Creative Conversations 2009: Career Trajectories - Not All Straight Arrows

Join the San Francisco Bay Area Emerging Arts Professionals in a roundtable discussion featuring a panel of emerging and established Bay Area arts professionals as they share their career paths, challenges, and advice. The event is held in community with Americans for the Arts' 2009 Creative Conversations and National Arts and Humanities Month.  Light refreshments served.

Oakland Asian Cultural Center is 5 minutes from the 12th Street BART Station at Broadway in Oakland.

Panelists:

1. Evelyn Orantes, Cultural Arts Developer, Education Department, Oakland Museum of California
2. Maia Rosal, Managing Director, Joe Goode Performance Group
3. Marc Vogl, Program Officer, Performing Arts Program, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
4. JUST ADDED! Ellen Oh, Executive Director, Kearny Street Workshop

Price:

$6 to reserve your seat online
$8 at the door

Panelist Biographies:

Evelyn Orantes is currently the Cultural Arts Developer for the Oakland Museum of California. She oversees art school programs for the education department as well as serves as the Project Director of the Days of the Dead annual exhibition and related public programs. Evelyn has devoted the last eight years of her career as a cultural worker advancing community based arts practice, and addressing issues of diversity in the arts. She has participated as a fellow at the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives, where she worked with staff from the National Museum of the American Indian to develop Days of the Dead programming and curriculum.

Ms. Orantes is an altar maker and installation artist. Her work has been shown in venues including the Mission Cultural Center, Triton Museum, The Legion Palace of Fine Arts and the Oakland Museum of California. She has donated her cartoneria pieces to the Chicana Latino Foundation’s art auction and currently serves on board of the Chicana Latina Community.

Maia Rosal is Managing Director of Joe Goode Performance Group. She enjoyed a career as a dancer with American Ballet Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, and Pretty Ugly Dancecompany before being drawn into arts administration. Her previous management work includes associate manager of Floria Productions, a small European based company representing artists in the performing arts;and production manager for incoming performances and events at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Marc Vogl has worked for over a decade with artists and performing arts groups in the Bay Area. He co-founded the sketch comedy group Killing My Lobster and the Hi/Lo Film Festival and served as executive director of Lobster Theater Project, a multi-disciplinary San Francisco non-profit arts organization.  Marc's experiences in the arts have included acting, writing, directing and producing award winning comedy shows and new plays, making short films, programming film festivals, and representing small arts organizations on the San Francisco Arts Task Force.

Outside of the arts, Marc has volunteered on local, state and national political campaigns, reported on AIDS and refugee crises from Africa, worked for several hi-tech start-ups in the Bay Area, taught American History to French kids and delivered flowers in his hometown of Washington, D.C.

Marc studied at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, and holds B.A. degrees in American History and English Literature from Brown University and a Masters in Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard where he was a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow.

Ellen Oh is the Executive Director of Kearny Street Workshop (KSW). Founded in 1972, KSW is the Bay area's oldest Asian Pacific American multidisciplinary arts organization.

Ellen worked in marketing and community outreach at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, during its move from Golden Gate Park to Civic Center.  She then earned a Masters Degree in Arts Administration from Columbia University.