As Bright as the web that is so big all over this country & world with artists who have been nourished by this beloved campus

Bright for 115 years of being held by Carnegie bricks, big windows, natural light, wood, vines, brutalist concrete

Bright for eucalyptus smell

Bright for looking out on the city from the library

Bright for jade studios

Bright for all our teachers being working artists & believing that we can be artists too

Bright for warming up next to the glass studio before biking home

Bright for a kiss on the bench by B building

Bright for life long friends

Bright for craft always, with or without the C

Bright for constant surprises

Bright for never knowing what we will walk past on our way to class

Bright for Kari & Nance & Ted, ashe, ashe, ashe

Bright for getting lost in the library of my dreams

Bright for hiding in all the corners

Bright for all the trees & bright for knowing all the names of the trees

Bright for hodgepodge buildings that match our interdisciplinary practices

Bright for a scale that felt like an embrace

Bright for late night working

Bright for ducks in the print shop

Bright for going to school in a park

Bright for tiles and stones and leaves and dirt in our pockets

Bright for a closeness and proximity to community

Bright for every view on this campus being beautiful

Bright for stacks of ceramics under staircases

Bright for weavings in the gate, flags hanging from trees & love notes in hidden corners

Bright for choosing CCA because of this campus

Bright for flying a kite out of the sculpture studios onto Clifton street

Bright for lunch on the bench across from Treadwell

Bright for the ceramics graveyard

Bright for getting lost but always being home

Bright for printing in the etching studio at wee hours of the morning

Bright for the largest stone litho library on the west coast

Bright for art in the streets

Bright for being awe of our classmates

Bright for pot brownies on the last day of class

Bright for resisting the schools desire for design, capitalism & whiteness

Bright for knowing the real roots of this school

Bright for this neighborhood

Bright for touching history on a daily basis & being transported

Bright for becoming an artist thanks to the ways this place has continued to hold us

Bright for waves and running into folks and huge smiles

Bright for our first art shows being on this campus

Bright for that small window in IPW that always held the most gorgeous sunsets

Bright for meeting our heroes, mentors, life long friends, beloveds, kin on this hill

Bright for saying “all my classes are in Oakland”

Bright for making dyes in the garden

Bright for countless potlucks, meals, meetings, moments on Macky lawn

Bright for adjunct & staff union organizing banners getting hung from Martinez

Bright for flowers growing out of concrete

Bright for the care and love that is so engrained in all these walls and walkways

Bright for spilling and making messes and leaning into them all

Bright for centering an artistic pedagogy full of exploration and discovery

Bright for an ecosystem that has imprinted us deeply

Bright for endless memories

Bright for poets and painters and furniture designers and printmakers and weavers all sharing space

Bright for the ways in which this campus, this place, this culture, all of yall have crafted and shaped and become CCAC’s greatest imagination

Bright for loving Oakland through CCA

Bright for arms full of books

Bright for dreaming together

Bright for fighting for living wages

Bright for all the tears that will get shed today because this place means so much to so many

Bright to this collective grief & mourning

Bright to making cups from clay harvested in the Oakland hills

Bright for telling future generations about the beauty, smells, feelings, generosity, memories of this campus

Bright for this campus being more that just this campus

Bright for this home

Bright for the expansive becomings of our relationship to this place

Bright for being mad and angry at the CCA administration

Bright for starting our own school in the forest, in our kitchens, in the streets and knowing that we as alumni have everything we could ever need to keeping feeding each other

Bright for the ways the bay & beyond have been shaped by this school

Bright for the ways this work will continue

Bright for felting and finding and figuring out what it is about being an artist that we must claim

Bright for teachers that are now collaborators

Bright for holding class outside, so many classes outside, under redwood trees and next to rosemary bushes

Bright for always prioritizing cultural work over capitalism

Bright for the fact that even though we won’t be able to gather on this land anymore, we will always gather and honor our experiences wherever we go

Bright for us out shining it all

Bright for caring about each other

Bright for all the years of art that has been made right here

Bright for craft crafting care crafting an abundance of approaches to the past-present-future

Bright for “what worlds world worlds” as Ursula Le Guin says

Bright for a legacy so strong it’s in our bones forever

Bright for the CCAC Oakland campus, rooted, we will love you forever and ever

Now I want to introduce Deborah Valoma, a weaver of so much in this community. She is the Chair of Textiles, Founder and Co-chair of the Oakland Campus Legacy Committee, an artist and dedicated fighter to the preservation, honoring and loving of this beloved campus. I am honored to get to work with you and learn from you constantly.