嘿嘿视频

3 Alumnae Artists to Know

Richard Nelson, the founding chair of the 嘿嘿视频 Department of Art, recruited artists in the 1960s to create a faculty that included Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri and others whose work now is displayed in museums worldwide. Their work continues, through art faculty members and students. Here, we feature three female artists who studied at 嘿嘿视频 over two decades 鈥 their media are performance art, sculpture and ceramics.

Angela Willetts, M.F.A. 鈥16: Found Performance Art With Dough

Angela Willetts was working on her M.F.A. at 嘿嘿视频 a few years ago when Annabeth Rosen, a ceramicist and Robert Arneson chair of art and art history, walked into her studio. 鈥淪he said, 鈥榶ou are really good at making things look pretty.鈥欌欌 There is always the but. She also urged Willetts to work on something challenging. Willetts took her advice to heart, figuring out where she should go next. It was not comfortable at first, she admitted. Raised and educated in England, Willetts was more accustomed to a regimented learning style. She studied economics, English and history in high school. But she always wanted to be an artist. Her previous education was completely unlike the free-flowing work atmosphere in 嘿嘿视频 studios. 鈥淚 was trying to think my way through the art,鈥 she remembered. 鈥淭hat wasn鈥檛 working.鈥 

Angela Willetts
Angela Willetts with her 鈥淪lant Step.鈥 Photo courtesy 

鈥淚 got this idea to work with dough,鈥 she said, planning to sculpt with it. She soon found the movement of the salt dough was more interesting than the material itself. It kept changing. (She also heard Rosen鈥檚 voice in the back of her head saying, 鈥測ou are not listening to the materials.鈥) So she grabbed a video camera and recorded herself working with the bread dough to see how it moved. Now, she uses her body to explore her materials, recording herself working with objects and the video becomes the exhibited work. Performance art never would have occurred to her, before her time at Davis. She didn鈥檛 even like it, she said. And she didn鈥檛 know of , a noteworthy performance art graduate of 嘿嘿视频. She wasn鈥檛 familiar with contemporary art. 鈥淣ow, my work almost always comes from physical interaction, and I use my body to explore the material.鈥 Sometimes that means tumbling with a , an from 嘿嘿视频 that she re-invented with mirrors and plywood for a recent Sacramento exhibition; or acting out a scene in wearing cheap plastic kitchen utensils she bought at a local market. Her work often contains subtle political commentary. Willetts鈥 video in the Guatemalan ruins that she shot while on a fellowship there, for example, pokes at issues with colonization and its effects on people. She teaches art at middle and high schools in the Bay Area to support her 5-year-old son and herself while exhibiting her work all over the world. She also worked at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, shortly after getting her M.F.A., planning education programs and developing the drop-in studio programs that have become a popular tradition at the 嘿嘿视频 museum. She credits her time at 嘿嘿视频 with launching her career. 鈥淓very single professor was my friend, and they were great cheerleaders, while still giving a lot of critical feedback,鈥 she said. 鈥淭hey inspired me, as an artist, to find the art voice in my head.鈥

Elisabeth Higgins O鈥機onnor, M.F.A. 鈥05: From Clay Rats to Cute Mules

Elisabeth Higgins O鈥機onnor had been pursuing her master鈥檚 degree in fine arts at Cal State Long Beach when her ceramicist husband got a job at a Sacramento region community college. She met with Rosen, and was convinced she could find a new M.F.A. home at 嘿嘿视频 working in studios at TB 9. She found that and more, and continues to teach undergraduate art there while living and working in her studio in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento. She was working in clay back then, and the first objects she made at TB 9 were rats. 鈥淲e had a rat problem, and they were everywhere. They kept eating my sandwich. So I just made some out of clay,鈥 she laughed. She reflected on her beginning days at 嘿嘿视频 while taking a break from teaching an undergraduate sculpture class. It was an open space, with good light, a 24/7 working environment and minimal distractions, she said. She lived in town then, and could walk or ride her bike back and forth to her studio whenever she wanted, to finish projects, apply glaze or fire clay. 

