Founded in 1907,
California College of the Arts (formerly California College of Arts and Crafts) is a regionally accredited, independent school of art and design in
OaklandOakland is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California and a major West Coast port city, located on San Francisco Bay about eight miles east of the City of San Francisco. Oakland is a major hub city for the Bay Area subregion collectively called the East Bay, and it is the county seat...
and
San FranciscoSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
, USA. It is one of the premier fine arts and design institutions in the United States. CCA is a member of the
Association of Independent Colleges of Art and DesignThe Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design is a non-profit consortium of thirty-six of the leading degree-granting art colleges in the United States. All AICAD member institutions have a curriculum with full liberal arts and sciences requirements complimenting studio work, and are...
(AICAD), a consortium of thirty-six leading art schools in the United States and Canada.
The college offers undergraduate and graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, curatorial practice, visual criticism, design, and writing. The college confers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of business administration in design strategy, master of arts, and master of fine arts degrees.
History
CCA was founded in 1907 by
Frederick MeyerFrederick Heinrich Wilhelm Meyer , was prominent in the Bay Area Arts and Crafts movement. Born near Hamelin, Germany in November 6, 1872.-Early years:...
in
BerkeleyBerkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
as the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts during the height of the
Arts and Crafts movementThe Arts and Crafts Movement was a British, Canadian, Australian, and American aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century...
. The school's first site was the Studio Building on Shattuck Avenue in
BerkeleyBerkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. In 1908 the school was renamed California School of Arts and Crafts, and moved to the former Kellogg Primary School at the corner of Oxford and Center Street in downtown Berkeley, across from the campus of the
University of CaliforniaThe University of California is a public university system in the state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University system...
. In 1910 the school moved to the site of
Berkeley High SchoolBerkeley High School is the only public high school in Berkeley, California. It is located one long block west of Shattuck Avenue and three short blocks south of University Avenue in Downtown Berkeley, and is recognized as a Berkeley landmark...
on Allston Way. In 1922 the school moved to a new, permanent campus on the former James Treadwell estate in
OaklandOakland is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California and a major West Coast port city, located on San Francisco Bay about eight miles east of the City of San Francisco. Oakland is a major hub city for the Bay Area subregion collectively called the East Bay, and it is the county seat...
located just east of the intersection of College Avenue and Broadway, where it remains today. In 1936 the school became the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC).
In recognition of the growth of the college and its broad curriculum as well as for image reasons, the college was renamed California College of the Arts. CCA dropped the word "Crafts" from its name in 2003 and is now simply known as "CCA", Many students and faculty voiced objection about the name change, and still refer the school as CCAC.
CCA's faculty and graduates have influenced, and in many cases led, many mid- and late-twentieth-century art movements. CCAC was closely linked to the emergence of the 1960s ceramics movement. Alumni
Robert ArnesonRobert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at UC Davis for four decades.- Career :...
and
Peter VoulkosPeter Voulkos popular name of Panagiotis Voulkos, was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his Abstract Expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art....
and faculty member Viola Frey helped initiate the ceramics revolution, which established that medium as a fine art. The photorealist movement of the 1970s is represented by current faculty member Jack Mendenhall and alumni
Robert BechtleRobert Bechtle, an American painter, born in San Francisco, California on May 14, 1932. He received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, in 1954 and 1958 respectively....
and Richard McLean. Alumni
Nathan OliveiraNathan Oliveira is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California. Since the late 1950s he is the veteran of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions, in important museums and galleries worldwide, including several Whitney Museum of American...
and
Manuel NeriManuel Neri is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.- Biography :...
were leaders in the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
Former and current CCA faculty includes designers
Yves BeharYves Béhar is an industrial designer and founder of fuseproject, the San Francisco-based design and branding firm he established in 1999. He is considered a leading figure in industrial design. -Early life and education :...
