| California College of the Arts | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1907 |
| Type | Private |
| President | Stephen Beal |
| Academic staff | 500 |
| Students | 1,800 |
| Location | Oakland, California and San Francisco, California, USA |
| Campus | 4 acres (1.6 ha) |
| Website | http://www.cca.edu |
California College of the Arts (formerly California College of Arts and Crafts), founded in 1907, is known for its broad, interdisciplinary programs in art, design, architecture, and writing. It has two campuses, one in Oakland and one in San Francisco, California, USA. It is one of the premier fine arts and design institutions in the United States and a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD), a consortium of thirty-six leading art schools in the United States and Canada. CCA is also widely regarded as one of the leading art and design institutions in the world.[1]
The college offers undergraduate and graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, curatorial practice, visual criticism, design, design strategy, interaction design, and writing. CCA 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.
Both campuses host lectures, artist talks, and other special events almost every day.
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.
Sponsored studio courses enable students to work directly with professionals from distinguished firms such as IDEO and Gensler.
Internships help students gain practical experience and professional connections while at the same time earning academic credit. Internships are required by the Architecture, Interior Design, Industrial Design, and Graphic Design programs, and all programs recommend them.
The CCA Center for Art and Public Life organizes numerous programs (exhibitions, community art collaborations, student project grants, and more), putting students into contact with the diverse communities in the Bay Area and around the globe.
The recently launched ENGAGE at CCA initiative is a family of courses, embedded throughout the college’s curriculum, in which students work with outside experts to find solutions to particular community issues.
Through the International Exchange Program, students may spend a semester at one of more than 30 colleges of art and design around the globe. CCA also offers summer study-abroad courses.
Qualified students can study for a semester at any one of 32 other art schools throughout the U.S. through the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD).
Contents |
CCA was founded in 1907 by Frederick Meyer in Berkeley as the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts during the height of the Arts and Crafts movement. The school's first site was the Studio Building on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. 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 California. In 1910 the school moved to the site of Berkeley High School on Allston Way. In 1922 the school moved to a new, permanent campus on the former James Treadwell estate in Oakland 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) as well as having a San Francisco based campus.
In 2003 the school changed its name to California College of the Arts, or CCA, due to popular use of the word crafts which refers to simple art forms and not the historical meaning of the word crafts which refers to a skill set.
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 Arneson and Peter Voulkos 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 Bechtle and Richard McLean. Alumni Nathan Oliveira and Manuel Neri were leaders in the Bay Area Figurative Movement, and the Studio Glass movement was brought to Oakland by Marvin Lipofsky, who founded the glass program at the school in 1967.[2]
Former and current CCA faculty includes designers Yves Behar, Brenda Laurel, Nathan Shedroff, Christopher Simmons, Michael Vanderbyl, and Martin Venezky; architects Thom Faulders, Ila Berman, Katherine Lambert, and Craig Scott; artists Kim Anno, David Heintz, Raymond Saunders, Claudia Bernardi, Jordan Kantor, Kota Ezawa, Christian Jankowski, Tim Lee, Mario Ybarra Jr., Larry Sultan, Jim Goldberg, Brian Conley, Ken Lum, and Lia Cook; goldsmith Alan Revere, writers:Tom Barbash, M. Celeste Connor, Joseph Lease, Aimee Phan, Lisa Robertson, Mitchell Schwarzer, Dodie Bellamy, and Kevin Killian; curators Raimundas Malasauskas, Renny Pritikin, and Jens Hoffmann; and filmmaker Rob Epstein.
Bloomberg Businessweek cites CCA as one of "The Best Design Schools in the World."[3]
According to the U.S. News & World Report, CCA ranks 11th among best overall Master of Fine Arts programs in the country (tied with Art Center College of Design and Columbia University).[4]
CCA is also ranked highly in numerous MFA programs and specialties.
CCA’s Oakland campus is on 4 acres (1.6 ha) 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 Animation, Ceramics, Community Arts, Glass, Jewelry / Metal Arts, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Textiles, Visual Studies, and Writing and Literature.
Animation program facilities include a new 18-station computer lab, an animation homework lab, and a stop-motion lab; equipment for film production and digital video; and a sound booth.
Ceramics facilities include various gas and electric kilns, a glaze lab, and a large car kiln.
The metalworking and jewelry facilities include a wide range of tools and professional benches with flexible shafts.
Sculpture facilities include a waxworking area, a bronze foundry, a plaster and mold-making room, a woodworking shop, and a metal fabrication studio.
The glass facility includes a two-bench hot shop with glass furnaces and equipment for fusing, casting, and coldworking.
Textiles facilities include a digital Jacquard TC-1 loom, a computerized weaving lab, 32 floor looms, computer-operated dobby looms, a print studio with 15 padded print tables, a fiber sculpture studio, and a dye lab.
For printmaking there are lithography presses, a 40x60 American French Tool etching press and various other etching presses, a polymer plate maker, relief presses, a silkscreening and papermaking complex, approximately 100 litho stones, and a letterpress lab.
The photography center has two large black-and-white darkrooms, a 42-inch RA4 color processor, 12 individual darkrooms for color printing, a mural darkroom for both black-and-white and color printing, high-end Macs, an alternative-processes lab, and a dedicated lighting studio.
The San Francisco campus houses the programs in Painting/Drawing, Architecture, Graphic Design, Illustration, Film, Fashion Design, Furniture, Industrial Design, and Interior Design as well as all of the graduate programs.
The 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m2) 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. It also contains classrooms and studios, galleries, a lecture hall, a cafe, and a library. A new state-of-the art digital facility includes a postproduction lab, an audio recording suite, three video editing suites, and a 2,100-square-foot (200 m2) production stage.
The new Graduate Center building offers studios, outdoor workspaces, and meeting/installation rooms. Both the main building and the Graduate Center have won architectural awards.
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.
The fashion studio has facilities for cutting, draping, knitting, and sewing. The wood and furniture facilities include a bench room, a machine room, and a spray booth. Students have access to spacious shared studios for painting, drawing, and architecture. Seniors in the Painting/Drawing Program have individual studios, as do all Fine Arts graduate students. However, there is no dedicated studio space for students majoring in Illustration.
The MFA Program in Writing has its own building.
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||