Mission Voices Summer 2020

Artists in Education Program

Mission Voices Summer 2020

Program Dates: July 6-30, 2020; Online meeting Mondays through Thursdays, 2:00pm-5:00pm
Final Project Presentations: July 30, 2020

Southern Exposure's Mission Voices Summer (MVS) is a FREE four-week intensive summer arts program for youth aged 14-21, now online! Young artists learn to use the visual arts as a tool for expressing ideas, ambitions, and creativity. In MVS, students spend the summer working with other Bay Area youth to learn all kinds of skills from drawing printing, and photography, to sculpture, video and architecture, as you create projects at home under the guidance of professional artists. 

Youth Artists: Fill out this application to be a part of Mission Voices Summer 2020.
Teaching Artists: Our Lead Teaching Artists have already been selected and applications are now closed. 


We're excited to announce that Chanell Stone, Hannah Waiters and Felix Quintana will be joining us as Lead Teaching Artists for Mission Voices Summer (MVS) 2020, Southern Exposure's FREE four-week intensive youth summer arts program. MVS will be taking place online this year from July 6-30 as we continue to shelter in place. 

Chanell Stone is a visual artist and photographer living in Oakland, CA. She holds a BFA in Photography from the California College of the Arts and has exhibited in venues across San Francisco and New York, her most notable being her solo exhibition "Natura Negra" at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and the Aperture Foundation in New York. Through the use of self-portraiture and analogue photography, she investigates the Black body's relationship to urban nature and the natural world.

Chanell's workshop "On being and becoming" will explore diverse approaches to self-portraiture through a series of mark-making and photographic prompts. Students will break down what constitutes a self-portrait and be given space to work outside of traditional conventions. 

Born and raised in the Bay Area, Hannah Waiters scavenges sculptural memorabilia that speak to her identity: a first-generation Black womxn fighting the curse of temporality. By creating assemblages from the objects she collects, Waiters preserves and reframes her family histories, and examines the performativity of heirlooms. They are a Master of Fine Arts and MA in Visual & Critical Studies candidate at California College of the Arts.

How do you assemble hope from the rubble? At this pivotal moment in history, we are taking apart and rebuilding society's structured identity. Hannah's MVS workshop, Futures Assemble, is centered around methods of community-based art, which teaches students to fasten together narrative-based assemblages from reclaimed sentimental objects, recycled materials, and ambition. Students will build and showcase sculptures to represent metaphors for their communities that are restorative and not depleting; assembly required. 

Felix Quintana is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and educator. Quintana has exhibited his work widely, including at Vincent Price Art Museum, Residency Art Gallery, MACLA, SOMArts Cultural Center, and LAXART among others. His work has been featured in NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, ARTnews, and more. Quintana received a BA in Art from Humboldt State University, and is an MFA candidate at San Jose State University. Quintana currently lives and works in San Jose, CA.

For Felix's MVS workshop, students will be guided to create hybrid analog and digital photographs and collaborative works that reflect on identity, memory, home, movement, and speculative futures. Students will learn about contemporary Black and POC photographers that use art and activism as a tool for social justice, such as Emory Douglas, Dignidad Rebelde, Patrick Martinez, and more. Students will be challenged to ask themselves not only how they identify through their art, but what it will take for their own experience and those that they love to embody the notion of freedom.