Floating Kīpuka /Dreaming the Futures We Want to Grow
Exhibition Dates: April 6-28, 2023
Edward M. Dowd Art and Art History Building
Art and Art History Gallery
Gallery Hours: M-F, 9 am-4 pm
Lucas Fellow Visiting Artist: Corinne Okada Takara
Artist Talk and Reception: April 6, 2023, 5-7 pm, Dowd Lobby
Please join the Department of Art and Art History in welcoming Corinne Okada Takara, our resident artist who is here for the Winter and Spring quarter 2023. Corinne is the second Lucas Fellow of the Montalvo Lucas Artist Residency Program in collaboration between SCU’s Department of Art and Art History and the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga.
Meet the Artist: Corinne will be in residency at SCU from February to April. Stop by the Visiting Artist Studio (Dowd 218) to introduce yourself and get a sneak peek at her upcoming exhibition artwork when she is on campus. Corinne will be our host at an Artist Lecture and Welcome Reception on February 15 at 5:30 pm in the Edward M. Dowd Art and Art History Building.
A few of her other engagements on campus include a community workshop on April 12, an Earth Day workshop on April 22 and meetings with multiple classes at SCU during the Winter quarter. Corinne will also participate in two SCUSAL (SCU Student Art League) events on February 16 and April 18 for students and art enthusiasts. The artist talks, receptions, and workshops are free and open to the community.
Corinne is a community artist activist and STEAM educator who creates playful art/science experiences that elevate cultural science knowledge and community voices in conversations centered on sustainability and biotechnology. She has spent over 15 years collaborating on arts programming in East San José, Salinas and Hawaii with a career spanning game design, public art, and many community spaces collaborations.
As the daughter of a toy designer, her approach is informed by play’s power as a facilitator of brainstorming, communion, experimentation, iteration, and dreaming of sustainable futures. She was introduced to biology by her father through hands-on toy making with natural materials, and storytelling with endemic, invasive, and canoe plants on Maui. She learned about biological systems sitting on her grandma’s lanai as she was taught to make pinwheels of hibiscus flowers and boats of bamboo leaves. Listening to family stories of life in a Maui sugarcane labor camp, Corinne learned that we know a place through the plants, its names, its legends, gifts of health, rituals of gratitude, and play. That deep multifaceted engagement with biology has inspired her to connect to place and community through food, playful making, cultural knowledge, and agricultural labor issues.
Salinas workshop photo credit Marithza Quiroz.
Takara’s most recent explorations conducted through her Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Residency have centered around community storytelling of biofutures with LEGOs, clay, and natural materials on a suspended LEGO table. As a Lucas Fellow with the Montalvo Artist Program and SCU, Corinne will continue these explorations and conversations through an expansion of the Floating Kīpuka Grow Kit.
Corinne Takara Instagram
Ginko Bioworks Creative Instagram
Floating Kīpuka collaborators
The show was an opportunity for Takara to highlight a few works by other artists. Included in the exhibition was a biomaterial piñata, Veiled Lady, which was the result of a collaboration between piñata artist Patty Botello and Corinne Takara. Also showcased was Science Superpowers: Reimagining biological mythologies, an art exploration using science lab waste designed by Dr. Callie Chappell which invited additional reflections on what science is and can be. Virtual Santa Clara: Culture and History consisted of 3D printed artifacts from the grounds of Mission Santa Clara that were 3D scanned and documented by SCU students in collaboration with Muwekma Ohlone Youth Representatives in the class of Dr. Amy Lueck, Associate Professor of English and Dr. Lee Panich, Associate Professor of Anthropology.
This event is free and open to the public.
In compliance to ADA/504, please direct your accommodation request to Mitch Grieb at mfgrieb@scu.edu at least 72 hours prior to the event.
Welcome Reception & Artist Talk photos »
Mycelium Light Workshop photos »
Biomaterials and Legos Workshop photos »
Montalvo Earth Day Workshop photos »