Alum Spotlights
Each quarter, the Department of Art & Art History invites one alum to share about their work and unique career trajectory in the arts.
Alexis Bard Johnson
PhD Art History, Class of 2019
Current Profession: Curator
Alexis Bard Johnson is the Curator at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. She oversees the exhibitions, programs, and art collection at one of the largest repositories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer materials in the world. Johnson earned her PhD in Art History with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University in 2019. Before joining the ONE Archives, Johnson worked at the Princeton Art Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Originally from Chicago, she now lives in Los Angeles with her wife, their son, and their two tuxedo cats.
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I graduated with my PhD in spring of 2019 and started my job at ONE Archives in fall of 2019. I was lucky in terms of the timing and the fit between my area of expertise and what ONE Archives was looking for. ONE Archives is the largest LGBTQ archive in the country and has archival collections, periodicals, and art objects. My dissertation, Turning the Page: Image and Identity in U.S. Lesbian Magazines, reflects my interest in the intersection of art history, and feminist and queer theory and history, and my career builds on that interest. The archive was a perfect fit. As one of now two employees on the curatorial side of our organization, I am responsible for day-to-day admin, planning exhibitions and programs, and overseeing the care of our art collection. Thus, my work is different every day, depending on current priorities. Occasionally, I will also work outside of the archive, conducting research for future exhibitions, seeing exhibitions, and visiting studios of local queer artists.
I would not be where I am today without my degree from Stanford and the knowledge I gained in the work of getting the PhD. I learned so much through my classes and through the oral exam process. These provided me with a grounding in art history and confidence with the material. Conducting research for my dissertation taught me the value and excitement of archival research to reveal and analyze material that has rarely, if ever, been talked about before.
Also, while in graduate school, I had the opportunity to work on several exhibitions, including Contact Warhol: Photography Without End. I worked with curators Richard Meyer and Peggy Phelan and co-researcher Jon Davies. I was involved with every aspect of the preparation for this large show and also had the opportunity to write an essay for the catalog. There is no question that being a part of this exhibition gave me the skills I needed to land the job at ONE Archives.
I love the opportunity to work with art, archives, and artists. Some of my favorite projects have paired examining parts of our collections with working alongside queer artists to recontextualize these works for the present day. I did this with Sarah-Joy Ford, an artist based in the UK. She came to the Archives to work with our lesbian pulp collection, and, together, we created an exhibition called Looking for Lesbians that probed not only the history of lesbian pulps but also the history of lesbian publishing in Los Angeles. Another favorite project was Archival Intimacies: Queer South/East Asian Diasporas. I worked with a co-curator, Aziz Sohail, and we worked with two contemporary artists, Prima Jalichandra Sakuntabhai and Vinhay Keo, to showcase their work as well as the Los Angeles Queer South Asian community organization, Satrang, to tell their 25-year history. Most recently, I worked with fellow Stanford PhD graduate Cyle Metzger on an exhibition called Robert Andy Coombs: No Content Warning. We showcased nine works by Coombs whose photographs probe the intersection of disability and gay desire.
What is the best career advice you ever received?
I think the best advice I received is follow your passion. The art world can be tough, so if you are working on something you care about personally, your motivation will be there. The other best advice I got was from my advisor Richard Meyer. He said that the questions you come to grad school asking are going to be the same questions you are asking/trying to answer for the rest of your career. You will view them from different angles and perspectives, but, when you look back, you will see how they all go together. I suppose this isn’t career advice per se, but I often return to this idea and find it helpful to put what I am currently doing into perspective with what I have accomplished and where I am heading.
So far, what has been a career highlight?
I would say one career highlight has been working with amazing interns and now an assistant. I love the mentorship aspect and working with younger folks who are interested in the field. I learn as much from them as I hope they learn from me. I have been lucky to have had several Getty Marrow interns and a curatorial assistant thanks to the Getty Emerging Professionals grant program.
What project(s) are you currently working on?
