5 young artists to watch

With half a dozen art schools within a 100-mile radius, the Bay Area supports an astonishing range of young talent. These five artists kept coming up during our talks with collectors and dealers.

Misako Inaoka

Installation and multimedia sculptures MFA 2006, Mills College In her September 2007 show at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery, Inaoka presented a veritable natural history museum of small, sculpted, disturbingly mutated yet beautiful bird-creatures. The assemblage, which included a corner and walls festooned with artifi cial vegetation, felt otherworldly but perfectly calibrated for our troubled ecological times.

Kristina Lewis

Mixed-media sculpture and installation MFA 2003, California College of the Arts Her exhibition at Queen’s Nails Annex this past autumn was an eye-opener. Using vision and a humble detachment not often seen in the art world these days, Lewis, a former design student, let mundane household items—zippers, sewing needles, copper scouring sponges, men’s shirts—proliferate freely into their own surprisingly organic forms.

Reed Danzinger

Painting MFA 1995, San Francisco Art Institute Shown most recently in April 2007 at the Todd Hosfelt Gallery, Danziger’s almost baroque work— colorful, intricate patterns in which she layers cells atop feathery or jewel-like shapes—comes alive at the place where science and art cross paths.

Paul Hayes

Illustration and installation art BFA 1999, Rhode Island School of Design In the last several years, Hayes has earned increas ing attention for his enormous kinetic sculptures of origami-like folded paper. Both fl eeting and deeply felt, they rain down from above, making one think of fl ocks of birds, snowstorms, and billowing leaves. His installation in an exhibition on Alcatraz last summer evoked a mythic winged bird and was a huge hit.

Emily Prince

Drawings and installation art BFA 2004, Stanford; MFA in progress at UC Berkeley At 26, Prince was one of the youngest artists shown at the Venice Biennale last summer. In the fall, her epic assemblage of three-by-four-inch hand-drawn likenesses of all the American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan sold to London’s Saatchi Collection for a price in the six figures.