Artist-in-Residence
A joint project of STAR and The Point (landlord to a majority of shipyard artists), this program grants studio space for 18 months to artists living or involved with the Bayview-Hunters Point community.
Shipyard Trust for the Arts (STAR) is pleased to announce that Alan S. Hopkins has been chosen as the 2010-2011 Artist in Residence at the Shipyard. Alan grew up in the Bay Area and moved to San Francisco in 1972 to work with the Alotavos theater group. Alan graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1976 with a degree in painting. As a naturalist he became interested in the Bayview/Hunters Point area when he found a wealth of birdlife along the bay’s edge. With knowledge of both art and local wildlife, Audubon asked for his comments on Patricia Johanson’s proposal for the “Endangered Garden” at Candlestick Cove. In 1991, he and other GGAS directors proposed Pier 98 become what is now Heron’s Head Park at India Basin. Alan is a co-author of A Field Guide to 100 Birds of Heron’s Head. Alan was the STAR Naturalist in Residence from 2004 to 2008, where he documented birds at the Shipyard and took shipyard residents on walks around Bayview/Hunter’s Point area. As an instructor with Kids in Parks, Alan teaches Visitaticon Valley Middle School students about the area’s natural history.
Alan’s mixed media work is influenced by his work performing wildlife monitoring. He is interested in the interaction of the parameters imposed upon systems and the chance observations made within those parameters. Most of his work involves repetition and or ritual to some extent. He contends that wildlife surveys are of most value when the same territory is documented over a defined period of time. While scientific field work is intended to be completely objective, the observer always influences the data in some small way. Most of Alan’s work documents the mundane or banal, but in doing so he believes a greater awareness of this time and place will be evident.
Former artist-in-residence include Dolores Grey, Juan Fuentes, Mary
Booker, Santie Huckaby, Rhonel Roberts, Veronica Orozco, and Mauricia
Gandara.
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AIR Application for 2012-2013
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