The California
Studio was established in 2020 through the generosity of
longtime UC Davis arts education benefactors Jan Shrem and Maria
Manetti Shrem. The California Studio builds on the Department of
Art and Art History’s legacy as home to a top-ranked
art studio program that, since its founding in 1958, has trained
individuals that inspire communities and culture. The California
Studio presents contemporary forms of practice and approaches to
education that expand upon this history.
The California Studio welcomes a group of visiting artists
annually to the Department of Art and Art History. Visiting
artists come to UC Davis in one of two types of
residencies:
Spotlight artist residencies. The
California Studio supports three to four spotlight
artists each academic year. Spotlight artists are in residence
for seven to 10 days and receive a generous honorarium,
accommodations while at UC Davis and a travel stipend.
While at UC Davis, each artist participates in and contributes
to the life of the Art Studio program through departmental and
public programming. Spotlight artist residencies are by
invitation only, and residency programming is created in
conversation between visiting artists and departmental faculty.
Teaching artist residencies. The
California Studio hosts two teaching artists in the Department
of Art and Art History. Teaching artists design an advanced
undergraduate studio course and a graduate-level seminar for
the department’s graduate students. Each artist is in residence
for one academic quarter, or ten weeks, and receives a salary,
benefits, a travel stipend, a materials stipend and studio
space. Teaching artists are active members of UC Davis’
artistic and scholarly communities. As such, they are
encouraged, and provided with the administrative support, to
collaborate with the UC Davis community and to take advantage
of Northern California’s immense resources.
To learn more about visiting artists at The California Studio or
to sign up for The California Studio newsletter, please
click here.
Shimon Attie is a multidisciplinary artist who
creates site-specific installations in public spaces using video,
photography and collaborative processes with local communities.
Attie’s art reflects on the relationship between place, memory
and identity and explores how contemporary media may be used to
re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place and
identity.
Lynn Hershman Leeson’s work investigates the
relationship between humans and technology as it relates to
identity, surveillance and the use of media as a tool of
empowerment against censorship and political repression. She
is internationally recognized for her pioneering
contributions to the fields of video, film, artificial
intelligence, and interactive and net-based media art.
Jessica Segall is a multi-disciplinary artist
based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is often sited in hostile and
threatened landscapes. By embedding her work in these sites, she
plays with the risk of engaging with the environment and the
vulnerability of the environment itself. She has exhibited
internationally, most recently at the Fries Museum, The Coreana
Museum of Art and The Havana Biennal.
Xu Bing is a visual artist internationally
recognized for his experiments with written script. Xu garnered
international attention in the late 1980s for his experiments
with the Chinese written script created using woodblock carving
and printing to produce a series of nonsensical characters. Since
then, Xu has explored the ways in which the written script
bridges different systems of writing and engages audiences across
different cultures.
Cecilia Alemani is the Artistic Director of the
2022 Venice Biennial. Since 2011, she has been the Donald R.
Mullen, Jr. Director and Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public
art program presented by the High Line in New York City.
Alongside her commitments at the High Line, she served as
Artistic Director of the inaugural edition of Art Basel Cities:
Buenos Aires in 2018 and was Curator of the Italian Pavilion at
the 2017 Venice Biennial.
The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Artist Residencies at UC
Davis presents contemporary forms of practice and approaches to
studio art education. The program brings a group of visiting
artists to the Department of Art and Art History every year.
