Artist in Residence Alumni
Nicole Dalager
(Nic) is a visual artist based in San Francisco, California. Nic studied at University of Denver, receiving her B.A. in Emergent Digital Practices.
Working professionally as a graphic designer, her passion is deeply rooted in creating art and she hopes to continue expanding her practice through exploring multidisciplinary avenues of artistic expression. Her work primarily focuses on color therapy and dreaming up surreal environments as a means of practicing presence.
Working in both digital and traditional mediums, her current body of work utilizes surrealism and animation to explore themes on mental health, existentialism, and the human experience. Her work aims to expose the vibrancy of existence, even through times of turbulence and strife.
Nic has displayed work in multiple galleries throughout the Bay Area and is currently completing her first artist residency at the Midway.
Danae Lenda
Danae Lenda is a 24 year old visual artist working in San Francisco. Her work is very personal and revolves around changing perceptions of identity, drawing from personal experiences and often responding to current events. Danae’s focus for her work is a reflection of her generation’s values, concerns, and experiences.
Anne Garvey
Anne Garvey is a contemporary visual artist based in Oakland, California. A graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute and Saint Mary’s College, she has exhibited, taught, and collaborated with fellow artists at home and abroad. Garvey works in a variety of media, but is primarily known for her realistic paintings of people and tangled objects. Her art centers around the inner human experience of a variety of mental states. Tangled elements, such as cords, yarn, and chains, serve as metaphors for different states of mind, and invite the viewer to contemplate our common struggles. Her current body of work explores anxiety, trauma, and resilience through large-scale drawings, paintings, and sculptural installation.
Garvey’s work has been published in Memoir Magazine, TWIRL: a Decade of Artist Interviews, and the Racket Journal. She has participated as an artist-in-residence at the North Street Collective in Willits, CA, the Hoi An Recreation Center in Vietnam, Saint Vincent de Paul, and various programs throughout the bay area via San Francisco Arts Education Project and the Museum of Children’s Art. Her work has been exhibited widely in venues and galleries including L.A. Artcore and Castelli Artspace in Los Angeles, Axis Gallery in Sacramento, and Adobe Books in San Francisco.
ær
ær (they/them) is a visual artist, hardware hacker and digital media developer exploring themes of spatial semiotics, queerness and liminal form. Their practice integrates procedural and printed media to play with the reification and abstraction of perception and place. Combining hardware and software with interactive design, they produce generative audiovisuals for movement-based performances and immersive installations. A graduate of the Gray Area creative coding program and featured artist with CODAME, ær has also facilitated free public workshops on topics of new media, experimental video production and creative technology.
Shikha Hutchins
Shikha Hutchins is an artist and teacher living in San Francisco. She works mostly in clay and paper, drawing inspiration from the conflict and unexpected harmonies between contemporary life and the natural world. To honor the precious limits of life, her works invites a sense of play and light-heartedness. She makes vessels for holding light, foraged flora, a nourishing meal, or nothing at all. Her functional ware is often sculptural, her sculptural work often functional. Her works have been shown at Lala Land Gallery in Fayetteville and X?X Gallery in San Francisco.
Artist Statement:
My current focus explores our deep connection to and place in nature. I believe that we are nature, we are fauna. My hope is to use my art practice as a way of reconnecting and remembering this fundamental fact by using the process of play as a portal into the natural world. I want for people to see themselves reflected in my work and, in seeing themselves, to be transformed.
Alex Sodari
Alex Sodari (he/they) is an Mexican-American artist based in Oakland. His work is inspired by his community, comic books, folk art, local history, and the natural world. They create paintings, illustrations, zines, and large scale murals.
A graduate in Illustration from the California College of the Arts, Alex is the founder of the Lazer Zine, a comic and illustration anthology publishing Bay Area artists. They are also the cofounder of the Mission Art and Comic Expo, an event highlighting Queer and POC artists in San Francisco.
Alex has exhibited in numerous Bay Area galleries, and his most recent show “Dualidad” (with artist Jacqueline Krase-Ochoa at Rock Paper Scissors Collective) celebrates the magic of their Mexican heritage. His current work examines the history of colonization in the West through the lens of magical realism.
