The University of San Francisco’s Thacher Gallery Presents ‘All that you touch: art and ecology’

The online exhibition and artist panels will run from September 7 to November 7, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO (August 25, 2021) – The Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco (USF) opens its 2021-2022 season focused on ecology and environmental justice with an exhibition reminding us that we are all part of nature. Featured artists include: Byron Au Yong, Nicole Dixon, Katie Dorame, Alicia Escott, Felicitas Fischer, Barnali Ghosh, Conni McKenzie, Jaime Serra dos Santos, Linda Yamane, and Minoosh Zomorodinia

All that you touch: art and ecology presents artists whose creative practices are informed by their personal encounters with the natural world.

Using whiteroot sedge and willow, Linda Yamane’s traditional Ohlone baskets reveal the inextricable link between culture and place. Katie Dorame’s collage prints indigenize iconographic Los Angeles landscapes with layered images of abalone and acorns. The meditations of California wildflowers in Alicia Escott’s installations and Barnali Ghosh’s South Asian fabric and dance-infused mirrored portraits further explore the tensions between native and invasive, organic and human-made. Nicole Dixon’s mixed-media paintings use natural elements, such as wood and gold, to reflect the cultural and spiritual qualities of her figures in order to lift up Black wisdom, while Minoosh Zomorodinia’s paintings use gold leaf to map her walks through urban landscapes. The compositional sketches by Byron Au Yong and the dance film co-created by Felicitas Fischer, Conni McKenzie, and Jaime Serra dos Santos serve as lamentations for nature devastated by climate change and geopolitical factors.

Working across the disciplines, these artists ask what can nature teach us about adaptation, regeneration, and healing? What can nature teach us about ourselves?

The exhibition will also include a series of artist panels open to the public, including “Indigenous Foodways: a conversation and cooking demonstration with Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, founders of mak-'amham: Contemporary Ohlone Cuisine” on Wednesday, October 13, 6:30-8:00 p.m. Visit the exhibition calendar for events.

About Thacher Gallery

Located in USF’s Gleeson Library, the Thacher Gallery is a public art gallery where creativity, scholarship, and community converge. Each year the Thacher Gallery presents a series of diverse, high-caliber art exhibitions that probe aesthetics, stimulate dialogue, and reflect the urban Jesuit university’s commitment to social justice.

About the University of San Francisco

The University of San Francisco is a private, Jesuit Catholic university that reflects the diversity, optimism, and opportunities of the city that surrounds it. USF offers more than 230 undergraduate, graduate, professional, and certificate programs in the arts and sciences, business, law, education, and nursing and health professions. At USF, each course is an intimate learning community in which top professors encourage students to turn learning into positive action, so the students graduate equipped to do well in the world — and inspired to change it for the better. For more information, visit usfca.edu.