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Brian Taylor

Visual Artist: Mixed Media, Photographer

Brian Taylor was born in Tucson, Arizona. He received his B.A. Degree in Visual Arts from the University of California at San Diego, an M.A. from Stanford University, and his M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. Brian is known for his innovative explorations of alternative photographic processes including historic 19th Century printing techniques, mixed media, and hand made books. He has been a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Polaroid Corporation. His work has been exhibited nationally and abroad in numerous solo and group shows and is included in the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. His work has been published in American Photographer, Photo Asia, Exploring Color Photography, Photographic Possibilities, and Artworks. Brian has taught photography workshops for over 20 years at institutions including the Friends of Photography, the University of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley, Stanford University, Photo Alliance, and f/295 at Carnegie Mellon. Brian is currently Professor of Photography in the Department of Art and Art History at California State University, San Jose.

Deborah Mills Thackrey

Visual Artist: Photographer, Videographer

Photographer Deborah Mills Thackrey was born in the Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo in 1953. Numerous childhood trips along old Route 66 thru the Southwest instilled in her a wanderlust and love of the passing scenery including dramatic sunsets, old motel signs, roadside attractions like snake shows, desert landscapes, the Navajo Indian reservation, Burma Shave signs, and National Parks like the Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. Iconic images from the Vietnam War and 60’s cultural protests inspired in her a love of the ability of the photojournalist to capture a meaningful moment in time. She joined her junior high yearbook staff in order to get her hands on her first camera. As the only photographer in high school journalism class she was left alone in the darkroom to develop her skills. This put her on the path of being self-taught and independent most of her career. Thackrey migrated to California at the age of 20, unable to get into regular art classes at San Francisco State she began to study theatrical design. The influence of her makeup and costume design is visible in her projected nudes series. In the next phase of her life she began a career as a graphic designer which gave her an opportunity to work art directing top commercial photographers at major corporations such as Apple. She also spent 30 years studying modern dance with a student of seminal modern dance pioneer Lester Horton. Recent projects include a third collaboration with dancer Ishika Seth at the Theatre Yugen in San Francisco projecting her textural photographs and videos onto dancers who improvised to the content of the images. When her husband Tom returned to photography about a decade ago, she picked up a camera again as well, after more than a 20 year absence. They spent time in the esteemed photographic community of Carmel beginning friendships with photographers such as Edward Weston’s grandson Kim. Within a couple of years of serious immersion in photography, Thackrey was offered her first solo exhibit in Monterey at the Stefani Esta gallery in 2002. She began to regularly win prizes in juried shows in Los Gatos and Santa Clara with curators such as Philip Linhares from the Oakland Museum and the Triton’s George Rivera. Solo exhibits in Los Angeles and Palo Alto followed, as well as being included in more than 50 group shows ranging from the Texas Photographic Society, to galleries in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Monterey. Thackrey has recently become an activist for artists in the South Bay as one of the founders of the Silicon Valley Artists’ Collaborative with the goal of helping to create more recognition and opportunities for local artists. She has been trying her hand as a curator and gallerist founding the Axis Art Gallery in downtown San Jose’s Axis high rise. Thackrey won the coveted 2009 Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship Grant for Photography which included a show in the rotunda of Santa Clara’s Triton Museum. Her work is in private collections from New York to LA and Marin County and in corporate collections such as Adobe.

Marta Thoma Hall

Visual Artist

Hall graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in fine arts. She learned extensively about economics from her father, who was a Professor of Economics at the University of Tehran. As a nationally recognized public artist, her sculptures can be viewed in cities and towns across the country. Hall has managed her own art business for thirty years and her work has taken her to New York, London, South America, and Asia.

Truong Tran

Educator; Literary Arts: Poet; Visual Artist: Mixed Media

Truong Tran (born 1969) is a Vietnamese-American poet, visual artist, and teacher. His collection dust and conscience (2002) won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize, and in 2003, he served as Writer in Residence for Intersection for the Arts. Tran currently lives in San Francisco, where he teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, and is Writer in Residence at the San Francisco School of the Arts. Artist Statement: Day In The Life … On days when I am not working as a poet and teacher, I try to wake up early. I empty my oversized messenger bag of books and papers and the previous day’s half-eaten lunch. I place the strap over my left shoulder, with the bag firmly secured to my back. I begin to walk. I walk for as long as it takes to fill the bag with stuff: branches, findings from the local thrift stores, choice items left in boxes on sidewalks and, if I’m lucky, something I’ve never seen before. Once the bag is filled, I return home, empty the contents from the bag, creating mounds of what some might consider piles of junk. I see them as source materials and the beginnings to my art making process. I am committed to using these recycled materials as an environmentally conscious artist but also as an artist who strives to make art accessible through both its practice and use of materials. Quite frankly, I get a kick out of forcing these disparate objects to come together, compromising and accommodating one another in their process of becoming something new, something beautiful. I refer to what I do as art making because I do not paint, draw or sculpt in a traditional or learned consideration of artistic craft. My craft is founded in the doing. I glue things together. I make things fit. I dip things in wax. I cut. I build. I weave. I think. I fill things up with paint using ketchup bottles. I stare at things in hopes that these things will talk back to me. This is what I do. It makes me happy. It allows me to lose myself in the process of doing. It makes me sad. It allows me to find myself in the process of seeing. I insist on it being called art at the end of the day.

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