SPRANG BRAK

Anjelica Colliard @jellicore

Colliard is a queer artist based in Oakland, specializing in mixed media drawing and painting as well as mural work and printmaking. They hold a BFA from University of California, Berkeley, and are inspired by a hope for a more peaceful and sustainable world. They have shown across galleries and museums in the greater Bay Area and West Coast, including Hashimoto Contemporary (SF) and the Oakland Museum of California. They were an Artist in Residence at Google in 2022, a featured artist for Target Pride and Plunge Towels in 2023, and a guest instructor at Berkeley Art Museum in 2025.

Statement: I am an artist trained in printmaking with a foundation in drawing, based in Oakland. My current works are primarily medium and large-scale mixed media drawings and paintings that feature fantastical botanical motifs, color play and stylized characters. Dynamic and surreal, my pieces draw inspiration from intuition, body and movement, and explore themes of ecology, gender and softness. My goal is to inspire my viewers to play and find wonder in the world around them as a means to gather hope, strength, and community in our often overwhelming world.

Chloe King @kinggtingg

Chloe King (b. 1999, lives and works in Oakland, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, video, installation, and photography. King received their B.F.A in 2021 from Cornish College of the Arts and is currently a Dual Degree M.F.A + M.A candidate at California College of the Arts. They have participated in numerous exhibitions and public art events, including the 2024 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition at Somarts, San Francisco, CA; Fools Gold at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA (2024); Cheek and Hole at Specialist Gallery, Seattle, WA, and more.

Statement: My practice is rooted in painting and photography, with a heavy focus on materiality, process, and the ways speculative world-building can offer alternative understandings of what the future can or should look like. My work draws from the histories of photography, film, and Black science fiction to interrogate how narratives are constructed, whose stories are legitimized, and how cultural memory is shaped through images and storytelling. Recurring visual motifs like pixelation, animal prints as faulty camouflage, and dystopic or intangible settings reference both a world just out of reach and a hurried erasure of information—inviting the viewer into a game of deciphering what is real, what is not, and why that distinction matters.

Chris Thorson @turnalittletowardsme

Chris Thorson’s work has been presented in solo and two person exhibitions at Quint Gallery in San Diego, CA; Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, CA; Mama’s in Vallejo, CA; and the Des Lee Gallery at Washington University in St. Louis, among others. Group exhibitions include Personal Space, Vallejo,CA, Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Subsidiary Projects, London, UK; The Hessel Museum at Bard College; and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Her work has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Riverfront Times, KQED, and New American Paintings. She received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives and works in Vallejo, CA.

Statement: My sculptures make space to question the conditions of contemporary life and culture while testing the boundaries between what we overlook and what we esteem. Using a range of materials and methods, I remake and represent everyday objects to explore themes including consumption, illusion, and vulnerability.

Ester Tuva @https://www.instagram.com/ester2va/

Ester Tuva graduated with her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2022. Prior to CCA, she studied Psychology and Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.

Statement: Ester Tuva is a painter and weaver based in Oakland, CA. Her work is inspired by silliness, embarrassment, and guilty pleasures: moments that belie performances of coolness or detachment. A reverence for meticulous processes also plays a key role in her work. Tuva uses hand-controlled methods on the floor loom to create intricate patterns and typography in her weavings, and she hand-weaves the canvases for her paintings.

Gabrielle Medina @iknowgaby

Gabrielle Medina is a Mexican American painter. She was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona where she received her Bachelors in art history and studio art at the University of Arizona. She received her Masters of Fine Art from California College of the Arts. She is currently living and working in Oakland, CA

Statement: I paint objects into abject abstracted space, collaged together with found materials. I take inspiration from Vanitas paintings, semiotics, pop culture and my own Mexican culture. In my paintings I create connections and associations by collage. I take found objects like scribbled notes and used lotto scratcher tickets; I'm drawn to little trinkets that show evidence of life and a connection to another person. I take inspiration from my hometown, moments of sentimentality and the women around me. I'm inspired by women that are fully themselves, that smash together authenticity, camp and "tackiness” to create moments of self expression and power. My work explores what is valuable and desirable. A large part of my practice is imitation. Recreating stickers or decals, using rhinestones, creating my own tags and graffiti. I enjoy playing with imitation because it is so closely tied to the concept of value. My work questions what is valuable, a rhinestone, a used lottery scratcher? When I first moved to The Bay Area I was struck with the extreme poverty and wealth. In my work I use collage and painting to explore and critique class structure and inequality. I smash together the ugliness and the abject with fully rendered and meticulously painted food, objects, trash, and "jewels".

