Latest news with #CaliforniaCollegeoftheArts
San Francisco Chronicle
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Social anxiety and Fibonacci spirals adorn the runway at the CCA fashion show
When Cyuaka Vu was 8 years old, they watched their mother sew at the dining table in their home in St. Paul, Minn. She mostly made traditional Hmong garments that the family wore to community celebrations and holidays. 'In my culture, there's a lot of hand-sewing techniques,' Vu, 35, said. 'We'd be adorned with all these hand-embroidered pieces.' One of the motifs in her traditional pieces was a spiral, symbolic of family and ancestral lineage in Hmong culture, which Vu featured prominently in their collection at the California College of the Arts runway show Friday. 'My senior thesis is inspired by the spiral, I patterned out a Fibonacci sequence spiral in pretty large scale,' they said. Vu was one of seven graduating students who showed off their work, many of whom are making their postgrad debut into the fashion industry with mixed emotions. 'I think there is a cycle of both hope and anxiety because a lot is not in our control,' Vu said. Vu enrolled in CCA after being unable to find a fashion industry job without a bachelor's degree in fashion, and even then, limited job availability was top of mind. The political landscape is also a source of their worry. 'The taking away of rights from LGBT people, from women, from people of color — it's crazy to me,' Vu said before the show. 'I think all of it is interconnected, and if one goes away, that gives way for other groups, and it feels like a downhill ride.' On Friday, Vu's curvilinear jacket sleeves and trousers with coiled pleats landed on the runway outside CCA's main building in San Francisco to applause from friends, family and professors. 'The way the government is rolling out things, it's really about fearmongering,' said Helen Maria Nugent, the dean of CCA's Design Division. 'I think the students will find their way, with no doubt in my mind.' While Vu's linen, silk and cotton garments melded the Hmong spiral motif with inspiration from a visit in 2024 to their partner's home city of Tulum, Mexico — and a particularly circuitous and magical bike ride the two went on, anxiety showed up in a more literal way elsewhere on the runway. Jingyi Yang's garments reflected the social anxiety that she and others of her generation experience, exacerbated by the pressure of social media, she said. 'I think everybody is worried about the future,' said Yang, 24, who knew she wanted to be a designer while watching episodes of 'Project Runway' as a kid in her coastal Chinese hometown of Qingdao. Titled 'Frictional Identity,' Yang's collection included a top with the outline of a face mask used for skin care as a nod to societal pressure for self-improvement. Meanwhile, copious pleats, layering and zebralike line work represented illusion and self-protection in the face of social anxiety, she said. Yang also feels anxious about the job market that awaits her. 'When I started to design this collection, I didn't feel that anxious about unemployment because there's still one year left,' she said. 'But right now, I feel already worried about unemployment.' Yang, who will be sticking around the Bay Area after graduating while she applies for jobs, said she and her peers feel that there are not a lot of opportunities in an already competitive industry. Other designers such as Hao Wei Chuang — whose collection referenced a Chinese novel about a Buddhist monk through dragon-like scales on leather trousers and fantastical, lace headpieces — were mostly looking forward to life after college. 'I feel excited,' said Chuang, 24, who hopes to pursue his fashion career in New York. 'It feels like a new chapter in my life.' Kalen Walthour, 22, who grew up in Louisiana, said her relationship with her faith gives her a lot of hope and confidence in herself no matter what's going on in the world. 'I define success as a woman loving herself,' Walthour said. 'I feel like my calling in life right now is to bring hope to women who feel broken.' After her models strode down the runway in gowns meant to evoke Eve in the garden of Eden, Walthour joined her fellow designers in a gold skirt and ceramic bodice meant to symbolize the dual strength and vulnerability of womanhood, she said. After the show, Nugent commented on how President Donald Trump's administration has weighed on student life. At least one international student at CCA decided to return home after the administration threatened to revoke their visa, she said. For Vu, the precarious state of the world is also motivating, especially as they observe other designers they admire stay engaged in politics and stand in solidarity with oppressed groups. 'That's why I think it's important for me to express myself the way I do,' they said.
