Of Here From There | De Aqui Desde Allá

Creativity Explored, SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute), and Ana Teresa Fernández present Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá, the first large-scale project featuring CE artists with developmental disabilities.

Created in partnership with Ana Teresa Fernández, the immersive installation surrounds visitors with fantastical, large-scale sculptures on which animated and time lapse videos are projected. Sculptural surfaces seem to undulate and pulsate, providing an exhilarating experience of the unique art and mark-making processes of almost 50 CE artists.

The videos capture the artists’ drawing processes, from Jose Nuñez’s dense repeating bird figures to the growing labyrinths of lines of Roland Record. These images multiply and spread quickly over the white surfaces of the giant flowers, clouds, floating boat, and dragon sculptures designed by CE artists in the installation, created with the help Fernandez’ long time tango partner and wood working co-creater, Dennis Henner.

Fernández, who received her MFA from SFAI in 2006 and taught at SFAI, facilitated more than 15 art making workshops in 2019 at Creativity Explored as a visiting artist-in-residence, exploring ideas of movement, migration, home, and place with the artists. But she became increasingly interested in their very personal visual vocabularies and intricate mark-making.

“Their voices are their marks, their depictions,” Fernández notes. “Their work is how they narrate or explain how it is they see the world. And through this collaboration, we wanted to recreate their magical landscape. A moment where we can be and exist in that world of marks.”

Fernández documented the artists as they painted on translucent vellum, videotaping their brushstrokes from the other side of the easel as they worked and then creating time lapse videos of the developing images. Other artists worked on iPads so that the images could be rendered into digital animation. Examples of the 70 videos that will be used in the installation are available through Creativity Explored’s Instagram profile. More videos and information about the process behind the exhibition are documented on the Creativity Explored Tumblr.

The video renderings were curated and formatted to be played along with the poetry by poet Leticia Hernández Linares, and dance choreography by dancer Vanessa Sanchez (La Mezcla) and musician Tommy Guerrero. This performance was especially created for Creativity Explored and their work activated the videos unto the installation. The technical expertise of Jonathan Proto and Phil Reyneri allowed for the videos to be translated unto digitally mapped renderings held within the sculptures. Each, becoming alive with the process of marks, colors and blossoming imagery uniquely placed. This immersive experience depicts in essence the world of Creativity Explored.

Join us as we celebrate CE artists’ first large-scale public art project at our inaugural installation for Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá. The installation will be on view from March 6 to April 26, 2020 at SFAI Fort Mason Campus, Pier 2. The opening reception will take place on Friday, April 6 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm with performances beginning at 7:00 pm.

Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá is generously supported by Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Grants for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Koret Foundation and California Arts Council.