Since I arrived at ONE Archives almost five years ago, I have been working on an exhibition for the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time. For the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, our exhibition will be presented at the USC Fisher Museum and is titled Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation. The exhibition considers the importance of science fiction fandom and occult interests to U.S. LGBTQ history. Science fiction and occult communities helped pave the way for the LGBTQ movement by providing a place for individuals to meet and imagine spaces less restricted by societal norms. The exhibition focuses on Los Angeles from the late 1930s through 1960s and looks both forward and backward to follow the lives of writers, publishers, and early sci-fi enthusiasts, including progressive communities such as the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, the Ordo Templi Orientis at the Agape Lodge, and ONE Inc. Spanning fandom, aerospace research, queer history, and the occult, Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation reveals how artists, scientists, and visionary thinkers like Jim Kepner, Lisa Ben, Margaret Brundage, Morris Scott Dollens, Marjorie Cameron, Renate Druks, Curtis Harrington, and Kenneth Anger worked together to envision and create a world of their own making through films, photographs, music, illustrations, costumes, and writing. I have been working with fellow Stanford alum Kelly Filreis on the project, alongside ONE Archives director Joseph Hawkins and curatorial assistant Quetzal Arevalo. It is set to open August 22 and run through November 23. In addition to the exhibition, we have produced a catalog with the same name that is published by Inventory Press and ready for pre-order now.
Past Alum Spotlights
Carla Gutiérrez, Documentary Film MFA '04
Carla Gutiérrez
MFA in Documentary Film, Class of 2004
Profession: Documentary Filmmaker
Carla Gutiérrez is an Emmy and Eddie nominated documentary filmmaker. Her directorial debut FRIDA, about iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, premiered at Sundance 2024 where it won the prestigious Jonathan Oppenheim Award for Best Editing. FRIDA (TIME Studios, Imagine Documentaries) is an Amazon MGM Studios original. Her work as an editor includes the Oscar nominated films RBG - about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - and LA CORONA. Carla edited JULIA, about renowned chef, and television personality Julia Child (Telluride, Toronto Film Festivals, CNN Films); and PRAY AWAY (Tribeca, Telluride, Netflix Original). Her work has received awards at Sundance, Tribeca, Berlinale, Outfest, the Critic’s Choice Awards, the National Board of Review Awards and the DuPont Columbia Awards. She has been a creative adviser for the Sundance Edit Lab, and a mentor for the Firelight Producers’ Lab, The Karen Schmeer Diversity Program, and the Tribeca Film Fellows program. Carla is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and the American Cinema Editors.
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At Stanford I fell in love with documentary editing. The mental exercise required to build a tight and emotionally charged story excited me to no end. The documentary program at Stanford taught me how to keep a film focused and a narrative arc engaging. I took these lessons with me as I went on to work as an Assistant Editor under veteran editor/director Kim Roberts (also a Stanford Documentary film alum). Under Kim’s mentorship I honed my storytelling skills to tackle long feature length narratives. Over the years I continued editing documentaries. I found the craft of editing incredibly creative and fulfilling. As an editor, I take viewers through an emotional, immersive experience. I have mastered the art of building vivid scenes and revealing my characters’ most intimate thoughts, passions, and demons.
Then, about two years ago, a story that I had carried inside of me for decades pulled me in to take on the director’s role. Frida Kahlo’s art has been a constant inspiration to me since I was a visual art student at Williams College. I studied her art and biography almost obsessively. As a Latina immigrant I especially related to Frida’s relationship with the United States, where she lived for long stretches of time. She was a misunderstood “exotic” outsider who yearned desperately for her homeland, Mexico. Throughout the years later, as I matured as a woman, a mother, and an artist, I was continuously inspired by the depth of Frida’s art. I was aware there hadn’t been a documentary that had truly focused on Frida’s own voice. And I knew that she had left a very rich testimony of her life in numerous letters, her illustrated diary, essays and a few short print interviews. I was confident I had the storytelling chops to bring Frida’s voice to life. I had a strong desire to tell her story on film in a way that would feel new, intimate, and visually cinematic.
One of the main lessons I learned at Stanford was that film is a collaborative art form. The most gratifying aspect of directing my first film has been working closely with incredibly talented people and learning from them. The best decisions I made as a director was pairing up with producer Katia Maguire, supervising editor David Teague, animators Renata Galindo and Sofia Cazares, and composer Victor Hernandez Stumpfhauser.
What is the best career advice you ever received?
“Find your people.” Most films are made in collaboration, so finding creative partners who you can build a trusting creative space with is crucial, not only to make good films, but to have fun at it. If you have joy during the creative process, that joy will find its way into the film.
So far, what has been a career highlight?
RBG’s theatrical release was certainly a highlight of my editing career. The entire crew was actually surprised about how that film caught on fire. It was a theatrical hit. But the most special part of that experience was seeing multiple generations of women going to the theater together and being inspired by the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It was a true female communal empowering phenomenon.
What project(s) are you currently working on?
I’m developing a couple of new documentary projects. I love dancing socially (and alone in my kitchen) and I love working with layers of sound and music in film, so I’m itching to do a music documentary. We will see!
