West Side Stories – the Informal School of Social Practiceat the Department of Art & Art History of Leland Stanford Jr. University
West Side Stories – the Informal School of Social Practice at the Department of Art & Art History of Leland Stanford Jr. University

Short study on the selected practices of socially engaged artists, graduates of the Stanford University, living/working in the greater Bay Area, California, USA

Summary/Abstract: The article synthetically brings closer the silhouettes of artists from the West Coast, touchingupon the issue of society in their works. The key chosen for the selection of the describedprojects id the authorship, each time belonging to the graduate of the same university programme of higher education. The text concentrates on methods of work, the specific sensitivity and kinds of thinking and expressing on topics of importance for the people in this particular environment. The firstly introduced historical, intellectual, economic and geopoliticalcontext, having a fundamental influence on the functioning of the artistic scene and academiclife of the San Francisco Bay, serves to familiarize with the characteristic of the region, andthus allows for a closer look at the ways of working on the selected issues. The author, on theexamples of Stephanie Syjuco, Amy Balkin and Amy Franceschini, portrays the wide spectrumof creative activity, which he arbitrarily dubbed the Informal School of Social Practices of theStanford University’s Art Department in Palo Alto, California.Key words: social practice, social practice art, Stanford University,

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