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SF State pilot program trains students to handle art — and they’re already landing jobs

Read more about SF State pilot program trains students to handle art — and they’re already landing jobs

Funded by a California State University grant, the 12-unit pilot program is designed to diversify the field of art handling

For the past year, Art students at San Francisco State University set aside their easels and learned the trade-skills aspects of the art world. A pilot program in Art Handling teaches students the proper ways to handle art and prepare them for careers in museums, galleries, auction houses and beyond. The 12-unit program is among the first of its kind at a public university, training students in a field where no academic degree program exists, anywhere.

Students have found themselves driving a forklift, riding a scissor shift, drilling wooden cleats into walls of the Fine Arts Gallery on campus and more. The experience they’ve gained since beginning the program last fall has already landed them work at venues such as the de Young Museum, Contemporary Jewish Museum and California Institute of Integral Studies. Many of the 15 students in the pilot program had never even heard of art handling.

“This program has been transformational,” said Adrian Morelock-Revon, a sculptor who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Art History this year. “I was goal-less coming back to university. Now I have more direction.”

For Public Health major Megan Rogers (B.S., ’24), the Art Handling program has introduced her to new community.

“I took a ceramics class and fell in love (before enrolling in Art Handling),” Rogers said. “This has been a really big confidence boost. It has been wonderful to connect with like-minded students.”

Other students in the cohort have made discoveries both practical and symbiotic.

“I’m much nicer to my own artwork now, especially storing it,” said Emma Purves, a multidisciplinary artist, as she and two classmates wrapped sculptures from the most recent Fine Arts Gallery exhibition. “I used to keep it in a pile without thinking about long-term damage.”

Valerie Mata, who completed a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art this year, has found that there is much more to art handling than hanging, packing and shipping.

“I’ve gained a strong idea of my environment and community, delving into this portion of the art world with people closer to my age and getting into the museum world and curatorial projects,” she said. “We see a different side. It gives me continuous learning.”

Art handling is a mid-level position secured through on-the-job training, word of mouth and unpaid internships, which is not economically feasible for most San Francisco State students, as stated in the grant proposal that was funded by the California State University Creating Responsive, Equitable, Active Teaching and Engagement (CREATE) Awards Program. It was the only arts-based program to win a CREATE award for 2023 – 2024. The program also aims to diversify the field of art handling. The overall workforce is more than three-fourths white and male, according to data compiled by the Broad Museum.

“A program like this really does open the diversity in this industry. By happenstance or not, the industry is really white and male dominated,” said Kurt Otis (B.A., ’18), one of two alumni tapped by the School of Art to mentor students. He is the lead art handler for the Minnesota Street Project’s Art Services department in San Francisco. “The semester is a short time, but my mentorship with the students truly lasts longer. I told them, ‘You have my phone number. You have my email. ... Let me help you transition into the professional world and even beyond.’”

The other mentor, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Preparator Ximaps Dong (B.A., ’19), has shown students how they install artwork in their job as well as for friends at neighborhood galleries.

“I’m able to use the resources and my community to help students out,” Dong said. “And also, just like, make it approachable because I feel like the art world can be a little scary and foreign.”

“We want to create those network connections now,” said Art Lecturer Kevin B. Chen, who directs the program with SF State Fine Arts Gallery Director Sharon E. Bliss. “If we can help restructure the network, we can help diversify it.”

“We’ve also gotten incredible feedback from institutions. They’re saying that they’ve been waiting for something like this,” Bliss said. “The word is getting out and folks are just like, ‘How do we support you? How do we get these trained students into our workforce?”

The students will finish their program with a culminating exhibition that they will install themselves. “Waters Run Deep” will be on display Saturday, Aug. 10 – Saturday, Sept. 7, in the Fine Arts Gallery in the Fine Arts building. Admission is free.

Learn more about the SF State School of Art.

Two students drill into a 5-foot-tall wooden box while standing in the Fine Arts Gallery

Photo Credit: Adrian Morelock-Revon

Adrian Morelock-Revon cuts into wooden blocks while standing and wearing a yellow short-sleeved collared shirt. A pink reusable water bottle decorated with stickers and a whiteboard are visible behind Morelock-Revon

Photo Credit: Ivan Jaimes-Carrillo

Oakland artist named Harker Artist-in-Residence at SF State

Read more about Oakland artist named Harker Artist-in-Residence at SF State

In residency made possible by the San Francisco Foundation, Liz Hernández will create fictional research office on campus

San Francisco State University’s School of Art has named Liz Hernández as the Harker Artist-in-Residence, a 12-month appointment in which she will create a “fictional research organization” on campus, The Office for the Study of the Ordinary.

The residency is made possible by the Harker Fund at the San Francisco Foundation. Established by Ann Chamberlain in 2005, the fund awards grants to nonprofit organizations underwriting residency and project support for artists working in public practice and environmental interdisciplinary studies.

