Michele Pred was born in San Francisco in 1964. She received her B.F.A. with distinction from the California College of Arts and Crafts and a certificate in French Language from University of Sorbonne, France. She also attended San Francisco State University, California as a graduate student.

Pred incorporates aspects of contemporary culture and politics in her art. She comes from a family of scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and geopolitical educators, thus her own predilection toward work that comments on contemporary society, while plumbing what might be considered its cultural artifacts. She uses these artifacts, such as a range of objects now forbidden for travel, for her palette and sculptural material.

Pred’s preference for unconventional materials has been a constant, materials asso- ciated with memory of time, place, and events. Pred says of her raw materials, ”the diverse array of assembled ‘dangerous’ items may be regarded as the cultural residue of a particular moment in history…each small tool, like each of us, bears some weight of the changed world.”

Pred’s Berkeley studio is filled with boxes in which she sorts her materials. Scissors are sorted by color of handles, knives are placed together, and clippers with images are in one box, silver clippers in another. The raw materials, the artist’s palette, await her conceptual approach.

Pred has expanded her vocabulary of image, form, and materials, revealing the strength of her conceptual underpinnings, the thoroughness of her research, and the range of her sculptural expression.