We are excited to officially announce the Creative Practice Studio Fellows for 2021!
Each of these emerging artists received a $1,000 grant from CPS to support the development of their art. Some applied it toward education, while some are launching socially engaged art projects within their community.
All of the recipients are students of mine, and I have been so proud to watch them grow into the artists they are today. Please read about these bright minds and big hearts. Congratulations Lesly, Erica, Mila, Angela and Camron!
Lesly Valezquez
Lesly Vazquez draws from a personal narrative inspired by her family, community, and experiences as a first-generation queer, Xicana woman. Growing up and learning about art history, she quickly admired great master artists of the Western canon.
But she could never see herself represented in their art. This “story of art” valued particular tastes and bodies that inherently spoke to class and privilege, from which she felt outside. Representation and visibility started to be her way to challenge these norms.
Vazquez values the importance of bringing visibility to marginalized communities like her own, as well as the importance of learning untold stories. Her art practice is a narrative activity that renders the unseen. To narrate herself and her community is central to her practice. Only by integrating where she comes from does her work feel complete.
Recently, Vazquez has used photography and original drawings as a quick and accessible way to raise funds for different collectives. Mutual aid during these challenging times is important, now more than ever.
Currently, she is collaborating with an art collective called Tha Hood Squad, which is based in East Palo Alto, CA. They provide free meals to communities around the Bay Area and to farmworkers in Watsonville and Salinas. She hopes to bring visibility of these hidden narratives into the contemporary art world, while at the same time reallocating funds back into the community.
Mila Moldenhawer
Mila Moldenhawer is a multimedia visual artist born and raised in Berkeley, CA. He works with clay, plaster, ink, screen printing, acrylic paint and found objects to create installations, sculptures and paintings.
Mila identifies as a transman and first-generation American. His mother is from India and his father is from Poland. He is currently a senior studying Art Practice and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.
His work takes root in the joyful solace of his childhood. The colorful playgrounds, toys, fabrics and foods he encountered established a love for the feeling of true presence that is inherently part of the play and the dynamic objects we use to play.
By using bright contrasting colors and abstraction, he hopes he can diverge from the lusterless frequencies of modern design and create more fluidity, play, curiosity and community in any given space.
Erica Lee
Erica Lee grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown before moving the city’s Sunset District. She is interested in social justice, particularly with gender and disability.
She is currently serving a year in Oakland with AmeriCorps and hopes to continue with a career in social work. In her free time, you can find her reading, knitting or baking!
She hopes to utilize this grant money to buy art supplies for her students and to contribute to graduate school applications.
Angela Buencamino Phung
Angela Buencamino Phung is a daughter of diaspora, something that has informed her concern with intergenerational knowledge. She produces art in a variety of mediums, including performance, installation, photography and video.
Angela rejects the notion of monolithic hxstory and seeks to disrupt Eurocentric knowledge through projects that center the voices of people who would have been made silent or invisible, whether they are local, global, personal and familial.
Her practices as an artist, community member, educator and learner are grounded in a persistent curiosity about the potential of a collective imagination. Currently, she is based in the California Bay Area on Ohlone Land. She was born and raised in Sacramento on Nisenan Land.
She plans to partially redistribute her CPS grant to BIPOC community members to support their creative projects or basic needs. Additionally, the funds will be used to ensure access to learning and art materials for the preschool- through high school-aged students she will be teaching throughout the next academic year.
Camron King
Camron King is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with acrylic, charcoal, collage and photography. She is studying social welfare and art practice at the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate.
When she isn’t in the Bay Area, she is in her hometown of Phoenix, AZ, teaching art fundamentals to 9- to 13-year-olds at a local art school. She enjoys exploring themes of pleasure, race, interpersonal relationships and menstruation through her artwork.
Camron wants to use her fellowship money to create a zine that helps young menstruators learn about their bodies through art. In addition to playing her part in ending the stigma surrounding menstruation, Camron aspires to become a licensed art therapist within the next few years.