Associated Press
18-04-2025
- General
- Associated Press
From Chinatown to the Sidewalk: A Public Art Project Makes Hidden Labor Visible
San Francisco, CA - April 18, 2025 - Non Alien Box is a public art and storytelling project initiated by Xinling Wang, a Chinatown-based cultural worker and curator, in collaboration with artists Yunfei Hua and Grace Cao. The project reclaims abandoned San Francisco Examiner newspaper boxes and transforms them into decentralized storytelling platforms that bring visibility to the often-erased voices of international students, immigrant workers, and non-resident cultural laborers. The project traces its conceptual roots to Wang's 2022 solo intervention Hidden in Plain Sight, installed along Terry A. Francois Boulevard, a street formerly known as China Basin Street. Once a site associated with early Chinese labor communities, the name 'China Basin' has quietly disappeared from public consciousness. In response, Wang painted a mural directly onto a discarded newspaper box at the location, reimagining traditional symbols like plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum to reflect the fractured experience of diasporic identity. She also created and installed a fictional Chinese street sign, 'Bin He Lu', as an act of reclaiming cultural memory and countering erasure. ' I saw this gesture as a small act of renaming and reclamation, " Wang reflects. " Public space is not only physical territory. It is a memory field that revealswho is preservedand who is forgotten. ' Terry A. Francois Boulevard (formerly China Basin Street), San Francisco, California Non Alien Box extends this act from a singular reflection into a collaborative and growing archive. The first box, installed in early 2025, features a collection of handmade 'classified ads' designed to resemble vintage job postings. The stories inside, however, speak not of opportunity, but of exclusion and survival. One reads: 'Because of my visa status, noone wants to sponsor keep my OPT active, I've been doing unpaid internships at art institutions—doing thesame work as paid employees.' Another recounts a broken promise: 'They told me, help us build this nonprofit and you'll qualify for an H-1Bcap-exempt. I worked full-time withoutpay for a year. Then they gave me a vague excuse and let me go. I left with nothing andhad to return to myhome country.' These flyers are pasted inside former information hubs that once delivered headlines to the public. Now, they offer truths that rarely make it into the news cycle. The project debuted at the 2025 Creative Citizens Symposium at California College of the Arts, where it was exhibited for four days alongside an artist talk and student workshop. Non Alien Box was recognized with the 2025 CPAL Impact Award for its contribution to cultural storytelling and immigrant visibility. Looking ahead, the team is preparing a series of workshops in Chinatown, Japantown, and Manilatown in collaboration with local nonprofit organizations. These sessions will invite international students, short-term visa holders, and migrant workers to design their own 'ads,' turning personal stories into public messages. These new works will be installed across additional newspaper boxes, forming a network of storytelling sites throughout San Francisco. Portsmouth Square (Chinatown), San Francisco, California As these boxes reappear across the city, some will blend in while others will spark curiosity. What was once overlooked infrastructure becomes a site of testimony and cultural resistance. 'We are not only artists,' says Wang. 'We are workers, immigrants, and witnesses. These boxes are our bulletin boards and our monuments.' Non Alien Box is more than symbolic. It is a public intervention rooted in lived experience and structural critique. The project asks urgent questions about visibility and belonging in today's cities: Who gets remembered? Who gets to belong? And who remains hidden in plain sight? Media Contact Company Name: Non Alien Box Contact Person: Xinling Wang, Independent Artist Email: Send Email Country: United States Website: Source: Queqi Culture Media
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
California Dems scoff at Newsom proposal to give $20M to SF private arts school
SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to provide $20 million in funding for a small private arts college in San Francisco backed by a tech CEO ran into fierce pushback from Democratic state lawmakers on Tuesday. All four Democrats on an education finance budget subcommittee voted against the governor's request to fund the California College of the Arts, which has just 1,280 students and two weeks ago received $45 million in donations, half of which came from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In the same January budget proposal, Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor — called for 8 percent in cuts and over $200 million in deferrals for the public University of California and California State University systems. 'From an optics perspective, when we're talking about cutting 8 percent of funding for the University of California and the California State University — for us to be singling out one private college for $20 million in taxpayer support is not a good look,' said Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat who is running for state superintendent next year. But at least one key Democrat backed Newsom's proposal. Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told POLITICO he 'fully' supports the funding for the private school along with public universities — citing President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's 'efforts to take a wrecking ball to federal education and science funding.' The committee's recommendation goes to the full Assembly budget committee, which will negotiate priorities before state lawmakers pass a budget in June. Newsom will release a revised budget proposal in May. Amanpreet Singh, a representative for Newsom's Department of Finance, said at a hearing before Tuesday's vote that the proposal was 'unique.' She added the 'administration has determined that supporting the California College of the Arts is a compelling interest to the state, specifically in Northern California, and believes that the benefit of supporting the institution and ensuring its financial stability would be a greater benefit than allowing the institution to essentially not survive.' Singh said that the programs offered by the school are 'distinct' from what UC and CSU provide. Newsom's office referred to Singh's statements at the hearing. