Curation and Experience Design

Stacie worked as the Curation Specialist for an art collection in a Mountain View technology headquarters. She led the outreach and commissioning process with artists around the Bay Area. In addition to curating the collection, she led the development of the interpretive signage program and the digital experience, guiding how users engages with the work.

Stacie documented behind-the-scenes—interviewing and photographing artists as they created and installed the work.

In the Studio with Nicole Mueller

In the Studio with Erin Zhao

Tell me a little about yourself and your journey to becoming an artist in the Bay Area.
My name is Haoyun Erin Zhao. I'm a painter. I'm printmaker and installation artist based in San Francisco, California. I grew up in, a southwest city in China. I moved to the United States when I was 17 years old to continue my education. I have lived in California, particularly San Francisco for the last 13 years.

How does living in California inform your work?
This place, has provided me with a unique blend of cultural diversity, natural beauty, and artistic community. I feel really fortunate to live in a city that's in such close proximity to natural parks, mountains, forests, beaches, and the ocean. I find myself constantly being inspired by the diverse landscapes.

What does having a physical space mean to your process?
I see my studio space as an extension of my creative process because it bears visible traces of my ongoing work and reflects my thought process. It is a safe place for experimentation and for making mistakes. I like the space to be organized yet adaptable at the same time.

Talk to me about your process, mediums, and materials you’ve worked with throughout your career?
When I first started studying art, I was practicing calligraphy and then I learned Chinese ink brush painting. Watercolor acrylic oils. When I was in art school, I also learned digital tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.

I engage in an intuitive drawing process, which I allow the natural movement of my hands, arm, and the body to guide me. The idea is to really surrender the control to the chance and allow the deep thoughts from the unconscious to take over and to draw like a deeper connection within yourself.

Tell me about this project at Gradient Canopy.
For this project, there are two sets of triptychs. , they're both acrylic on canvas, and with each canvas measuring 10 by seven feet. The first set is titled Melodic Bay. In creating this piece, I aim to balance, , geometry, uh, repetition and form variations to evoke, , a sensor experience that's similar to monodic composition, which brings movement, , and rhythm.

This piece also features this undulating patterns that's composed of natural curves and gradients. I think abstractly it portrays the distinctive, estuary environment in the bay.

The second piece is titled Oceanic on Calligraphy. And in this piece it interweaves these vibrant brushstrokes and, uh, gentle gradients to capture the ocean's dynamic energy And this, , serene tran quality and the shapes in the painting that resemble this ebb and flows of the ocean's wave serves as a metaphor for the constant change in life.

By looking at the shape, I think the pieces can also serve as puzzles for the eye that invites the viewers to engage their imaginations, to seek and discover all these hidden connections and pathways through shapes and forms.

What does working at this scale mean to you?
I think working in such large. Scale really felt, , incredibly immersive. I, I think this really compelled me to adapt a more of the methodical approach from estimating how much paint I would need, , for each shape to. Deciding on which layers to tackle on the same day.

What do you hope people will take away from this project?
When I was creating these pieces, I had the destination in mind–these pieces are heading to a technology company here in the Bay Area, that there are a lot more people get to enjoy, the artwork. So I really hoping people will get to spend time with it. They will be encouraged to pause. And look at the artwork from different angles because of the scale of the work. I really hope each time when people look at the work, they will discover something new.