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Up Art Activations at the Preserve Dani Dodge Los Angeles artist Dani Dodge uses unexpected sculptural materials to alter spaces. Her experience as an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq changed her forever. Since then, she has created art and installations that change and challenge expectations. From brightening a black and white snowy forest in Ireland with luminescent tree stumps to turning a Los Angeles gallery into a gantlet of rotating car parts made from baby blankets, her works play with surrealist ideas using innovative forms. The installations merge the rational and the dream state. They often require interaction with the viewers. Although she creates individual works for group shows, she is best known for her installations that confront emotion. In the past she has invited participants to share burdens, joys and sins. Her work often incorporates interactive elements that require participants to reveal personal truths, and in doing so recognize our shared human frailties. She has burned people’s fears, thrown people’s burdens into the ocean and typed people’s secrets for the purpose of posting them publicly. Dodge created site-specific installations at the Coos Art Museum, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, New Museum Los Gatos, Inland Empire Museum of Art, Inglewood Public Library, San Diego International Airport, San Diego Art Institute and more. Dodge’s installation/performance CONFESS at 2015’s LA Pride was named one of the outstanding public art projects of the year by Americans for the Arts. Her work is included in four museum collections and has been shown across the U.S. and internationally. Peace on Earth at the Preserve ... and MOAH /January 25, 2019 Learn More> Dawning of a residency at the Prime Desert Woodlands Preserve /January 1, 2019 Learn More> 2019 Back to list

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Up Flora Various Artists Nancy Macko: The Fragile Bee Main Gallery Terry Arena: Simbiotic Crisis: Northeast Rooftop Terrace & Entry Atrium Gary Brewer: Secrets and Emanations Wells Fargo Gallery Debi Cable: Glow South Gallery Candice Gawne: Lumen Essence South Gallery Lisa Schulte: Essence of Time South Gallery, Top of Stairs & Jewel Box Mud Baron: #flowersonyourhead Vault Gallery Jamie Sweetman: Affinities Education Gallery 8,000 Years of Antelope Valley History Curated by Anthropoligist Dr. Bruce Love East Gallery Nancy Macko: The Fragile Bee Since the early nineties, Nancy Macko has drawn upon images of nature—in particular the honeybee society—to explore the relationships between art, science, technology and ancient matriarchal cultures. Until recently, she combined elements of painting, printmaking, digital media, photography, video and installation to create a unique visual language. This combination of media allowed her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism, nature and the importance of ancient matriarchal cultures, as well as to explore her interest in mathematics and prime numbers in particular, in which she endeavored to make explicit, the implicit connections between nature and technology. Since 2005, she has been developing a body of purely photographic work that takes the viewer into a space of light, air and unfamiliar textures. Using a macro lens to shoot nature subjects from her garden at close range, the images are then realized as large scale photographic works. As a social practice, Macko’s work addresses life’s fundamental questions. She photographs the process of the life and death of plants that are a metaphor of our brief existence. Increasingly threatened by encroaching development, plants remind us how fragile the whole ecosystem is; for example, there is still a very serious concern over the longevity of honeybees. For two decades, Macko has worked with honeybee imagery and media to imagine a utopia where the power and strength of women would be recognized and celebrated. The bees became the metaphor because of their cooperative and unified nature in literally creating the hive, protecting the queen and foraging for food to feed all. In 2009, her focus shifted to examining the flora they draw nourishment from and so carefully attend through the process of pollination. In essence, the bees experience memory loss when they “disappear.” Global research has determined that pesticides and fungicides containing neonicotinoids enter the bees’ nervous systems when they pollinate causing them to experience a form of dementia, which then prevents them from finding their way back to the hive. Grassroots groups like SumOfUs have organized protests and gatherings to raise their voices against bee-killing pesticides and the corporations that manufacture them. We are reaching the point where our global ecosystem is straining, and the threat to the bees is becoming a threat to all of us. As bees die off, up to a third of the food we consume is threatened and food prices are already being affected around the world. Friends of the Earth and the Pesticide Research Institute released a report in August 2013 detailing how some “bee friendly” home garden plants, such as sunflowers, sold at Home Depot, Lowe’s and other garden centers have been pre-treated with the very neonic pesticides shown to harm and kill bees. “The Save America’s Pollinators