Serena Cole Dinner Lecture

Dinner Lecture
In conjunction with I Wanna Be Adored: New work by Serena Cole
January 16th, 2010, 7-10:30pm

Guest Speakers: Tina Takemoto and to Jeffrey Gibson
Guest Cook: Abner Nolan

Saturday, January 16th will be another unique Dinner Lecture experience. Our special guests will be Tina Takemoto and to Jeffrey Gibson. The evening will be spent eating delicious food created by artist Abner Nolan, meeting new people and looking closely at the artwork of Serena Cole from her Triple Base solo exhibition last month, I Wanna be Adored.

Both speakers have been working closely with Serena Cole in the MFA program at California College of the Arts and will discuss concepts surrounding Cole’s current work. Tina Takemoto is a is a writer, theorist, and performance artist. She is currently a Visual Studies Professor at CCA. Takemoto will be presenting a brief lecture titled “Art, Advertising, and the Production of Desire”. Jeffrey Gibson is a contemporary artist form New York and is a Visiting Artist at California College of the Arts. He was recently awarded the Headlands residency in Marin. Gibson will share a his perspective on fashion advertising images and will show how they are reflective of class and racial demographics and simultaneously seductive as images of surreal beauty. Gibson has created a photo interview with Cole, exploring her teen fashion drawings as well as a recent “Prada Fashion Show” that he and Cole created in December.

About Guests:

Tina Takemoto is a writer, theorist, and performance artist whose work explores issues of gender, race, illness, and queer identity. Her installation-based performances have received grants funded by Art Matters, Inc., the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Takemoto’s articles appear in Art Journal, Performance Research, Afterimage, Women and Performance, and the anthology Thinking Through the Skin. Takemoto is associate professor of visual studies at the California College of the Arts, and she currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Queer Cultural Center. On occasion, she makes guerilla appearances as Michael Jackson and Bjork-Geisha. BA, University of California, Berkeley; MFA, Rutgers State University of New Jersey; MA, PhD, University of Rochester. (Website: www.ttakemoto.com)

Jeffrey Gibson is a painter and sculptor living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in the United States but moved frequently and lived abroad as a child in Germany and Korea. He is also a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half Cherokee. This unique combination of cultural perspectives and exposure are essential to understanding Gibson’s artworks that combine and transform seemingly disparate references drawn from both Western and non-Western sources. Gibson received his Master of Arts degree from The Royal College of Art (UK) in 1998 and moved to New York in 1999. His paintings and sculptures have been shown nationally and internationally at museums, galleries and art fairs. Selected exhibitions include No Reservations at The Aldrich Museum (2006), Off the Map at The National Museum of The American Indian (2007), SONOTUBE at The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (2007), Solution at Diverseworks (2009), Totems at Sala Diaz (2009), Signs Taken for Wonders at Jack Shainman Gallery (2009), and Lover at On Stellar Rays (2009). His work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, ArtNews and The Brooklyn Rail. He is currently a visiting artist at California College of Arts.

Abner Nolan (cook for the evening) is a San Francisco-based artist and educator. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Nelson Gallery at UC Davis and SF Camerawork. In 2006, Nolan produced a series of posters for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street program, and a monograph of his work was published this year by TBW Books. Nolan is currently an adjunct p