Ben Wood is a British-born visual artist based in San Francisco. He is a recipient of the California Governors Award for Historic Preservation for his work to preserve the Mission Dolores mural. His work has been shown internationally, at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City, the London Jewish Museum, and the East West Center in Hololulu. Since 2004 he has created large scale video projections on Coit Tower, Dewey Monument, and other buildings in San Francisco.
He has a BFA in Digital Media from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters Degree in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ben Wood is a recipient of the 0-1 Visa for Artists of Extraordinary Ability. He has taught at California State University Monterey Bay, Melo College and West Valley College. He is currently a Visiting Faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute.
His talent for combining new media technology with historical subject matter not only provides faces and voices to those individuals whose histories have been forgotten but offers an avenue for public dialogue and the chance for people to reflect on their past in order to teach and propose something better for the future.
Mr. Wood is one of the best of a new generation of artists with a distinctive and original approach to connecting art to the people and encourages people to reassess a past to impel awaking and consciousness for the present. His career-long interest remains the hidden histories that lie dormant behind buildings in our community. His innovation rests in his ability to highlight those hidden histories with the tools of contemporary technology. His extraordinary artistry and dedication to understanding history through new mediums will help us re-see the relevance of these important questions.
