FEATURED ARTIST  PRESENTERS

FEATURED GUESTS 

Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander is Assistant Curator of American Art and Co-director of the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Her curatorial practice is driven by a commitment to social justice, a broad and critical understanding of what constitutes “American art,” and a desire to collaborate with living artists. From 2017-2018 she was a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, earning her Ph.D. in art history that same year from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tressa Berman, Ph.D. is an art writer, curator, visual ethnographer and creative coach who specializes in visual cultural studies and the creative exchange. She has shared stories from the hood of a car in rural North Dakota to the desert campfires of central Australia, and the urban art studios of the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and beyond. She has published two non-fiction books (Circle of Goods, SUNY Press, and No Deal! Indigenous Art and the Politics of Possession, UNM Press), poems and chapbooks, and countless academic articles she hopes someone has read. Her art writing includes artist essays for galleries, an occasional art column for LA's Cultural Weekly, and for art magazines such as Art Papers, New Art Examiner, REVIEW: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Fabrik Magazine, and others. Former faculty of California College of the Arts, she now teaches her Creative Curriculum to students and creatives around the world.

Paloma B. Concordia was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and gives credit to New York City for developing her business savvy state of mind. Her education and career began in the fashion and retail industry, and transitioned into the music business at the height of the digital media boom. Inspired by progressive artists in the Bay Area, Paloma began to explore youth empowerment programs and social justice initiatives, and found her passion in supporting the progressive arts community through public relations.

Paloma has served as a program coordinator in partnership with Beats Rhymes and Life, and the East Bay Asian Youth Center in Oakland, CA, as well as a Program Director with non-profit arts organization, the Estria Foundation. Combining her experience in these fields, she founded the PapaLoDown Agency in 2009, a boutique public relations company specializing in a client base of entrepreneurs and community orgs in the arts, culture, and community spaces.

Paloma serves on Daly City’s inaugural Small Business Commission, and is a board member for the Asian American Women Artists Association, and Pinayista, empowering APIA women through entrepreneurship and public relations. When she's not working with clients, she is busy at home with four boys, ages 18, 8, and 7 year old identical twins!

Gail Enns, Director of Celadon Arts, is widely recognized for exhibitions which show the influence of Japanese culture on American contemporary art. Her most recent curated exhibition, Shadows from the Past, Sansei Artists and the American Concentration Camps, is on online at the San Joaquin Delta College Horton Jr Art Gallery, Stockton and is scheduled to be shown at the Monterey Museum of Art September 9, 2021 through January 9, 2022. Resilience, an exhibition also focused the on Sansei experience, begins a five year tour with the Mid-West Arts Alliance beginning in 2021. Enns moved to the Monterey Peninsula from Washington, DC in 2003. Since then, she has curated exhibitions in collaboration with the Japanese American Citizens League, the Joseph Campbell Foundation, Opus Archives, the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, the Sand City Arts Committee and, for over three years, directed Green Chalk Contemporary. From 1984 - 2003, Enns owned Anton Gallery and served as the advisor to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation Gallery from 1990 to 1995 in Washington, DC. During this time, she guest curated exhibitions for the Japanese Embassy, the Japan Information & Culture Center (JICC), Washington, DC; The Japanese Chamber of Commerce, Nippon Gallery, NYC; and art spaces and universities in Washington, DC, New York, Maryland and Virginia.

Laura Kina is Vincent de Paul Professor The Art School and Director Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul University. A 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence and 2020 Art Matters Foundation grantee, Kina is co-editor of Queering Contemporary Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2017) and War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013), reviews editor for the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, and event editor for American Quarterly.

Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker, Professor Emerita of Asian Art History at Mills College, held the endowed Carver Chair in Asian Studies. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.  Her early work focused on classical Indian and Indonesian art for which she wrote on and curated exhibitions including The Image of Women in Indian Art, and Myths and Symbols in Indonesian Art.  Since the mid-90s she has been working with women artists in India.  In 1997 she curated Women Artists of India: A Celebration of Independence, an exhibition that was part of the Festival of India that celebrated India’s fifty years of independence from British colonial rule. She has written extensively on Indian women artists and written and curated exhibitions of Asian American artists. She has received many fellowships and awards, and recently was an NEH fellow at the Institute for Asian American Art, New York University.  

She is a founding member of SACHI (Society for Art and Cultural Heritage of India) and serves on the Advisory Committee for the Society for Asian Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and she has been a member of AAWAA since its inception. She also serves on national and international art organization boards.