Arts Division Newsletter

Xander Patnoe was originally motivated to make music after being inspired by the soundscapes in video games. Now a fourth year Music major she is exploring potential futures in music, with a multidisciplinary look at how music affects space and multimedia settings.

Aaron Samuel Mulenga is a multi-disciplinary artist and scholar from Zambia, now residing in Santa Cruz, California. Since 2015 his work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions including the Iziko Museum, SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, the Henry Tayali Gallery, 37d Gallery and Modzi Arts Gallery in Lusaka. Aaron has participated in several art exhibitions such as the second Congo Biennial, 2022, in Kinshasa, D.R Congo, the Johannesburg Art Fair, 2022, and the Stellenbosch Triennial in 2020, in South Africa. Aaron holds a B.F.A. from the University of Cape Town, an M.F.A from Rhodes University and an M.A from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in History of Art and Visual Culture and has work currently being exhibited at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery.

An article by James Gordon Williams, Assistant Professor, Music, about his cross-disciplinary artistic research collaboration with artist Maria Gaspar has been published in the peer-reviewed online journal liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies ISSUE 8.2 under the theme “Catastrophe (a black gathering).” The article documents his performance on Gaspar’s 18 prison bars collected from Chicago’s Cook County Jail. As part of Gaspar’s exhibitions, Williams’ three performances on the prison bars happened at El Museo del Barrio in New York City, the UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences, and during Make Music Day at the San Jose Museum of Art.

Shani Heckman’s (Merrill ’95, economics) journey to the arts was anything but a straight line. The new tech director for the Film and Digital Media Department (FDM) has now spent decades working in the film industry highlighting social injustices and their community.

Less than a year after graduating, Bailey Rios (‘24 Art) is building a flourishing art career, which predominantly focuses on oil painting. He’s currently living just outside of San Luis Obispo, where he has set up a painting studio for himself. Before Rios graduated last spring he had already been accepted into a residency program at the San Lorenzo Valley Museum. He spent the last week or so of his time at University of California, Santa Cruz, driving from his studio class on campus to Boulder Creek. The residency lasted during the summer, and ended with an exhibition featuring the work Rios had completed.

Renowned filmmaker, film scholar and Dean of the Arts Division at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Celine Parreñas Shimizu will premiere her latest film at the 27th San Francisco’s Independent Film Festival on Friday, February 7, 2025 at the Roxie Theater.

On Friday December 6, 2024, University of California, Santa Cruz, welcomed to campus the internationally acclaimed independent filmmaker, music composer and scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha for a screening of her 2022 documentary, What About China? After the screening, graduate students and faculty in attendance joined in a discussion about the film, its nonlinear aesthetics, its polyphonic and embodied worldmaking, and the ways that a filmmaker could give back to the community.

Two cutting-edge research projects led by the University of California, Santa Cruz, have been awarded funding through the University of California’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI). This underscores the university's leadership in advancing creative and impactful solutions to global challenges. The UC Climate Action Arts Network (CAAN), spearheaded by Associate Professor of Art Karolina Karlic and Professor of Art Jennifer Parker, received nearly $2 million to leverage art and design as a powerful medium to engage the public in climate resilience and sustainability.

Two extraordinary Bösendorfer grand pianos have found their new home at UC Santa Cruz, thanks to the generosity of alumnus Ken Corday (Porter ’75, aesthetic studies/music). Corday, an accomplished pianist, composer, and Emmy Award-winning executive producer of Days of Our Lives, continues his longstanding support of the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz through this remarkable gift.

Internationally exhibited photographer, archivist, curator and Professor Emeritus of Art at UCSC, Lewis Watts, is currently showing his work in a retrospective exhibition. With a keen interest in both historical and contemporary representations of people in the African diaspora, this exhibition includes portraits of artists, activists, authors, and musicians as well as Watts’ documentary street photography and urban landscapes. This exhibition showcases a curated selection of Watts' work spanning nearly 50 years, illuminating his exploration of identity, memory, and the complex narratives that define our shared human experience. By revealing the poetry embedded within the Black experience—whether in New Orleans, Harlem, Paris, Oakland, Cuba or beyond—Watts coaxes us to engage with his images on a deeply personal level.

From the moment Professor John Jota Leaños, Film and Digital Media, began the first day of ART 139: Murals and Movements by offering sage gathered from his garden, it was clear the course would provide a rich, immersive experience. Exploring the history of muralism in the context of social and political art movements across the Americas, students worked together to design and produce a mural honoring the cultural histories of Black, Indigenous, and Latiné communities. The project, created to celebrate El Centro’s 30th anniversary, was brought to life with the support of visiting muralists and UCSC alumni, Irene Juarez-O’Connell and Victor Cervantes, and included excursions to San Francisco’s Mission District and Santa Cruz’s Beach Flats. 

Sarah Sanford, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Art department, will be showcasing new work in an upcoming two-person exhibition, Light Gets In—Ann Resnick & Sarah Sanford at the Cabrillo Gallery located at Cabrillo College in Aptos, Calif. The exhibition will be on view February 3 through March 7, 2025.

Launched at the start of fall quarter 2024, the University of California, Santa Cruz, created a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary major in the Arts Division. Creative Technologies is situated at the crossroads of arts and technology and is dedicated to exploring digital tools for creativity in the context of web-based community and society, with an emphasis on collaboration, creative labor that occurs outside of traditional “arts” and “design” contexts, and the deeper ethics and justice that those tools can help to foster. 

Grant Whipple is currently exhibiting paintings in two group shows. Sacred Ground opened at the Amos Eno Gallery in New York on January 9 and is running through February 9, 2025, and Prometheus is at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, running January 24 through February 21, 2025. Sacred Ground examines the idea of spaces that hold deep significance and meaning, both personally and collectively, and Prometheus focuses on Fire as a symbol of transformation and enlightenment, showing works made with or about fire, heat, warmth, and works that burn physically or metaphorically.

The Gallery at Heimbold Visual Arts Center at Sarah Lawrence College recently announced the opening of In the Room, a group exhibition featuring four contemporary photographers: Jonathan Jackson, Assistant Professor of Photography: Race, Representation, and Critical Practice at UCSC, along with Kelly Kristin Jones, Ashley M. Freeby, and Allie Tsubota. Through still photography, archival research, and family histories, these four artists explore the relationships between personal and collective memories, and in particular how public histories are made, challenged, and remade. The exhibition runs through February 25, 2025.

Alongside renowned artists Mary Mattingly and Athena LaTocha, Tyler Rai’s piece Neshome Likht for Ecological Relatives will be on view as part of the show To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home at the Fairfield University Art Museum in Fairfield, CT. Rai is currently a first-year M.F.A. student in Environmental Art and Social Practice (EASP) at UCSC. Curated by Al Miner and David Brinker, the show explores the role spiritual/religious practice can play in our personal responses to the climate crisis. The sculpture and video work will be up through March 29, 2025 when the exhibit will move to the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University over the summer.

Sesnon Gallery Director Valéria Miranda was recently awarded a $6,000 two-year grant from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County towards operations expenses for the Sesnon Gallery. The Arts Council experienced an exceptionally competitive grant cycle, with more applications than usual, so having this support is very much appreciated.

The Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) at 100 Panetta Avenue in Santa Cruz will be closed for installation of their next exhibitions. On February 7, IAS celebrates two upcoming exhibitions featuring the work of Mia Eve Rollow, Caleb Duarte, and Levester Williams. All exhibitions and public programs are free and open to the public.