Thank you Sean for your beautiful and poignant words. That was Sean Nash, Assistant Professor in the Critical Ethnic Studies Program. He is an artist, educator, linguist, writer, and filmmaker and a member of the Oakland Campus Legacy Committee.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am Lisa Jonas and I am the Director of Alumni Engagement here at CCA. I’m also an artist, an alum of the college, and I co-chair the Oakland Campus Legacy Committee with Deborah and Annemarie.

I want to close our program by not only thanking all of our wonderful speakers, but also thanking everyone here for coming to be with us today to collectively show our gratitude to our beloved garden campus. Each of you are here because this place has had an impact on you, made an impression in your life, your studio, your classroom. And you have had an impact on this place, on our history and legacy, and on this community that will endure as we move across the Bay.

When you leave the campus today, we have some gifts for you. We have clippings from the large jade plant that grows in the garden behind you, as well as some soil from the gardens so that you may take home part of the campus and root it in your own gardens.

We also have some handmade paper, made by students in Jaime Knight’s Printmedia class from abaca, embedded with iris and palm leaves harvested from the campus gardens. The paper is embossed with one of the many sun logos that we discovered scattered throughout the college’s archives over the decades, likely referring to the sunlit nature of the campus.

But before you go, I would like to welcome you all now to a reception at the Oliver Art Center for the culminating exhibition of the Legacy Print Project, which celebrates the campus’s 100 year history. Please join us for a drink and some food, and at about 5:30 we will have some short remarks in the gallery about the exhibition and project.

Remarks delivered September 24, 2022