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas declined to comment. The California College of the Arts, founded in 1907, offers 22 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs in subjects such as ceramics, photography, comics and game arts, with tuition at $60,000. Enrollment has declined by 42 percent in the last five years, leading to a deficit that the governor's proposal would backfill. David Howse, the school's president, told lawmakers the funding would be used to hire staff and repair infrastructure. He called the college a 'private institution with a clear public impact.' 'I know you are aware of the immense challenges facing higher ed: declining enrollment, rising cost and economic uncertainty, destabilizing once stable institutions — essentially putting higher ed institutions across the state at-risk,' Howse said. 'These challenges do not spare our public partners, nor do they exempt private institutions like CCA.' Assemblymember David Alvarez, the committee chair, said in an interview after the vote that the recommendation 'signals the priorities of the Assembly, which is to public education.' The San Diego Democrat pointed to the school's operating deficit of $4.2 million as much smaller than a $20 million structural deficit that school officials said included costs for deferred maintenance. 'I think we're reflective of Californians' expectations,' Alvarez said. The California College of the Arts is not the only San Francisco arts school to face budget challenges. Last year, a nonprofit led by Laurene Powell Jobs bought the San Francisco Art Institute, which had declared bankruptcy after being saddled with $20 million in debt. Private colleges in California rarely receive state funding. Most recently, the state provided $50 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles in 2021 for a new medical school, and $5 million to the California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert 2022 to pursue accreditation. Committee staff wrote in a report that 'both of these appropriations were for specific purposes that have an obvious statewide interest' before recommending that state lawmakers reject the proposal.
Politico
05-03-2025
- Business
- Politico
California Dems scoff at Newsom proposal to give $20M to SF private arts school
SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to provide $20 million in funding for a small private arts college in San Francisco backed by a tech CEO ran into fierce pushback from Democratic state lawmakers on Tuesday. All four Democrats on an education finance budget subcommittee voted against the governor's request to fund the California College of the Arts, which has just 1,280 students and two weeks ago received $45 million in donations, half of which came from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. In the same January budget proposal, Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor — called for 8 percent in cuts and over $200 million in deferrals for the public University of California and California State University systems. 'From an optics perspective, when we're talking about cutting 8 percent of funding for the University of California and the California State University — for us to be singling out one private college for $20 million in taxpayer support is not a good look,' said Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat who is running for state superintendent next year. But at least one key Democrat backed Newsom's proposal. Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told POLITICO he 'fully' supports the funding for the private school along with public universities — citing President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's 'efforts to take a wrecking ball to federal education and science funding.' The committee's recommendation goes to the full Assembly budget committee, which will negotiate priorities before state lawmakers pass a budget in June. Newsom will release a revised budget proposal in May. Amanpreet Singh, a representative for Newsom's Department of Finance, said at a hearing before Tuesday's vote that the proposal was 'unique.' She added the 'administration has determined that supporting the California College of the Arts is a compelling interest to the state, specifically in Northern California, and believes that the benefit of supporting the institution and ensuring its financial stability would be a greater benefit than allowing the institution to essentially not survive.' Singh said that the programs offered by the school are 'distinct' from what UC and CSU provide. Newsom's office referred to Singh's statements at the hearing. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas declined to comment. The California College of the Arts, founded in 1907, offers 22 undergraduate and 10 graduate programs in subjects such as ceramics, photography, comics and game arts, with tuition at $60,000. Enrollment has declined by 42 percent in the last five years, leading to a deficit that the governor's proposal would backfill. David Howse, the school's president, told lawmakers the funding would be used to hire staff and repair infrastructure. He called the college a 'private institution with a clear public impact.' 'I know you are aware of the immense challenges facing higher ed: declining enrollment, rising cost and economic uncertainty, destabilizing once stable institutions — essentially putting higher ed institutions across the state at-risk,' Howse said. 'These challenges do not spare our public partners, nor do they exempt private institutions like CCA.' Assemblymember David Alvarez, the committee chair, said in an interview after the vote that the recommendation 'signals the priorities of the Assembly, which is to public education.' The San Diego Democrat pointed to the school's operating deficit of $4.2 million as much smaller than a $20 million structural deficit that school officials said included costs for deferred maintenance. 'I think we're reflective of Californians' expectations,' Alvarez said. The California College of the Arts is not the only San Francisco arts school to face budget challenges. Last year, a nonprofit led by Laurene Powell Jobs bought the San Francisco Art Institute, which had declared bankruptcy after being saddled with $20 million in debt. Private colleges in California rarely receive state funding. Most recently, the state provided $50 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles in 2021 for a new medical school, and $5 million to the California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert 2022 to pursue accreditation. Committee staff wrote in a report that 'both of these appropriations were for specific purposes that have an obvious statewide interest' before recommending that state lawmakers reject the proposal.
