Artist Heesoo Kwon on Family Archives, Inherited Objects, and the Creation of Nurturing Spaces

Thank you to everyone who joined us on November 8 at the East Side Arts Alliance Cultural Center @eastsidecultural to celebrate the work of artist Heesoo Kwon @leymusoom ! Heesoo’s conversation centered on Seven, Seven, Seven: Interwoven Memories—her residency project created in collaboration with Elena Serrano, co-founder of ESAA, and her daughter Ariana, honoring their family’s stories and legacy. Kwon shared about her vast and diverse art practice on family archives, inherited objects, and the creation of nurturing spaces. Kwon also presented on her past and ongoing works in which she crafts immersive digital worlds that reimagine matrilineal histories and queer the structures of familial relationships. Within these digital ethers, the artist conjures feminist utopia—realms of healing and liberation from the personal, familial, and ancestral wounds etched by centuries of inscribed patriarchy. We hope you found moments of meaningful connection—with the artist, the work, and one another. The afternoon felt deeply nourishing and re-energizing for us. Heartfelt thanks to Heesoo, Roberto Martinez (Program Director at EastSide Arts), and to all who came out to support and uplift these vital stories.

Artist Name Brown on Visions of Future Potentiality

A huge thank you to artist Name Brown @nyamebrown for opening up his studio to @seedartistseries on Saturday, August 23! Brown pursues complex themes through serial bodies of work and draws on a rich legacy of diasporic cultural practices and symbols. His Afrosurreal discourses build worlds where allegory and historical events interact with visions of future potentiality, resulting in paintings that articulate contemporary Black mythologies. We are beyond grateful to Nyame for opening up his studio for this rich mining of stories and exchange of ideas.

Good vibes, great people, & amazing art! Was a visit that lingered long after we said our goodbyes.

Art and Community with Juan Carlos Quintana

Bathed in sunshine in San Leandro, CA, Juan Carlos Quintana welcomed the SEE(d) Creative Network into his backyard studio in June 2025 to mingle, enjoy summer-inspired bites and wines, and, most importantly, dive into conversation about his in-depth art practice.

Quintana’s work layers sharp visual commentary, satirical edge, and multi-layered techniques. From large-scale paintings confronting Louisiana’s legacy of plantations and petrochemical industries, to boxed monotype sets, homages to Cuban artists, and intricate collages, his practice feels both urgent and alive. SEE(d) was honored to gather in community—witnessing, sharing stories, and appreciating what Juan Carlos’ art does best: communicate with vibrant intention and integrity.

email: director@seedartistseries if something catches your eye!

An exquisite gathering at Renée Gertler's Studio

For those who joined @seedartistseries studio visit with Bay Area artist Renée Gertler @renee_gertler — the word of the day was exquisite! Renée shared her conceptual ideas and working processes around her labor intensive drawings and sculptures amidst a community of supporters and art enthusiasts. Gertler’s sculptures employ papier-mâché, minerals, crystals, beadwork, and textile techniques that she learned from her mother. She regards the sculptures as feminine abstractions–their shapes and contours reference the female form in mysterious, non-literal ways. Gertler’s drawings engage with concepts, memories, and sensibilities regarding logic and intuition, as expressed through number patterns, colored pencils, and airbrush techniques. The drawings use an optimistic pastel and technicolor palette popular of the cultural landscape of 1980s Los Angeles.

Renée also shared her love of collecting and her own rituals of daily practice. Together, we discussed how artists create physical objects that can inhabit very deep, metaphysical ideas. The generative sharing felt important and relevant to our current times. We are so grateful to Renée for opening her studio to us, and to the collectors and supporters who joined in the spirit of belonging. Many artworks are available, so please email us if something catches your eye! director@seedartistseries.com

SEE(d) Artist Series with Shirin Towfiq at Clio's

It was a deeply meaningful @seedartistseries program with artist Sharon Towfiq on December 7, 2024! Artist @shirintowfiq shared her fascinating, multi-layered creative process, while cultural anthropologist Cari Borja @drcariborja led a thoughtful Q&A in the very cool back room at Clio’s. Shirin spoke about her family’s history—being from Iran but unable to return—and how immigrant families persevere and adapt. She explored how she is reclaiming her cultural heritage, navigating layers of loss, grief, absence, storytelling, reverence, identity, and the search for home. The conversation also touched on how symbols like magic carpets and gold thread serve as metaphors for time travel, connecting to both the past and future. Shirin shared how discovering a long-lost family archive offered new context for understanding her parents’ and grandparents’ lives in Iran—hugely inspirational material for her current work. Huge thanks to Clio’s Oakland for co-hosting the event with us! And for so many of you who came out to support!!✨✨

SEE(d) at 500 Capp Street with yétúndé olágbajú

Thanks to all who joined us on Saturday September 14th @500cappstreet to explore and learn about artist yétúndé olágbajú's work and collaborative practices.