Yijun Ge
Yijun Ge was born in Xiang Yang, in the province of Hubei, China. She received her Bachelor’s from Hubei Institute of Fine Art. During that time, she taught art workshops in oil painting, charcoal drawing and printmaking, and assisted instructors at Hubei Institute of Fine Art University.
Yijun received her MFA in painting from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, California. Her work has been exhibited in multiple galleries across the United States including Contemporary Venice Art Fair hosted by Itsliquid and Rossocinabro Gallery. Yijun was the featured muralist for the publication “Mural Artist Takes a Stand on Violence against Asians” by the Asian American Press. On November 20th of 2021, and on December 8th of 2021, she was the champion of the ArtBattle Oakland, and ArtBattle San Francisco. Art Battle is live competitive painting, a global tournament of talent.
ARTIST STATEMENT Dreams are the inspiration for my art. The elements that show up in my dreams help to create a painting’s theme. They become symbolic language and represent larger concepts. I design my art language from dreams, and in my dreams, there are often some interesting elements, such as spiders, sailboats, cats and dragons. These elements serve my art creation to choose the art themes, and they are unique for symbolic meaning. For example, a dragon means a life journey full of possibilities.
Stephen Longoria
Stephen Longoria is a Texan currently living and working in Japantown San Jose, CA. His focuses include printmaking and silkscreening, as well as woodworking, welding, and other forms of fabrication. Through screen printing, he showcases his illustrations and mixed media pieces.
ARTIST STATEMENT My illustrations focus on creating bold dark shapes on light colors. My work depicts what I want out of life and what I love to do.
Jeffrey Yip
Jeffrey Yip is an interdisciplinary artist of color based out of Oakland, producing installations and performances with an emphasis on using technology as a tool of creation. Interested in uniting the senses as an approach to building experiences, he often combines light and sound in physical as well as virtual spaces. Thematically his work revolves around exploring technology to facilitate healing as a form of radical justice and often works collaboratively to create sustainable communities.
ARTIST STATEMENT I’m an interdisciplinary artist building multi-sensory experiences in the framework of healing justice. Conceptually, my work draws inspiration from science fiction, magic, and themes from the distant future. I create spaces for healing with emerging technologies, combining light, sound, sculpture, and human-machine interaction. My art practice offers alternative modalities to traditional western wellness and sparks dialogue around community resilience.
Adrianna “Boo” Alejo Sorondo
Adrianna Alejo Sorondo is a mixed media artist and anthropologist from Fresno, CA. living and working in San Francisco. Focusing on ritual and genetic memory, her work highlights the spiritual and physical resilience of people over time through the tending of gardens, turning poison into medicine.
“I am truly grateful for this experience as a Midway Artist Studio Resident! The chance to create in such a space among a cohort of fellow artists was priceless. Throughout my time at The Midway I felt incredibly supported in my creative energy. Norah and staff went above and beyond! From my workshop to the exhibition, I feel more connected to the Bay Area art community and look forward to building on the relationships I’ve made.”
Emily Benz
Emily Benz, born in 1985, received her MFA in Studio Art at the San Francisco Art Institute, and her BFA in Painting at Southern Oregon University. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Artist Statement: My practice explores medium-specificity, concepts of existential rationale and cognitive distortions. Recently, it has dealt with themes of self-loathing and narcissism, routine and ritual, and of failure and success. The process involves painting abstract and figurative content upon both conventional and non-conventional surfaces. The resulting image is then redacted, with particular elements and objects often being blotted out or left vacant, emphasizing mark-making as an act of cognizance.
Sasha Vu
The Midway
San Francisco based artist and designer Sasha Vu graduated with a BFA in Communications Design and Illustration from Brooklyn’s Pratt institute in 2013. She studied 2D and 3D design, lighting , photography and illustration.
Since graduating, Sasha has worked as a freelance installation artist, photographer and illustrator. She also has worked as an assistant art director conceptualizing , collaborating and creating event installations and prop design.
Sasha is a co founder of San Francisco based art collective StreetHeart.