I have produced and project managed 100+ exhibitions and events in my career at organizations such as San Francisco Art Institute, Root Division, South Seattle Community College, Greenhorns, and SOIL Artist Run Gallery. Several highlights are outlined below.
SOUTH SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ART GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
I coordinated and designed Envisioning a Future in October 2008 as the South Seattle Community College Art Gallery Coordinator. This exhibition featured eight artists who imagined restorative ecological actions for the damaged places in their urban neighborhoods.
The show explores these topics both through storytelling and through direct social engagements. Dayna Hanson’s satirical dance film about modifying her 1980 Mercedes to run on scavenged vegetable oil from downtown diners, and Sarah Kavage and Nicole Kistler’s Living Barge Project each act as poignant examples. Living Barge Project was a social sculpture which transformed a decommissioned barge, on Seattle’s polluted Duwamish River, into a native plant restoration garden. Artist Vaughn Bell also led an artist talk and an adoption ceremony for Personal Pocket Biospheres.
Envisioning a Future was 1 of 20 exhibitions that I coordinated, curated, and administratively supported during my time as the Art Gallery Coordinator at South Seattle Community College.
ROOT DIVISION EXHIBITIONS
At Root Division I acted as the Program Manager for a monthly exhibition series, live events, exhibition catalogues, and an art and venue rental program.
Our exhibitions fostered the creation of new works by emerging artists, such as Primordial Lumpariums by Jillian Crochet. Through the creation of pseudo-scientific tableau and in collaboration with plants and algae, Jillian reclaims systems, spaces, and timescales to challenge the image of disability culture as linked to medical systems of control and experimentation. She reclaims these aesthetic sensibilities through her own curiousity-driven experimentation and storytelling: hand-cast silicone containers (lumpariums) contain bubbling algae and sticky mud that create ecological connections across species while creating relatable systems of care and examination.
Learn more about the programs, exhibitions, and events I managed at Root Division.
NEW GENRES SALON at SFAI
The SFAI New Genres Salons were festivals of performance art, installation, and video work by SFAI New Genres students. Some iterations of this event were annual festivals that sprawled across the entire campus and featured ambitious works by 50+ students. Other times the Salons were more nimble—taking place 6 times a year in the headquarters of the New Genres complex.
TOWER RADIO & TWR
Tower Radio started as a shortwave pirate FM radio broadcast, transitioned to a streaming online radio station, and then onto a sound based exhibition project called TWR. TWR was run by students at the San Francisco Art Institute. I was the staff advisor and administrative manager of all student workers, exhibitors, and initiatives on this project.
In Spring 2017, TWR presented Juan Pablo Ayala and Victoria Ordway’s sound and video installation — an immersive environment which broadcast the diary entries and home movies of 3 friends trying to survive on their damaged planet. Viewers enter into this piece of expanded cinema as if into the whirling minds of the 3 friends. A narrative soundtrack features each friend wondering out loud about slowing to geological timescales and re-building safety in their almost-post-human world.
video shot by: Renée Rhodes
editing by: Pedro Alejandro Verdin
