Artist Assistants and Gallery Staff

Natural Selection is a site-specific art installation made by NYC artist Katerina Lanfranco with the help of a wonderful group of talented UCSC students. They are visual arts and HAVC (History of Art and Visual Culture) students.

This group of artist assistants includes:

Dmitri Moore

Dmitri is a conceptual artist & photographer from México. He is interested in identity, subjectivity & modernity.

                                                                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                  Heidi Cramer     

Heidi is studying fine art and concentrating her studies on mixed media & sculpture at UCSC.  She finds inspiration from the natural world and focuses her creative efforts on feminine, social and environmental issues.

Jennifer Brown

From Los Angeles, a sculptress & mosaic artist working with glass; with her favorite material being broken mirrors. Her goal after graduation is to move to France.

Kristen Gautier-Downes

Kristen spent nearly ten years in New York City before returning to the the west coast to study painting at UC Santa Cruz. She is conceptually interested in environmental issues and finding ways to involve communities in the practice of art making.

Leia Delbahan

Bay Area Native, Leia is a History of Art & Visual Culture major with an interest in contemporary exhibition design. She is interested in traveling, exotic cuisine and animals.

Whitney Romberg

Whitney Romberg is a studio art major at UCSC focusing on mixed media and

photography. Her artwork is influenced by a variety of things including psychology,

adaptation, and the color blue.

Emily Meehan

Having grown up in Napa Valley, Emily is a now a Studio Art major at UCSC with a focus in painting and drawing.  She has deep love for all creative expression;  particularly apparel design, cullinary arts, and music.

Miguel Angelo Libarnes


Miguel is a 4th year student at UCSC majoring in Studio Arts. He is interested in photography and digital media.

Nick Paris

Nick is a Studio Arts student at UCSC and is focused on photography. 

Zachary Livingston

From Southern California, Zach is a History of Art and Visual Culture major at UCSC. He is an accomplished clothing designer and has gained a love for the studio arts through his involvement in Natural Selection

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Sesnon Art Gallery Staff

Gallery Director/Curator Shelby Graham

Shelby Graham

Shelby Graham has an MFA in photography and is a practicing artist exhibiting her work in the US and Japan. She has been director/curator of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UCSC since 1999 and her curatorial works include: Xiaoze Xie: Resistant Archeology, 2011, Human Conditions, 2010; Some Assembly Required: race, gender and globalization, 2009–2010; Interruptions of Hierarchies, 2008; Image as Object, 2006; Hank Willis Thomas: Signifying Blackness, 2006; and The Rhetoric of the Pose: Rethinking Hannah Wilke, 2005.



Sesnon Art Gallery Manager/Assistant Curator Mark Shunney

Mark Shunney

Mark Shunney is an artist, critic and curator.  In 2001 Mark opened and operated a contemporary art gallery in a storefront in D.U.M.B.O. Brooklyn, NY.   Since completing his graduate degree in sculpture in 1997 at RISD, Mark has maintained a studio focus in sculpture and installation art.  Starting in 1997 he maintained his studio in Brooklyn (DUMBO & Red Hook) and concluded in the South Bronx before moving it to the forest of Felton, California in 2005.