Visual Arts

reelaviolette botts-ward

Poetry and the Senses Fellow and Postdoctoral Scholar in American Studies at UC Davis

reelaviolette botts-ward is a homegirl, an educator, and a nontraditional multimedia artist from Philadelphia, PA. She is currently a doctoral candidate in African Diaspora Studies researching Black women’s healing spaces in Oakland. ree centers “everyday round the way Blackgirl methodology” to theorize creative innovation in the wake of displacement. Founder of blackwomxnhealing, ree curates healing circles and exhibitions for and by Black womxn, using Black feminist poetics and artistry as tools for translation between academic and community audiences. Her first book,...

Natasha Boas

Contemporary Art Curator, Writer, Critic

Natasha Boas is a French-American contemporary art curator, writer, and critic. She has taught art history and curatorial studies at Yale, Stanford, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her exhibition on the Modernist Algerian artist, Baya MahieddineBaya: Woman of Algiers in 2018 at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University garnered her international critical attention. In 2017 she was featured in Lynn Hershman Leeson's...

Peter Bittner

ARC Fellow, Multimedia Journalist, and Lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Journalism

Peter Bittner is the founder of The Upgrade and is passionate about making a difference through emerging media & technology.

His photography and videography have been published on the front page of The New York Times and in CNN, Bloomberg, NBC, Reuters, Vox, Business Insider, Hearst Digital, Al Jazeera, Popular Mechanics, VICE News, and other major outlets. Peter is a Fulbright Scholar and has covered science, sports, travel, politics, and culture — and has a special knack for projects that get him outdoors and off the grid.

Peter produces content for...

Evan Bissell

ARC Fellow, Artist, Researcher, Facilitator, and Administrator

Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the Othering & Belonging Institute and helped found Richmond LAND, the first community land...

JD Beltran

Artist/Filmmaker, Inventor, Journalist, Writer, Designer, Educator, Creativity Cheerleader, and Founder/Director of Center for Creative Sustainability
JD Beltran is an award-winning creative, journalist, and policymaker with extensive experience in design & technology, sustainability, culture, and art. She is the Founder & Director of the Center for Creative Sustainability consultancy in San Francisco and is a professor in Design at San Francisco State University. Beltran's work has won myriad awards, having been exhibited worldwide including at the Walker Art Center, the San Francisco MOMA, Ars Electronica in Austria, The Getty Center, The Kitchen, New York, and the MIT Media Lab. Her work was...

Bonnie Begusch

2009 ARC Fellow

Bonnie Begusch (b. 1981 in Oakland, USA) works primarily with time-based media and text. After studying Media Art and Literature at UCLA, she received her MFA in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been screened and exhibited at numerous venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Berkeley Art Museum; Sterling Music Room, New York; SF Film Society, San Francisco; KARST, Plymouth; RUA RED, Dublin; Exile, Berlin; Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne;...

Bruce Beasley

Sculptor

Bruce Beasley was born in Los Angeles in 1939. A typical hot rod loving teen raised in West Los Angeles, he graduated from University High School then headed for Dartmouth as a Freshman to study rocket engineering. After taking one of the few art classes Dartmouth offered, Beasley knew that his calling was art. He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to study sculpture, and while still an undergrad, Beasley’s very early work titled Tree House, from the Cast Iron series, was selected for inclusion in the influential exhibition...

Kim Anno

Painter, Photographer, Film/Video Artist, and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Program at CCA

Kim Anno is a painter, photographer, and film/video artist whose work has been collected and exhibited by museums nationally and internationally. Born in Los Angeles, Anno has had exhibitions and screenings at the University of Suffolk, England, 14th Annual New Media Festival, Seoul, Korea, Kala Art Institute,Berkeley, Goethe Institute in Johannesburg, the Durban Municipal Gallery, South Africa in the "Don't Panic Exhibition", Flux Projects, Atlanta, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, 6 channel video installation, Windows Project, Atlanta, Sky Dive Gallery, Houston, San...

James Grantham Turner

Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at UC Berkeley

James Grantham Turner publishes extensively in literature and art history across the early modern period (1500-1800), in Britain, France and Italy: his most recent book The Villa Farnesina: Palace of Venus in Renaissance Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022), won the PROSE Award for best art history title from the American Association of Publishers, and glowing reviews in Times Literary Supplement and New York Review of Books. Seven other books have appeared from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale. His interests focus on sexuality and gender,...

Kellen Trenal

ARC Fellow, Visual Artist, Performer, and Small Business Owner

Kellen Trenal (pronounced like “Chanel”) is a visual artist, performer, small business owner, alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, and holistic wellness enthusiast, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Proudly representing both African (Black American) and niimíipuu (Nez Perce) ancestry, Kellen embraces these multiple identities to empower their work in all its manifestations. Kellen shares (he)artwork through Trenal Original, a traditional-arts based, 2SLGBTQ+/BIPOC-owned, small business. Kellen utilizes a wealth of Indigenous knowledge to...