Act” is included in the next Farm Bill in Congress and the EPA has released rules and new labels for pesticides containing neonicotinoids (imidacloprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin and thiamethoxam). These labels feature a special warning and prohibit use of these products where bees are present. While this is a good sign, it is not enough. We know that bees need more protection and we need more research so that we can better understand the impacts of these and other pesticides on pollinator habitat. As our farms become monocultures of commodity crops like wheat and corn—plants that provide little pollen for foraging bees—honeybees are literally starving to death. If we do not do something, there may not be enough honeybees to meet the pollination demands for valuable crops. As the disappearance of the bees grows more and more dire, Macko’s sense of responsibility to saving them and all of us has also grown. As an artist one way Macko approaches this issue is to study and photograph the plants that attract the bees in Southern California and in different regions of the country. Working with native plants from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, CA, she is completing a series of photographic “portraits.” As an avid gardener, Macko has also created a drought tolerant space in her garden for these plants to attract the bees. In the future, she wants to continue to document and understand the disappearance of the bees in terms of comparative visual documentation by visiting botanical gardens throughout the United States talking to curators, botanists and horticulturists about it. Originally from New York, Macko received her graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. A practicing artist since the early 1980s, she has produced more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in over 150 exhibitions, both nationally and abroad. She has received more than 30 research and achievement awards for her art. She has traveled extensively and has had highly productive artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and the Musee d’Pont Aven in Brittany, France. Macko’s work is in numerous public collections including: Denison Library and the Samella Lewis Collection of Contemporary Art at Scripps College; the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Bell Gallery at Brown University; the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA Hammer Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art; the New York Public Library; the North Dakota Museum of Art; Pomona College Museum of Art; Gilkey Center for Graphic Art, Portland Art Museum and the RISD Museum of Art. Macko is Professor of Art at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Terry Arena: Symbiotic Crisis: Northeast Terry Arena explores the vulnerability of the honeybee and, in turn, our food sources through highly technical, rendered drawings. The growth of one-third of the crops we eat are supported by pollination from honeybees. This is to include direct consumables such as fruits, vegetables and nuts and indirectly in the crops that are grown to facilitate the production of meat and dairy products. The role of the honeybee is so integral to crop propagation that bees are transported by trucks to farmlands in need of pollination. Recently, the mysterious vanishing of the bees has been covered in public media. Though studies have been conducted, causes of the decline in the bee population are not yet definitive. Considering the ideas of our relationship with the environment and impact bees have on our food sources, Arena’s detailed renderings are drawn on food tins and repurposed materials. The reductive, yet analytical nature of the graphite drawings is reminiscent of nature studies and botanical drawings of old masters. Though the appearance and quantity of drawings is somewhat mechanized, each one is unique and handmade from collected source materials. Terry Arena received her Master of Arts degree in Painting at California State University, Northridge in 2009. Recently, Arena’s work was part of a two-person show at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California and she completed a series of mobile installations housed in a box truck last fall. In addition, she has had three solo shows of her graphite still life renderings at Sinclair College in Ohio and the Ventura and Moorpark Colleges in California. Her work has been included in various group exhibits such as Sweet Subversives: Contemporary California Drawings at the Long Beach Museum of Art in Long Beach, City and Self at Red Pipe Gallery in Chinatown, Chain Letter at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica and Revisiting Beauty at Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana. Arena currently lives and works in Ventura. Gary Brewer: Secrets and Emanations For many years, Gary Brewer has been developing a vocabulary to articulate through images and metaphors, the mystery and history of life. His vivid oil paintings present subjects such as: orchids, lichens, corals, pollen and seeds—biological life forms suspended in space. Brewer uses their complex design and compelling architecture as metaphors for the history of life on earth and of human consciousness. In his newest works Brewer has included the mapping of “Dark Matter”, a gravitational structure