Making Meaning: Collage with Carlos Villa

Join artist and educator Amy Berk in exploring the work of Carlos Villa and his rich materiality by making a Villa-inspired totemic object.  Participants are invited to investigate his charged use of materials as they explore his work and legacy and create their own powerful object to take home. Materials will be provided and as always in true Carlos fashion, there will be food and conversation.   

Amy Berk is an artist and art educator who attended Carlos Villa's famous Worlds in Collision symposia when she was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and had the great honor of teaching Villa's long standing collage class at SFAI after he retired. Berk now directs City Studio, SFAI's award-winning youth studio program offering underserved youth high-quality arts education in their own neighborhoods.  She has taught at SFAI since 2006, serving as Chair for the Contemporary Practice program from 2011 to 2013, and has taught “City as Studio Practicum” offering practical teaching experience to the SFAI student body since 2010. In 1996, she co-founded the innovative Meridian Interns Program serving inner-city teens and has taught in the Post-Baccalaureate program at UCBX since 2004.  Her current collaboration with Artivate creates opportunities for youth to explore artmaking in the public sphere.  She remains committed to giving teens (and adults) a much-needed voice, a safe place in which to speak and helping them find the proper tools to do so.