About the Team
Project Director
Evan Bissell’s work is a project-based practice of creating structures of collaborative dialogue for personal and social transformation. With groups of people, Bissell facilitates educational, auto-ethnographic and contemplative processes of interviews, research, listening, writing and art-making. Resulting from these processes are collaboratively designed or interactive, multi-media exhibitions, larger-than-life portraits, transmedia educational materials and public installations. Project themes have ranged from the impact of incarceration on families to imagination as a practice of transformation for youth.
Bissell has exhibited at Alcatraz Island, Intersection for the Arts and SOMArts Cultural Center, created a hybrid set/installation for the premiere of Chinaka Hodge’s play Mirrors in Every Corner as well as participating in shows at Southern Exposure and Guerrero Gallery. He is a two-time recipient of the Individual Artist Commission award through the city of San Francisco’s Cultural Equity Grants program, and has received funding from Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure program, Puffin Foundation, LEF, the East Bay Fund for Artists, Panta Rhea Foundation and the California Arts Council, among others. He was a 2010 Eureka Fellowship Nominee. He has taught art and led public projects in schools (k-12) throughout the diverse range of schools and in jails in the Bay Area, including Leadership Preparatory Academy in Oakland, Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley and the Freedom School summer program in San Francisco. Since 2010, Bissell has co-taught and designed Teenalive, a class at El Cerrito High School that combines curriculum addressing masculinity, communication skills and violence with art instruction. He is currently an artist in residence at Intersection for the Arts.
Bissell is a 2005 graduate of Wesleyan University with a double major in Painting and American Studies with an Ethnic Studies concentration.
evanbissell.com
Photo by Joan Osato
Design and Programming
Erik Loyer uses tactile and performative interfaces to tell stories with interactive media. His work has been exhibited online and internationally at venues including MOCA Los Angeles, the Prix Ars Electronica, and IndieCade, and his website The Lair of the Marrow Monkey was one of the first to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, at SFMOMA. As Creative Director for the experimental digital humanities journal Vectors, he has designed over a dozen interactive essays in collaboration with numerous scholars, including the Webby-honored documentary Public Secrets. Loyer is the founder of interactive design studio Song New Creative, and creates story-driven interactive entertainment under the Opertoon label, including the best-selling, critically-acclaimed iOS application Strange Rain. His current projects include the interactive graphic novel app Upgrade Soul and a "philosophical flight simulator" entitled Languish.
Additional Collaborators:
Tanya Orellana - Research
Lisa Nowlain - Research
Josh Begley - Additional Concept Design and Outreach
Evan Bissell’s work is a project-based practice of creating structures of collaborative dialogue for personal and social transformation. With groups of people, Bissell facilitates educational, auto-ethnographic and contemplative processes of interviews, research, listening, writing and art-making. Resulting from these processes are collaboratively designed or interactive, multi-media exhibitions, larger-than-life portraits, transmedia educational materials and public installations. Project themes have ranged from the impact of incarceration on families to imagination as a practice of transformation for youth. Bissell has exhibited at Alcatraz Island, Intersection for the Arts and SOMArts Cultural Center, created a hybrid set/installation for the premiere of Chinaka Hodge’s play Mirrors in Every Corner as well as participating in shows at Southern Exposure and Guerrero Gallery. He is a two-time recipient of the Individual Artist Commission award through the city of San Francisco’s Cultural Equity Grants program, and has received funding from Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure program, Puffin Foundation, LEF, the East Bay Fund for Artists, Panta Rhea Foundation and the California Arts Council, among others. He was a 2010 Eureka Fellowship Nominee. He has taught art and led public projects in schools (k-12) throughout the diverse range of schools and in jails in the Bay Area, including Leadership Preparatory Academy in Oakland, Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley and the Freedom School summer program in San Francisco. Since 2010, Bissell has co-taught and designed Teenalive, a class at El Cerrito High School that combines curriculum addressing masculinity, communication skills and violence with art instruction. He is currently an artist in residence at Intersection for the Arts.
Bissell is a 2005 graduate of Wesleyan University with a double major in Painting and American Studies with an Ethnic Studies concentration.
evanbissell.com
Photo by Joan Osato
Design and Programming
Erik Loyer uses tactile and performative interfaces to tell stories with interactive media. His work has been exhibited online and internationally at venues including MOCA Los Angeles, the Prix Ars Electronica, and IndieCade, and his website The Lair of the Marrow Monkey was one of the first to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, at SFMOMA. As Creative Director for the experimental digital humanities journal Vectors, he has designed over a dozen interactive essays in collaboration with numerous scholars, including the Webby-honored documentary Public Secrets. Loyer is the founder of interactive design studio Song New Creative, and creates story-driven interactive entertainment under the Opertoon label, including the best-selling, critically-acclaimed iOS application Strange Rain. His current projects include the interactive graphic novel app Upgrade Soul and a "philosophical flight simulator" entitled Languish.
Additional Collaborators:
Tanya Orellana - Research
Lisa Nowlain - Research
Josh Begley - Additional Concept Design and Outreach
Discussion of "About the Team"
Your work is fantastic!
I am one of the founders of the Campaign to End the New JIm Crow, inspired by Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. Myself and others, a diverse group of activist in New York City, are in the process of building a national movement to end mass incarceration and replacing them with caring communities. One of the key task in movement building is that you first have to raise consciousness, wake the people up! After viewing your work The Knotted Line I am inspired and would love to have such a tool for our campaign.You can see our work at www.endnewjimcrow.org, and www.allthingsharlem.com. I would love to be in touch with you. You can also reach me on facebook/Joseph Jazz HaydenPosted on 13 January 2013, 4:22 am by Joseph Jazz Hayden | Permalink
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