Djerassi
Resident
Artists
Program


The mission of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program is to support and enhance the creativity of artists by providing uninterrupted time for work, reflection, and collegial interaction in a setting of great natural beauty, and to preserve the land on which the Program is situated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will remember the feeling of magic in the old barn that told me I had to dance there the first moment I stepped foot in it. I will remember the conversations with other artists over amazing meals. I will remember dancing on grass, cement, leaves, wood, paper, and anywhere the mood struck.

Erin Mei-Ling Stuart
Choreographer
San Francisco, CA

Lecture Series

THE PALO ALTO ART CENTER & DJERASSI RESIDENT ARTISTS PROGRAM PRESENT...

  "WHERE ART ORIGINATES: ARTISTS & THE CREATIVE PROCESS"
- Lecture Series to Feature Artist Performances and Insights to Their Work -

At the Palo Alto Art Center Auditorium
Series runs April 3 to October 30, 2008

Free Admission
Reservations required
Please call 650.329.2366

The public is invited to explore the creative process and personal approach to artistic growth in a series of five exciting lecture evenings featuring nine 2008 Djerassi Program resident artists. Held at the Palo Alto Art Center Auditorium, the lecture series starts on Thursday, April 3, 2008 and will conclude on Thursday, October 30, 2008.  Participating artists represent a wide range of artistic expression and will perform and speak about their work. Each program will conclude with a Q & A session with the featured artist(s). Admission is free; reservations are required. Please call 650.329.2366 for more information.

“OXYGEN” — A New Opera / Thursday, April 3, 2008, 7:00pm

 

The series kicks-off on Thursday, April 3, 2008, 7:00pm with Djerassi Program Founder, playwright and  Stanford Professor Emeritus Dr. Carl Djerassi (San Francisco/London), in a multimedia presentation with three internationally recognized artists who are collaborating with him on a new opera based on his play “OXYGEN,” co-authored with Dr. Roald Hoffman (Cornell University, NY), a poet and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. Austrian composer Dr. Wolfgang Mastnak, Chair at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Münich, and Austrian writer/director Isabella Gregor, who trained as a director at the Opera House in Zurich, Switzerland, will join them on the program, which will include live music and video.

 

 

Literary Reading & Film / Thursday, May 1, 2008, 7:00pm
                    

Viet Nguyen (Los Angeles) is Associate Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. He received his B.A in English and Ethnic Studies with highest honors   in 1992 and his Ph.D in English 1997 from UC Berkeley. Nguyen’s work, “A Correct Life,” was included in Best New AmericanVoices 2007 (Harcourt Brace, NY) and he is the author of “Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America” (2002; Oxford University Press). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and he has lectured extensively on a range of topics all over the United States and abroad.

 

 

Filmmaker Vanessa Woods (SanFrancisco), a recipient of an MFA Film Fellowship (2005-2007) from the San Francisco Art Institute, will show clips from various works, including “Memory Box, Tomako’s Letter,” a film using photography, sound, poetry and language to examine the true story of Keizo, a Japanese man who lost his memory and became estranged from his daughter. Woods has shown her work widely in solo and group shows in the United States and France.  She received her B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York.

for details

 

Live Jazz! / Thursday, July 10, 2008, 7:00pm

 

Drawing from his study of African, Japanese, Indonesian, European and American music cultures, trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith (Los Angeles) has developed a world music and jazz theory that he calls “Ankhrasmation.” At Djerassi, he will work on new compositions that draw their inspiration from “the issues of borders and the growing reality of refugees and immigration in the world.” Smith is an instructor and coordinator, African-American Improvisational Music, at the California Institute of the Arts. 

for details  

Contemporary Miniature Painting / Thursday, September 4, 2008, 7:00pm sabeen

 

Sabeen Raja (Lahore, Pakistan) will show slides of her miniature paintings and discuss her work. Raja received her BFA from the National College of Arts in Pakistan and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She says of her work’s sensual imagery and contemporary themes that she “makes demons of our own personalities who blind us to the possibilities of change…miniature painting is a parallel or analogy to the perceived non-freedom of woman in Pakistani society.” 

NOTE: Adult subject matter will be presented.

 

"I am not forgiven", opaque watercolour with gold on wasli paper, 2007

 

for details

Literary Reading / Thursday, October 30, 2008, 7:00pm
             

Afro-Guyanese writer Karen-King Aribisala (Lagos, Nigeria) received her PhD in African and West Indian Literature from the University of Sussex in England. Currently a Professor of English at the University of Lagos in Nigeria, her work has been widely published in Africa, Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. While at Djerassi, she plans to work on "Shakespeared Black,"  which “reacts to the history of colonization and the insidious use of education of the colonized…” 

 

 

for details

Please note that programs are subject to change.

Palo Alto Art Center
1313 Newell Rd. Palo Alto
CA 94303
650-329-2366
Directions

                              the gift of time   

© Djerassi Resident Artists Program 2008