that is web-like: ordering and organizing galaxies into clusters—an invisible lattice structuring the known universe. For Brewer, our lives are lattice-like in the hidden web of connections that link us to our past and send tendrils into a future resonant with meaning. Brewer states: “I was raised in Lancaster. My father was a test pilot and later became an engineer in the aerospace industry, working to land a man on the moon. As a young child we would walk to the end of our street, which dead-ended at the edge of the desert to watch the X-15 coming in for a landing after skirting the edge of the atmosphere. It was here that the first philosophical musings arose in my young mind. When I stood on the pavement of our street I was in ‘civilization’, but by simply stepping over the edge onto the desert sand I was back in ‘nature’ among the road runners, jack rabbits, horny toads and kangaroo rats that were my companions on my excursions into the wilds. There is something strangely poetic about my return to Lancaster where I spent my youth, to exhibit art works that still vibrate with those philosophical musings of a young boy standing on the edge of the desert, gazing up to the stars and exploring the universe at his feet.” Brewer is a self-taught artist raised in the Mojave Desert. He has curated two major exhibitions, Them; Artists, Scientists and Designers Concerned with the Entomological World SOMARTS, San Francisco, CA in 1999 and The Age of Wonder; Artist’s Engaged with the Natural World Turtle Bay Museum, Redding, CA in 2011. His work has been exhibited in galleries located in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco and are in private, corporate and museum collections throughout the United States. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Debi Cable: Glow Debi Cable creates colorful immersive art experiences through her fluorescent hand-painted murals. Subjects often incorporated include flowers, butterflies, geisha’s and dragons. She also creates full environments such as underwater visions, voyages through space and Alice’s Wonderland. Furthermore, her hand painted murals leap off the canvas through her signature accessory, 3D ChromaDepth® glasses. Debi Cable's artistry was recognized early in her career, when the California native was invited to show at the prestigious “Festival of Arts,” in Laguna Beach, California. Then, after honing her talents for several seasons at the Laguna Beach Sawdust Festival, Debi's faux finishing skills became renowned and she was invited to Las Vegas to paint some of the most amazing hotels, casinos and private residences in the world. Cable's return to Los Angeles has led to the detailed restoration of many landmark venues including the Los Angeles and Palace Theater on Broadway. Her latest personal project, a dazzling 120 foot long blacklight koi fish mural, is located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles on 4th and Main Street. Debi Cable presently lives at the world renowned Brewery Artist Colony and is one of the most prominent up and coming blacklight artists in the country. Debi also supports the growth of her fellow artists by sitting on several committees that promote and market the vibrant arts scene of downtown LA. Formerly the co/founder/art curator for Pershing Square, she is now the Burning Man Regional arts director for Los Angeles allowing her to bring vast, public attention to some of today's hottest artists. Candice Gawne: Lumen Essence Candice Gawne is a Los Angeles artist living and working in San Pedro, California. Since 1975, her oil paintings, neon sculptures and art furniture have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Berlin, Tokyo and Taiwan. Her neon sculptures are inspired by the fluid grace and endless variation of form found in the inhabitants of the seas and botanical realms. Through electricity, the noble gasses krypton, neon, xenon and argon are transformed to illuminate glass sculptures that show the color and energy of life. Glass, at once translucent and reflective, contains the light as form and energy are revealed. Thus, Gawne states “my invisible feelings of love for the natural world appear as ‘jewels of light’ in glass." For Gawne, light also creates a special kind of abstract energy within the space it describes. She uses light coming into the darkness to symbolize a point of transformation. Candice Gawne studied art at El Camino College and UCLA and has served as an art educator at MOCA, LACMA, OTIS College of Art and Design, ISOMATA, Los Angeles Union School District, the Cultural Affairs Department for the City of Los Angeles and many other public and private schools and institutions. She is currently a resident teaching artist for the Arts Council of Long Beach. She has original work in many corporate, public and private collections including those of Frederick R. Weisman, The Corning Museum of Glass, Charles and Lydia Levy, Doug Simay, Janine Smith, Dr. Cassie Jones, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium at the Port of Los Angeles, late actor Robin Williams, dancer Paula Abdul, director Penny Marshall, Stephen Reip and artists Eric Johnson, Lili Lakich and D. J. Hall. Lisa Schulte: Essence of Time Essence of Time (Hidden Beauty) is a body of neon work that began as a form of catharsis for self-taught neon artist Lisa Schulte. During a