Meet the Team
Ryan Hueston
Ryan Hueston is Navajo and Hopi from the Navajo Mountain Reservation. Prior to the facilities’ closing in the early 1990’s, Hueston’s entire family was educated at the Navajo Mountain Boarding Schools. He grew up on the Navajo Reservation, and enjoyed the closeness of a community that, despite extreme poverty, recognizes the importance of family, place, and culture. Hueston’s grandfather, Harold Drake Sr, served as Navajo Councilman from the 1970’s-80s. His grandmother, Stella Rose Begay-Drake, was a teacher at the boarding school before its closing. Hueston’s immediate and extended family are blessed by belonging to such a beautiful and sacred place. Despite the community’s challenges, they have shown him nothing but support, love, and how to be brave as he has navigated the world beyond the reservation.
Hueston is an interdisciplinary artist, he has received his MFA degree from California College of the Arts in 2017. He has an arts education background, working as adjunct faculty at Dartmouth College for printmaking and painting from 2014-2015. He learned construction working with his uncle Jeff Begay at Kitchell Construction in Phoenix, AZ, and during his time at CCA has established the Grand Opera House. Recognizing a lack of a communal space for interdisciplinary, interdepartmental sharing of work and ideas, Hueston built a 30-seat theater in an MFA studio, modeled on a Victorian auditorium. Since its inception in the fall of 2015, the Grand Opera House has hosted regular performances that have allowed students from any department and discipline to contribute their work and collaborate on project ideas. Through the Grand Opera House project, Hueston also established a visiting-artist program, allowing the CCA community to choose artists from outside the school to perform and collaborate with the community at the Grand Opera House. His drive and dedication to address communal needs and share love and culture is a learned trait from his family and community on the Navajo Reservation.
www.ryanfrankhueston.com
Magdalena Jadwiga Härtelova
Magdalena Jadwiga Hartelova is an independent curator and artist, currently working between Berlin, Prague, and the Bay Area. She met Hueston and Schoefer-Wulf at the California College of the Arts where she was getting her MA degree in Curatorial Practice. They have collaborated on different projects ever since.
In her practice, Magdalena explores the ethic of care in contemporary art through exhibition and art making, writing, and social practice projects. Her interdisciplinary approach allows her to talk about trauma's influence on identity, safe(r) spaces, limits of intimacy, and hollows in communication from various angles. Subsequently, in her projects Härtelova investigates ways to navigate and keep moving.
She has experience in developing and managing large-scale international projects--for instance the EU-funded ContainEra project, engaging galleries and artists from eight European countries in a long-term artistic exchange, a project in which she was the founder, main curator, and symposium organizer. She has been the curator of the PlaySpace gallery in San Francisco for two years. There, she also started the Language Project that focuses on maintaining mother tongue diversity and on cross-cultural dialog with Iranian artist Shaghayegh Cyrous. During the project, she also especially used her undergraduate degree in Art history and studies of Architecture and Urban Planning, as well as her social practice work, and her experience as a visual art and craft teacher.
www.magdalenajadwigahartelova.com
Ella Schoefer-Wulf
Ella Schoefer-Wulf is a German-US American writer and visual artist. She writes experimental and cross-genre work that focuses on the relationship between language, the body, trauma and landscapes. Ella investigates the potential language has to subjugate and oppress, or empower, educate and liberate and explores options for hybridity and experimentation between disciplines. She is interested in conversations about how to use art to empower and heal individuals and communities.
Ella's undergraduate studies at Naropa University in Boulder Colorado focused on critical, feminist and post-colonial theory in writing and literature.
She is currently an MFA in Writing candidate at California College of the Art's where she received the Leslie Scalapino Award for poetics in the fall of 2015.
www.ellaschoeferwulf.com
Ella Schoefer-Wulf is a German-US American writer and visual artist. She writes experimental and cross-genre work that focuses on the relationship between language, the body, trauma and landscapes. Ella investigates the potential language has to subjugate and oppress, or empower, educate and liberate and explores options for hybridity and experimentation between disciplines. She is interested in conversations about how to use art to empower and heal individuals and communities.
Ella's undergraduate studies at Naropa University in Boulder Colorado focused on critical, feminist and post-colonial theory in writing and literature.
She is currently an MFA in Writing candidate at California College of the Art's where she received the Leslie Scalapino Award for poetics in the fall of 2015.
www.ellaschoeferwulf.com
Graeme Aegerter
Aegerter was born and raised in Seattle with a Zimbabwean mother and an Alaskan father, he has spent my life navigating multicultural environments and immersed in communities around the world. As a young queer filmmaker, he seeks to use documentary film to collaboratively elevate the voices of marginalized communities to be heard by audiences around the world. His work thus far has focused on issues of gender and justice for indigenous communities. He finds his center in nature, and adore exploring the outdoors of the Pacific Northwest.
Aegerter was born and raised in Seattle with a Zimbabwean mother and an Alaskan father, he has spent my life navigating multicultural environments and immersed in communities around the world. As a young queer filmmaker, he seeks to use documentary film to collaboratively elevate the voices of marginalized communities to be heard by audiences around the world. His work thus far has focused on issues of gender and justice for indigenous communities. He finds his center in nature, and adore exploring the outdoors of the Pacific Northwest.
