SEE(d) Artist Series with Shirin Towfiq at Clio's

It was a deeply meaningful @seedartistseries program with artist Sharon Towfiq on December 7, 2024! Artist @shirintowfiq shared her fascinating, multi-layered creative process, while cultural anthropologist Cari Borja @drcariborja led a thoughtful Q&A in the very cool back room at Clio’s. Shirin spoke about her family’s history—being from Iran but unable to return—and how immigrant families persevere and adapt. She explored how she is reclaiming her cultural heritage, navigating layers of loss, grief, absence, storytelling, reverence, identity, and the search for home. The conversation also touched on how symbols like magic carpets and gold thread serve as metaphors for time travel, connecting to both the past and future. Shirin shared how discovering a long-lost family archive offered new context for understanding her parents’ and grandparents’ lives in Iran—hugely inspirational material for her current work. Huge thanks to Clio’s Oakland for co-hosting the event with us! And for so many of you who came out to support!!✨✨

SEE(d) at 500 Capp Street with yétúndé olágbajú

Thanks to all who joined us on Saturday September 14th @500cappstreet to explore and learn about artist yétúndé olágbajú's work and collaborative practices.

A special shout-out goes to yétúndé olágbajú who traveled from Los Angeles and put great care into their presentation. We loved their focus on collaboration, learning/unlearning, care, improvisation, play, and honoring ancestors. This approach enriched our discussions about their various bodies of work and their perspectives on lineage—collecting, distilling, liberating (as seen in the ‘Mammy’ series), as well as photographing family memories, performance, braiding and creating rituals. We also appreciated their exploration of home and Sankofa, which in Ghanaian poetry signifies the importance of revisiting the past to gain knowledge and hold onto it. In the case of yétúndé, they don't hold it, but rather, share that knowledge with others.

We are grateful for the generous support of Gui, Alex, and Lian at 500 Capp who welcomed us so graciously into the historic space.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 9th, for yétúndé’s celebration and culminating exhibition of their year-long residency, ‘a spiral fuels and fills,’ also at 500 Capp Street in San Francisco.

Artist Lisa Blatt Pushes the Boundaries of Perception

It was another dreamy SEE(d) studio visit—this time with artist, Lisa Blatt (@lisa_blatt) in the Minnesota Street Projects Studios in winter, 2024. Blatt shared her fascinating artistic practice that explores the complexity of creating landscape images that push the boundaries of perception. Using a traditional 4 x 5 camera (now digital), a tripod and herself, the artist’s project involves travel (mostly solo and often with scientists) to extreme climate locations — White Sands, New Mexico, Iceland, Antarctica, the driest desert, the deepest lake in the Andes, among many others. The images that result are exquisite interpretations of what the land has to say.

Our deepest gratitude to Lisa for opening her studio and sharing her daring and courageous process that often yields surprising results — ‘The Corruption Series’ comes to mind. The artist’s more recent heatscapes use infrared technology to document sites where troubling events have occurred. She contemplates what stories do these sites tell?

Inverting Perspectives with Artist James David Lee

It was one of those mild and memorable fall San Francisco days. SEE(d) Artist Series met at the studio of Artist James David Lee (he/him) for an afternoon of deep seeing, learning and sharing in the artist’s backyard art studio, out of his beloved late grandmother’s garage in San Francisco’s Excelsior District.

James explained his love of Daoist parables that invert perspectives and create worlds where we, the viewer, may not know what we are looking at. We lose our bearings in a magical, unstable world, forced to let go of what we know is true. In Lee’s recent book paintings, the viewer's place in the landscape is unclear, even slippery–sometimes, we hover above a ravine and occasionally look up from the bottom of a river floor.

In the series of ink works, instead of brushes, Lee used castaway household materials like crumpled-up Kleenex and fruit rinds to make imprints and recontextualize what we consider mundane vs. precious, adding a layer of ethereality to the drawings. In the poem paintings, Lee memorizes a poem about landscape and then copies the poem repeatedly, placing layer upon layer of oil paint and rendering the poem illegible. What meaning is left when the text is unreadable?

Similarly, the book paintings go through a process by which Lee pairs poetry with imagery. In the case of 'Rent Poem,' Lee borrows a poem from his friend Victor Vazquez incorporating fragments of the poetry into the inked landscapes and leaving us to wonder, in what world am I traveling?

Artworks are available for acquisition, please contact us: director@seedartistseries.com

To see more images from the visit, please follow us on Instagram: @seedartistseries

A Deeply Thought-provoking Conversation with Sofía Córdova

Thank you to all who attended our studio visit with the thoughtful and prolific interdisciplinary artist Sofía Córdova. It was a rare opportunity to witness the artist in their sacred space and contemplate their recent works on revolutions--real and imagined. The First Chapter in the series, ‘GUILLOTINÆWannaCry Yellow: Break Room’ considers revolution historically and ponders its often messy, indeterminate and non-linear relation to time, space and personality.