reflective time in her life, she reflected on what was important to her and what was not. She questioned what things, energies and people needed to be placed in the past to allow her to move forward into the future. Pondering these questions during a walk on the beach, Schulte was captivated by the ever changing beauty of pieces of wood that had drifted onto shore. The changes were infinite; influenced by water, sand, clouds, and, of course, light. With these images in mind, she set out to create a body of work that would transcend that same sense of change and contrast in the human experience. Schulte states: “From beginning to end, life is an extraordinary, beautiful journey full of contrast and contradictions. As humans we are much the same on an anatomical level but uniquely different based on our experiences and influences. Essence of Time is a look at this journey.” The neon artworks were created with different size neon glass tubes that show the strength and gentleness of each piece of dried wood. For Schulte, the “dead” roots, branches, and various other materials used, represent the passage of time and our basic sameness. It also reflects that there is a beauty in all things, regardless of age. The noble gas, argon, reflects how life affects each of us differently; while each piece of glass is pumped with argon, with a small drop of mercury added, the colors of white, which range from the warmer whites to the cooler whites, show that by simply changing color and temperature, a different personality and/or feeling is achieved from each piece. For Schulte, the choice to use only white neon in this body of work is “a symbol of the beginning, the new, a lightness, the good and innocence, just as the wood chosen represents the beauty in aging and strength that lives on.” Born in New York and raised in Southern California, Schulte currently resides in Hollywood and works from her studio in North Hollywood, California. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries across the United States including exhibits at the Museum of Neon Art and commissioned pieces for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Images of her artwork have also been published in many online art magazines, several books, magazines and a science text book for 10th graders. Schulte’s neon sculptures are also featured in many private collections. Mud Baron: #flowersonyourhead Mud Baron is a farmer, teacher, activist, artist and social media whiz. As the executive director of John Muir High School’s urban community farm, Muir Ranch, he runs the only hands-on teaching farm of its kind in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The farm makes fresh, organic goods and gorgeous flowers accessible to underserved communities and introduces the love of farming into the public education system. Baron and his students sell at farmers markets, host farm to table dinners and provide original floral designs of increasing popularity. As creator of the Plug Mob, a free seedling program mostly for young students, Baron leverages donations from major gardening companies to help cultivate more school gardens throughout Southern California. It helps in getting the word out that this farmer and dahlia aficionado also has a knack for leveraging social media. He won the Shorty Award (think Oscars of Social Media) in 2012 in the category #Food ; and his Twitter and Instagram accounts @cocoxochitl have some 32,000 followers combined. He is a superstar in the “photos of beautiful flowers” internet community; and that is because Mud Baron is also an artist. His interactive performance-based photography project, #flowersonyourhead , developed from the simple realization that all kinds of people love flowers. He carries exotic, fragrant Muir Ranch-grown bouquets to public places, convincing friends and total strangers to be photographed with, as the name suggests, flowers on their heads. Disarming, intimate and art-historically evocative, this ongoing portrait series proves that flowers are food for the soul and the seeds of change can take root anywhere. Baron states: “If you look at the development decisions that are made by business and local politicians, what we get constantly is a stream of strip malls and concrete. You can’t eat that. Other species don’t eat that, either. What might seem like a trivial Martha Stewart-esque effort, isn’t. With #flowersonyourhead , I’m doing [environmental artist] Andy Goldsworthy but including people into my art.” In the future, Baron would like to develop a charter school with a maker curriculum and is currently working to raise funds to install a new aquaponic system at Muir Ranch. Jamie Sweetman: Affinities As an avid gardener and former biomedical illustrator, the natural world serves as a primary influence on Jamie Sweetman’s artwork. Recently, she has focused on drawing, using monotype on mylar with colored pencil, ink and marker. Sweetman looks for form and structure in the complexity of nature through layered drawings that often merge human anatomy with plant life. This process originated with Sweetman’s experience and studies in human dissection. She states, “The structure of the growth pattern of a wisteria or kiwi vine is similar to the veins and arteries of the human circulatory system. Viewing a cross section of the cerebellum of the human brain reveals the shape of a tree. The similarity continues when you look at tree branches, root systems, river beds viewed from the sky and lightning.” Sweetman also draws on fractal geometry as one explanation for these phenomena. According to Benoit Mandelbrot, "Fractal geometry plays two roles. It is the geometry of deterministic chaos and it can also describe the geometry of mountains, clouds and galaxies." Sweetman earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of Fine Arts degree from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). She has exhibited across Southern California and is in several private and public collections including Paramount Pictures and Saxum Vineyards. Sweetman teaches Anatomy for Artists at CSULB and the University of Southern California and Printmaking at Azusa Pacific University. