29 Notable alumni of
Otis College of Art and Design
Updated:
The Otis College of Art and Design is 1266th in the world, 447th in North America, and 419th in the United States by aggregated alumni prominence. Below is the list of 29 notable alumni from the Otis College of Art and Design sorted by their wiki pages popularity. The directory includes famous graduates and former students along with research and academic staff.
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Evan Spiegel
- Occupations
- computer scientistentrepreneur
- Biography
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Evan Thomas Spiegel is an American and French businessman who is the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. As of August 2025, he had a personal net worth of $2.5 billion according to Forbes.
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Damon Wayans Jr
- Occupations
- screenwritertelevision actorvoice actoractorfilm actor
- Biography
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Damon Kyle Wayans Jr. is an American actor and comedian. He starred as Brad Williams in the ABC sitcom Happy Endings, for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2012, and as Coach in the Fox sitcom New Girl. In 2014, he starred in the comedy film Let's Be Cops, and provided the voice of Wasabi in Big Hero 6.
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Kim Gordon
- Occupations
- guitaristart criticexhibition curatorvisual artistsongwriter
- Biography
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Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, singer and songwriter best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating from Los Angeles's Otis College of Art and Design, she moved to New York City to begin an art career. There, she formed Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore in 1981. She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released a total of six albums on independent labels before the end of the 1980s. It then released nine studio albums on the label DGC Records, beginning with Goo in 1990. Gordon was also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993.
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Edith Head
- Occupations
- costume designerfashion designer
- Biography
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Edith Claire Head was an American film costume designer. She received a record 35 nominations for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design and won a record eight times, making her both the most honored and most nominated woman in the Academy's history. She also holds the Guinness World Record for most-credited costume designer in film history, with a total of 432 credits.
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Hana Mae Lee
- Occupations
- make-up artistmodeltelevision actorcomedianfilm actor
- Biography
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Hana Mae Lee is an American actress, model, comedian, and fashion designer. She portrayed Lilly Onakurama in the musical comedy Pitch Perfect film series (2012–2017) and Sonya in the horror comedy film The Babysitter (2017) and its 2020 sequel. Lee also owns the fashion line Hanamahn.
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Tyrus Wong
- Occupations
- painterconcept artistlithographerbackground artistdesigner
- Biography
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Tyrus Wong was a Chinese-born American artist. He was a painter, animator, calligrapher, muralist, ceramicist, lithographer and kite maker, as well as a set designer and storyboard artist. One of the most-influential and celebrated Asian-American artists of the 20th century, Wong was also a film production illustrator, who worked for Disney and Warner Bros. He was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as a greeting card artist for Hallmark Cards. Most notably, he was the lead production illustrator on Disney's 1942 film Bambi, taking inspiration from Song dynasty art. He also served in the art department of many films, either as a set designer or storyboard artist, such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Rio Bravo (1959), The Music Man (1962), PT 109 (1963), The Great Race (1965), Harper (1966), The Green Berets (1968), and The Wild Bunch (1969), among others.
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Michael Gira
- Occupations
- singerpoetwritercomposerrecord producer
- Biography
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Michael Rolfe Gira is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. Now based in New Mexico, he founded the band Swans, in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York City in the 1980s at the height of the no wave movement. He is also the founder of Young God Records and previously fronted Angels of Light.
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Bob Clampett
- Occupations
- composerpuppeteeractordirectorwriter
- Biography
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Robert Emerson Clampett Sr. was an American animator, director, producer and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros. as well as the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil. He was born and raised not far from Hollywood and, early in life, showed an interest in animation and puppetry. After dropping out of high school in 1931, he joined the team at Harman-Ising Productions and began working on the studio's newest short subjects, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
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Marisol Escobar
- Occupations
- painterdesignerassemblage artistsculptordraftsperson
- Biography
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Marisol Escobar, otherwise known simply as Marisol, was a Venezuelan-American sculptor born in Paris, who lived and worked in New York City. She became world-famous in the mid-1960s, but lapsed into relative obscurity within a decade. She continued to create her artworks and returned to the limelight in the early 21st century, capped by a 2014 major retrospective show organized by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The largest retrospective of Marisol's artwork, Marisol: A Retrospective has been organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and curated by Cathleen Chaffee for these museums: the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (October 7, 2023 – January 21, 2024), the Toledo Museum of Art (March–June 2024), the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (July 12, 2024 - January 6, 2025), and the Dallas Museum of Art (February 23–July 6, 2025). Although it was supplemented by loans from international museums and private collections, the exhibition drew largely on artwork and archival material Marisol left to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum as a bequest upon her death.
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Robert Irwin
- Occupations
- scenographerpainterinstallation artistartist
- Biography
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Robert Walter Irwin was an American installation artist who explored perception and the conditional in art, often through site-specific, architectural interventions that alter the physical, sensory and temporal experience of space.
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Dean Tavoularis
- Occupations
- production designerpainterscenographer
- Biography
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Dean Tavoularis is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart and Bonnie and Clyde.
