Alicia McCarthy
| Alicia McCarthy | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1969 |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | The Mission School |
| Awards | 2013 Artadia Award |
Alicia McCarthy is an American painter. She is a member of San Francisco's Mission School art movement. Her work is considered to have Naïve or Folk character, and often uses unconventional media like housepaint, graphite, or other found materials.[1] McCarthy's art features punk messages transformed into poetic and geometric forms.[2]
Biography
McCarthy was born in 1969 and grew up in Oakland, California. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993 and an MFA from UC Berkeley in 2005. McCarthy’s work has been shown at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Center, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In 2013, her work was included in a major traveling exhibition, which was shown at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University. She is the 2013 winner of the Artadia Award and was both a 1995 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture fellow and a 1999 fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts residency program.[3] She is currently based in Oakland, California.
McCarthy currently lives and works in San Francisco, and incorporates California's culture into her much of her work.[4] Although she has not been arrested since 2000, McCarthy has participated and advocated for the use of graffiti and street art in protest of capitalism.[5] McCarthy's work, as part of the larger Mission School movement, is a direct response to the Dot-com bubble's effect on San Francisco's urban development.[6]
In 1992, the dean of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) addressed an angry letter criticizing her campus graffiti, claiming that her art "looks like shit".[7] Ironically, McCarthy is now featured as a part of SFAI's notable alumni.[8]
Works
McCarthy creates abstract paintings that fuse the aesthetics of American punk with those of outsider artists (a style sometimes referred to as "urban rustic").[9] She uses a variety of different kinds of paint (gouache, house paint, spray paint), often on found wood or paper and sometimes including text.
Energy that is All Around
Energy that Is All Around was a formative exhibition of Mission School artists, curated by Natasha Boas at the San Francisco Art Institute. In response to the technology bubble of the 90's, the Mission School artists sought to "detechnologize" contemporary art and reengage with folk and craft art.[10]
Exhibitions
- Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California, Oakland Museum of California (Sep, 2014)
- Snobody, V1 Gallery (Jan, 2015)
- Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible?, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (Oct, 2014)
- PIEROGI X X: Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition, Pierogi (Sep, 2014)
- Alicia McCarthy + Jenny Sharaf, Johansson Projects (Jun, 2014)
- ENERGY THAT IS ALL AROUND/Mission School: Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Alicia McCarthy, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri, Grey Art Gallery, NYU (Apr, 2014)
External links
- "Copenhagen Gets a Taste of San Francisco in Alicia McCarthy’s First European Solo Show"
- ArtSlant Magazine
References
- ↑ "Alicia McCarthy". Kadist. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Alicia McCarthy: New Paintings". SF Art News. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Alicia McCarthy". Artspace. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Exploring The Mythology Of The Female California Artist". Huffington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Art's Not Dead". Diablo Magazine. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "A San Francisco School with an Artistic Mission". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Your Graffiti "Looks Like Shit," a Historic Letter to Alicia McCarthy". Hyperallergic. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "SFAI History". San Francisco Art Institute. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ "Alicia McCarthy". Artsy. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
- ↑ Boas, Natasha (2014). Energy That is All Around. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 978-0-615-98873-3.