,
Brenda LaurelBrenda Laurel is a pioneering writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur in the fields of human-computer interaction, interactive narrative and cultural aspects of technology ....
,
Michael VanderbylMichael Vanderbyl is a multidisciplinary designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the principle of Vanderbyl Design....
, and Martin Venezky; architects Thom Faulders, Ila Berman, and Craig Scott; artists David Heintz,
Raymond SaundersRaymond Saunders may refer to:*Raymond Saunders *Raymond Saunders...
, Claudia Bernardi, Jordan Kantor, Kota Ezawa,
Christian JankowskiChristian Jankowski is a contemporary multimedia artist who largely works in video, installation, and photography.He has created a number of television interventions...
, Tim Lee, Mario Ybarra Jr., Larry Sultan,
Jim GoldbergJim Goldberg is a renowned American photographer / artist and writer who has been involved in long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations.-Artistic career:...
,
Brian ConleyBrian Conley is an English comedian, television presenter, singer and actor.-Biography:Brian Paul Conley was born and raised in West London and studied Performing Arts at The Barbara Speake Stage School. He started his career as a holiday camp entertainer, working as a Pontin's Bluecoat at the age...
,
Ken LumKen Lum is a Canadian artist of Chinese heritage who lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Working in a number of media including painting, sculpture and photography, his art is conceptually oriented, and generally concerned with issues of identity in relation to the categories of...
, and Lia Cook; goldsmith Alan Revere, writers
Lisa RobertsonLisa Robertson can refer to:*Lisa Robertson , a Canadian poet*Lisa Robertson , a QVC television hostess...
,
Mitchell Schwarzer- Mitchell Schwarzer :Mitchell Schwarzer is an architectural historian who writes on the urban and suburban built environment with attention to issues of mobility, perceptual psychology, media, consumerism, and memory. He is Professor of Architectural History and Chair of the Department of Visual...
, Joseph Lease, Amy Phan,
Tom BarbashTom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, educator and critic. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal...
,
Dodie BellamyDodie Bellamy is a novelist, nonfiction author, journalist and editor, known for her non-traditional use of sexuality, politics, and narrative experimentation. Her work is frequently associated with that of Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, and Eileen Myles...
, and
Kevin KillianKevin Killian is an American writer with a strong following in San Francisco's gay literature scene. He is founder and former director of Small Press Traffic. He now edits the poetry zine Mirage/Periodical...
; curators Raimundas Malasauskas,
Renny PritikinRenny Pritikin is the Director of the Richard L. Nelson Gallery and the Fine Arts Collection at the University of California, Davis.Pritikin was named Chief Curator for all artistic programs of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in January 1997 after serving as Director of the...
,
Lawrence RinderLawrence R. Rinder is the Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive , a position to which he was appointed in 2008.Previously, he was the Dean of the College at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco...
, and
Jens HoffmannJens Hoffmann is a writer and curator of exhibitions. He has worked as a curator since 1997 and is currently the Director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco where he also directs the Capp Street Project artists-in-residency program...
; and filmmaker
Rob EpsteinRob Epstein, also credited as Robert P. Epstein is an non-fiction filmmaker, director, producer, writer and editor. Epstein has won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature for the films The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt...
.
Oakland Campus
CCA’s Oakland campus is on at the corner of College Avenue and Broadway. Two of its buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Based on this campus are the undergraduate programs in fine arts (except Painting/Drawing), Animation, Community Arts, Writing and Literature, and Visual Studies.
