Artists | Silicon Valley Artist Laureates

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Elmaz Abinader

Literary Arts: Playwright, Poet, Writer

To be born a writer and an Arab-American in this lifetime creates an imperative for my work and despite an education that led me away from politically charged writing, my life, my family’s country and the political climate demanded I give voice that nuanced characters and moments that have no complication in the media. My work has been inspired by the dislocation of my parents from Lebanon to the US, and has radiated outward to dislocations, occupations, and disenfranchisement of other people in the Arab World and Diaspora. My first book, a memoir, The Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon was the story of three generations of Lebanese and their various challenges in finding a home away from their country. Based on diaries, interviews and letters, the book covers two centuries, ending in 1947. My second publication, a poetry collection, In the Country of My Dreams…. Provides a collection of very specific dislocations—not only the family immigration but my own transition from New York to the Midwest and the shock of the open terrain of Nebraska and the intimate relationships with natural elements. In addition to these publications, I have written and performed several one-women plays: Country of Origin, Ramadan Moon, 32 Mohammeds, Voices from the Siege and The Torture Quartet. Each uncovers a personal perspective on the lives of Arabs in the middle of political trauma. For instance, 32 Mohammeds is an intersection with the death of Mohammed al-Durra, a boy killed in Palestine before the second Intifada; Ramadan Moon explores the mythology associated with women who are veiled and the different reasons and responses to the veil. My new poetry collection, This House, My Bones draws parallels between the changes of the earth through natural means to the changes in our bodies during unnatural traumas and how that trauma moves through generations. This collection is being published by Willow Press in October 2014 My current project is a novel, When Silence is Frightening (Working title)

Terry Acebo-Davis

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Evident in her meticulous, cross-referential body of work Acebo Davis reflects the symmetry of the artist’s duty as a professional recorder of experience and memory and the basic human desire to do so. Looking at Acebo Davis’s ouevre now, one realizes that her work was not only timely, but also is timeless. -Reena Jana / Art Writer (New York City, NY)

Pilar Agüero-Esparza

Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Print Maker, Sculptor, Textile

Born in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Pilar Agüero-Esparza was exposed to the potential of materials and the love of the hand-made working with her parents in their shoe repair shop. She received a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and MFA from San Jose State University. Pilar has been an active artist, arts educator and arts administrator in the Bay Area exhibiting her work in numerous institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Triton Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Santa Cruz Museum, MACLA, Palo Alto Art Center, Galeria de la Raza, and the De Young Museum. Her public art commissions include a series of murals in the main reading area of the Biblioteca Latinoamericana Branch Library in San Jose.

Tasi Alabastro

Performing Artist: Actor

Tasi Alabastro is an actor, online content creator, and photographer whose work focuses on reflecting his community and culture. He has had the honor of being published in Content Magazine, Tayo Magazine, and featured in various galleries in San Francisco. He is a proud member of the Red Ladder Theatre Company and is currently working with inmates in state prisons as part of Arts-in-Corrections, a program that re-engage participants with their creativity and imagination.

Ronald E. Alford

Performing Artist: Composer

Composer Ronald Alford brings together the fields of music and computer science in an experimental approach to music. With the electronics created to react to my wheelchair movements, I am able to cause my laptop to generate sound as I roll across a performing space, either outside or on a stage.

Shannon Amidon

Visual Artist: Photographer, Videographer

Shannon Amidon was born and raised in San Jose, CA. She is a mixed media artist using alternative process photography, encaustic and paper ephemera as her main mediums. Her subjects often involve objects the artist has found in nature or collected in her travels such as: seed pods, insects, botanicals, fossils, feathers, bones, and vintage paper ephemera. Using these items and mediums, Amidon creates unique pieces that explore the beautiful, repulsive, and mysterious sides of natural history. Shannon’s artwork has been exhibited worldwide with emphasis on the US West Coast. In 2011 she was named the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Laureate, receiving a Fellowship Grant in photography. She was also the recipient of an Eco Art Grant and studio make-over from the Art Inspector part of the Zero One Art and Technology Network. In 2013 Amidon was one of eight artists chosen to create a large, 400lb, 5ft x 6ft public art heart for San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. Amidon has been an artist in residence at the HerhÃºsid House Artist Residency in Iceland as well as the David and Julia White Artist Colony in Costa Rica. She is active in her local arts community contributing her time, knowledge and art whenever possible. She is also involved in arts education outreach for children and young artist mentoring through the SPARK program.

Kathy Aoki

Visual Artist: Painter, Print Maker

Kathy grew up on the east coast in the small town of Natick, a Boston suburb. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, followed by two years at Washington University in St. Louis for an MFA in Printmaking. Currently Kathy lives and works in the Silicon Valley where she is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University. Past awards include fellowships from Kala Art Institute (1995), the MacDowell Colony (2001), Headlands Center for the Arts (2003), and Djerassi (2006). Her work can be found in major collections across the U.S. such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, SFMOMA , the Harvard University Art Museums, and the New York Public Library. Past projects included a 2004 grant from the San Francisco Public Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street Kiosk Poster Project. Her series of linocut prints were transformed into 4 x 6 ft posters entitled “Champions of Market St.” showing Market St. pedestrians dressed in super-hero garb performing random acts of kindness. In January 2012, Aoki completed an interactive “Political Paper Dolls”art installation commissioned by the San Jose Museum of Art for the exhibition “Renegade Humor.”

Sally Ashton

Literary Arts: Poet

Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, teacher, and Editor-in-Chief of DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. She earned her BA in English with a creative writing minor from SJSU, and her MFA in Poetry and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship, Poetry, from Arts Council Silicon Valley and a fellowship from Montalvo Arts Center. She is the author of three books of poetry, two of which were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Poems also appear in the textbook, An Introduction to the Prose Poem, and Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes, as well as in literary journals such as Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Brevity, Zyzzyva, 5am, Mississippi Review, and Poet Lore. She was awarded the Fish Flash Fiction First Prize, an international award, in 2014. Ashton was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate on April 1, 2011. During her term, she compiled a collection of the favorite poems of County residents posted on a project blog. She also hosted a series of public readings of these poems throughout the county. Her project for 2012 was Poetry on the Move, a contest for county residents culminating in winning poems placed in county buses and light rail cars. Besides teaching at San Jose State University, she teaches private workshops and at writer’s workshops including Disquiet: An International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. She has a keen interest in the intersection of the arts and science and in the relation of image to word.

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