Interdisciplinary

Voice and Vision 

Instructor: Pam Lanza
9 Sessions / Wednesdays, June 20-August 15, and Sunday, July 29
Time: Wednesdays, 6:30-9:45 pm, Sunday, 10 am-4 pm
Location: Studio 13
Number: IN-1012
Tuition: $400
Register now

Explore the relationship of the word to visual art, learn to incorporate text into your work, and discover the importance of spontaneity and randomness in the creative process. You will experiment with letting words “conjure up” images and allowing images to invite verbal elaboration. Beginners can work with simple drawing or collage techniques; more advanced students can work in any media (excluding oil paints or other fumy substances). You will explore text as image, pattern, background, communicator, and visual element; utilize found text and “automatic” writing and drawing; and discover how random pairings of word and image can open up whole new avenues of ideas for future work. No prerequisite.

Pamela Lanza has an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has been teaching at UC Berkeley Extension and the SFAI ACE program for over ten years. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and college campuses across the country, including University of North Carolina, Florida State University, the Alexandria Museum of Art at Louisiana State University, California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco), Stanford University, and Synagogue for the Arts and Pleiades Galleries in New York. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Ferry Review; as the cover for Anatomical Venus by Meg Schoerke; and illustrates Origins, Transformation, Limitations and Scientific Culture by William Wentworth of Clemson University.

Space and Site: A Moveable Drawing Studio 

Instructor: Nancy de Y. Elkus and Laura Boles Faw
4 Sessions / Saturdays, June 2-June 23
Time: 10 am-4:30 pm
Location: Offsite and Studio 14
Number: IN-1003
Tuition: $320
Register now

Space and Site: A Moveable Drawing Studio will focus on four aspects of drawing space: constructed space, virtual space, interior vs. exterior space, and transformative space. We will meet at different designated sites within San Francisco each week and begin with a discussion of one of the four types of space. We will consider how these aspects of space interact with our location and can be represented in a drawing. We will sketch onsite until noon, maintaining a heavy focus on technical aspects of drawing, and then return to SFAI's drawing studios. After lunch, we will take a short look at artists’ works that grapple with similar concerns. During the second half of our day, participants will create a finished drawing reflecting both the day’s location and a chosen aspect of space. We will complete each session with a critique. This course is designed to improve participants’ drawing skills and represent various aspects of space in drawings. The course will also teach participants how to source inspiration, work from sketches, and work in a series. This course is open to all levels, though some drawing experience will benefit the participants.

Laura Boles Faw is an artist, curator, and educator whose mixed media sculptures and installations focus on the reconsideration of spatial signifiers. She received a BA in Art History from Sewanee and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. Boles Faw has recently shown her work at Ever Gold Gallery and Royal Nonesuch Gallery in San Francisco, and had a solo show with her collaborator Cathy Fairbanks at Pop Up Art House in Las Vegas in the fall of 2011. She also co-curated Over My Dead Body: A Collaborative Installation about Artistic Survival during the summer of 2011. http://laurabolesfaw.com

A working visual artist with extensive teaching experience, Nancy de Y. Elkus has exhibited throughout California, is a founding member of the Los Angeles-based A Feminist and Women’s Artist Collective (FAWNA), and has received honors and fellowships in the US, Mexico, and Germany. Since 2009, Elkus has served as the Meridian Interns Program (MIP) Director and also as lead Master Artist. In her own artistic practice, which includes sculptural objects, installations, and videos, Elkus uses the human body as a focal point to examine the ways in which we are constrained by, and contained within, self-identity, culture, and society. She received an MFA in New Genres and MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art with a focus in video from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her AB from Brown University.