The Second Chapter: ‘GUILLOTINÆWannaCry Act Green: Sauvage, Savage, Salvaje’ (recently commissioned by Tufts University Gallery), presents an immersive, futuristic environment of speculative climate devastation. The work draws upon ancestral traditions of body scanning, tending to the earth, and revolutionary organizing by Black and Indigenous peoples from within the land itself, from land that may or may not be known. Thank you for this deeply thought-provoking and timely conversation, Sofía!

SEE(d) Hosted a Picnic in the Park

SEE(d) Artist Series turns 5 (minus 2) this year! After experiencing the success of our first two years, and then, the strange, 2-year isolation of Covid, SEE(d) ‘rebooted’ its program last year with an amazing slate of artists: Julia Goodman / Michael Hall, Pablo Cristi, Taraneh Hemami, and nkiruka oparah.

The two-year hiatus made us realize that in-person gathering feeds the soul. To this end, we hosted a picnic on July 8, 2023 in Lake Temescal Park in Oakland for artists and SEE(d) patrons to meet one another, share stories, and build community. We had a great time and thank all of those who joined!

An Afternoon of Deep Learning with Artist nkiruka oparah

Thank you to all of those who made it out to support nkiruka oparah’s art practice in April. It was another afternoon filled with deep seeing and learning. nkiruka touched upon their process of improvisation, the importance of available materials, the accessibility of drawing and human gesture, and how they see collage as a metaphor for poetry and a language that is outside of form. Their work in the digital realm led to performance, videos, and their current project of queering the “modernist grid” using drawing, painting, sculpture, and wearables. Their practice is as deep as it is varied, as surprising as it is spiritual. 

Thanks to nkiruka for hosting, and to all who came out to support —we left the studio inspired by their generosity and the curiosity that comes from within. Here are the photos from the day. 

Please know that select works by nkiruka are available for purchase through SEE(d) with the proceeds directly supporting their practice. Email director@seedartistseries.com for inquiries.

Day of Reflection and Illumination with artist Taraneh Hemami

Thank you to all those who joined SEE(d) and artist Taraneh Hemami on December 11, 2022 at the Minnesota Project Space studios. It was truly an extraordinary day of illuminating revelations and exchanges around the themes of exile, artist agency and power, both global and local. We were immensely grateful that so many came out to bear witness to Taraneh’s deeply research-based intellectual and generative practices in the midst of a busy holiday season and in the rain! Participants experienced a very special showcase of her engaging and thought-provoking works in addition to an epic survey of her past works.

Please know that select works by Taraneh are available for purchase through SEE(d) with the proceeds directly supporting her practice and her causes. Email director@seedartistseries.com for inquiries.

Pablo Cristi on Street Writing, Cultural Hybridity and Living Full Circle

There are days, and then, there are SEE(d) studio visit days. Those are the days that SEE(d) supporters get the opportunity to experience an artist’s spiritual, creative and sacred space—their studio. Those are the days artists generously share their ideas, their practices and open themselves up to new community. Those are the days we at SEE(d) are grateful for artists’ grit, intention and creative enterprise. Artists are truth-tellers. We, as supporters, need to listen.

Pablo Cristi’s Oakland studio visit on Saturday, September 17, 2022 reminded us just how lucky we are to be able to gather and celebrate creative genius and sustained artistic effort. Pablo’s works are deeply affecting and relevant today as they directly address themes of migration, human rights, displacement and how these affect family bonds, economic struggles, and community building. Pablo brought up themes of street writing, hybridity, cultural liminality, marginalization of the past, present, and future. Thank you to those who joined us for this enriching and nourishing evening, and to those who purchased art for their collections. 

Pablo Cristi works are available for purchase through SEE(d), proceeds go to support the artist. Contact: director@seedartistseries.com with questions.

SEE(d) Reboots with Artists Julia Goodman and Michael Hall

We are deeply grateful to two extraordinary Bay Area artists Julia Goodman and Michael Hall who hosted SEE(d) on June 5th in their light-filled Berkeley garden studio. It was a brilliant afternoon of deeply looking, thinking and investigating the cycles of life and transformation and connective meanings each artist brings to their work.  Art patrons came from all walks of life, including thought leaders from the arts, design, VC, tech and other business realms to learn from and support one other. At the center were the artists’ ideas and their thoughtful and unique ways of seeing the world. There is always so much that we gain and take away from each SEE(d) artist’s visit. Thanks too to Monique from Euqinom Gallery who co-presented Julia’s work.

Here are a few photos from the inspiring day. It felt so wonderful to gather in person. The feeling of belonging was felt throughout. Artworks are available. Contact: director@seedartistseries for artwork inquiries.