Hudson Hatfield @hudsonbupson

Hudson Hatfield (Hud) is a multimedia artist working in video, sculpture, performance, and installation from Colorado. Hatfield received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2014. He is a current MFA candidate for Studio Art at Stanford University. Described in the past as “a chapel for gay Halloween” and “Pop Art brewed in the Rockies”, the visual style in Hatfield's work combines themes of spirituality and gay sexual identity in relationship to landscape, geography, and pop culture with a significant dose of slap- stick wit and Olympian bravado.

Statement: Being from Colorado, the myth of the American West is something that has always held a significant amount of weight in my fantasies. Not only as a backdrop for freedom, reinvention, and rugged beauty, but also (and especially as a gay man) as a place of violence, erasure, and loneliness. The friction between these two states…danger and desire…is the frontier from which my art practice grows. I draw specifically from the experiences I had growing up and the many manual labor jobs I’ve worked in the past. In turning on a camera and recording myself in cowboy drag, or wearing my old uniform from when I was a construction worker; I can re-imagine a version of history that gives wide-open-space for my gayness. In doing so, the myth of the American West is not the place that tried to erase me, but the stage on which I reimagine myself in full color. Through video, sculpture, and installation, I can collapse the mythic and the personal, the historical and the intimate. I can stage a cowboy fantasy that’s both real and parody, sacred and silly. I can turn a gas station into a liminal altar, the landscaping job into choreography, and my sense of humor into a weapon.

Jillian Crochet @jilliancrochet

Jillian Crochet is a Bay Area disabled artist working in sculpture, video, and performance to confront grief and disability. Her work questions: What is natural/unnatural? What bodies are included/excluded -- important? Her practice seeks to liberate the disabled body from normalized marginalization and oppression. In 2021 she was awarded an Emerging Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She was a 2020-21 Artist in Residence at Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability program and a 2020-21 Graduate Fellow at Headlands Center for the Arts. She has shown work at the YBCA, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, CA, SOMArts, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Alabama Contemporary Art Center and has published work in Able Zine based in London, UK, Quiet Lightning, and Feral Fabric Journal. She has presented work at MAD Museum, Stanford, and BAMPFA. She earned her BFA from the University of Alabama in 2007 and an MFA in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in 2020.

Statement: Jillian Crochet is a Bay Area interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, video, and performance. Her work uses haptic and embodied aesthetics to challenge the hierarchy of the senses and unpack disability and grief. Using elements found in ‘nature’ mixed with medicalized objects, her practice questions the medical model, desire for control, and the complex ethics of genetics and experimentation. A surreal sense of time and disembodiment shapes her work through repetition and duration. An oscillation of the subject/object relationship reflects and unsettles our understanding of nature. What is natural/unnatural? What bodies are included/excluded -- important? The unceasing work of self-advocacy led her to performance and interventional installation that reveals the inherent ableism of our built environment and social structures. The disabled body subverts expectations of how a body should look, perform, and produce - exist.

Kyle Daniels @biloba.baggins

Statement: My name is Kyle Daniels. I am a self taught ceramic artist based in Oakland, CA. I draw on additive & subtractive processes to develop complex surfaces that encourage viewers to interact with the objects in unexpected ways. I aim for there to be a touch of humor in all of my work.

Mary Campbell @maryccampbell

Mary Campbell is a multimedia artist interested in the theatrics of everyday life. She finds inspiration in do-it-yourself homeowner manuals, magazine advertisements, and life hack tutorials in the midst of the loneliness of late capitalism. Casting, sheet forming, photographing, and camouflaging, Campbell approaches the objects she crafts like props in a performance. “Silently steering the attention from photograph to object and back again, I invite you to engage and follow their direction. With any luck, you’ll reach a dead end.” Campbell is a recent graduate of CCA’s MFA program where she was awarded the Dennis Leon and Cristin Nelson Graduate Merit Award. She has shown work in the Bay Area at Gallery 16, SF Camerawork, Berkeley Art Center, Incline Gallery, and Bass and Reiner; and regionally at Stelo Gallery (Portland, OR), Littman Gallery (Portland, OR), Wassaic Project (NY), and in NAHP’s traveling Papermaking Triennial exhibition (US).

