Join us in welcoming and celebrating 2023-2024 Fellows and Parent-Artists!

We're excited to announce our latest cohort of Fellows - Alison Chen, Philip Crawford, John Yoyogi Fortes, Helia Pouyanfar, Georgina Reskala, and rhiannon skye tafoya. They will have up to 9 months unlimited access to Kala's facilities, a $3,000 stipend, one free Kala class or workshop, and a culminating group exhibition as a cohort in the Kala Gallery.

Bushra Gill, Jun Igarashi and Sasha Kelley are beginning their parent artist residencies supported by Sustainable Arts Foundation. This flexible residency experience offers studio access and resources to artists with children under 18, helping to create multiple entry points for artists juggling a creative practice with the ever-evolving and diverse demands of family life.

Applications for Kala’s 2023-2024 Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program, including the Jen Cole AIR Award are open through Slideroom and the deadline to apply is July 15, 9pm PDT.

A special thanks to the supporters of the Fellowship and Parent-Artist Residency programs including the National Endowment for the Arts, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Sustainable Arts Foundation and The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. 

Apply Now

2023-2024 Fellows

Alison Chen is a visual artist working in video, performance, photography, and text. Her work addresses the complexities and confusions that surround intimacy, and the areas where our preconceived notions fall short. She earned an M.F.A. in Photography and Related Media from Parsons the New School for Design. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including at Collarworks in Troy, NY, the CUE Art Foundation in New York City, and the Los Angeles Center of Digital Art in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in the Society for Photographic Education Film Festival, the Beijing Design Festival, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, and the Dali International Photo Festival. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Philip Crawford is a US-American artist based in Berlin. His studio practice combines critical essays, works on paper, video, sculpture, and installation in a wide-ranging study of popular representations and “fast images”. In his work, Crawford investigates ways to slow down their reading to re-visualize black livingness, unsettle hegemonic historical narratives, challenge systems of oppression, and reclaim technologies of power. Philip holds a B.A. in History from Stanford University and an MFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Germany and the Czech Republic.

John Yoyogi Fortes John Yoyogi Fortes is a painter whose work explores self, culture, and identity in the physical and psychological landscape. Drawing from multiple sources like Filipino culture, comics, pop culture and art history, John’s paintings are an amalgamation of artistic styles wrapped in dark humor, word play and an obscure world.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, John’s family migrated to San Francisco, California when he was five years old. He attended California State University, Fresno where he studied under artist and musician, Terry Allen and conceptual artist, Charles Gaines. John currently lives with his wife and daughter in Sacramento, California.

Born in 1995 in Tehran, Iran, Helia Pouyanfar immigrated to California in 2014. Her conceptual art practice and research endeavors to illustrate and investigate the permanently transient state of the refugee body and its negotiation and reconciliation with Place. 

She received her B.A. in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and her MFA in Studio Art from UC Davis. She has been the recipient of UC Berkeley’s Certificate of Excellence in Sculpture and received the 2021 Margrit Mondavi Graduate Fellowship from UC Davis. Her work has been exhibited at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Root Division, Southern Exposure, SF Camerawork, Berkeley Art Center, and Skirball Cultural Center. She currently resides and maintains an art studio practice in the Bay Area.

Georgina Reskala was born and raised in Mexico City. She received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Reskala is an artist dealing with ideas of memory, history and the power of narrative. Through repetition, her works question the distortion of history through time and tie into ideas of collective memory and our shared past. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Hariban Award in Kyoto Japan. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. She has had several solo exhibitions at PDX CONTEMPORARY ART, Portland OR., K.OSS Contemporary Detroit MI, The Meyer Simpson Library, Oakland CA, Contornos, Mexico City, Quotidian, San Francisco, CA. Her work has been shown at Zona Maco Foto, Mexico City, Seattle Art Fair, Seattle WA., Photo LA, Los Angeles, CA., and Pulse Miami, Miami FL.

rhiannon skye tafoya is an indigenous artist from the eastern band cherokee and santa clara pueblo tribes. her tribal heritage and lineage are significant components continuously present within her artwork. skye comes from a lineage of basket-weavers, both paternal and maternal, and also used to make red willow baskets with her dad. skye continues to use paper-weaving processes to honor her loved ones and ancestors. her meticulously crafted designs, patterns, prints, and weavings are influenced by basketry and contains themes of cultural teachings, cherokee language preservation, motherhood and personal & family narratives. skye creates with the intention of archiving, preserving and sharing stories, language, culture, and experiences.  

2023-2024 Parent-Artists

Bushra Gill is interested in finding order within the chaos of everyday life through art. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and emigrated to Houston, Texas, with her family as a small child. Drawn to art from a young age, she graduated from Pratt Institute in 1994, with a BFA in sculpture. She spent many years of working as a museum educator at various galleries and museums including The Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center and The Rotunda Gallery, while also working as a studio assistant to various artists including Maya Lin, Ursula von Rydingsvard and Maria Elena Gonzalez, as well as a career as a clothing designer and boutique owner in New York. In 2009, she moved to northern California with her family and returned to making art. In recent years, Gill has participated in many exhibitions across the United States.

Jun Igarashi an independent curator from Japan. He earned a BFA from Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan. He served as a curator for Arts Maebashi (2015-2022). His curatorial works at Arts Maebashi include “Art Meets 07 Tomomi Goto / Naoko Tamura” (2022), “The Earth is Blue Like a Lemon : Hirose Satoshi” (2020), “Unexpected Encounter AIR Maebashi 2015-2019” (2018). and Co- curated the exhibition “Woodcut Movements in Asia 1930s-2010s” (2019), “FOODSCAPE - we are what we eat” (2016). He was also in charge of the Artist In Residency program and Community Projects. He is in Berkeley through the 2023 Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Currently he is researching how parents artists and creative workers can engage in sustainable activities while raising a 2-year-old child.

Sasha Kelley is an Oakland based multidisciplinary artist using photography, place making, and social practice to explore the topics of collective archives, divine archetypes, collaboration with black/brown/queer communities.

Sasha Kelley has exhibited at Sonoma County Museum, SOMArts Cultural Center and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

This year, Sasha has participated in Black Space Residency, produced a solo show at Swim Gallery and released Keek Magazine.