Bill Zindel

April 2021

Bill Zindel is an independent artist, illustrator, and designer who creates collages that are structured yet unrestrained, employing bold colors and patterns with geometric leanings and retro-futuristic tendencies. He draws inspiration from typography, signage, old records, and sacred geometry. His work as a designer informs his art formally, but his love of cutting, pasting, and collecting goes back to childhood. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Bill lives in El Cerrito CA and works as a Studio Facilitator at NIAD. This residency is a part of our partnership with NIAD, which brings teaching artists from local nonprofits supporting artists with disabilities to spend a week at Chalk Hill to work on their artistic endeavors.

Jo Ann Biagini

April 2021

Bay Area artist Jo Ann Biagini presents new works on paper that simultaneously embody whimsy and lushness. Inspired by books about nature as well as by the natural world itself, Biagini puts book pages into new environments layered with drawn and painted imagery. With shape, color and scale she conjures up new visions of the natural world. Born in Oakland, California, Jo Ann received an MFA in ceramics from the California College of the Arts in 1993. Jo Ann has shown her work regionally and nationally. She currently teaches at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland CA. This residency is a part of our partnership with Creative Growth, which brings teaching artists from local nonprofits supporting artists with disabilities to spend a week at Chalk Hill to work on their artistic endeavors.

Lacey Johnson

April 2021

Lacey Johnson’s work is part manifesto, part pedagogy, and part girl gang.  Using interdisciplinary art practices to explore her code of ethics, she began her work as the Video and Animation Instructor at Creativity Explored in 2019. Lacey is mostly concerned with telling triumphant tales of the feminine divine in non linear ways, and considers visual expression to be both her love language and a tool to inspire transformative cultural practices. Always a collaborator, she has been a part of multiple art and activism collectives and has presented her work locally in The National Queer Arts Festival, and at Artist Television Access, and SOMArts. She is from the Texas Gulf Coast and lives in Oakland, California. This residency is a part of our partnership with Creativity Explored, which brings teaching artists from local nonprofits supporting artists with disabilities to spend a week at Chalk Hill to work on their artistic endeavors.

Sonja Hinrichsen

March 2021

Sonja Hinrichsen* examines urban and natural environments through exploration and research. As an artist she feels the responsibility to address subject matters our society tends to neglect or deny, particularly adverse impacts to the natural world. Her work manifests in immersive video installations, video performances and interventions in nature. Sonja graduated from the Academy of Art in Stuttgart, Germany in 1997/98, and received a Masters degree in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001.

*Due to changes in his scheduling, Will Clift will not be able to attend and instead, Sonja's residency was extended.

Bennett Ewing

February 2021

Bennett Ewing*, informally known as "Eyevan Tumbleweed”, is best known for his sculptural series of faces composed of found wood. He has spent the majority of his artistic focus creating an ongoing series of visages comprised from pieces of wood he collects from mountains, deserts, swamps, riverbanks, forests, and beaches. The wall-hanging relief faces in his series are pieced together meticulously and somewhat extemporaneously, using the natural colors, patterns and directions of various wood fragments to create countenances described as powerful, whimsical, even haunting. Bonded with glues and reinforced with two-part epoxy, the sylvan entities and their expressions of thought and emotion portray a glimpse of an otherworldly realm that is not altogether unfamiliar.

*Due to changes in her scheduling, Mary Jane Ward will not be able to attend and instead, Bennett was invited to attend Chalk Hill Artist Residency 2021.

Greg Crawford

January 2021

Greg Crawford is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Oakland, CA. He is also a substitute teacher at Creative Growth- a community program we are proud to partner with! His amazing work examines American consumer culture through a process in which he transforms found materials into new narratives.