Suttirat Larlarb, Studio Art BA '93
Suttirat Larlarb
Studio Art BA, Class of 1993
Profession: Designer for stage & screen
What has your career path been like since graduating?
One of my professors encouraged me to apply to an artists’ retreat after graduating and it was there that I first had the experience of being immersed in a community completely dedicated to creativity, surrounded by aspiring and professional artists from all walks of life. That helped me understand that the next steps toward my intended career in the arts would also require the same kind of immersion and focus – for me, Grad school – which was followed by moving to London to where I worked as an assistant designer on various productions in theatre and film for a few years. This in turn set me up to work in both fields, and to be able to do so in quite an international sort of way, something I feel very fortunate to have managed early on in my career and that has deeply influenced my work choices and process ever since.
What does your day-to-day look like?
CONVERSATION is a key initial step into the collaborations; Reaction, in the form of visual research and design exploration, can only move forward in the kinds of projects I’m involved in once certain conversations have been initiated; it is at this stage that I get to ask questions, steep in and react to the early story-telling or world-building ideas of a director or other collaborators. I need this stage so that I can go forth with following my visual instincts; this sets up guidelines for me to engage in the next steps: the research process, and then the drawing and ideation that inevitably follows next.
RESEARCH – delving into a broad range of fields as they relate to whatever project I’m working on. This means digging into imagery, articles and analysis of contemporary art, art history, material culture and related cultural histories, literature, current events. It also requires honing in on very specific research topics when the project requires a specificity in terms of time period, region or world or profession– a mix of hunting and gathering, from near and far, physical first-hand information when possible, or visual references while scouring online digital archives, libraries, museum collections and exhibitions or other image sources.
CONCEPTING/DRAWING – I draw by hand, which is an essential part of my process – the ideas are forming and I am chewing over things while drawing – I do incorporate a digital layer when I am past a certain point, not always, but if I need to come up with a variety of options, quickly, I’ll start from my hand-drawing and adjust digitally for speedy iterations.
DESIGN EXECUTION & ESTABLISHING – Shepherding the execution of design ideas I would define as a methodically organized but simultaneously very organic, rolling process from the workroom/atelier onto the set or stage. In film and TV, a myriad of factors can change on every level imaginable, so the design isn’t yet complete until it is ‘established’ on film. Because things do often change on a dime, due to environmental, temporal, emotional, or visual factors, one must be ready to respond with expert instincts - ideas that still serve the overall story and character arcs while being precise for the moment being shot. You’re constantly operating with big picture and fine cellular detail all at once. This rubik’s cube of creating a visual story from seemingly disparate, out-of-sequence elements, is constantly being worked along the path of completing a project.
How did your time at Stanford help prepare you for your current career?
Being a student in fine arts within a university that also offered strong courses and experiences in other arts, humanities and sciences taught me to value and really embrace the process of synthesis. At Stanford I was able to integrate working in other fields, such as VTSS and Drama, together with my major in studio art. I was, in effect, laying the foundation for my current design process. I have never worked on a single project that didn’t require me to dive into a myriad of attending other subjects in the quest for inspiration, or for shoring up a niche visual argument.
What do you enjoy about your current profession?
Constant learning, constant discovery (in a personal sense). Every project starts from scratch, new stories, new worlds, new challenges, and therefore new/untested methods of achieving these new goals.
What is the best career advice you ever received?
Early on in my career as an assistant designer, my natural state of workaholism was in full-effect - I never felt I could leave the studio at the end of the regular workday until I reached a natural stopping point to the task at hand; I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave things to the next day. While working in the studio of a renowned and influential British designer, one time he had left for the evening and once again asked me to lock up the studio – only to return a little later to order me to stop for the day, saying “No children’s lives are at stake”. It’s an obvious idea – but coming from him, one of my heroes and someone who was at the top of the field, and to run the studio in such a humane way with that reminder – that kindness and balance were just as important as the work – this was a major lesson learned and emulated.
So far, what has been a career highlight?
London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremonies – being part of a skeletal creative team to create the story and design the ceremony, and to get to apply myself in designing for both screen and live performance simultaneously in this massive way, with some of the best minds in the design ecosystem all working together to figure out how to execute dream-like ideas and make them happen – including one of my favorite designs of my career: the official protocol moment in which there is an a release of doves of peace, which I had interpreted in the language of cycling and cyclists.
What project(s) are you currently working on?
I can’t really say much more than that I’m currently working on a new TV Series and will be consulting on character designs for an upcoming video game.
