God Has No Spam Folder No 4 1633
Visiting Artist Lectures

Jessalyn Aaland

09/15/22

Please join us for a lecture with artist Jessalyn Aaland. She will also be our OS47 Artist-in-Residence later in the month.

Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 7:30 — 8:30 PM
Location: Oxbow Studios*

Jessalyn Aaland is a Bay Area interdisciplinary artist working across social practice, painting, print, and sculpture. Her work often touches upon complex social issues, but with a sense of humor, hope, and joy. Much of her work explores how systems (such as the K-12 education system) function as sites for both conformity and resistance, and conveys the possibility that a more utopian society is not unreachable. Her socially-engaged projects address public audiences of everyday people (e.g. youth, teachers, workers), and often take the form of workshops and Risograph-printed posters and booklets. Aaland’s project Class Set has provided 20,000 Risograph-printed, artist-designed posters featuring social justice quotes to schools, libraries, and educational non-profits nationwide, and the designs and accompanying curriculum are available for anyone to download online for free. Her work has been supported with funding from Southern Exposure, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has been an artist-in-residence at Facebook (Menlo Park), Real Time & Space (Oakland, CA), North Mountain (West Virginia), and Sim (Reykjavik, Iceland), and was a 2018-2019 Political Power fellow at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

*Please note due to COVID-19 safety protocols this event will not be open to the public.

I want to thank you all for being so supportive and wonderful, thank you for running this incredible program. And half of my acceptance to RISD is because of Oxbow. (Especially thanks to Chris who wrote my letter of rec, to Jennifer who revised my essays, to the admissions team who helped me with my portfolio.

— Jeff Shen, Fall 2014

It's been a whirlwind week, but also a time when I sang the praises of Oxbow to my colleagues. I've been thinking much about how Oxbow is an exemplar of true education. That art centers the curriculum is hardly surprising, and for those of us who work within the traditional educational mold Oxbow offers a gold standard of focused project based learning. Beyond the school's approach to immersive experience are the intangibles which make Oxbow different. The sense of community and of working together, even as each student retained their strong individual presence is palpable. The feeling of warmth and trust between the adults and the nearly adults in the Oxbow community could be felt throughout the campus. The openness of the architecture and interconnectedness of the three studios in themselves speak of the Oxbow philosophy and identity. More than form follows function, the physical attributes of Oxbow have a distinct warmth and invite exploration.

I'm sure that the ongoing challenges of leading and reinventing your school might sometimes keep you from having the time to see Oxbow with the fresh eyes of a visitor, but your steady presence and vision are really visible in every detail. Thank you for inviting me to one of the most profound experiences in my career.

— Ken Rush, Visual Arts Department, Packer Collegiate Institute

Our daughter graduated summa cum laude from NYU with a double major in Studio Art and Art History. She is now working for Calvin Klein. She is contemplating getting a law degree and pursuing a career repatriating art objects. She still keeps in touch with several of her Oxbow classmates and they have regular reunions in Manhattan... I would say that Oxbow was the best semester that any of my four children spent in their cumulative 16 years of high school. Our daughter was the right kid, and for the right kid you do a wonderful job. You changed her life. Thank you.

— John Powley, Parent

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