MAKERS series: Lewis Watts

MAKERS series exposes the creative and often raw process of individual making by exploring the origins and processes of creativity and the interplay between inspiration, innovation with an emphasis on the act of making itself. Presentations and discussions with diverse practitioners working in the arts, or at the intersection of architecture and design, will broaden our assumptions of the complexities of making at scale—to reveal insights into materials and methods, digital and nature-based technologies, and the highly personal journey between vision and process to reach creative outcomes.

Reflecting Forward : Tracing the Past

If making is representing, it begins with seeing. How do we look through others’ eyes to understand what they see, feel and live? By capturing people, ideas, and moments as visual evidence, the present becomes history, and in turn, history reshapes our understanding. Artists see more deeply, they ask different questions and seek answers to form their individual making. Join us to learn about the decades of seeing, artistic expression and cultural documentation inspired by the pursuit of telling societally important stories. 

Speaker

Lewis Watts

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist, curator, traveler and Professor Emeritus of Art at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley. Lewis’ research and artwork centers around the “cultural landscape” primarily in the African Diaspora. A prolific documentary photographer, and visual historian Lewis’ work includes portraits of artists, activists, authors, and musicians. Among his publications, he is the co-author of Harlem of the West : The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era” by Heyday Books, Berkeley, 2020, New Orleans Suite : Music and Culture in Transition, a post-Hurricaine Katrina conversation, by University of California Press, 2013, Portraits Edition One, Berkeley, 2020 and collaborated with Landscape Architect Walter Hood in Black Landscapes Matter, UVA Press 2020 . Lewis’ work is an invitation to reflect on our own lives and connections to the people and the spaces we inhabit and the history that holds meaning. Watts’ work has been exhibited at and has collections at the SFMOMA the Cité de la Musique (Paris, France), the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, Louisiana), the Oakland Museum of California , the Neuberger Museum of Art and many others nationally and internationally. 

Moderator

Lise de Vito

Lise de Vito’s design career spans decades in the San Francisco Bay Area, as co-owner of Zack | de Vito Architecture + Construction, with award-winning architecture and interior design projects across residential, commercial, and vertically integrated design-build development. Alongside her professional practice, Lise is a multidisciplinary artist as well as co-owner of a San Francisco–based gift+art shop, where research, curation, and making actively inform her creative interests.

In collaboration with AIASF and the Center for Architecture+Design, Lise created, curates and moderates the MAKERS series, highlighting the storytelling and journeys of diverse makers and creative practitioners at scale.