News and More from the Art Alumni Group University of California, Berkeley



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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Congratulations to the Class of 2008

It was my pleasure once again to attend the 2008 Commencment in the sculpture garden of BAM and personally welcome to the real world, these artists, our newest alumni:

Gabriel Agee, Christopher Alarie, Gilberto Armendariz, Stephanie Barringer, Erika Bird, Ben Bracamonte, Jessica Bracamonte, Shannon Braziel, Christopher Breithaupt, Erik Bro, Sarah Brock, Emily Brundige, Rebecca Bush, Crystal Carlson, Faheema Chaudhury, Crystal Chen, Jayson Cheung, Kristie Chow, Yve Laris Cohen, Cecilia Contreras, Madelyn Covey, Ashley Davidson, Natasha DeAlmeida, Laura DeNardo, Daniel Edery, Nathan Finney, Gabriel Fischer, Emily Frost, Aaron Fung, Katherine Greenman, Carson Grubach, Wen Dong, Tony Guan, Olga Gutierrez, A Han, Amber Handal, Karen Henderson, Anna Hoffman, Clare Hutchinson, Mattie Kahren, Bryan Kato, Tricia Kim, Ping Kuang, Lynn Seohong Lee, Adrienne Levoy, Shang-Wuen Liu, Edwin Lo, Brendan Luce, Steven Lybeck, Katherine Madrigal, Makai Magie, Jason Maze, Robert McCluskey, Zoilita McKeon, Kelda McKinney, Sonia McNally, Lucia Mendoza, Tina Moreno, Oliver Mork, Sheau-Wha Mou-Keefe, Amber Morrison, Amber Mueller, Jenifer Nelson, Jean Linh Chi Nguyen, Khang Nguyen, Hilary Pollack, Allison Porterfield, Joanne Rademacher, Nick Reid, Carolina Reyes, Rebecca Richards, Gabrielle Roussos, Hayley Rucker, Jon Running, Lillian Sabersky, Christina Salazar, Asaki Sano, Kelly Seldan, Youna Shin, Matthew Siemonsma, Jenny Song, Keiko Stong, Jingqin Su, Hongyun Suriwong, Jessica Tatara, Maile Thompson, Michelle Tingen, John Torrens, Sharita Towne, Elizabeth Tran, Justine Travers, Minisha Trivedi, Katy Tsai, Wan-Ling Tsai, Enrique Unzueta, Kate VandenBerghe, Greg VanHoesen, Julia Wiener, Stacy Wilkinson, Nicole Wilson, Eric Wong, Michael Wooten, and a special repeat performance from Sierra Helvey.

MFA graduates: Adrianne Crane; Renee Davis- awarded a UAM Council Founders Prize and an Eisner Prize; Rosalyn Khor-Eisner Prize; Emily Prince - awarded a Headlands Graduate Fellowship Program (1yr. residency 2008-2009); Wenhua Shi- awarded a Javits Fellowship; Sunny Taylor awarded the Kelsey Travel Award and an Eisner Prize; Indira Morre left us with the Harry Ford Lord Award.


Shannon Jewel Braziel was the recipient of this year's Art Alumni Award for the Leadership in the Art Community. Shannon also garnered the Doris Nichols Sculpture Award.
The Theresa Hak Kyung CHA prize was awarded to Jingqin Su.



~Lynne Rutter, BA 1985

Monday, May 5, 2008

Farewell to Tony Shultz BA 1969

Tony Shultz was happily quoted as saying he showed up at Free Speech and left Berkeley at People’s Park. In the midst of all of that, Tony was a student in the Residence College, working in the theatre shop building sets and hanging lights and working in the Ceramics studio under Peter Voulkous and Ron Nagle. He set up kilns, fired his own stuff and created work independent of class time as well formal study. He had previously studied with Helen Slater in Los Angeles.
Leaving Berkeley in '69 with his degree in Theatre (cum laude) and a one-way ticket to London, he spent three years with the Moving Being Company as actor and technician, working with Charles Marowitz at the Round House Theatre. Returning to the states he worked as a technician for the studios and then headed to New York to star in the original production of Grease, and as a featured player in The Bakers Wife with Paul Sorvino and Platinum with Alexis Smith. In 1986, Tony decided to move into real estate in Los Angeles, marrying actress Susan Merson in 1987. Their daughter, Sofie, was born in 1991.
Tony was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an asbestos exposure disease, on January 2 of this year and died unexpectedly after surgery on March 15, 2008. There is a blog detailing the last few months of his life at www.thejourneyoftheprince.blogspot.com His family would very much appreciate hearing from anyone who knew or worked with him the ceramics studio. Susan can be reached via email at susan@susanmerson.com.