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David Hammons
- Occupations
- architectural draftspersonvideo artistdraftspersoninstallation artistconceptual artist
- Biography
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David Hammons is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s.
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Alison Saar
- Enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design
- In 1981 graduated with Master of Fine Arts in fine art
- Occupations
- painterprintmakerinstallation artistsculptorillustrator
- Biography
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Alison Saar is a Los Angeles-based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion." Saar credits her parents, collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar (née Brown) and painter and art conservator Richard Saar, for her early exposure to art and to these metaphysical and spiritual practices. Saar followed in her parents footsteps along with her sisters, Lezley Saar and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh who are also artists. Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City. She has received achievement awards from institutions including the New York City Art Commission as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
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Carlos Almaraz
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Carlos D. Almaraz was a Mexican-American artist and a pioneer of the Chicano art movement. He was one of the founder of the Centro de Arte Público (1977–1979), a Chicano/Chicana arts organization in Highland Park, Los Angeles.
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Masami Teraoka
- Occupations
- painterprintmakerukiyo-e artist
- Biography
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Masami Teraoka is an American contemporary artist. His work includes Ukiyo-e-influenced woodcut prints and paintings in watercolor and oil. He is known for work that merges traditional Edo-style aesthetics with icons of American culture.
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Michael Lin
- Enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design
- Studied in 1990
- Occupations
- video artistpaintertextile artist
- Biography
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Michael Lin is a Taiwanese artist who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium and Taipei, Taiwan. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, and grew up in Taiwan and the United States. Lin is considered a leading Taiwanese contemporary painter and conceptual artist.
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Billy Al Bengston
- Occupations
- ceramicistpainterlithographersculptor
- Biography
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Billy Al Bengston was an American visual artist and sculptor who lived and worked in Venice, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii. Bengston was probably best known for work he created that reflected California's "Kustom" car and motorcycle culture. He pioneered the use of sprayed layers of automobile lacquer in fine art and often used colors that were psychedelic and shapes that were mandala-like. ARTnews referred to Bengston as a "giant of Los Angeles's postwar art scene."
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Dorothy Jeakins
- Occupations
- costume designeractor
- Biography
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Dorothy Jeakins was an American costume designer.
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Zhenya Gershman
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Zhenya Gershman is an American painter and portraitist. She is known for her "dramatic monumental portraits of iconic public and private figures" and interest in art history.
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Judithe Hernández
- Enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design
- 1969-1979 graduated with Master of Fine Arts
- Occupations
- educatorpainter
- Biography
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Judithe Hernández is a Mexican-American artist and educator, she is known as a muralist, pastel artist, and painter. She is a pioneer of the Chicano art movement and a former member of the art collective Los Four. She is based in Los Angeles, California and previously lived in Chicago.
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Mark Bryan
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Mark Bryan is an American painter. Bryan's work travels in two distinct directions. Satirical works of social, political and religious comment and works which take an inward track to the imagination and subconscious. Humor and parody play a large role in many of his paintings. Style elements and influences in his work include classical painting, illustration, Romanticism, Surrealism and Pop Surrealism.
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Khoi Vinh
- Occupations
- graphic designerdesigner
- Biography
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Khoi Vinh is a graphic designer, blogger, and former Design Director for The New York Times, where he worked from January 2006 until July 2010. Fast Company named Vinh one of "The 50 Most Influential Designers in America" in September 2011.
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Darren Waterston
- Years
- 1965-.. (age 61)
- Occupations
- painter
- Biography
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Darren Waterston is an American artist who is mainly known for his ethereal paintings.
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Mayuka Thaïs
- Years
- 1979-.. (age 47)
- Occupations
- singerfilm directorsinger-songwriter
- Biography
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Mayuka Thaïs is an American singer-songwriter, artist, voice over artist, art educator, and edutainer. She is known for her role as a bilingual singer and actress on the popular children's program Shimajiro.
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Alonzo Davis
- Enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design
- In 1971 graduated with Bachelor of Fine Arts
- In 1973 graduated with Master of Fine Arts
- Occupations
- academicartist
- Biography
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Alonzo Joseph Davis Jr. was an American visual artist, gallerist, and educator. He is known for co-founding the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles with his brother Dale Brockman Davis. In reaction to a perceived lack of coverage of black art, Davis became an advocate for black art and artists. His best-known work is the Eye on '84 mural he painted to commemorate the 1984 Summer Olympics.
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Beulah Woodard
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Beulah Ecton Woodard was an American sculptor and painter based in California. Woodard was the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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Patrick Ching
- Occupations
- illustrator
- Biography
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Patrick Ching is a Hawaiian conservationist and wildlife artist, ornithological illustrator, and author of children's books.
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Ruth G. Waddy
- Enrolled in the Otis College of Art and Design
- Studied in 1965-1965
- Occupations
- activistartistprintmaker
- Biography
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Ruth G. Waddy was an American artist, printmaker, activist, and editor, based in Los Angeles, California.
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Ada Mae Sharpless
- Occupations
- sculptor
- Biography
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Ada May Sharpless was an American artist and sculptor.