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Bruce Love, Ph.D.: 8,000 Years of Antelope Valley History Native peoples are here and were always here, a fact easy to forget if we think of California Indians as living in the past, but it has been only a few generations since California missions moved people from their homelands, and ranchers and farmers took over Native hunting and collecting grounds. Long before the mission period of just 200 years ago, reaching back 8000 years (and possibly 12,000!) the Antelope Valley was home to diverse language groups who practiced long distance trade, social networks, religion, commerce, village life, and all the hallmarks of civilized society including land management and care for natural resources. Evidence from distant millennia is scarce and many times only recognized by trained archaeologists, but traditions and cultures from more recent times are best understood by the Native peoples themselves. This exhibit attempts to bridge that enormous time span and introduce the visitor to the artifacts and the people, the history and the culture, the archaeologist and the Native. The exhibit organizer, Dr. Bruce Love, Antelope Valley resident living in Juniper Hills, has a Ph.D. from UCLA in anthropology and has more than thirty-five years experience in Southern California as well as Mesoamerican archaeology, history, and cultural anthropology. Acknowledgements: Wanda Deal, David Earle, David Em, John Fleeman, Dr. Roger Grace, John Kneifl, Roscoe Loetzerich, Lorence, Stevie Love, Rudy Ortega, Jr., Charlee Reasor, Ray Rivera, Jim Rocchio, Peggy Ronning, Carol Sevilla, Richard Suarez, Del Troy, Charles White, Darcy Wiewall, MOAH Staff, AVC volunteers. May 9 - June 28, 2015 Back to list

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Tanisha Alam < Back Spring Festival By Tanisha Alam It is always a certain time of the year that you return to us. With your beauty and personality, your color and vibrance, you bring everyone prosperity and good fortune. For one month you are regarded with happiness. Like a symbol of hope, the troubles we faced in the last year will disappear at the sight of you. For one month you are displayed to showcase your beauty and your charm. Invited into the homes of all, you give us luck with your presence. For one month, you are the most regarded of any. In such festive times, there would be no tradition without you. You are essential and you are easy. The activities associated with you bring joy to the community, but you do not require much maintenance. Most importantly you are familiar. Since the beginning you have been there. Every year this time approaches, you are the most anticipated guest. When we have to venture from home, we look for you as a sense of belonging and as a sense of family. When we see you, we are reminded of all the good moments in our lives. A joyous time, that one month. But what happens after? What happens when the weather changes and new flowers bloom? All of a sudden your face drops and your color fades and you emit a certain stench. But why? Are you jealous that others arrive after you? But, you had your grand entrance. You were praised till you were worn out. People toss you aside, some even holding on till the last petal. Because, now that your time has passed, you are out of luck and out of style. The festivities that happen before you bless us for the following year, but they must come to an end eventually. Now we have to get on with our lives. Time does not stop, so we cannot allow you to linger, and that you know. So, you accept it. You make your departure, taking your festivities with you. You understand. That time of year is over, your regard is over. Oh well. This happens every season. No hard feelings. It is rather bittersweet. You know when you will come and you know when you will leave. Mourning you like the dead seems pointless. You will be back, so, instead of crying, let us continue to celebrate. Celebrate our new found luck, prosperity, and joy. Let it resonate for the next year, and once the weather turns cold and that luck seems to run out again, no worries, only a couple more months before you return. You come bearing gifts when we need you most, and once that joy is fulfilled, you depart till your time returns. You have a motive and as long as time continues to move forward, you will continue to fulfill it. That is the beauty of you. Previous Next

