Mission
To uncover the practices and stories of artists while simultaneously revealing the interconnected nature of how their work has inspired our culture and everyday life.
Meet Our Team
Alan Chin
Alan Chin (b. 1987 Berkeley, CA) lives and maintains a studio in Hawthorne, California. He attended Academie Minerva in the Netherlands and earned his BFA in ceramics and painting from California College of the Arts in 2011. For six years, Chin was the studio assistant to the American artist Raymond Saunders. Alan’s work has been shown in cities around the world and at institutions such as the Berkeley Art Museum, California College of the Arts, The Kaneko, Richmond Art Center, Sam and Alfreda Maloof Museum, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. In 2017, Alan was selected to represent the USA at the first International Ecological Sculpture Biennale in Wuhan, China.
Tom Franco
Tom has been the Director of the Firehouse Art Collective since 2004. Firehouse is a progression of four community art spaces providing art studios, communal housing, and event spaces in the East Bay of the Bay Area in California (namely the Cities of Berkeley and Oakland). The Firehouse’s mission is to empower the practice of artistry for the benefit of personal and community well-being.
In addition to his main profession as a fine art sculptor - using found objects, mixed media and paint - Tom works with his wife and film producer Iris Torres as a partner in Firehouse Films. Firehouse Films develops and creates movies, short content, television series, and documentaries.
Iris Torres
Iris is a native of Guadalajara, Mexico, where she also attended college and began her career. She majored in Broadcasting Communications and subsequently worked in journalism, radio, and Television.
In 2005 she moved to Vancouver, BC to pursue a career in film production. She was an Assistant Director for films like “Twilight” and “Planet of the Apes” before transitioning to producing during her 5 year stint in Vancouver.
In 2010 she became a producer for James Franco's production company Rabbit Bandini Productions. While with Bandini, she worked on various productions from commercials and series to feature films. Her 2013 debut feature “Interior Leather Bar” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has been shown at numerous Film Festivals around the world.
Feature film producing credits for films directed by James Franco include “Bukowski” (2013) and “In Dubious Battle” (2016) starring Selena Gomez, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris and Bryan Cranston (which premiered at Venice Film Festival). Other credits include “Goat” (2016), “King Cobra” (2016), “Don Quixote” (Palm Springs Film Festival 2015), and “Memoria” (2013). Iris collaborated with Sony TV and Lifetime on “Mother, May I sleep with Danger?” starring Tori Spelling, which led to a second production with Lifetime of “High School Lover” in 2016.
In 2015 Iris partnered with Tom Franco to create Firehouse Films, a company that works on features, shorts, series, and documentaries. Additionally, in 2018 Iris Torres became the co-owner of FutureRetro Productions alongside partner Elissa Shay.
Mattias Russo-Larrson
Mattias received his BFA in Design & Media Arts from UCLA and has formed his approach to design with a deep understanding of its dialectical nature. He is empowered by a scrupulous attention to detail and an effective understanding of the big picture. He cares deeply about the persuasion of an aesthetic but equally as such for the practical performance of a design. He understands that design is a system that is often simple in principle but complex in execution.
Patrick Sampson
Patrick is the Executive Director of the Cogostar Foundation.
Prior to co-founding the Cogostar Foundation with Alan Chin, Patrick was a Registered Investment Advisor with Sampson Investment Management. There he assisted with the management of $60mm of client investments and was tasked with co-managing client financial planning services.
Sampson was drawn to the power of philanthropy while at Sampson Investment Management. There he recognized the ever-increasing importance which philanthropy will play in future generations' ability to provide support to our society’s most important services and programs to promote a more just world.
Patrick is also the Chief Executive Officer at Cogeo (www.cogeo.us), a firm that specializes in organizational development and funding growth to 501c3 nonprofit organizations.
An avid soccer player and fan, Patrick was a collegiate division 1 soccer goalkeeper and team captain for Loyola Marymount University.
