Arts Division Newsletter

Sociology major Chanel Zaldaña never dreamed that when she first came to UC Santa Cruz that she’d be pursuing acting, but now she’s taken the lead role as Nya in the upcoming African American Theater Art Troupe’s (AATAT) production of Pipeline that opens on February 24.

Unfinished Objects in the Field is a newly published audio piece by Kevin Corcoran, a first-year M.F.A. candidate in the Environmental Art and Social Practice program. The piece is featured in the online biannual publication Lateral Addition. Assembled from sound recordings related to Point Reyes, the Mount Tamalpais watershed, and the San Francisco Bay shore, the work expands a set of questions about listening and documenting through an energetic approach to field recording. This approach builds on Corcoran’s background as a percussionist and involves interacting with places and objects in states of transformation with transference between site and studio.

Patty Gallagher was recently featured in Lookout Santa Cruz for her current starring role in the Jewel Theater production of “Little Heart,” a play by poet and author Irene O’Garden. It’s a heady role, but if anyone in the Santa Cruz theater ecosystem is prepared for it, it’s Gallagher, a longtime faculty member in the Theater Arts Department at UC Santa Cruz and a familiar face to fans of Santa Cruz Shakespeare.

From Lima, Peru, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City to Florida and Washington, DC, Meredith Dyer, the department manager for the History of Art and Visual Culture (HAVC) Department at UC Santa Cruz, has lived a culturally rich and fascinating life.

Comedian, actor, writer, and film director Akiva Schaffer is a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island along with childhood friend and fellow UCSC alumnus, comedian/actor Andy Samberg. Schaffer has directed, produced, acted and written several films and television programs including Saturday Night Live, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and PEN15. His many accolades include winning the Emmy Award and the Writers Guild of America Award, and he’s been nominated for a Grammy Award.

The Division of the Arts will soon begin construction of a world-class production and post-production facility in support of its Social Documentation (SocDoc) M.F.A. program.

Read more

Celebrated painter Fritz Chesnut very generously accepted the invitation from students for a “meet and greet” that was advertised throughout the division. After the February 9th Arts Council gathering, he met with students at the UCSC printmaking shop and the Eduardo Carrillo gallery. Printmaking students Nami Lee and Nick Uglow showed him their work and students like Psi Padhya and Matthew Kim asked him questions about his own experience as an Arts alumnus. One student, Alex Yu, gave him a tour of their new art exhibit. After this, the students joined Fritz and Dean Celine in the Dean's Conference Room in DARC for the formal meet-and-greet session with dessert and an informal Q&A. The students felt that his dedication to the Arts and to their success was inspiring and motivating.

SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week. The Fourth Annual Los Angeles exhibition will be held on February 15th–19^th at Skylight, Culver City.

Read more

UCSC Arts Division alumni will gather together at ESMoA (the Experimentally Structured Museum of Art) in El Segundo on Sunday, March 5, 2023 mingle with fellow Banana Slugs, hear from Dean Celine about the latest from the Arts Division, and explore TIME, an exhibit by a two-time Academy Award-winning film production designer and art director Rick Carter (Kresge ’74, Art) who received the Arts Distinguished Banana Slug in 2022.  

Read more

On February 10, the UCSC Art Division’s Arts Professional Pathways hosted an event with renowned producer and writer Nicole Jefferson Asher with more than 50 students in attendance. Dean Celine introduced the panelists while student moderator, Chanel Zaldana, and faculty moderator, Michael Chemers, conversed with Nicole about her artistic and professional journeys in Hollywood. The Q&A portion of the event was a great success as well with many students asking Nicole questions and advice about breaking into the industry, the artistic process, and diversity and inclusion in the industry. 

micha cárdenas, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Performance, Play & Design, recently won the Anonymous Was a Woman award, which goes to women-identifying artists over the age of 40 who are at “a critical junction in their career.” Each of the 15 winners will receive $25,000.

Read more

This year’s Thinking Gender Conference will feature interactive presentations and workshops throughout the day with Celine Parreñas Shimizu, T.L. Cowan, and Jas Rault. The theme for this year’s conference is “Transforming Research: Feminist Methods for Times of Crisis and Possibility.” Shimizu’s groundbreaking work in gender, race, and sexuality, as well as her bridging of theory and practice through film production make her an ideal interlocutor for the kind of dialogue we look forward to having at Thinking Gender 2023. Shimizu will present “Creativity in the Face of Devastation: Methodologies of Research and Practice Across Inequality.” Her film, The Celine Archive (2020), will also be screened with a Q&A afterward. The conference will take place at UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center.