Up Llamando Marsia Alexander-Clarke Alexander-Clarke enjoys silence and solitude. She is a private person, never feeling like she fit into a culture. When she came to the United States at the end of her childhood, she began to see the world differently. She soon realized that everyone has perceptual limits, and that her own view seemed small, and somewhat limited. Alexander-Clarke's video work incorporates this perspective, presenting small fragments of nature and our surroundings. They are, however, just marks on a greater canvas, signifying the vastness of space as a metaphor for the unknowable and incomprehensible. Alexander-Clarke orders these marks and fragments into sequences that play with the viewer’s expectation and perception of time. She provides slivers of recognizable imagery that multiply and repeat, transforming what originated as a brief and fragmentary moment into a tour of introspective sensations. After images remain long after the light from a color block fades,mixing in memory with the next mark to deepen the dialogue between what is seen and unseen. Through pulse and rhythm, Alexander-Clarke expands one's view of the material world, transforming it into a greater sense of being. May 13 - August 20 Back to list

Up What it takes to survive a crisis or the imaginary Richter scale of rage Eileen Cowin Eileen Cowin uses video, photography and multimedia installations to explore the blurred lines between narrative, storytelling, memory, the unconscious, fiction and truth. Her carefully fabricated compositions combine objects with intimate human gestures in a way that heightens the emotional experience and yet is open for interpretation, allowing the viewer to complete the artwork. Cowin's early work is often associated with the Los Angeles experimental photography scene of the 1970s and the East Coast Pictures Generation. During the 80s and 90s Cowin's work evolved to include the fully-constructed cinematic installations and videos that she is known for today. In her series What it takes to survive a crisis or the imaginary Richter scale of rage, Cowin expands on her themes of anxiety and rage through her various images and video installations. In the age of unprecedented mass upheaval due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cowin explores the constant state of crisis America has dealt with, starting with the 2016 presidential election to the present time. Her visual narratives are symbolic in nature, perfectly encapsulating the constant fear, turmoil and global uncertainty the pandemic has released. Eileen Cowin is a Los Angeles based artist known for work in photography, video and mixed-media installations. Her work has been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions and in more than 180 group exhibitions. Cowin’s works have also been featured in private and public collections including: the Brooklyn Museum, NY; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Los Angeles, CA; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the National Museum of American Art; and MOCA, Los Angeles. She has received numerous recognitions and awards including three individual fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a commission from the Public Art Fund in New York, a City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artist Fellowship in New Genres from the California Arts Council, California Community Foundation’s Fellowship for Visual Artists, City of Santa Monica Artist’s Fellowship, Best Experimental Film USA Film Festival, and three commissions from Los Angeles World Airports. Cowin is currently working on a commission for the Martin Luther King Jr. Metro Station in Los Angeles. January 23 – May 9, 2021 Back to list

Up A print collection Nuri Amanatullah Nuri Amanatullah is an Antelope Valley-based painter, illustrator, and designer whose stylized, graphic depictions of flora and fauna are represented in a variety of mediums including illustration and large-scale murals. Employing both traditional techniques and digital media, Amanatullah has designed for Disney, storyboarded for Uber, illustrated for Airbnb, and painted walls at numerous sites around the Antelope Valley including a mural with Antelope Valley Walls in 2018, as well as in Flint, Michigan as part of the Free City Mural Festival. He has also lent his talents to the non-profit Housing Corporation of America for the past three years helping to jump-start and brand a wide variety of art programs at affordable income housing properties. Illustrating animals and plants in a colorfully bold and vibrant style, Amanatullah subverts the idea of the desert as a barren and desolate setting by exploring the intersection of our everyday lives and the natural world. These brief, chance encounters with wildlife take place in the “vacant” spaces between housing and commercial developments, highlighting our own place amongst nature--often at odds with it, and far separated from our surroundings. February 2019 - May 2021 Back to list

