Teen program

Amy Berk is an artist and art educator who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2006-2022, serving as Chair for the Contemporary Practice program from 2011 to 2013. She co-directs the award-winning City Studio program which engages underserved youth in their own neighborhoods through sequenced art classes that are both rigorous and joyous. She has shown her work internationally, was one of the founders of the web journal stretcher.org and the artist group TWCDC.com. Since 2019 she and Chris Treggiari have collaborated on ARTivate which creates opportunities for youth to explore artmaking and citizenship in the public sphere. Amy has recently taken on a Program Director role at Industrial Design Outreach and is running a mentor-driven project at Academy High. She remains committed to giving teens (and adults) a much-needed voice, a safe place in which to speak and helping them find the proper tools to do so.

Vicky Li is a 2nd year Graphic Design Major with a writing minor at California College of the Arts (CCA) who was born and raised in San Francisco. Today they work with City Studios to give back to the underrepresented communities that raised them. By playing with the impractical, shocking and unexpected nature of human psychology, they hope to combine the qualities of fine art and design with a hint of absurdity.

Cheryl Meeker works in a variety of media, whose work touches on the fundamentals of sustenance, both physical and spiritual, in our economically and environmentally destabilized world. Recent work explores a spiritual approach to the environment. The pandemic opened space for an intimate, ongoing coral reef fish watercolor project, and a collaborative landscape restoration project in a local public park. Actions with the housing and climate justice movements and work in the public library system have informed her work and led to hybrid action/art works holding public space. In the art team Dan and Cheryl, with Dan Spencer, interviews and situational interventions fused the tensions of lived interaction with the artificiality of the studio, site, or relational set-up. A founding member of stretcher.org, she worked collaboratively to create the first online art publication in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at Anglim/Trimble, Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, ATA, Mission 17, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, the Oakland Art Museum, and online at SFMOMA Open Space, and the Richmond Art Center.

Chris Treggiari investigates how art can enter the public realm in a way that can engage people in our communities. Based in Oakland, CA, he focuses on highlighting diverse community experiences, histories, and personal stories through participatory mobile platforms that encourage audience engagement, turning the passive viewer into an active art maker who can participate in sharing their personal voice in a community dialogue. Treggiari has shown internationally including the Venice Biennale 2012 American Pavilion as well as nationally at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Oakland Art Museum. Treggiari has received grants from the San Francisco and Oakland Arts Commissions, the Creative Work Fund, The Rainin Foundation, The Seattle Center Foundation, and the Zellerbach Foundation. Treggiari has taught at the California College of the Arts since 2013.

Daria Belle is an 18-year-old artivist from Oakland, California that primarily focuses on public art and screen printing. Growing up as a Black woman in the Bay Area, her work depicts the struggles and triumphs of minorities and women, using unconventional color palates and ambiguous characters so that everyone feels included. Now in her freshman year at UCLA, Daria is working towards a professional architecture degree.

Alex De La Cruz, originally from San Francisco, California, is now a first-year student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He intends on majoring in Anthropology with a concentration in Medical Anthropology, and a minor in Creative Writing, all while following the Pre-Med track. Aside from academics, Alex enjoys painting, writing, and exploring the outdoors whenever possible.

Isaiah Dufort is the director of the San Francisco Art & Film Program, an arts education nonprofit that provides free access to film, music, theater and dance performances to Bay Area teenagers. Having joined SF Art & Film as a high school student in 1998 and starting work as an intern the very next year, Isaiah has worked with the program for 25 years, taking over the role of executive director in 2018. Isaiah is also teaching artist-in-residence at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in both the Creative Writing and Media Arts departments.

Michelle Mush Lee is Executive Director of Youth Speaks. Mush is a poet, narrative strategist, and pioneer of spoken word pedagogy. A Harvard University Project Zero Fellow, Mush is frequently a featured speaker on the intersection of emergent cultures, racial justice, and solidarity movements, and women of color in leadership. Her talks and writings have been featured on Vogue, HBO, PBS, AfroPop, Summit Series, Social Venture Network, National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), and the Berkeley Communications Conference. Mush has shared the stage with powerhouses like Natalie Baszile, Jeff Chang, David Banner, Hope Solo and Harrison Ford. Her writings have been commissioned by the University of California, Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, Stop AAPI Hate, and See Us Unite campaigns. Mush has also been published in All the Women in My Family Sing, an anthology of essays by women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In 2019, Mush was invited to serve the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Division as a Cultural Strategist-in-Government (CSIG), where she worked in City departments to infuse policymaking and practices with radically creative and culturally-competent thinking and problem-solving to promote civic belonging. Mush is the Vice-Chair of the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission and a member of the City’s Funding Advisory Committee. In her spare time, Mush enjoys running, organizing her bookshelf, and laughing at mom jokes with her son.

Jennifer Stuart has been an artist and arts educator for over 30 years, teaching art to students of all ages in a variety of settings. Her artwork abstracts her investigation of cycles and systems found in nature. She is interested in different types of matter and energy, and how natural forces form an ever changing world. Her publications include a curriculum guide and a co-edited book about arts integration, Artful Teaching. Jennifer attended Rhode Island School of Design where she received a BFA in painting, and Columbia University Teachers College where she received an MA in arts education. She co-founded the arts non-profit Out of Site (now known as Youth Art Exchange) in 2000 and served on the Board of Directors of Youth Art Exchange from 2020 to 2023.

Michelle Yi Martin is a multi-disciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Her practice is rooted in the progressive traditions of the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. In this spirit, she continues as an educator, weaving history, literature, and the arts with her students. Yi Martin is represented by Municipal Bonds in San Francisco and recently had her second solo show with the gallery in 2023. She and her collaborator were invited to participate in the Craft and Design Biennale in Copenhagen where they became finalists. Additionally, she has been commissioned by MetaArts, and she has also been awarded the commission for a permanent installation at San Francisco’s newly developed Pier 70 that is currently in development.