Rebecca Haseltine

The ICA is pleased to feature drawings by San Francisco-based artist Rebecca Haseltine in its two façade windows.

Rebecca Haseltine comes from generations of family members who have lived in California dating back to the early 1800s. For Haseltine, the state’s connection to water, and its environmental effect on the population naturally became the main inspiration for the imagery in her work.

Although the state is located on the Pacific Coast bordering the largest ocean on earth, issues with water have existed throughout California’s history including environmental dangers to marine life as well as coastal communities, from toxic chemicals and pollution linked to offshore fracking, to the drought that Central California recently experienced as the driest years on record. The effects from these conditions widely become topics of concern as humans heavily rely on groundwater for uses such as drinking, irrigation, industry and livestock.

Much like myriad ways in which water and flow sustain the evolution of life forms, Haseltine’s drawings illustrate formations of passageways as they gracefully twist and turn and eventually, organically flow back into themselves. The artist uses a combination of color washes and sinuous linework to create drawings which serve as contemplation on water as a life-giving source to both the earth and the human body.

Haseltine has exhibited her work in the Bay Area and has received artist residencies from the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation and the Cummington Community of the Arts. She is a recipient of grants from the Pollack-Krasner Foundation and the Ludwig Voelstein Foundation. Based in San Francisco, Haseltine has taught in Paris, France; Amherst, Massachusetts; Prescott, Arizona; and at Sonoma State University.