Sakura Heffron
Sakura Heffron is an architect, designer, and model currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. She Received her Bachelor of Architecture from UCLA and formerly worked for Frank Gehry Partners. She is now the founder and creator of her own design company.
Ryan Cave
Ryan is a Vice President and Secretary of the Board of the Cogostar Foundation. While relatively new to philanthropy, Ryan brings over 10 years of sales, marketing, and business strategy experience to the team. Having started in door-to-door sales, Ryan worked his way from hawking coupon books at gas stations to developing go-to-market strategies for innovative businesses around the country. Ryan is inspired by the opportunity strategic philanthropy has to solve the world’s biggest problems and was drawn to Cogostar’s unique approach to the market. He is the Business Development Manager of SecurEdge and the Principal Consultant for the boutique strategy firm Rico, Ink. At any given point, You can always find Ryan preferring to be outside, whether it’s backpacking a remote trail on a mountain, weeding the garden, or enjoying a rainy jaunt about town.
Nikki Segal
Nikki is a 3rd generation native Angelino with a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California in Cinematic Arts. Continuing on with the city’s legacy, she works in various costume and art departments in film and TV. Outside of work, she writes and performs music, having previously played the major festival circuit throughout North America. Her passions lie in working with others and building things that bring comfort. Her current focus and passion is restoring a historical home in Los Angeles built in 1929.
Alex McAdoo
Alex McAdoo is a painter from Bellingham, Washington and is currently living and working in Los Angeles, CA. He received his BFA in Graphic Design from University of Utah in 2013 and his MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019.
Shawn Hibma-Cronan
Shawn HibmaCronan creates large scale artworks using various traditional and state-of-the-art craft techniques. He has exhibited work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Tokyo, Japan) the Oakland Museum of California Sculpture Court, the San Francisco International Airport, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Penland Gallery in North Carolina. He previously was an artist in residence at the Museum of Art and Design in NYC, the Autodesk Pier 9 Workshop, and the Oakland Museum of California (among others).
HibmaCronan is currently working on a large public art commission for a development in Oakland’s Auto Row Neighborhood.HibmaCronan is on the Berkeley Art Center’s Board of Directors and the California College of the Arts Alumni Campus Planning Committee helping with the future SF campus unification effort. He has been an ongoing member of CCA’s Alumni Mentorship Program and has hosted ongoing technique-based apprenticeships for recent grads in his studio. He has taught Woodworking at the Crucible school in Oakland and Steel Sculpture at the Penland school of crafts in North Carolina.
Nick McAdoo
Nick grew up in San Francisco and is now an architect living and working in Los Angeles. His current employment is as a Project Manager at Michael Maltzan Architecture. He has worked on a variety of projects at various scales, including a single family addition to a house, a 750-seat musical performance theater, and a million-square-foot mixed-use development. He enjoys spending his free time outdoors - hiking, camping, or tending to his chickens. Nick received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and his Masters in Architecture from Yale University.
Episode 1: Stan Dann Teaser
Episode 1 will highlight the life and work of Stan Dann (1931-2013). Stan’s story is one of a juxtaposition of his younger life as a working professional and his found passion and discovery later in life as an artist.
After briefly working as an Art Director at McCann-Erickson advertising agency in San Francisco, Dann formed a boutique design group, 222, with several partners in the 1960s. To call attention to the new firm, he hand-carved a redwood sign. Architects and design firms in the surrounding North Beach area took immediate notice. As the demand for his skills grew, he quit the advertising business and opened the Stan Dann Studio in Oakland, California.
For over thirty years, Stan Dann’s world exploded with sophisticated images of everyday life, landscapes, shoes, machinery, and even dimensional doodles. Wildly prolific, his work was exhibited often in California and the Bay Area, and his solo exhibitions included such legendary venues as the Allan Stone Gallery, New York. His work is in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA) and his wall sculpture was featured in "Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design" at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY).
The Unnoticed Foundation is a project of the Cogostar Foundation (EIN 46-3270072).