CCA Student Spotlight
In collaboration with California College of the Arts, the ICA SF invited CCA graduate students to propose creative exhibitions in the ICA SF bathrooms, continuing our mission of supporting the local arts ecosystem and encouraging artists to push the boundaries of their practice. In the coming months, these spaces will feature site-specific installations by four CCA Graduate Fine Arts students: Kelley Finley, Deena Qabazard, Dottie Lo Bue, and Jason Stern.
On view February 10 - May 5, 2024: Dottie Lo Bue and Jason Stern.
On view November 11, 2023 - February 4, 2024: Kelley Finley and Deena Qabazard: Mutability Stalls.
Date
November 11, 2023–May 5, 2024
IMAGE
Dottie Lo Bue, Untitled, 2023. Oil on canvas.
This project is organized by Samantha Hiura (ICA SF Curatorial Fellow, CCA MA Curatorial Practice & MA Visual Critical Studies ‘25).
Installation view Deena Qabazard: Mutability Stalls, 2023 Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno
Detailed view Kelley Finley: Mutability Stalls, 2023 Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno
Detailed view Kelley Finley: Mutability Stalls, 2023 Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno
In honor of Peter Simensky, a beloved mentor, collaborator, and advocate.
Dottie Lo Bue is an artist from California whose work across painting, drawing, and poetry is anchored in an ever-present anxiety, a search for gentleness within it, and how surreal both can be. Considering themes of nostalgia, displacement, and safety through the subtly uncanny, her work is an invitation towards symbols and their boundaries as metaphysical space, as worlds compressed, dismantled, and put back again.
Lo Bue is currently pursuing an MFA at California College of the Arts, where she recently received the Barclay Simpson Master of Fine Arts Award, and holds a BFA in pictorial art from SJSU. Her work has been selected to be shown at Root Division and Soft Times Gallery, among other Bay Area art spaces.
Jason Stern explores diverse ecologies and our relationship to our wildlands through a versatile practice, including woodblock printmaking and installations using ceramic and metal. Through a central question, “What would art for birds look like?,” Stern prods our growing emotional and spiritual separation from the natural world. He says: “If my work succeeds, we will begin to mend our growing divide between our lived experience and our wildlands.” Jason Stern is currently pursuing an MFA at California College of the Arts.
Deena Qabazard is a Kuwaiti American artist currently working in San Francisco, CA. She weaves together materials, dance, and movement to experiment with the physical and mental capabilities of the human body– both its lived experience and its visual representation. A duality of familiarity and strangeness fuels her work, originating from within her experience of growing up between California and Kuwait. Qabazard is currently an MFA Candidate at California College of the Arts.
Kelley Finley is an interdisciplinary artist primarily working in sculpture and performance. Finley received her BFA in Sculpture at Kutztown University (Kutztown, PA) and is currently pursuing her graduate degree at California College of Arts. She is a visual artist who explores personal identity and labor as a biracial woman, and formal aesthetics that investigate the relationship between the body, fragility, and solidity. Her work has been shown internationally in Hong Kong and Italy.