual storytelling. Using the  empty dress as an icon, I explore female identity, memory and history. 

Dress Stories: Collected Memories, emerged from a series of works consisting of paper dresses that I had created earlier. Dresses can challenge cultural assumptions,  consumerism and materialism, while holding a sense of place, time, and emotion.  

The eight illustrated vignettes in this book express the everyday, the elegant, the sad and profound, and joyous experiences that took place while these dresses were  being worn."

- Marcia Weisbrot

 

"I paint my soul and the feelings that are not palatable in, as what bell hooks calls our civilization, a white-supremasist capitalist patriarchy. My transness cannot be controlled, nor can my dedication to my fellow human. Art is essential in healing the traumas of life, when pushing back against the system can get you fired, evicted, or killed. I transform emotion into color of grief and texture of bliss to create bright, modern works. While the viewer might see bold vibrant creations, when I paint, I’m thinking about working in service, transphobia, drag silhouettes, or opening up higher dimensions within myself."

- Jasper Wilde

Biography

 

Jasper Wilde (they/them) is a non-binary abstract painter and educator based in San Francisco. Their vibrant, dynamic canvases channel experiences of a trans person navigating late-stage capitalism. Exploring themes of heartbreak, identity, autonomy, and imagination, Jasper's work is characterized by bold colors and gestural expression. They have led abstract painting workshops at Ruth's Table, employing a teaching style that encourages artists to infuse their emotions into their work.

 

 

 

Biography

Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, Jun Yang lived in Dublin, Ireland, Belgium, and France before settling in San Francisco. Jun has called San Francisco second home for the past 14 years. The city’s rich cultural diversity, urban landscape, natural beauty, and socially inclusive atmosphere have greatly inspired Jun’s work. San Francisco provides a sense of support and protection for Jun and many other queer artists, nurturing their creative expression.

Jun is a self-taught artist, his paintings, murals, and textile sculptures draw inspiration from his childhood traumas, healing journey, experiences of grief, the Queer immigrant experience, and cultural shock. For the past several years, Jun has focused on the creation of representing POC strong Queer bodies through painting, sewing fabric sculptures and sculpting figures out of clay to reflect on marks and evidence of survival, growth, and nourishment.

Jun combines his art with activism, reflecting his personal journey as a Queer immigrant and advocating for LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights by celebrating inclusivity and solidarity he has found in San Francisco while exposing ongoing struggles.

"My work explores Mesopotamian mythology and ancient objects, ceramic history and pop aesthetics. Clay has provided a link through historical Mesopotamian cultures to all of the great Bay Area artists that have inspired my work and shaped our contemporary concept of the medium, rooting myself and practice within a diasporic and localized sense of place.

- Maryam Yousif


Biography

Maryam Yousif was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1985 and lives in San Francisco, California. She received a Master of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2017, and received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Windsor, Ontario in 2008. Yousif has had solo and two-person exhibitions with David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, CO (2022), The Pit, Los Angeles, CA (2021), Andrew Rafacz, Chicago, IL (2021), Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2020, 2019), / slash art, San Francisco, CA (2019) and RSF Projects, San Francisco, CA (2017). Yousif’s work has been featured in exhibitions such as Wild Frontiers, The Pit, Los Angeles, California (2021), Dog Days, The Pit, Palm Springs, California (2021), Sleight of Hand, The Center for Craft, Asheville, North Carolina (2020) and The Lands Beyond, Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco, California (2019). She was a finalist for the Museum of Art and Design!s Burke Prize (2021), and completed an AICAD fellowship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Ceramics Department (2019-2021). She received the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship Grant in 2023. Her work can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Art and Design and the Denver Art Museum.