Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based interdisciplinary artist and Adjunct Professor at California College of the Arts. She teaches seminar and studio courses on cultural narratives of mortality, textile theory, and strategies of feminist art. Angela has hosted Death Cafes in Oakland and is a certified Grief Recovery Specialist. She consults with families on home funerals and end of life preparation. Last year she was a guest speaker at The Life and Death Potluck group for a discussion on death and mourning in contemporary art.
Her practice examines the aesthetics of loss and notions of purity and contamination through linguistic metaphors of color and cloth. In 2005, she completed her MFA from California College of the Arts and was awarded a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Her work is in the permanent collection of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum and was featured in the Journal of Cloth and Culture and In The Make: Studio Visits with Artists. This July, she has an installation on view in the exhibition, The Disquiet, curated by Dena Beard at Pro Arts Gallery. She has also exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Exit Art, Ampersand International Arts, Oakland Art Gallery, Southern Exposure, The Richmond Art Center, The Small Gallery, and The Oakland Museum of California.
Her research on death and textiles in the work of Teresa Margolles was published in Surface Design Journal and was the subject of her presentation “From the Morgue to the Museum” at the Textile Society of America conference in the fall of 2014.
Associate Professor, Textiles
Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies
Associate Professor, Fine Arts
Website: www.angelahennessy.com
