SFMOMA’s Art of California galleries are currently displaying the works of the 2024 SECA Art Awards artists. Since 1967, the SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) Art Award has honored Bay Area artists whose work has not, at the time of nomination, been accorded substantial recognition from a major institution. Recipients of the SECA Art Award are chosen by SFMOMA curators after a series of studio visits attended by SECA members. Each of the award recipients has a gallery dedicated to their work.
Rose D’Amato
Pinstriper and painter Rose D’Amato was born in Whittier, Calif., and lives and works in San Francisco. D’Amato is a second-generation sign maker, and she is drawn to decorative folk arts, hand lettering, and imagery inspired by her upbringing. Her family gave her direct experience with pinstriping and lettering on lowriders. Sign painting as an art form is often overlooked, and D’Amato’s art celebrates this form and the traditions of lowrider culture. As an artist, D’Amato is motivated by her intention to learn and implement techniques of handmade modes of production. After earning a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016, she apprenticed and worked at New Bohemia Signs, and continues to work independently as a painter. D’Amato has been an adjunct professor of hand lettering at California College of the Arts since 2019.
Angela Hennessy
Born in 1971 in Monterey, Calif., Angela Hennessy is an Oakland-based artist who constructs sculptures and installations highlighting the gestures of domestic labor — washing, wrapping, stitching, knotting, brushing, and braiding. She holds an MFA from California College of the Arts, where she teaches courses on contemporary narratives of death. For many years, Hennessy served as a hospice volunteer and a death doula, working with families on home funerals, death vigils, and grief rituals. All of these experiences find their home in the storytelling behind her work. The braiding of human hair draws upon mourning practices that mediate the connection between the living and the dead. As a survivor of gun violence, Hennessy has faced her own mortality and has assisted others in facing theirs. Wake Work from 2024 consists of synthetic hair, chenille yarn, and 24-karat and imitation gold leaf. The weavings reference European and African traditions of collecting and offering hair as a relic of the body or sign of grief. In death, hair is used to preserve a part of the physical body that has departed.
Rupy C. Tut was born in Chandigarh, India in 1985 and now lives in San Francisco. Her paintings preserve and reimagine the tradition of Indian painting through depictions of women, landscapes, and ancestral figures. Her process is grounded in grinding and mixing mineral pigments and applying layers of colors to hemp paper or linen canvas using fine-tip brushes. Tut’s art is based on her calligraphy and traditional Indian painting studies. Her histories touch on historical and contemporary displacement narratives around identity, belonging, and gender. As a descendant of refugees and a first-generation immigrant, Tut’s family narrative of movement, loss, and resilience is a foundation of her creative process. Eastern imagery and diasporic identity inform works like A River of Dreams (2024), consisting of handmade pigments on linen. A female figure acts as a Dream Protector, a presence who watches over humanity during the dream state. Similarly, in The Dreamweaver (2024), made with pigments on hemp paper, a figure lies fused to the ground, a body made of flowers, lying still in a frenzied world.
The SECA Art Award recipients’ exhibition is on display through May 26, and admission is free to the public in celebration of the Bay Area Arts Community.