A special shout-out goes to yétúndé olágbajú who traveled from Los Angeles and put great care into their presentation. We loved their focus on collaboration, learning/unlearning, care, improvisation, play, and honoring ancestors. This approach enriched our discussions about their various bodies of work and their perspectives on lineage—collecting, distilling, liberating (as seen in the ‘Mammy’ series), as well as photographing family memories, performance, braiding and creating rituals. We also appreciated their exploration of home and Sankofa, which in Ghanaian poetry signifies the importance of revisiting the past to gain knowledge and hold onto it. In the case of yétúndé, they don't hold it, but rather, share that knowledge with others.

We are grateful for the generous support of Gui, Alex, and Lian at 500 Capp who welcomed us so graciously into the historic space.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 9th, for yétúndé’s celebration and culminating exhibition of their year-long residency, ‘a spiral fuels and fills,’ also at 500 Capp Street in San Francisco.

Artist Lisa Blatt Pushes the Boundaries of Perception

It was another dreamy SEE(d) studio visit—this time with artist, Lisa Blatt (@lisa_blatt) in the Minnesota Street Projects Studios in winter, 2024. Blatt shared her fascinating artistic practice that explores the complexity of creating landscape images that push the boundaries of perception. Using a traditional 4 x 5 camera (now digital), a tripod and herself, the artist’s project involves travel (mostly solo and often with scientists) to extreme climate locations — White Sands, New Mexico, Iceland, Antarctica, the driest desert, the deepest lake in the Andes, among many others. The images that result are exquisite interpretations of what the land has to say.

Our deepest gratitude to Lisa for opening her studio and sharing her daring and courageous process that often yields surprising results — ‘The Corruption Series’ comes to mind. The artist’s more recent heatscapes use infrared technology to document sites where troubling events have occurred. She contemplates what stories do these sites tell?

Inverting Perspectives with Artist James David Lee

It was one of those mild and memorable fall San Francisco days. SEE(d) Artist Series met at the studio of Artist James David Lee (he/him) for an afternoon of deep seeing, learning and sharing in the artist’s backyard art studio, out of his beloved late grandmother’s garage in San Francisco’s Excelsior District.

James explained his love of Daoist parables that invert perspectives and create worlds where we, the viewer, may not know what we are looking at. We lose our bearings in a magical, unstable world, forced to let go of what we know is true. In Lee’s recent book paintings, the viewer's place in the landscape is unclear, even slippery–sometimes, we hover above a ravine and occasionally look up from the bottom of a river floor.

In the series of ink works, instead of brushes, Lee used castaway household materials like crumpled-up Kleenex and fruit rinds to make imprints and recontextualize what we consider mundane vs. precious, adding a layer of ethereality to the drawings. In the poem paintings, Lee memorizes a poem about landscape and then copies the poem repeatedly, placing layer upon layer of oil paint and rendering the poem illegible. What meaning is left when the text is unreadable?

Similarly, the book paintings go through a process by which Lee pairs poetry with imagery. In the case of 'Rent Poem,' Lee borrows a poem from his friend Victor Vazquez incorporating fragments of the poetry into the inked landscapes and leaving us to wonder, in what world am I traveling?

Artworks are available for acquisition, please contact us: director@seedartistseries.com

To see more images from the visit, please follow us on Instagram: @seedartistseries

A Deeply Thought-provoking Conversation with Sofía Córdova

Thank you to all who attended our studio visit with the thoughtful and prolific interdisciplinary artist Sofía Córdova. It was a rare opportunity to witness the artist in their sacred space and contemplate their recent works on revolutions--real and imagined. The First Chapter in the series, ‘GUILLOTINÆWannaCry Yellow: Break Room’ considers revolution historically and ponders its often messy, indeterminate and non-linear relation to time, space and personality.

The Second Chapter: ‘GUILLOTINÆWannaCry Act Green: Sauvage, Savage, Salvaje’ (recently commissioned by Tufts University Gallery), presents an immersive, futuristic environment of speculative climate devastation. The work draws upon ancestral traditions of body scanning, tending to the earth, and revolutionary organizing by Black and Indigenous peoples from within the land itself, from land that may or may not be known. Thank you for this deeply thought-provoking and timely conversation, Sofía!

SEE(d) Hosted a Picnic in the Park

SEE(d) Artist Series turns 5 (minus 2) this year! After experiencing the success of our first two years, and then, the strange, 2-year isolation of Covid, SEE(d) ‘rebooted’ its program last year with an amazing slate of artists: Julia Goodman / Michael Hall, Pablo Cristi, Taraneh Hemami, and nkiruka oparah.

The two-year hiatus made us realize that in-person gathering feeds the soul. To this end, we hosted a picnic on July 8, 2023 in Lake Temescal Park in Oakland for artists and SEE(d) patrons to meet one another, share stories, and build community. We had a great time and thank all of those who joined!