Newly published author and current MFA candidate Dean Talamantez talks to us about what went into the making of his first published book, Sacred Fool. The book was created as a gift to famed Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky.

What is the origin story of your interest in Jodorowsky? Are there particular pieces of work or themes he explores that really speak to you?

I see Alejandro as a visual poet. My initial introduction to his work was the 1989 film Santa Sangre, which is considered his return to the Panic Movement that he helped found in the 60’s in Paris…

MFA Program Coordinator Megan Jacobs reflects on connecting within the MFA Program in the Age of Virtualization

As we are coming around to a full year since the pandemic changed life as we know it, I have been reflecting on the nature of how we interact with one another.

For so many of us, the pandemic has made it so that we have to engage in an online format with people we knew and spent face-to-face time with pre-pandemic. This has been challenging, to say the least. But what about forging new relationships in the virtual space?

As the Program…

Led by guidance received in her dreams, MFA@CIIS graduate Lola Victor has moved, painted, and published beyond borders.

My inquiry as an MFA candidate into my own narrative as an artist and a person was the seed that developed into my MFA project, propelled me into a post-graduation international relocation, landed my murals international space, and got my writing published in CURIOUS Magazine. All of these things were led by guidance and visions from my dreams. It has been a journey that is ever-unfolding.

My deep passion for art that connects people across borders and connects them to the realization…

MFA@CIIS graduate Heidi Kraay describes the creative process that has supported her for years.

The creative process I can count on listens to the underbelly of my mind, taking myself apart and putting me back together. Later I pick up the pieces and type what resonates, but more important is holding a pen, tracing each blue line: the physical act of writing. …

Candidate for an MFA@CIIS Dean Talamantez shares his thoughts after curating a showcase of creative work from MFA alumni

There is a strange building in San Francisco at 10th and Mission with a Zen garden on its roof where student counselors, psychologists, and artists alike use a holistic approach to study consciousness.

Among the offered paths of academia, California Institute of Integral Studies’ MFA department is a quiet program — quiet in that it doesn’t tout its accomplishments. Like the Room of Requirements at Hogwarts, the professor’s heads are brimming with endless objects, but none will clink out until required.

When I was searching for the perfect MFA program, I asked CIIS Professor Carolyn Cooke about the program’s publishing…

Artist, writer, curator, producer and CIIS MFA graduate Marie Marković invites you to dive into imagined elsewheres

In the Before times…

I was working on an immersive performance. It’s the form that resonates the most with me, on stage. Having the audience participate in the work, completing the beauty and the meaning by receiving it, and gifting their response. I came to a point in my lifelong exploration of performance where I just couldn’t do the thing where I am on stage and you are all looking at me. I froze. …

Tribeca Film Festival Winner Jessica Habie’s new workplace drama Here She Comes attempts to push the conversation around sexual intimacy past its final taboo: reality.

Jessica Habie, the filmmaker who created Mars at Sunrise and several award-winning documentaries about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, graduated from California Institute of Integral Studies, earning her Masters of Fine Arts in the Summer of 2018. Her new television series, Here She Comes, seeks to entertain, educate, provoke dialogue, and, ultimately, make your sex life better. We had a chance to catch up with her this summer in the form of the following interview.

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Writing and performing with The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle, Lisa Frias utilizes the medium of Dance and Theatre to teach the healing power of gratitude.

Lisa is the director of the Dance Department at Thomas R. Pollicita Middle School in Daly City, California. For more than 20 years, she has performed as a core member of The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women/HIV Circle. In 2019, she graduated from California Institute of Integral Studies, receiving her Master’s of Fine Arts. Her stage production, Gratitude, will run at Stagewerx in San Francisco from January 28 to 31, 2021.

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