Click here to watch Mentor Carolina de San Juan talk about what ArtsBridge means to her.
Architecture and Urban Design
Ms. Vital is focusing on the digital reconstruction of buildings in her doctoral studies at UCLA. She is an ArtsBridge alumna herself, and has taught at Pasadena City College, and served as a Teaching Assistant in UCLA’s Departments of Architecture and Design/Media Arts.
Art
I moved to LA to earn my Masters Degree in Fine Art Painting at UCLA, after growing up in San Francisco. My art and my interests are symbiotic. My painting comes from natural imagery and hands-on engagement with daily experience; my interests include urban agriculture, bicycling, and sharing all of this with as broad a community as possible.
“Watching children learn to harness non-verbal communication through lessons taught by ArtsBridge scholars is essential to my practice as a visual artist. My participation in ArtsBridge has reconnected me to the fundamental value of art in society as a kind of creative ritual that can provide anyone, regardless of age or background, with inspiration, knowledge and a well of self-empowerment.”
Brenna Youngblood was born in 1979 in Riverside, California, and currently lives in Los Angeles. She has recently exhibited her work at the Hammer Museum. She received her BFA in 2002 from California State University, Long Beach, and will receive her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2006. She participated in group exhibitions at Hayworth Gallery and Compact/Space in Los Angeles in 2004. Her photographic collages were included in Handmade at Wallspace, New York, and State of Emergence: Unsuspected Cracks in the Art World Infrastructure at Track 16 Gallery, Los Angeles, both in 2005.
Design/Media Arts
As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA, Reas interacts with undergraduate and graduate students to push the boundaries of art and design. His classes provide a foundation for thinking about computers and the Internet as a medium for exploration and set a structure for advanced inquiry into synthesis of culture, technology, and aesthetics.
UCLA Arts Museums
Hall has been the UCLA Fowler Museum since 2004. Her prior experiences in the field of education includes coordinating the community outreach efforts at museums in New England and California, as well as a year of teaching 5th grade students at a bilingual school in Honduras. The Fowler Museum has partnered with ArtsBridge for many years with great success. AB Scholars have used the permanent collection and exhibitions of the Museum as the inspiration for implementing rich and meaningful arts programs at host schools. Hall believes that “working with ArtsBridge has been invaluable to enhancing the accessibility of the Museum, bringing the arts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas out of the galleries and into the communities, intersecting local lives with global arts.”
John Alan Farmer is an art historian and attorney. He received his B.A. in art history from Yale University, his Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University, and his J.D. from Fordham Law School. He has worked extensively for arts institutions such as the Americas Society Visual Arts Gallery; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and College Art Association, where he served as Senior Editor of Art Journal. For several years, he has worked with The Quiet in the Land, a nonprofit art and education organization that organizes long-term community-based art projects throughout the world. He is presently Head of Academic Initiatives at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
World Arts and Cultures
Ms. Leung is a faculty member in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures; teaching areas include: improvisation, choreography, movement analysis, fundamentals and modern dance technique, dance education, and production management/administration. She has taught as guest artist wherever her works have been presented throughout the United States and internationally. Leung’s teaching and creative work reflects her interest in praxis; creating bridges between the intuitive and the analytical, the theoretical and the practical, the conceptual and the physical. She has served as an ArtsBridge mentor since its beginnings.
Carolina San Juan is an ex-ballroom dance instructor turned performance artist/nascent scholar. Current projects include, “From Vaudeville to Bodabil: American Imperialism, Race and Gender in Philippine Performance,” “The Other Minstrels: Transnational Imagination in the Myth of David Fagan,” and “The Imperial Mole Project.”
John Wesley Days, Jr. is a PhD. candidate in the Department of World
Arts and Cultures where he writes, studies and performs conflict transformation through music, movement and ritual theater. He explains, “I got involved in ArtsBridge because my family caste is public education. Grandparents, parents, aunt, uncles and cousins, most are educators in the public school system. It is what we believe we were born to do in this world.” In addition to his mentorship role, Mr. Days served as the ArtsBridge Teaching Assistant during Winter Quarter.
Ana Maria Alvarez has been sharing her joy, love and obsession for moving in rhythm with others for over fifteen years. As a teacher, choreographer, community arts activist, originally from the east coast, she moved to Los Angeles from NYC in 2002. Alvarez received her MFA in Choreography at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. Alvarez is the Artistic Director of ContraTiempo Dance Company, and is faculty at Seeds University Elementary School where she is creating a new Interdisciplinary Dance Program for ages 4-12.