The Treadwell Ceramic Arts Center has multiple electric and gas kilns, a glaze lab, a large car kiln, three work areas devoted to metallurgy and jewelry making, professional jeweler’s benches, and a wide array of tools. The Barclay Simpson Sculpture Studio includes one of the largest working foundries at any college as well as a plaster room, a woodshop, and a metal fabrication studio. The glass facilities include a hot shop with two benches, a glass furnace, and equipment for coldworking, casting, and fusing. The textiles studio is equipped with a T1 computerized loom, a computer laboratory, and studios for weaving and large-scale printing. The Blattner Print Studio has multiple lithography presses, a polymer plate maker, etching presses (including a 40x60 American French Tool press), relief presses, a letterpress lab, 100 lithography stones, and a complex for papermaking and silkscreening. The Blattner Print Studio also houses a two-floor photography complex with 12 individual darkrooms for printing in color, two large black-and-white darkrooms, a RA4 color processor, an alternative-processes lab, a mural darkroom for printing in both black and white and color, a dedicated lighting studio, high-end Macs, and more. The film and video facility includes several editing and sound suites, a computer lab, a streaming radio station, a screening room, and a first-year studio facility with a woodshop, a computer lab, and a dedicated 4D classroom and computer lab. The Oakland campus also houses painting and drawing studios, although these programs are officially based in San Francisco.
Meyer Library focuses on the fine arts, the social sciences, and the humanities.
Undergraduates organize and present exhibitions of their work (rotating weekly) at the Irwin Student Center gallery, the North/South Galleries, the Isabelle Percy West Gallery, and the campus cafe.
The Oliver Art Center hosts faculty and student exhibitions and reviews. Its programming promotes a compelling on-campus student experience, stimulates dialogue relating to the college’s programs, and establishes connections to outside communities.
The Center for Art and Public Life creates partnerships between the college and the diverse communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Reaching across disciplines, it uses the arts to address issues related to social justice, education, community development, and diversity.
San Francisco Campus
Located between the Potrero Hill and South of Market neighborhoods, CCA’s San Francisco campus is home to undergraduate programs in Painting/Drawing, Architecture, Graphic Design, Interior Design, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Furniture, and Illustration. It also houses all eight of CCA’s graduate programs: Fine Arts, Film, Architecture, Design, Writing, Curatorial Practice, Design Strategy, and Visual and Critical Studies.
The main building was once a Greyhound Bus repair shed, originally designed in 1951. It is now among the most notable “green” structures in San Francisco. Its central nave is a spacious and well illuminated space for student exhibitions and critiques.
There are numerous large studios for students in the design programs, including both open facilities that are shared and dedicated studios for each specific discipline. There are fashion facilities for sewing, cutting, and draping; rooms for drawing and painting; media-ready seminar rooms; production facilities for model making, woodworking, and furniture; numerous computer labs; and a rapid prototyping studio. Each individual fine-arts student has his or her own graduate studio space, and Design, Curatorial Practice, and Writing students have shared graduate studio spaces. A Graduate Center complex across the street from the main building houses fine-arts studios, film and media facilities, and seminar rooms. The Writing program resides in a newly acquired building, next to the Student Services building on 15th Street. Simpson Library specializes in architecture and design and also supports the graduate programs.
In the Tecoah and Thomas Bruce Galleries, undergraduates participate in exhibitions and departmental reviews. Graduate students may exhibit their work in the Paulette Long and Shepard Pollack Graduate Student Gallery (PLAySPACE). Its presentations typically last two weeks and, like all CCA exhibitions, are open to the public and dedicated to encouraging dialogue, artistic growth, and exhibition opportunities.
Small Press Traffic is a literary organization that is active year-round, sponsoring and promoting readings, workshops, lectures, and conferences featuring an array of visiting writers.
The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts is a forum for leading-edge contemporary culture. Its innovative exhibitions and accompanying publications and lectures feature compelling, important artists working on both the local and the international levels. Wattis Institute director Jens Hoffmann has been responsible for some of the most inspired and stimulating programming in the field of contemporary art. He was previously the exhibitions director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
Fine Artists
- Robert Bechtle
Robert Bechtle, an American painter, born in San Francisco, California on May 14, 1932. He received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California, in 1954 and 1958 respectively....
