Seventy-five years ago, my family began a multi-generational relationship with the Oakland campus. After returning from WW2, my father attended CCAC. And I earned an MFA in the early 1990s and began teaching shortly after. My daughter played in these gardens and on this lawn. So, for me, this is a family legacy.

But those of us gathered today are also a family—a community of artists—and our memories form a communal inheritance. I look out into the audience and see lineages of mentors, colleagues, and students. What I see laid out in front of me—is a tapestry of many-colored memory threads. We wrap ourselves in this collaborative memorial—a project we wove together through the decades.

When we leave for the last time this evening under twilight skies—the transitional moment of dusk—we carry two seemingly contradictory, yet intertwined emotions. We hold grief for the closing of an era, for the softening light as it radiates horizontally on the campus landscape. We also hold optimism for a future full of possibility—known and unknown—as we complete our transition from Oakland to San Francisco.

In keeping with the physicality of the garden campus and the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement that integrate body and mind, the Oakland Campus Legacy Committee designed this ceremony to engage our collective senses—what we see as an embodied experience of remembrance and celebration.

As artists, we collaborate with our materials. And every material has a voice. Every material remembers. What are the stories of the oak trees, whose arching branches shaded us for 100 years? What are the songs of the bedrock under our feet? Our materials—and the land itself—speak to us through sensory experience and poetic metaphor. We carry these storylines with us as well.

Today we drink tea from ceramic cups thrown by multiple hands—each distinctive as the clay responded to the diversity of touch. We drink tea steeped from plants harvested from this land: hummingbird sage—a California native—grown near the retaining-wall steps and fragrant mint, calendula, and lemon verbena cultivated in the community garden. We drink the materiality of the campus and metaphorically absorb its historical narratives and cultural legacies.

So, let’s drink the tea together now, while we ring the bell for the last time on the Oakland campus.

Ten rings—one for each decade.

Remarks delivered September 24, 2022