For Hernández’s residency, she will serve as lead researcher for The Office for the Study of the Ordinary. Her office will focus on investigating the everyday, documenting hidden narratives through the creation of objects, images and writing.⁣ It fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration, vulnerability, curiosity and experimentation. Her residency concludes in February 2025 with a culminating exhibition on the San Francisco State campus featuring documentation of the physical office, processes, artifacts and printed material.

Hernández is a Mexican artist based in Oakland since 2011. Her work spans a variety of techniques — painting, sculpture, embroidery and writing — which she uses to blur the space between the real and the imaginary.

Deeply influenced by the craft traditions of Mexico, her practice investigates the language of materials and the different stories they tell. She draws inspiration from literature, anthropology, syncretism, oral traditions and the landscape of Mexico City, always looking for an element that breaks the normalcy of everyday life.

Her partially autobiographical work has led to collaboration with her family in the shape of very personal research. Hernández has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

SF State School of Art Director and Professor Victor De La Rosa says that Hernández’s work with students supports institutional initiatives to increase retention and graduation rates and eliminate equity gaps.

“One central way that the School of Art is contributing to this effort is by increasing presence and engagement with role models of success,” De La Rosa said. “We are bringing in guest artists, lecturer faculty, graduate teaching assistants — and now Liz Hernández as the Harker Artist-in-Residence — who more reflect the diversity and varied experiences of our student body.”

Learn more about SF State’s School of Art.

Courtesy of Liz Hernández

SF State exhibition examines legacy of Japanese American incarceration

Read more about SF State exhibition examines legacy of Japanese American incarceration

Fine Arts Gallery presents new artwork reflecting on Ruth Asawa’s Garden of Remembrance on campus

Eighty-two years ago, Japanese American students from San Francisco State College were forced to withdraw from classes, some taken to prison camps. Twenty-two years ago, San Francisco State University dedicated a garden to honor the Japanese American experience of incarceration during World War II, especially that of the 19 students, and the resilience of this community after their release, designed by acclaimed artist Ruth Asawa. This year, the garden is the subject of further artistic exploration in new works on display in the Fine Arts Gallery on campus.

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” features new commissioned works by artists Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Tina Kashiwagi, Paul Kitagaki Jr., Lisa Solomon and TT Takemoto.

The exhibition opens on Saturday, Feb. 24, with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m., and concludes on Saturday, April 6. The Fine Arts Gallery is open Tuesdays – Fridays, noon – 4 p.m. Admission is free.

Dedicated in 2002, the Garden of Remembrance is located between Burk Hall and the Fine Arts building. A waterfall cascading from behind the Cesar Chavez Student Center signifies the return of the internees to the coastline after the war. Ten large boulders in the grassy area next to Burk Hall represent each of the camps set up during World War II. The names of the 19 former SF State students expelled and the names of the camps are listed on a bronze, scroll-shaped marker. The marker also includes reproductions of official government documents regarding the internment.

In an essay for the exhibition’s catalog, artist and cultural producer Weston Teruya describes “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” as a “relationship of care” to family, community and shared stories.

“This collection of artworks is an intergenerational remembrance: a deep sensory reflection on ancestral practices and cultural traditions that are studied across veils of time and oceans, and the unearthing of elided histories and traumas from beneath stone memorials or out of the recesses of overlooked archives,” Teruya writes.

“Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and SF State’s Instructionally Related Student Activities Fund.

Learn more about the “Reflecting on Ruth Asawa and the Garden of Remembrance” exhibition.

Student-curated art exhibition on campus celebrates farmworkers, exposes their struggles

Read more about Student-curated art exhibition on campus celebrates farmworkers, exposes their struggles

Brianna Montserrat Miranda helms ‘Essential,’ on display in the Fine Arts Gallery through Sept. 2

While essential workers were acknowledged in the COVID-19 pandemic, a new student-curated exhibition at San Francisco State University celebrates farmworkers and builds awareness of their continuing inhumane working conditions.

“Essential” opens on Saturday, Aug. 12, with a reception from noon to 4 p.m., in the Fine Arts Gallery. It is open Tuesdays – Fridays from noon to 4 p.m. through Saturday, Sept. 2. Admission is free.

As guest curator, San Francisco State student Brianna Montserrat Miranda has crafted a mix of contemporary art and poetry exploring relationships between labor, injustice, family and community. The nine artists include SF State alumnus Juan R. Fuentes, contributing a woodblock print titled “Mayan Warrior.” Historic works from the SF State Labor Archives and Resource Center will also be on display.

Miranda hopes that “Essential” makes people more mindful of the labor involved before produce makes it to the grocery store.

“I want our voices, our struggle and our experiences to be heard and respected,” she said.

Miranda, an Art History major and Museum Studies minor, has deep family roots in agricultural work.

