Alumni Spotlight: Summer 2022
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni from all four academic departments—Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design Media Arts, and World Arts and Cultures/Dance—and from our Visual and Performing Arts Education minor—submitted updates about their work and accomplishments since graduating from UCLA. This column features their achievements, awards, publications, and other honors, as well as upcoming events related to their work.
Achievements
Rosemary Candelario '07, M.A. Culture and Performance, ‘11 PhD, Culture and Performance, was named by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Jerome Robbins Dance Division as a 2022 Dance Research Fellow, and will focus on dance and ecology.
Natasha Case '08, M.Arch I, CEO and co-founder of ice cream company Coolhaus let us know that Coolhaus will become a fully animal-free brand after being acquired by Perfect Day’s subsidiary The Urgent Company. Case joined the Urgent Company as its new President of Brand Experience.
Tania Van Herle '95, M.Arch I, was elevated by The American Institute of Architects (AIA) to its prestigious College of Fellows, AIA's highest membership honor, for her exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society.
Upcoming Exhibitions and Performances
Refik Anadol '14, M.F.A. Design Media Arts, Machine Hallucinations - Nature Dreams, Centre Pompidou-Metz in Paris, through August 29, 2022.
Carmen Argote, Filtration System for a Process Based Practice. Cotton/ linen, acrylic, fiberglass, metal tags, cotton rope. 14 feet in diameter, 5 feet,4 inches in height.
Carmen Argote '00, B.A. Art, '07, M.F.A., Carmen Argote: Filtration System for a Process-based Practice, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, through October 23, 2022.
Heidi Duckler '88, M.A. Dance, founder of Heidi Duckler Dance, will present “Truth or Consequences,” a transdisciplinary salon, on the rooftop of the Bendix Building in downtown LA on August 14, 2022; and will present “The Body of the People: Heidi Duckler Dance's 37th Annual Gala Celebration” on October 22, 2022 at the Founders Church of Religious Science.
Christina Fernandez '89, B.A. Art, Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, on view at the UCR/California Museum of Photography in Riverside, September 10, 2022 - February 5, 2023.
Naotaka Hiro '97, B.A. Art, Sand-man, Bortolami, New York, through August 26, 2022.
Installation photograph, Family Album: Dannielle Bowman, Janna Ireland and Contemporary Works from LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art at Charles White Elementary School Gallery, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA, by Brica Wilcox
Janna Ireland '13, M.F.A. Art, Family Album: Dannielle Bowman, Janna Ireland and Contemporary Works from LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art at Charles White Elementary School Gallery, through July 30, 2022.
Yoonkyung Lim '20, M.F.A. Art, My Your Memory, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, through August 7, 2022.
Coleen Lorenz '89, M.A. Dance, is artistic director of NewGround Theatre Dance Company, which is launching a new performance series called Threads Of Compassion, July 21-23 at Arts Unity Movement Center in San Mateo, CA.
Renée Petropoulos '79, M.F.A. Art, The Medium is the Message: Flags and Banners, Wende Museum of the Cold War through October 23, 2022.
Gala Porras-Kim '07, B.A. Art, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, Byerly Hall at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University through July 3, 2022.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya '16, M.F.A., Art, 144 Powers, The Alice Austen House Museum, through September 19, 2022.
May Sun, UnderGround, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Photo by Natalie Hon.
May Sun '76, B.A. Art, has a room-sized installation UnderGround in the current exhibition Lonesome Crowded West - Works from MOCA's Collection at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through February 19, 2023.
Amir Zaki '99, M.F.A. Art, On Being Here, Diane Rosenstein Gallery in Los Angeles, through July 16, 2022.
Awards
rafa esparza '11, M.F.A. Art, was awarded the 2022 Pérez Prize from The Pérez Art Museum Miami in Florida.
The Administration and Operations Campus at Sunnylands. Image courtesy Lance O'Donnell.
Lance O'Donnell '94, M.Arch II, received an Honor Award at the 2020 AIAIC Design Awards for the Sunnylands Administration and Operations Campus, a 17-acre addition located adjacent to the existing Sunnylands Center & Gardens and the Annenberg’s historic estate in Rancho Mirage, CA.
Projects
Pratinav Chadha '19, M.Arch II, has founded Pratinav Chadha Architects in Delhi, India.
Barbara Coffman '76, M.Arch I, is currently constructing a single-family house dug into a hillside in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Santa Monica.
Villa Topos, designed by Salon Alper Derinboğaz Architecture.
Alper Derinboğaz '08, M.Arch II, founder of Salon Alper Derinboğaz Architecture, has completed Villa Topos, a summer house project located on a limestone hill in the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
Frederick Fisher '78, M.Arch I, founder of Frederick Fisher and Partners, which renovated UCLA Covel Commons Dining Hall; is designing (with Shepley Bulfinch) the new Eric and Wendy Schmidt Hall at Princeton University; and is working on the renovation and addition for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Joanne Kravetz '66, B.A. Art, is doing the planning and design for the interior of law firm Michelman & Robinson, LLP’s new offices in New York City and Los Angeles.
Oscar Magallanes '17, B.A. Art, won a major public work contract to install artwork at the lower entrance to the Century City Constellation Metro Station for the Purple/D line that will run to UCLA.
Emma Moriconi '19, B.A. World Arts and Cultures, an interdisciplinary artist, is a co-founder and collaborator of the Critical Studies Department (CSD), a fictitious initiative started by students of the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti of Milan, and recently helped organize the UNEDUCATION Project, a collective initiative that moves between research, meetings and self-management.
Carolyn Omine '85, B.A. Art, is a writer and co-executive producer of The Simpsons, and creative supervisor of four episodes per season.
Kathrina Wilson '89, B.A. Dance, is leading creative movement classes for children.
Birdcage pendant by Lisa Ziff Designs. A gold 1 ⅛” perforated teardrop shelters a dangling briolette.
Lisa Ziff '86, B.A. Design Media Arts, owns Lisa Ziff Designs, a handmade jewelry line.
Brenda Zuniga '01, B.A. Art, was featured in ICG Magazine in an article entitled “Changemakers,” highlighting people in the entertainment industry that inspire change in their communities. Zuniga is an underwater cinematographer and often volunteers her time to support ocean conservation.
Publications
Plas Gywn Hall Residence University College of North Wales, 1962, Demolished 2008 Bangor. Page spread from A Cambridge Modernist: The Architecture of David Wyn Roberts by Cory Buckner.
Cory Buckner '00, M.Arch II, is author of A Cambridge Modernist: The Architecture of David Wyn Roberts (Crestwood Hills Press, 2020).
Alison D'Amato '15, Ph.D. Dance, published Movement as Matter: A Practice-Based Inquiry into the Substance of Dancing in Dance Research Journal.
Jeffrey Dreiblatt '83, B.A. Art, published three poems in The Dillydoun Review, one in each month, in the April issue “It Draws Feathers,” in the May issue “Melancholia,” and in the June issue “Reunion.”
Alan Hess '78, M.Arch I, is co-author with Michael Murphy of Googie Modern: Architectural Drawings of Armet Davis Newlove (Angel City Press, 2022).
Michael Sakamoto '10, M.F.A. Dance, '12, Culture and Performance, published An Empty Room: Imagining Butoh and the Social Body in Crisis (Wesleyan University Press, 2022).
HEADER IMAGE: Gala Porras-Kim, Precipitation in an Arid Landscape, 2021 (detail). Courtesy of the artist.
Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
