Arts Division Newsletter

As a Santa Clarita native whose family moved to the San Jose area, it was important to Lauren Elscott that she stay near her family in college. When she visited the University of California, Santa Cruz and saw the lush greenery and beautiful surroundings she decided this was the place to be.

Mahshid Modares, a third-year FDM Ph.D. student, was invited by the National Art Education Association (NAEA) last April to create a curriculum resource (CR) for teaching k-12 students about Iranian Arts. The CR is published in The Asian Art and Culture Interest Group Journal, a peer-reviewed publication.

T. J. Demos has been selected as guest curator of Berlin Critics Week 2024, set to take place this February. He will present a range of short experimental artists’ videos under the title “Elemental Bodies: Ecologies, Media, Extraction,” followed by a public discussion. The program critically investigates media ecologies of extraction, as well as creative alternatives, asking: What have fossil fuel capitalism, AI, and the digital “green” economy made of the cinematic image and its figurations? How are artists responding at the nexus of aesthetics and politics, reimagining life and embodiment otherwise?

As a member of the class of 2015 staff member Edward Ramirez has been a part of the University of California, Santa Cruz for the past twelve years. He currently works as a digital imaging specialist for the digital printing lab on campus. Along with maintaining the tech side of printing, he also teaches students the more complicated aspects of printing for art.

Paul Mayeda Berges is a screenwriter, director and producer who has often collaborated with his wife, British-Indian director Gurinder Chadha, OBE. Together they have written eight award-winning films that have been critical and international box office successes. Berges studied film and theater at the UC Santa Cruz. He began his career making documentaries about the Japanese American community and was the director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

On Thursday March 21, 5-7pm the Sesnon Gallery will host a celebration of Dean Celine’s new book The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian/America (Duke University Press). The book explores the representation of Asian and Asian American children in contemporary industry and independent cinema. In the book Dean Celine discusses movies from the last decades including but not limited to Spa Night (2016), Yellow Rose (2019), The Half of It (2020), and Minari (2020). Books will be available to be purchased at the event from Two Birds Books.

Em Butler, Social Documentation, won the Arts Division preliminary round for their Coming Home to Mango Orchards and Aaron Samuel Mulenga, Visual Studies, for their Tenga Tenga: Can I Help You Carry Your Load? Grad Slam is a communication contest hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Division that is open to all graduate students, except those who have won 1st place in a previous Grad Slam. Participants have a maximum of three minutes to explain their graduate research or artistic endeavor to a general audience. Grad Slam at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz on March 2, 7-9 p.m.

Digital Arts and New Media students, Robbie Trocchia and Nicki Duval will premiere a new performance piece titled Peak at The Lab, San Francisco on Friday, March 1. Building off their collaborative performance bout, which staged and reconfigured George Bellows' boxing paintings with the help of two competitive boxers, Peak represents another foray into the intersection of arts and athletics for Trocchia and Duval. The piece features the words and physical performance of San Francisco-based queer weightlifter Sebastian Rios-Sialer within an audiovisual environment designed by Trocchia and Duval. Peak is informed by the intensity of competitive weight maximization, engaging with Rios-Sialer's experiences of strength training, emotional catharsis, and community-building. Featuring video design by Rory Willats (DANM '23).

Kairo Chin, 3rd-year senior, theater arts major and film and digital media minor, has received the University of the Future, Now! grant to help produce their passion project: Supernova Sync, A Queer, and BIPOC lip sync performance for joy and freedom of expression. The intent is to hold a space for intersectional identities to come together and workshop their favorite songs into creatively full performances. They are looking for creatives of all skill levels to participate in a range of areas: performance, technical crew, marketing, costumes, makeup, and more.

Sir Isaac Julien CBE RA, British installation artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of the Arts at UC Santa Cruz, along with Dionne Lee who works in photography, collage, and video to explore power, survival, and personal history in relation to the American landscape have been selected to be part of the next Whitney Biennnial that opens on March 20, 2024. Lee was invited to join the co-taught UCSC art class, Immersive Arts Field Research, this past fall quarter in Environmental Art and Social Practice (EASP).

On February 13th, Rebecca Wear, Assistant Professor of Directing, Performance, Play & Design, directed a reading of Ankita Raturi's NO ONE PLAYS BADMINTON IN AMERICA at Roundabout Theatre in New York as part of their 2024 Roundabout Underground Reading Series, a five-night event that included nightly readings of new works written by emerging artists. She’s also directing the world premiere of Lisa Dring's KAIROS at the Know Theatre in Cincinnati, which already has several other theaters committed to producing it later this year as part of a Rolling World Premiere.



The National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) recently announced its $33.8 million in funding going to projects around the country. Of the 260 humanities projects included are two UC Santa Cruz professors: Jennifer Derr, an associate professor of history, and Stacy Kamehiro, an associate professor of history of art and visual culture. Both professors are receiving $60,000 thanks to their individual projects.

“It falls on [the scientists’] side of the fence to figure out meaningful ways to show how art impacts our science,” says Ari Friedlaender, an ocean science professor at UC Santa Cruz. He and Rachel Nelson, the director of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS), have teamed up to create an interdisciplinary project that shows the effects of climate change in California, especially in regards to marine life through both art and science.

“To receive this award is a great honor,” says assistant professor of music Russell Rodriguez speaking about the Américo the Paredes Prize which he won in 2023. The prize was given by the American Folklore Society to reward scholars who invest in studying folklore and expanding cultural traditions.

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) announced the launch of the Coha Nowark Art + Science Residency Program, generously funded by Peter Coha (Kresge, 78 mathematics) and Vicki Nowark, and the inaugural artists-in-residence: Imani Jacqueline Brown and Christine Howard Sandoval. The Coha Nowark Art & Science Residency program brings artists and scientists together to innovate creative, social justice-oriented approaches to climate change. Through the three year pilot program, nationally significant artists, selected by University of California, Santa Cruz faculty and IAS staff, are awarded residencies at the IAS.

Since 2003 students have paid $2 a quarter in exchange for free access to performances and events put on by the Department of Performance, Play, and Design (PPD). Measure 11 which established this price has helped the department pay for its theater productions. Now Measure 11 could be back on the ballot pending approval from the Dean of Students, VC of Student Affairs, the Chancellor’s cabinet, and the University of California, Office of the President. Hopefully Measure 11 will be back on the ballot for UC Santa Cruz as it aims to raise the quarterly price from $2 by $5.

The UC Santa Cruz Arts Research Institute (ARI) is pleased to announce the winners of the Fall 2023 ARI awards. These highly competitive grants support projects that will enhance the national and international prominence of the arts at UCSC and increase the quality and vitality of research and creative work in theory, scholarship and/or practice in the arts. In this cycle, ARI awarded 11 grants to support faculty and graduate student research. Awardees: Laurie Palmer, Rosaline Kyo, Jay Afrisando, Matthew Schumaker, Russell Rodriguez, James Gordon Williams, Beth Stephens, Susana Ruiz, Jennifer Taylor, and mattie brice.