Reflecting CalArts’ experimental ethos, the Institute’s CalArts Expo returns on Friday, May 14 as a virtual event featuring creatively adventurous and imaginative projects by students, faculty, and alumnx representing every school at CalArts. Highlighting student projects created during the current academic year, the virtual CalArts Expo will present work by over 500 artists, curated and organized by our student-led team. Audiences can experience Expo in three ways—access though the Virtual Gallery; social media; and media playlists on Spotify, YouTube, and Vimeo. This year’s Expo precedes CalArts’ Virtual Graduation Ceremony, which begins at 6 pm PDT at calarts.edu/graduation.
The CalArts Expo goes live at 1pm PDT on May 14, 2021.
The Expo Welcome Event, free and open to the public, will take place from 1–2pm PDT on May 14, featuring a virtual meet-and-greet with the Expo team and guided tour through our exhibition spaces. RSVP here to receive the Zoom link.
Artists will also be featured on Expo social media through highlighted profiles of the student creative team, and posts presenting student, alumni, faculty, staff, and guest artists and their work. For more information, follow CalArts Expo on Facebook (@CalArtsExpo), Instagram (@calarts_expo), and Twitter (@CalArtsExpo).
Mayar Hamdan
Mayar Hamdan School of Art, Art and Technology, MFA 2 Al-Mashata “Al-Mashata” is a 360º interactive film/game made to be experienced on a mobile phone. “Al-Mashata” is Arabic for “the groomer,” but also means to “clean” or “beautify drastically”. The film is set in a beauty salon in the Middle East and puts you (the […]
Benjamin S. Gordon
Benjamin S. Gordon School of Art, Art, MFA 2 Sticks & Selection of paintings from MFA thesis exhibition – Sticks &
Levi Gillis
Levi Gillis School of Music, Performer-Composer, MFA 2 AUTOMATON AUTOMATON is a sonic and visual exploration of automation in many forms. The piece brings together Levi’s unique and intricate approach to the saxophone with his recent project of building automata and rudimentary sonic sculptures by hand. Text is written by Levi and includes an excerpt […]
Eternally Cowboy
Eternally Cowboy · Songs Eternally Cowboy School of Music, ExPop, BFA1 The Truth My music is often inspired by country music. I wrote this song many years back and it wasn’t until entering CalArts and meeting like-minded musicians that I feel this song came to completion. Featuring Chad Fitzsimmons, a fellow CalArts student, on fiddle […]
Madelyn Reed
Madelyn Reed School of Dance, Dance, BFA 1 46 Things “you can’t ascribe great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event.” Learning how to continue living with, through, and from trauma. Collaborators: Choreograph and Performance by Madelyn Reed Music by CoH and little Annie
Christine Gaffney
Christine Gaffney School of Art, Art and Technology, MFA1 when I wonder…the space between thoughts https://christinegaffney.com/
John Fumo
John Fumo School of Music, Faculty Ransom Music #1 Ransom Music #1 is an unrecorded work. I am fascinated by pieces of things, in this case small fragments of musical notations. johnfumo.net
Katherine Paez Froehlich
Katherine Paez Froehlich School of Theater, Production Management & Creative Producing, MFA1 Katherine Paez Froehlich Portfolio
Sarahjeen François
Sarahjeen François School of Theater, Acting, Alumnx Musings of a Negress Musings of a Negress is a spoken word album that reflects on the standards of society prescribed to my black feminine body. “Lessons in Gardening When Ya Skin Is Brown And The World Is Too Tough” as an excerpt from the album, and presents […]
Luka Fisher
Luka Fisher School of Art, Alumnx Kyler O’Neal’s Satan’s Tears Satan’s Tears is trans-singer songwriter Kyler O’Neal’s debut dance film and is a kind of love letter to other queer and trans people that have been made to feel lesser for who they are. Credits – Andrew Lush (director)-@andrewlush Isabelle Sjahsam (choreographer)-@isjahsam Burak Yerebakan (music […]
Michael Echaniz
Michael Echaniz School of Music, Jazz, MFA1 Seven Shades of Violet This is an uptempo, 7/4 jazz fusion composition of mine, originally for piano, upright bass, drums, keyboards, and female voice. This piece was intended to be a modern reinterpretation of a minor blues with a riff-based head, long improvisatory section for all band members, […]
Andrew Dyet and Abigail Johnson
Andrew Dyet and Abigail Johnson School of Music, Experimental Sound Practices, MFA2 Atmosphere Box Atmosphere Box is the result of collaboration between Abigail Johnson and Andrew Dyet. It is a sound sculpture that uses sensor data from the environment to synthesize sound. Originally designed for permanent installation at Chateau D’Orquevaux in Champagne, France, Atmosphere Box […]
Dimitri Di Lillo
Dimitri Di Lillo School of Film/Video, Character Animation, BFA2 BABY I LOVE YOU My 48hr film about distance, yearning, and boyz. https://dimitridilillo.squarespace.com/design
Matthew DeStefano
Matthew DeStefano School of Art, Art, MFA 1 FISH STORIES A pyramid stands on the banks of the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee. At once an ode to the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, a ⅔ scale replica of the great pyramids of Giza in glass and steel, “The Great American Pyramid” was conceived as […]
MAKAI
MAKAI School of Music, ExPop, BFA2 Wake Wake is a song and video about facing a cycling of self doubt and powering through it by finding comfort in nature and knowing one day we will all decompose.
Nicki Chen
Nicki Chen School of Music, InstrumentalArts, BFA3 loss too is also ours aside you still beside you in sleep and in waking this fear is still water in a bowl, a fish drowning underneath suffocation looming over our heads our house when did our tank become so small? when did we lose the ocean? An […]