Finding Home

Finding Home
San Francisco State University

Bay Area artist and educator Libby Black invited a group of undergraduate and graduate students from San Francisco State University’s School of Art to articulate their unique perspectives on home. Artists from a wide range of cultures and gender identities used a variety of mediums and techniques to examine their search to find a sense of belonging and safety. Watercolor, ink, acrylic paint, colored pencil, gouache, cannabis ink, and gold leaf were among the materials chosen by the artists to address this theme.

Living and working in the Bay Area, these students confront the challenges of pursuing their art in a region where affordable housing and studio space are scarce. As artist Ella Rose Avery writes, “We have all struggled to stay in the place we are from and love.” One of Libby Black’s goals for this exhibition was to create unity between the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs at SF State. Together these amazing student artists create poignant and thought-provoking representations of the power of art as a language through which diverse voices convey their journeys to find their place in the world.

San Francisco State University’s School of Art is an inclusive learning environment that promotes creativity and scholarship, and that mirrors the wide range of cultural, artistic and scholarly interests in the San Francisco Bay Area. The School of Art provides students with informed instruction in the histories and practices of the visual arts and museum studies within the context of a liberal arts university. The guiding principle of its curricula and instruction is the belief that art and its institutions are an important means to interpret human experience, and a fundamental mechanism by which a society evolves, understands, and reflects upon itself.

Libby Black is an Associate Professor at SF State. In her work she uses painting, drawing, and sculptural installation to chart a path through personal history and a broader cultural context to explore the intersection of politics, feminism, LGBTQ+ identity, consumerism, addiction, and desire. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and received a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1999 and an MFA at the California College of the Arts in 2001.

[image left]
Selected artwork from The Roads That Lead to Home, I’m So Glad I’m Here,
Remember the Red Poppies, Kenmore St., Emotions In Motion 2023
Ruby Schneider
reproduction print
Courtesy of the artist and Libby Black
San Francisco State University
R2023.1901.006.01; R2023.1901.006.02; R2023.1901.006.03; R2023.1901.006.04; R2023.1901.006.05

[image center]
See You in Dreamland  2023
Ella Rose Avery
reproduction print
Courtesy of the artist and Libby Black
San Francisco State University
R2023.1901.002

[image right]
HomeComeHome… Please  2023
Mud
reproduction print
Courtesy of the artist and Libby Black
San Francisco State University
R2023.1901.005 

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