About New Pacific Studio
NPS, launched in 2001, promotes the growth of the creative community through its interdisciplinary artist residency programme, and collaborates with schools, museums and community groups on projects involving the arts and local cultural and natural heritage. We offer a quiet place for intensive creative work in an inspiring environment in Vallejo, Northern California. A Resident Director provides encouragement and facilitates local contacts and outreach.
Resident Director
As resident director, author and retired academic Dr Kay Flavell facilitates contacts with the local San Francisco Bay Area arts community, works with the NPS board to host regular Open Days, and pursues her own historical research. Current projects include Scandinavian-Pacific migration in the 1870s (especially to Mauriceville, New Zealand);an essay on working in the 1990s with Berlin-born photographer Gisele Freund (1908-2000), and a biography of Californian artist and portraitist Mary Curtis Richardson (1848-1931), who lived in the NPS house as a young girl.
NPS Vallejo Board
studied at the universities of Otago, London and Monash, exploring 18th - 20th century German cultural history, museum studies and cultural policy. Since 1990 she has fostered a Pacific-centered vision via a Pacific Bridges Project (1990-2001) and the creation of two artist residency programs in Mt Bruce, New Zealand and Vallejo,California.
is director of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum and author of Vallejo (Images of America, Arcadia Publishing, 2004)
Addidtional Board Member Bios pending
Advisory Board
The role of Advisory Board members is to promote trans-Pacific exchanges between New Pacific Studio residencies and other cultural institutions and communities.
is a community performance artist, a disability culture activist, and Professor of English, Art and Design, Theatre and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She also teaches on the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College (Port Townsend). She is the Artistic Director of
The Olimpias, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Berkeley, California. Her travels take her regularly to Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia, where she researches and engages in community arts, social practice, and disability culture.
Dame Professor Anne Salmond DBE FRSNZ FBA
is a Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland and an eminent historian and writer. In 2013 she was named New Zealander of the Year for her contributions to cultural history. She was educated at Solway College, Masterton, and at the universities of Auckland and Pennsylvania. Her many books include two with a focus on early cross-cultural encounters in Aotearoa New Zealand, and three with a focus on Pacific encounters. She is a former chair of the NZ Historic Places Trust.
Dame Salmond has graciously agreed to be a patron of New Pacific Studio.
Awhina Tamarapa
is Curator Maori at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In 2012 she curated the stunning exhibition Kahu Ora/Living Cloaks at Te Papa. She also edited and contributed to Whetu Kakahu Maori Cloaks (Te Papa Press 2011).