Read more

Irene Lusztig has curated a newly-released online program, ESSENTIAL WORK for UK-based artist streaming platform Cryptopfiction (started by filmmaker Mania Akbari. It features Amy Reid’s feature film Long Haulers, made with women long haul truckers.The program also includes another UCSC-adjacent film, FDM alumna Emily Chao’s short Chive Pockets and a few other old and new feminist works about labor.



Professor, Art Department, and Co-Director of the Environmental Art and Social Practice Program, Laurie Palmer has a new book that has recently been published by University of Minnesota Press. Entitled The Lichen Museum, it explores how the physiological characteristics of lichens provide a valuable template for reimagining human relations in an age of ecological and social precarity.

Read more

Amy Mihyang Ginther's (Assistant Professor, Acting, Voice,Text) edited volume, Stages of Reckoning: Antiracist and Decolonial Actor Training is now available in all formats on the publisher's website and at bookstores. Stages of Reckoning is a crucial conversation about how racialized bodies and power intersect within actor training spaces. Centering actor trainers of color to acknowledge their personal experience and professional pedagogy as theory, this volume illuminates actionable ideas for text work, casting, voice, consent practices, and movement while offering decolonial approaches to current Eurocentric methods. Ginther co-wrote the Afterword with UCSC undergraduate Celia Espinosa and her chapter features UCSC undergraduate/graduate student, Rey Cordova.



Last summer, Annie Sprinkle and Professor Elizabeth Stephens (Art) produced and performed a wedding to fire in Boulder Creek and hosted a Fire Symposium at UCSC. They filmed both for Playing with Fire, their upcoming documentary project. They’ll be hosting a three-day happening, Exploring the Earth as Lover, in New York this June and taking the show on the road to Europe later this summer.



Read more

Congratulations to L. Gilbert and Dav Bell, graduate students in the Environmental Art and Social Practice M.F.A. program, who were awarded a $20,000 Carbon Fund grant from the UCSC Sustainability Office for their thesis project Greenhouse. Greenhouse is an intergenerational educational space that explores the relationship between art, food, and climate justice at the UCSC Farm. The space provides opportunities for student and community-led teaching and learning experiences.



Text Matters published an essay by Matthew Harrison Tedford in its most recent issue, "The Ecological Future." The essay, "Past Conditional Subjectivities: Enacting Relationships with the Non-Human in the Work of Ana Mendieta," examines how the work of 20th-century Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta challenges modernist thought that separate the human from the non-human, simultaneously calling on older ways of being and demonstrating that they never disappeared. In particular, the essay looks at how Mendieta’s Silueta and Rupestrian Sculptures series (from the 1970s and 1980s) model reciprocal and non-instrumental relationships between subjects.

Read more



Yasmine Benabdallah’s (Ph.D., Film and Digital Media) film How to Reverse a Spell, the Promise of an Archive won the award for Best Experimental Short Film at Sharjah Film Platform, the Sharjah Art Foundation's film festival.



Vega Darling’s (M.F.A., Social Documentation) work as a music supervisor for the film Vulveeta recently won Best Soundtrack at the Texas Underground Film Festival and the soundtrack is now out on Bandcamp.



On January 21, Ben Dorfan presented an hour-long program of original compositions, including a 25-string Gayageum work recorded by Master performer Ms. Moon, Yang-sook from Seoul, South Korea. Mr. Dorfan performed alongside UCSC alumna Dr. Kumi Uyeda in his two-piano piece Puzzle Riffs. The recital included several violin solos played by UCSC faculty Roy Malan, and additional works for cello, vibraphone, marimba, and piano, featuring guest performers Isaac Pastor-Chermak, Scott Siler, and Tony Gennaro. Special thanks go to Mr. Dorfan's thesis advisor Professor Hi Kyung Kim. This event received funding from the UCSC Music Department and a Graduate Research Fellowship.

Read More

Maureen McGuire participated in the 2023 Graduate Student Podcasting Institute hosted by the National Humanities Center and the Digital Humanities Center of San Diego State University from January 9-13, 2023. During the virtual institute, Maureen and fellow graduate students from across the United States learned more about producing a podcast. Participants of the institute also heard from Prof. Barry Lam, creator of Hi-Phi Nation, and Prof. Hannah MacGregor, co-creator of Witch, Please. By the end of the week, each group of participants produced their own 20-25 minute podcast episode.

Listen to the Podcasts

Sanctions on the Sky, a film by Mahshid Modares, SocDoc alum and 2nd-year Ph.D. student, has won the Best Human Rights’ Film at San Francisco Arthouse Short Festival in January 2023.

Her second film, Sanctions on Us, reached the semi-finalist at Seattle Filmmaker Awards in December 2022.



ACE NorCal Women’s Network Conference will be focused on Women in Higher Education: Playing the Game in a Changing Landscape, with a keynote address by Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu. This one-day, in-person conference features interactive skill-building sessions, networking, and a panel of women presidents.



Read More & Register