Dr. Jerry Hiura Next Gen Visual Artist Award

Dave Werner is the Lead Designer for the Emmy award winning Character Animator team at Adobe in California. His past projects include the Okaydave website, indie video game Atmosphir, and Extraneous Lyrics video series. He posts regular cartoons, music videos, and tutorials to his Okay Samurai YouTube channel. Dave's work has been featured by Wired, The Verge, Entertainment Weekly, TechCrunch, Kotaku, College Humor, and Sesame Street. 

Binh Danh reimagines traditional photographic techniques to explore history, identity, and place. He is known for his contemporary daguerreotypes of national parks, which create reflective images that invite viewers to see themselves within the American landscape. His work is held in major collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, SFMOMA, the de Young, the Asian Art Museum, and the San José Museum of Art. In 2023, his book Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging became the first recipient of the Minami Book Grant for Asian American Visual Artists from Radius Books. He is also an associate professor of art at San José State University. 

binhdanh.com • Instagram: binhtdanh
Binh Danh: The Enigma of Belonging ($65)

Imin Yeh is a project-based artist working with sculpture, installation, artist publication and multiples, and participatory projects. Her diverse practice is unified by both the social history and the materiality of paper and print.  

She has received support from the Heinz Foundation, Women Studio Workshop, and the Fleishhacker Foundation. She is the 2026 Contemporary Art Fellow at the University of Alabama. Recent Exhibitions include, a solo exhibition at the University of Alabama, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and Grizzly Grizzly (PA), and group exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), MOCA Jacksonville (FL) and Chautauqua Institute (NY). Imin’s work is collected at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Bainbridge Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art. Her artist publications are collected in dozens of academic and institutional libraries, including Stanford Library, Harvard Library, Rochester Institute of Technology and VCU Library.

She holds a BA- Art History and BS Art from the University of Wisconsin Madison, a MFA from California College of the Arts. She is an Associate Professor and Director of Foundational Studies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Joyce, Construct / Deconstruct, 2026
9 x 60 inches

Artist’s Statement

Construct / Deconstruct depicts the recurring process of decomposition and restoration that occurs during artistic creation. I often start pieces unsure of what the exact end product will become, but with enough experimentation I discover interesting images and patterns that guide my creative process. In having faith in my own ability to see art in both the mundane and unconventional, I encourage myself to explore mediums and techniques that I find unfamiliar.

For this piece, I wanted to experiment with the unique properties of printmaking. I referenced Yosemite’s unique rock formations to create a printmaking board and inked images onto sheets of paper until the board fell apart. I placed the prints in a sequence that portrays the continued disintegration of many elements of the original image, eventually leading to the emergence of new shapes and forms. The second image shows the printmaking board, which I painted over with sheer layers of white acrylic paint.

I believe that the process of artmaking holds a certain value comparable to the piece itself, and by trusting myself to create meaningful works of art from continued experimentation and exploration, I hope to lead by example and inspire my peers to do the same.

Lily, Optimized Machine, 2026
23 x 18 1/2 inches

Artist’s Statement

In my painting I am an optimized machine. The way I create art has been carefully built over the years. My process is always planned, my methods thought out days before, and my approach pondered on and analyzed. As an optimized machine I overthink, things must go perfectly, no mark can be wrong. But an optimized machines leaves no room for experimentation, no room for growth. So for the first time in a long time, I took a step away from my comfort zone of pencils and paper, and plunged into the world of painting. I felt apprehension and hesitation at the thought of abandoning my machine, which I was reliant upon in the art making process. These feelings are what I hope to convey in this piece. This piece represents the question I have begun asking myself: Should I continue adding on to my ever-growing machine, or should I let my goal of perfection go, and learn to trust the process?

Lauren, Cheese Aisle, 2026
8.5 x 6.5 inches

Artist’s Statement

I made with painting with watercolor and ink. I wanted to make my painting because I wanted to depict the art inside mundane places such as grocery stores. This connects to the theme Trust the Process because it took many weeks to add all of the details in the piece, and my attention to detail reflects my enjoyment of precise things such as chemistry. I hope this piece will inspire others to create, because of it's focus on rudimentary shapes and simple coloring.

The San José Museum of Art Dr. Jerry Hiura Next Gen Visual Artist Award was created in honor of former Trustee Dr. Jerry Hiura, a gifted individual dedicated to service, community, and the arts. A passionate advocate for multi-cultural arts, he served as chair of San José's Arts Commission and as president of the Arts Council of Silicon Valley. Dr. Jerry’s commitment towards advancing the local arts community in San José also included co-founding the Contemporary Asian Theater Scene (CATS), the Japantown Community Congress of San José (JCCsj) and establishing the Three Japantown Landmarks Public Arts projects and Ikoinoba, quiet resting places, throughout Japantown. As a board member for Chopsticks Alley Art, he furthered the creative dialogue between Japanese and Vietnamese American art and history. Dr. Jerry’s countless contributions were recognized Statewide when he was appointed in 2002 by Governor Gray Davis to the California State Arts Council, where he served as vice-chair.

Dr. Jerry and his wife, fellow Trustee Lucia Cha, joined the Board of Trustees of the San José Museum of Art (SJMA) in 2017. He served on the Executive Committee and was a key partner in SJMA’s engagement initiatives with San José’s Vietnamese community.

As a dedicated artist himself, Dr. Jerry explored his creative endeavors in expressive forms. His paintings and drawings utilized a variety of media, including oils, watercolor, and acrylics – and ranged from whimsical topics to portraiture. As an author, poet, and editor, he published The Hawk's Well in 1986, a unique collection of Japanese American art and literature.