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| Alicia McCarthy | |
|---|---|
| Name | Alicia McCarthy |
| Birth date | 1969 |
| Birth place | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Painting, drawing, installation, street art |
| Movement | Mission School, Contemporary art, Bay Area Figurative Movement |
Alicia McCarthy
Alicia McCarthy is an American artist associated with the Mission School and contemporary art scenes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work engages with abstract patterning, hand-stitched surfaces, and painted tapestries that reference craft traditions, street art, and outsider aesthetics. McCarthy's practice intersects with artists, institutions, and communities across galleries, museums, and public spaces in California and internationally.
McCarthy was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area amid cultural ecosystems such as the Mission District, the Tenderloin, and the Fruitvale neighborhood, environments that connected her to figures and movements like Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Conner, Sunnyside and organizations including Southern Exposure and Alternative Exposure. She studied at institutions that link to regional networks including California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute, University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and intersected with curatorial projects from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and community arts spaces such as Precita Eyes Muralists Association and Galería de la Raza. Early mentors and contemporaries included artists and educators connected to Oakland Museum of California, The LAB (San Francisco), David Ireland (artist), and arts collectives influenced by Diane Arbus, Sophie Calle, John Cage, and archival practices at Bancroft Library.
McCarthy emerged within the same milieu that produced the Mission School alongside artists like Barry McGee, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Rigo 23, Camille Rose Garcia, Margaret Kilgallen, and institutions such as SFMOMA and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. She has shown work in venues connected to curators from Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Walker Art Center, and galleries affiliated with Anglim/Trimble Gallery, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Galerie Perrotin, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. McCarthy's street- and studio-based projects have intersected with public art programs at MUNI, San Francisco Arts Commission, Art in General, and international festivals linked to Pow! Wow!, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, and biennials such as Whitney Biennial and Venice Biennale via collateral exhibitions. Collaborations and residencies have involved Headlands Center for the Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and nonprofit platforms including Theaster Gates-led initiatives and Creative Growth Art Center.
Her visual language weaves hand-drawn grids, cross-hatching, and stitched surfaces using materials and methods shared by practitioners connected to Ruth Asawa, Anni Albers, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, and Marta Minujín. McCarthy employs acrylic, gouache, ink, and appliqué on canvas, wood panel, and found objects in a manner resonant with Mission School aesthetics and street-art practices evident in the work of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She integrates craft techniques such as embroidery and weaving that recall Bauhaus, Arts and Crafts movement, American Folk Art Museum holdings, and contemporary fiber artists like Sheila Hicks, Nick Cave (artist), and Ghada Amer. Her palette, patterning, and iterative mark-making connect to postminimal and pattern-oriented practices by Brice Marden, Frank Stella, Jules Olitski, and to feminist craft discourse advanced by Judy Chicago and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.
Solo and group exhibitions featuring McCarthy's work have appeared in museums and galleries associated with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, De Young Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Walker Art Center, New Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and international venues such as Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Serpentine Galleries. Her works are held in public collections including SFMOMA collection, Brooklyn Museum, Seattle Art Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Cleveland Museum of Art, and university collections at UC Berkeley Art Museum, Stanford University Cantor Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, and Harvard Art Museums. She has participated in curated exhibitions organized by curators from Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Museum of Latin American Art, SITE Santa Fe, Portland Art Museum, and regional biennials and fairs linked to Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Artpace, and SculptureCenter.
Writers and critics from publications linked to institutions such as Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, Frieze, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Hyperallergic, and The Guardian have framed McCarthy's practice alongside peers like Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee and movements including Mission School and Street Art. Scholars and curators at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Getty Research Institute, MoMA, and SFMOMA have considered her contributions in exhibitions and essays about urban aesthetics, craft revival, and feminist revaluations of labor-intensive practices seen in the work of Tracey Emin, Cecily Brown, and Kara Walker. Collectors, critics, and educators draw lines between McCarthy's influence and teaching lineages that include Ruth Asawa School of Art, California College of the Arts faculty, San Francisco Art Institute alumni networks, and artist-run initiatives like Ever Gold [Projects].
McCarthy has engaged with art education and community arts organizations that operate alongside Precita Eyes Muralists Association, Southern Exposure, Pro Arts Gallery, Community Arts Stabilization Trust, Creative Time, and programs funded by National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and foundations such as Guggenheim Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation through workshops, talks, and residencies. She has contributed to youth outreach and public art mentorship connected to Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, San Francisco Public Library, Oakland Unified School District arts programs, and nonprofit educational partnerships with California College of the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and community-driven platforms like The Laundry and The Luggage Store Gallery.
Category:American painters Category:Artists from San Francisco