New Graduate Fine Arts MFA Studios, Social Practice, and Residency Intensives

Contemporary art in the Bay Area is demanding international attention, thanks to a roaring local economy, the expansion of museums such as SFMOMA, the proliferation of new galleries, thriving artist-driven projects, entrepreneurial maker spaces, and other visionary arts initiatives. This vibrancy has attracted a fresh wave of national and international artistic and curatorial talent, one that is bringing diverse perspectives to the Bay Area’s renowned artistic, technological, environmental, and social communities. At the heart of this is the living learning laboratory of California College of the Arts, a connective campus that describes itself as both creatively hackable and sustainably agile.

New studios and location
This fall CCA Graduate Fine Arts students moved into a newly renovated MFA Studio complex at the American Industrial Center. Located just 1.4 miles from the main San Francisco campus in the vibrant Dogpatch neighborhood, the complex offers large, professional studio spaces, installation and critique spaces, a wood shop and fabrication area, freight elevator, tool check-out system, desktop computing stations, a large communal table for events and meetings, as well as a full kitchen and comfortable common area. Most importantly, this location puts the CCA Graduate Fine Arts Program at the heart of DoReMi, San Francisco’s newest arts district, in close proximity to thriving cultural and partner organizations such as Minnesota Street Project, the Museum of Craft and Design, and Workshop Residence, as well as within a growing network of CCA learning sites across the city and throughout the Bay Area, including the Curatorial Research Bureau, The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Center for Impact and Art Practical. Students also enjoy CCA’s outstanding range of traditional and craft-based facilities and access to graduate courses in Visual and Critical Studies, Film, and Curatorial Practice.

CCA Graduate Fine Arts Open Studios
2565 Third Street, San Francisco
November 10, 2018 12–3pm

Social Practice at CCA
Inaugurated by Ted Purves in 2005, CCA’s Social Practice Workshop was the first Master’s level curriculum of its kind in the United States. Since then, the field of socially-engaged contemporary art has evolved and expanded, and CCA has played an acclaimed and integral role in that. Today, the Social Practice curriculum immerses students in the theory and practice of public and socially-engaged art, providing opportunities to work contextually in a variety of public spaces, including urban environments and specific regional communities, as well as online social spaces and institutional structures. Students work directly with an international group of visiting artists including, most recently, Bik Van der Pol, Tania Bruguera, Bureau of Linguistical Reality, Christopher Cozier, Leslie Dreyer, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Amy Franceschini, Ben Kinmont, and Torolab, among others.

Lecture in Memory of Ted Purves: Shane Aslan Selzer
Timken Hall, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco
November 7, 2018, 4–6pm

Please give to the Ted Purves Scholarship campaign!

Residency Intensives​
Our new series of Residency Intensives provide a platform for concentrated student engagement with distinguished visiting artists who each lead a variety of pedagogical activities during a month-long period onsite, culminating in the co-creation of a new public artwork. This unique curricular opportunity affords students unparalleled access to innovative figures in contemporary art. Last year we welcomed our first Residency Intensive artist Jibade-Khalil Huffman, who produced a short film with his students; in 2018–19 Tschabalala Self will work in the CCA printmaking studios on a new moving image work, and Servane Mary will partner with Workshop Residence, an organization that engages the worlds of craft, art, and design and partners with local manufacturers to create functional objects for everyday living.