Statement: Finding inspiration in do-it-yourself homeowner manuals, magazine advertisements, and the loneliness of late stage capitalism, I’m interested in the theatrics of every day life. Bemused by gender and societal roles, I take note of what captures my attention. Baskets of fake fruit. How to disguise your junk with pattern matching design tricks. Holiday décor ideas. Life hacks. I approach the objects I craft as props in a performance. Casting my arm performing different tasks, I become an actor in my artwork, and the gallery the set. The gloves serve simultaneously as costume and signified, shifting between gardening glove, work glove, cleaning glove, and miscellaneous. Interested in poking holes in the illusions we encounter in our daily lives, I’m asking the viewer to expect the unexpected and to take a closer look. Silently steering the attention from photograph to object and back again, I invite you to engage and follow their direction. With any luck, you’ll reach a dead end.

Michael Diamond @m.ichaeldiamond

Michael Diamond, born in Los Angeles, graduated from the California College of the Arts in 2018 with a focus on painting. He has been living in Oakland for the past decade. Recently, he has shifted his artistic exploration towards sculpture, particularly in the medium of paper mache. His recent venture into paper mache sculpture explores the reinterpretation of personal narratives through everyday objects, integrating designs, motifs, and structures that reflect the histories embedded in urban artifacts.

Statement: My paintings speak on my experience walking in the city, pulling formal elements of color, textures, and patterns from the nuances of urban landscapes. I find myself ruminating on the histories that objects hold, combining designs, motifs, and structures to think about how my personal story can be reinterpreted through everyday objects.

Sammy Gripe @sammyydeer

Sammy Gripe is a San Francisco based multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves fluidly between soft sculpture, ceramics, and botanical assemblage. Drawing upon the emotional architecture of interpersonal relationships, Gripe creates intimate works that investigate vulnerability, attachment, memory, and the universal search for comfort and belonging. Her sculptures occupy a space between the familiar and preternatural, exploring the subtle ways objects can function as companions, witnesses, and extensions of self. Gripe has studied at University of Oregon, Beaux Arts de Paris, and San Francisco Art Institute where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture in 2020.

Torreya Cummings @torreya.c

Torreya Cummings works with sculpture, installation, photography, performance and video to explore how we understand (or misunderstand) history, people and places. They were an inaugural Bay Area Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2021-2023), a Creative Work Fund grant recipient (2024), an Artadia SF finalist (2024), and have exhibited solo projects at institutions including Recology SF, the Oakland Museum of California, and Aggregate Space Gallery (Oakland); group shows at The Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF), Gallery 16 (SF) and the Museum of Art and History (Lancaster, CA). They have presented performances with Machine Project (LA), Southern Exposure (SF), and the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts (SF). Cummings studied ceramics at University of California, Davis and holds an MFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts. Their studio is in Oakland, CA.

Statement: In this work, materials were scavenged from the waste stream at the San Francisco Dump during a four month residency. The palm trees forming the center of this piece came from an office building being emptied. Some of the mirrors, lamps and fake plants came from real estate staging companies clearing stock, other items are household cast offs: souvenirs, toys, decor. Representations of “paradise” or “the tropics” are often entwined with the impossible desire for escape (from the cold, the office, the grind) and separated from real, specific locations. The plants and animals are plastic, but the seashells were extracted from tropical places and were once alive. Sorting through these cast off representations was an opportunity to use commonplace and absurd materials to underscore a longing for paradise and the darker histories that underlie those desires. As in the baroque Italian paintings of the same title, which means “Even in Paradise, there am I”, the (plastic) skeleton serves as a reminder of Death, in this case hinting at the history of militarism, colonialism, resource extraction, and the tourism industry that make these escapist fantasies possible. The Bay Area, while cold and foggy and far away from the places that inspire these materials, is still linked to them by the Pacific Ocean, whose garbage patches are full of mass produced plastic items similar to those that are deposited at the transfer station hourly.

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