ARTIST // INSTRUCTOR // SF, CA
BIO
Zan Levine has over 13 years of experience as an artist, Art educator and advocate for social justice in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently teaches Art and Ceramics at Capuchino High School in San Bruno, CA. Zan is a multimedia artist specializing in Ceramics. She is a community organizer, and leader for youth movements. In her free time she enjoys planting trees with Climate Action Now (CAN!), gardening at home, camping, hiking in our beautiful National Parks, and of course spending time with her dog, Zowie Bowie. Levine spent her college age years in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, CA, and now she resides in San Francisco. Levine’s work has been shown regionally in group and solo shows since 2001.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Inspiration from poems, a classic method of communication, entertainment and learning, is where my journey began. I have been making a series of formative and self-reflective ceramic books using mid-fire, Dixon sculpture clay. The Dixon clay body is earthy, with a dark, rich, red color, and has a vintage feel to it after I apply muted underglazes; the clay is a subtly pertinent part of the equation in my work because it inserts meaning through its dramatic and antiqued appearance, adding another layer of meaning to each piece.
Notions of mis-communication in rhetoric and human interaction serve as a main focus for the narratives that emerge in this body of work. Using found quotes that have been misinterpreted when translated into English, I playfully and subtly relate text to imagery. Predominantly engaged with questioning how the meaning of the written word is seen ultimately as the truth, another focus is exposing how we see the world through our own lens, and revealing parallels found in human intention and language. By juxtaposing imagery with text, my aim is to guide the viewer through a conundrum that poetically questions fact from fiction, inadvertently revealing the true meaning of the translation.
Commonly intertwining nautical imagery in my pieces such as boats, anchors and sea-life, my intention is to evoke peregrinations and the passage of time. Therein, the ebb and flow of the sea can be scientifically measured just as easily as it can be mysteriously fathomed; a convergence that further describes my work.