In The Cut: between the studio and exhibition

In 2024 The San Francisco Arts Education Project invited me to create a project utilizing their Gallery Space at the Minnesota Street Project Gallery Complex for six weeks starting in October and ending mid November of 2024. Because education is the heart of this arts organization I decided to occupy the gallery in what I referred to as a hybrid residency. I wanted folks to see recent works on display alongside me working in the space, creating new works. l also conceived of a few projects to directly  engage and collaborate with the larger community.

I called this project In the Cut  because that phrase has a couple of associations for me. One being a bit of a nod to the role cutting plays in my artistic process and another as a nod to some older Bay Area slang which was familiar to me through hip hop, years before I moved to the Bay. In the Cut is one of my favorite phrases that I’ve picked up from my adopted home because it accurately describes a feeling that I have lived with my whole life and have written about before. It is twofold, that feeling of being out of the way metaphorically but also physically as being in spaces that are not intended to be occupied like when we used to skate drainage ditches for instance and secondly a feeling of plotting, waiting or biding your time to make your move again metaphorically but also in regards to skating a ditch with a bunch of other skaters.

It was important to me that In the Cut  existed as not quite strictly a visual art exhibition and not quite a full on studio residency but that it hovered somewhere in between. That it occupied a third space. I wanted to play with exhibition/installation strategies as much as I wanted to have the space to create new works. My goal was to invite viewers into the gallery space to see new works, but also to witness and learn more about my process and be able to engage in conversations about all things art and education. Two subjects that have occupied my conscious mind and working life for well over twenty years. My work as an educator goes hand in hand with my work as an artist. These two practices inform each other in profound ways as my studio inquiry works its way into my curriculum and often what I teach opens up insights into what I am investigating in the studio.