Thursday, November 14

6:00 – 8:00 PM

Exploring the keys to a healthy arts ecosystem, join us, alongside curator and poet Renny Pritikin, as he leads a conversation about surviving and thriving in the art world for over 50 years. Renny Pritikin will lead a conversation with local arts leaders of artist-run organizations about the arts ecosystem in which SoEx was founded and the one in which we currently find ourselves. He is joined by Aay Preston Myint, artist and curator, and Mayumi Hamanaka, Co-Director at Kala Art institute, who are also celebrating their 50th birthday, along with Valerie Imus, Artistic and Co-Director of Southern Exposure, and Lisa Rybovich Crallé, artist and Founder of Personal Space in Vallejo.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS
 
Renny Pritikin was born in New York City, and received a BA from New School College, NYC, and an MA from San Francisco State in Interdisciplinary Arts.  He was co-director of New Langton Arts in San Francisco from 1979 to 1986 and executive director from 1986 until 1992. He was chief curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 1992 to 2004. He was director of the Nelson Gallery and Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis from 2004 until 2012. He was chief curator of The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco from 2014 until 2018. Career highlights include a lecture series in Japanese museums as a guest of the State Department in 1995. In 2002 he was the curator for the United States exhibition at the Cuenca, Ecuador Biennal, presenting the work of Don Ed Hardy. In 2003 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to lecture in museums throughout New Zealand. He was a senior adjunct professor in the curatorial practices graduate program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco from its inception in 2003 until 2015. Pritikin is the author of five published books of poetry, most recently Westerns and Dramas, published by the Prelinger Library, where he was poet in residence (2020). He was a regular contributor to the art review site Squarecylinder from 2019 to 2024 and has been the United States correspondent for the Portuguese art magazine, Umbigo since 2020. His memoir, At Fourth and Mission: A Life Among Artists, was published in October 2023.

Originally from Japan, Mayumi Hamanaka is a visual artist, curator and educator. She is a Co-Director at Kala Art Institute in West Berkeley, and provides artistic vision and direction for the organization working closely with the education and residency teams and curating exhibitions, public programs and community engagement projects on themes of belonging, questions of identity, stories of immigration and more. Mayumi received her M.F.A from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and her B.F.A from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught photography at California College of the Arts, Berkeley City College and Diablo Valley College. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues including Headlands Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Taipei Artist Village, San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, Johansson Projects. She is a recipient of various awards including artist fellowship from de Young Museum, San Francisco, residency awards from Djerassi Residency Artists Program, CA, Santa Fe Art Institute, NM, and Taipei Artist Village, Taiwan.

Aay Preston-Myint (pronounced like the letter "A") is an artist, publisher, curator and educator working in the San Francisco Bay Area, after several years building a career and community in Chicago, Illinois. Their practice employs both visual and collaborative strategies to investigate memory and kinship, often within the specific context of queer community and history. In addition to their studio work, they have founded and led several cooperative efforts including No Coast, an artist partnership that prints and distributes affordable contemporary artwork, the Chicago Art Book Fair, and Chances Dances, a night life collective that supported and showcased the work of queer and trans artists in Chicago. They were formerly the Executive Director of SF Camerawork in San Francisco, California, and support Bay Area artist communities through Real Time and Space's studio and residency program, Southern Exposure's Curatorial Council, and the Board of Directors at Small Press Traffic, a seedbed for poets who push boundaries in the arts. 

Lisa Rybovich Crallé is an interdisciplinary artist and the founding director of Personal Space in Vallejo, CA and co-founder of Heavy Breathing, a series of experimental artist-led movement seminars. Her drawings, sculptures, and collages explore the relationship between body language, memory, and material history. Her work has been presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), Cornell University (NY), the Berkeley Art Museum (CA), the Detroit Institute of Arts (MI), the Manetti Shrem Museum (CA), Fort Mason Center (CA), Mills College (CA), and other venues. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center (VT), Ox-Bow (MI), Arteles Center (Finland), and the Bubec Sculpture Studio (Prague). In addition to her studio practice, Lisa is also an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Drawing at Berkeley City College.

Valerie Imus oversees the three main programs of Southern Exposure: Projects & Exhibitions; Artists in Education; and our regranting initiative, Alternative Exposure. Since 2011, she has overseen hundreds of exhibitions, projects, performances, and events for Southern Exposure. Formerly, she was the Exhibitions Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), and the Curatorial Associate at the CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art. She has also curated projects for the Oakland Museum of California, Mills College Art Museum, and YBCA. She has acted as a juror for prestigious art awards with Creative Capital, the Rainin Foundation, and Headlands Center for the Arts, and has lectured or participated in panels at Stanford University, CCA, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, and the ICA SF. She first became involved at SoEx as an exhibiting artist in 2001. She was an invited visitor to Urbane Künste Ruhr; and has exhibited with the collectives The Citizens Laboratory at the Venice Biennale of Architecture and Botkyrka Konsthall, Sweden, and with OPENrestaurant at SFMOMA and BAMPFA. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.