One of Elisabeth Higgins O鈥機onnor鈥檚 sculptures on view at the Lancaster Museum of Art and Art History. 鈥渉ate stayed the ending that love started to say,鈥 2017. 10 1/2' h x 10' w x 10' d, lumber, styrofoam, bedsheets, paper, paint, rope, twine, string, quilting pins. Photo courtesy 

Her work evolved, and she moved into sculptures made from found objects, art for which she is well known today. That later work, which has been exhibited throughout the United States and Canada, shows almost mythological characters in bright colors that are giant 鈥 6-foot-tall coyotes and 11-foot-tall mules and cattle. The creatures are made from trash and thrift store discards. Old crocheted afghans, quilt pins, rope, pillows and bedclothes, sometimes dipped in liquid clay, or slip, to stiffen them, make their way into her sculptures. She scavenges reject paint from big box stores to top it all off. She also uses Styrofoam as a primary, base material to craft the huge objects, making her work lighter than a lot of sculpture, and easier to move, she added. 鈥淎nd I feel good that I鈥檓 using it. It just goes to waste, otherwise,鈥 she said of the Styrofoam that she often finds near large community trash bins. The stunned donkeys and sweet cows are often described as 鈥渟cruffy.鈥 The found objects of her construction poke out from bellies and hooves in a final product that is a far cry from her once smooth clay. A recent exhibition at the Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles described her work as 鈥淓xisting somewhere on a spectrum between elegy and absurdity, the work examines a setting where cautionary tales, private anxieties and natural history museum dioramas mash-up 鈥 and attempts to close the gap between tenderness and the grotesque. Through a feminist lens, O鈥機onnor鈥檚 sculptures appear as something like a Where The Wild Things Are from a feminist imagination.鈥 Higgins-O鈥機onnor added this to the description of her work: 鈥淚t is a way to convey my engagement in formal concerns, process, materiality and the marks and decisions left by my hand.鈥 And, she said, 鈥淓veryone can identify with animals in some way.鈥 Fitting, then, that her work is featured in a current exhibition, running through the end of the year at the Palo Alto Art Center. On a recent afternoon in the TB 9 classroom of beginning students, she was both counseling beginning sculptors and admiring their work 鈥 and telling a student who wasn鈥檛 feeling well to get some rest. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very energizing to work with students,鈥 she explained. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so exciting to see them create 鈥 some of them for the first time. And then I get very juiced up about my own work.鈥

Kathy Butterly, M.F.A. 鈥90: Colorful, Complicated Pieces in Small Packages

Kathy Butterly, one of the last students to work under Arneson, came up in a world with few female sculptors to emulate, she said at a recent talk at the Manetti Shrem Museum. But when she learned of Viola Frey鈥檚 work, 鈥淚 had found my mentor,鈥 she said. 

Kathy Butterly

Kathy Butterly photographed at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at 嘿嘿视频. Karin Higgins/嘿嘿视频 The late Frey, a Lodi native and contemporary of Arneson and other artists of the California Funk movement, is known for enormous sculptures of people created in parts. Butterly, however, creates in a comparatively miniature world, creating confident bright orange, yellow and red clay works cured under extreme heat that are a few inches high. Displayed in 鈥Kathy Butterly/ColorForm鈥 at the Manetti Shrem Museum through Dec. 29, the ceramics in her first retrospective fill galleries backed by bright yellow walls that make everything pop. Most have political meaning 鈥 a result of creating most work while listening to public radio, she said, just like her mentor Arneson. recently described her work this way: 鈥淪ome sport wonky handles, bright little pompoms that have the texture of spongy coral, and garlands of tiny beads. They look squashed, squeezed, crumpled and pinched. But 鈥 against considerable odds 鈥 they cohere. Their colors, riotously combined, have nothing to do with 鈥榞ood taste鈥 yet manage to attain levels of gorgeousness rarely encountered in any medium.鈥 

Kathy Butterly "Middleclassiness"
Kathy Butterly, 鈥淢iddleclassiness,鈥 2015. Clay and glaze, 5 1/4 x 6 3/4 x 2 5/8 inches. Private collection. Photo courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery

Butterly works in her New York studio on many pieces at a time, as many as 12 sculptures a year. All along, with each piece, she experiments with color, materials, firing sometimes multiple times to get the look she wants. The painting of each piece is as important as the sculpture. And when she looks at others鈥 art in a museum, the materials get her attention. 鈥淗ow is that brushstroke so expressive?鈥 she asked. 鈥淚鈥檓 thinking about the weight of the color.鈥 And, she has a material she uses all the time that was left behind by her daughter one day: nail polish. It鈥檚 become a staple. 鈥淚 kind of feel that I鈥檓 become the master of nail polish,鈥 she said, of one of her many ways of working with color and layers. She said that with glazes, they all fire differently, and you don鈥檛 always know what you鈥檒l get. 鈥淲ith nail polish, you see it happen. It鈥檚 fun and immediate.鈥

Read more:

A Sojourner鈥檚 Path  

Primary Category

Tags