Deirdre Visser

Deirdre is an independent curator, writer, and artist based in San Francisco’s Mission District. Longtime Curator of The Arts at CIIS and publisher of CHROMA books, and more recently visiting curator at Mills College (now Mills College at Northeastern University), she strives to promote pluralism in the arts, to support artists in the creation of new work, and to foster dynamic and critical dialogues within and across communities.

Committed to community-based practices as an artist as well as a curator, Deirdre spent more than a decade working collaboratively with the Skywatchers Ensemble, and the brilliant team of artist facilitators in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood.

Deirdre harbors a not-so-secret love of woodworking. First entering the shop as an undergraduate, she’s been thinking, making, and writing about wood since. During the 2015-2016 academic year she took a sabbatical to attend what was then College of the Redwoods (now Krenov School) Fine Furniture program in Fort Bragg, CA. That experience was catalyst for sustained research into labor history and contemporary makers that became Making a Seat at the Table, the largest ever exhibition of women and gender non-conforming makers in wood. The show opened fall 2019 at the Center for Art in Wood (now Museum for Art in Wood) in Philadelphia, co-curated with Laura Mays. In 2022 Routledge published Deirdre’s first book, Joinery, Joists and Gender: a History of Woodworking for the 21st Century, which emerged from the same ongoing research process.

Today she teaches woodworking at the Randall Museum in San Francisco and is working on a new exhibition collaboration with the Museum for Art in Wood.

BOARD SERVICE and VOLUNTEER WORK:

• President of the Board, La Pocha Nostra, San Francisco, CA
• Board Secretary, ABD Productions, San Francisco, CA (2013-2023)
• Big Sister, 2009-2020, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area
2017 Inspirational Match Honoree