“I’m a first-generation Mexican American woman, born to parents who immigrated to the U.S. at a young age,” she said. “Both sets of my grandparents have at one point or another worked in farm labor, as well as my parents. In fact, my grandparents are still actively working — my grandpa in the fields and my grandma at a sorting factory.

“Mayan Warrior” by Juan R. Fuentes (2011)

“I also worked for a short while at a sorting factory, as have some of my relatives who are around my age,” Miranda added. “I’m from the Central Valley, where about 25% of the country’s food is produced — but most importantly, I’m from a small farming, low-income community that is often under-represented and overlooked.”

Each semester, students in Lecturer Faculty Kevin B. Chen’s “Exhibition Design” class create a proposal for an original exhibition, but this is the first time that the Fine Arts Gallery has selected one for its shows of professional, non-student artists.

“We have been so impressed with Brianna’s artistic sagacity and commitment to sharing lived experiences with our community at SF State, shedding light on the hard labor necessary to provide food on all of our tables,” Chen said. “Collaborating with her has been a highlight of the year!”

Sharon E. Bliss, the Fine Arts Gallery director, says she is excited for visitors to experience what came from Miranda’s vision: “Watching her bring ‘Essential’ to fruition — from planning meetings through studio visits with artists and working with essayist Marcial González and graphic designer Madeline Ko — has been an amazing journey, and now we’re just getting started with sharing it with a public audience.”

Major support for “Essential” is provided by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

“Receiving the opportunity to curate ‘Essential’ has definitely been the most pivotal moment I’ve had at SF State,” Miranda said. “I’m still a little shocked but most really grateful for the opportunity. I know how important this exhibition is for me, my family and the Latino/a/x community who have experienced the effects of the agriculture business in the U.S.”

Learn more about SF State’s School of Art.

‘Finding Filipino’: Renowned comics artist discovered herself attending SF State

Read more about ‘Finding Filipino’: Renowned comics artist discovered herself attending SF State

Rina Ayuyang’s new graphic novel and comic posters explore Filipino American culture and history — including on campus

One evening in the 1990s, Rina Ayuyang was passing through the Creative Arts building at San Francisco State University. In a small recital hall, she discovered a Filipino ensemble performing a ballad, “Dahil Sayo (Because of You).” She recognized the song because her parents would dance to it in the living room of her childhood home.

“I lived near campus and would walk down the halls a lot, and I’d just stumble upon things that were happening,” Ayayung recalled. “It was a very film-noir scene actually, this woman singing this Filipino romantic ballad that I just came and found myself in. And it was a very magical experience.”

It was one of the many life-changing experiences for Ayuyang at San Francisco State to influence her as a comics artist and shape her as a human being.

New graphic novel

“The Man in the McIntosh Suit” (Drawn and Quarterly, 2023) is Ayuyang’s new graphic novel, presenting a Filipino American take on the Great Depression. Mistaken identities, speakeasies and lost love intersect from strawberry farms on the Central Coast to Manilatown in San Francisco.

Kirkus Reviews writes: “Ayuyang spins a captivating tale that is both an homage to starry-eyed Hollywood movies of the period and a corrective that highlights the anti-Asian racism faced by immigrants as well as the thriving communities they formed.”

Throughout her work, Ayuyang (B.A., ’98) aims not only to increase representation of Filipino Americans in the arts, but awareness of their key roles in U.S. history.

“We always feel like we’ve come a long way, but there are still things that need to be addressed. We like to bury things in our history that aren’t as pretty,” Ayuyang said. “I feel like as an artist, we need to continue to use our platform to share ideas, motivate and inspire.”

‘Finding Filipino’ and the ‘CIA’

Ayuyang was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and chose to attend SF State because she had deep family roots in the Bay Area. She majored in Art with an emphasis in Conceptual and Information Arts, an experimental program where she says everybody made their own rules and embraced a do-it-yourself ethos that prepared her well for a career in comic arts.

“They called it the ‘CIA’,” Ayuyang said. “It was a little fun rag-tag artist operation going on. It had this grassroots feeling that felt very San Francisco, bohemian-like. It was very much my jam.”

The courses that Ayuyang took in the College of Ethnic Studies from professors such as Dan Begonia taught her about the hidden histories of Filipino farmworkers and activists in California. She met lifelong friends in the Asian American Studies Department and participated in the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor, a student organization.

SF State has had such an impact on Ayuyang that she dedicated a comic to the University in her new poster series, “Finding Filipino.” Presented by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street Poster Series, the nine posters are on display at 30 bus shelters in downtown San Francisco through June.

On the “Finding Filipino at SF State” poster, she shares her Gator story: “Here, I learned that I was more than a ‘model minority,’ that I could be an artist, a writer, an athlete — anything I wanted to be.”

Learn more about the SF State School of Art and College of Ethnic Studies.

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