- Squeak Carnwath
Squeak Carnwath is a contemporary American painter. She received her MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1977. She is a Professor of Art at the University of California, where she has taught since 1982, having previously taught at California College of Arts and Crafts and Ohlone...
- Liz Cohen
Liz Cohen is a performance artist and automotive designer. Cohen has an MFA in photography from California College of the Arts and Crafts, , where she has taught. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona....
- Jules de Balincourt
Jules de Balincourt is a French painter. He was educated at the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco receiving a BFA and went on to study at the Hunter College, New York graduating in 2005 with an MFA. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York...
- Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
- Christopher González
Christopher González was a Jamaican expressionistic sculptor and painter. González was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1943. He had a Puerto Rican father and Jamaican mother...
- Judith Linhares
- Richard McLean
- Nathan Oliveira
Nathan Oliveira is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor, born in Oakland, California. Since the late 1950s he is the veteran of nearly one hundred solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions, in important museums and galleries worldwide, including several Whitney Museum of American...
- Laurie Reid
- Raymond Saunders
Raymond Saunders may refer to:*Raymond Saunders *Raymond Saunders...
- Leslie Shows
- Louis Siegriest
- Paul Wonner
Paul John Wonner was an American artist who was born in Tucson, Arizona. He received a B.A. in 1952, an M.A. in 1953, and an M.L.S. in 1955―all from the University of California, Berkeley...
- Bedri Baykam
Bedri Baykam is an internationally acclaimed Turkish artist and intellectual. His father Dr. Suphi Baykam was a famous deputy in the Turkish parliament and his mother Mutahhar Baykam an architect-engineer...
- Robert Arneson
Robert Carston Arneson was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at UC Davis for four decades.- Career :...
- Viola Frey
- David Ireland
David Ireland may refer to:* David Ireland , American conceptual and installation artist* David Ireland , Australian novelist* David Ireland , Union Army colonel in the American Civil War...
- John McCracken
John McCracken is an American artist. He started his career creating bold, tight geometric compositions on Masonite or treated canvas. While still in school, his first exhibition at Nicholas Wilder's gallery in Los Angeles, California in 1965 was a critical success...
- Anna Von Mertens
- Manuel Neri
Manuel Neri is an American sculptor, painter, and printmaker and a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.- Biography :...
- Dennis Oppenheim
Dennis Oppenheim is an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer who was born in Electric City, Washington in 1938. In 1964, he earned his BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California and an MFA from Stanford University in...
- Mitzi Pederson
- Christina Lei Rodriguez
- Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos popular name of Panagiotis Voulkos, was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his Abstract Expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art....
- Harrell Fletcher
Harrell Fletcher is an American artist in Portland, Oregon who creates socially engaged interdisciplinary projects.-Early Work:While completing his degree at CCAC, Fletcher began collaborating with artist Jon Rubin...
- Lee Ming Wei
Graphic Designers
- Eric Adigard
- Lawrence Azerrad
- Giorgio Baravalle
- Gaby Brink
- Ernie Cefalu
Ernie Cefalu is a contemporary Senior Creative Director, currently working out of Los Angeles, CA. Cefalu attended the California College of Arts and Crafts and graduated in 1969 with honors...
- Patrick Coyne
Patrick S. Coyne is the editor and designer of Communication Arts magazine, the largest international trade journal of visual communications, that was co-founded by his father, Richard Coyne, in 1959....
- Jennifer Jerde
- Patricia McShane
- Michael Vanderbyl
Michael Vanderbyl is a multidisciplinary designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the principle of Vanderbyl Design....
Film and Media Artists
- Anthony Discenza
- Jim Kenney
- Hank Willis Thomas
Hank Willis Thomas is a contemporary African American visual artist and photographer whose primary interests are race, advertising and popular culture.-Biography:...
- Rick Schmidt
- Wayne Wang
Wayne Wang is a Chinese American film director.Wang was born and raised in Hong Kong, and named after his father's favorite movie star, John Wayne...
External links