California College of the Arts — News

CCA students from the spring 2016 EcoTAP Soil to Studio course, taught by organic dye expert and Textiles Program faculty member Sasha Duerr, are seeing their work -- in the form of costumes made from natural dyed fabrics -- performed on stage by Bay Area site-specific theater company We Players. Read more at California College of the Arts!

In addition to our collaboration with Soil to Studio (for both our 2016 production of Romeo & Juliet and our 2015 production of Ondine at Sutro), We Players is celebrated as a "valued community partner", recognizing our multiple offerings with undergraduate and graduate students at CCA. In addition to multiple in-class workshops led by Artistic Director Ava Roy, We Players has enjoyed several meaningful partnerships over the past 5 years...

Fall 2014
We Players served as the outside experts for a cross-listed Community Arts and Diversity Studies course, "Activating Public Space," taught by Center for Art and Public Life (the Center) Director Shalini Agrawal and Diversity Studies and Center scholar-in-residence Chris Treggiari.

Fall 2012
We Players, California State Parks / Angel Island, Angel Island Conservancy, and CCA collaborated to present site-specific student work in an island-wide public art installation on Angel Island.

The installation served as the central project of an MFA elective course, ENGAGE: Gatekeeping Nation, taught by CCA alumnus and We Players Visual Arts Director Patrick Gillespie (MFA 2009) and CCA First Year Program and Community Arts faculty member Aaron Gach.

Thanks CCA for your incredible role in our greater Bay Area Community!

It’s all about the site…

In 2015, We Players had the great pleasure of collaborating with Sasha Duerr and her “Soil to Studio” class at California College of the Arts for our Ondine at Sutro. With permission from the National Park Service, and working in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, we source native coastal plants and other materials (such as charcoal from the beach and rust from old pipes of the baths) to dye the silks used for the ondines’ costumes. This year, we’re headed to a very different environment – from moist, salty sea breezes to the hot, dry and agriculturally rich wine country in Sonoma County. Once again we are partnering with Sasha and her students to source natural dyes from the environment, allowing the clothes to literally become an extension of the landscape.

Soil to Studio visited our performance site at Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park in late February, for sense activating exercises, a talk and walk through of the project vision, and plant identification. The students gathered walnuts, lichens, and nopal, and also used cochineal (scaled bugs that live on the nopal cactus) and iron shavings to create stunningly beautiful, rich colors.

Our costume designer Brooke Jennings is working with these colors to shape the color palette of her design. Brooke shares, “The crux of my design is deeply influenced by the performance site, its history, and how people thrived in this rich space. Harvesting the resources needed to create natural dyes from the site itself helps inform a more integrated, specific window to the world of our show and the history of the site. For me, to personally recreate the ways in which people in 1830’s California made clothing using the tools and resources from the site itself is an incredible archeological experience.”

Our work is deeply inspired by the project site. Working thoughtfully with the land in creating our designs is central to both our ethos and aesthetic. Many thanks to Sasha and her students at CCA for joining forces with We Players to create such stunning fabrics!

In our next episode…how animals native to this Northern California landscape are inspiring our mask maker Monica Lundy, and the wearable sculptures she is creating for the characters.