Up Woven Stories Various Artists Featured Solo Exhibitions Ray Beldner, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Victoria Potrovitza, Katherine Stocking-Lopez, Nicola Vruwink Installations Rebecca Campbell, Peter Hiers, R.Rex Parris High School, Meriel Stern, Victor Wilde Group Fiber Exhibition Orly Cogan, Mike Collins, Valerie Daval, Terri Friedman, Gina Herrera, Anne Hieronymus, Uma Rani Iyli, Sandra Lauterbach, Karen Lofgren, Suchitra Mattai, Art Moura, Maria E. Piñeres, Vojislav Radovanovic, Joy Ray, Leisa Rich, Samuelle Richardson, Cindy Rinne, Nike Schroeder, Annie Seaton Lisa Solomon, Sandra Vista, Dana Weiser, Diane Williams Ray Beldner Ray Beldner uses found imagery from magazines, books, posters, and catalogs to create his dense, textural collages. He then mounts the collages to museum board and cuts eat piece into a unique shape. Like many of Beldner’s past projects, these Untitled Shaped Collages explore the idea of value: each small clipping is stripped of its historical significance and is appreciated for its more formal qualities such as texture, color, pattern, and shape. The works are “woven” together to create a new, visually active image. Ray Beldner is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and can be found in many public and private collections. Born in San Francisco, Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, and has taught sculpture, interdisciplinary studies, and professional practices at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, and the University of California in Santa Cruz. Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor In Blamethirst and Hate Stayed the Ending , Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor uses familiar animal-like forms to call attention to the struggles of the human experience, and the intersection between nature and culture. These creatures reach their physical and mental limits as they struggle to stand upright – bits of their armor-like coverings begin to unravel, their bodies distort, and their apparent fatigue lends an all-too-familiar sense of vulnerability. O’Connor gathered her materials for these sculptures from second-hand shops and thrift stores, reworking each element through cutting, sewing, ripping, wrapping, roping, tying, and stiffening, to create a surface that feels simultaneously distressed and beautiful. The salvaged materials (boxes, couches, bedding, blankets, pillows, Afghans) used by O’Connor rest on a skeleton of broken down furniture. The weight of these materials are quite heavy, and require “crutches” for support. Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor received her BFA from California State University, Long Beach, and her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions in California, as well as throughout the US and Canada. Her work has been featured in several publications including Juxtapoz Magazine, ArtForum, Artillery Magazine, and more. Elisabeth has taught studio art classes at the University of Washington, Seattle, Cal State University, Long Beach, and currently teaches as UC Davis. Victoria Potrovitza No Exit and Landscape by Dusk by Victoria Potrovitza were created by embroidering vibrant-colored thread into canvas and applying gouache or acrylic paint. Her background in architecture influences her abstract compositions, and she often references universal tribal symbols, drawing upon personal and shared history. Potrovitza is a contemporary abstract fiber artist with her MS degree in Architecture from UAUIM, Romania. A significant part of her career was dedicated to creating wearable art with a focus on hand-painted silk, and her collections have been featured at New York Fashion Week. During the last decade, Potrovitza shifted her focus from fashion to embroidery. Her artwork is featured online at Saatchi Art, and has been exhibited in the United States, Israel, and Romania. She lives and works in Lancaster, California. Katherine Stocking-Lopez Using natural forms, Katherine Stocking-Lopez investigates her personal experience of womanhood and motherhood, as well as the limits of gender and the human body. Inspired by the inevitability of change, Katherine stitches soft fibers, beads, and found objects together reflect on her struggles with anxiety, infertility, pregnancy loss, postpartum depression, and the imperfections of life. “Growth is inherently beautiful; seeds sprout, flowers bloom, love grows. But when things keep growing, or grow where they shouldn’t, growth can constrict and choke. Depression grows in the dark. Anxieties sprout from deep in the mind. Sickness clusters and bursts like spores. A garden can have both a tangle of thorns and a bloom of flowers. The duality of nature as creator and destroyer is present in my work.” Katherine Stocking-Lopez is a mixed media artist with a specialty in combining traditional drawing and sculpture work. She combines the family tradition of needlework with the complexity of emotions that family itself inspires. Katherine won Best of Exhibition at MOAH’s CEDARFEST juried art show in 2017, and first place in the 3-D/Mixed Media category at CEDARFEST 2016. Nicola Vruwink In Please and Your Everything, Nicola Vruwink crochets magnetically coated plastic film from cassette tapes, rather than the usual yarn. Employing obsolete materials such as cassette tapes is just one way that Vruwink draws attention to the loneliness of modern urban life, the fast pace of technological advancements, and the detritus that humans leave behind. The act of crocheting these typographical works provides the artist with a sense of symmetry and meditative order in the midst of our chaotic world. Originally from Iowa, Vruwink has lived and worked in Los Angeles for the past fifteen years. She received her MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the West Coast. She has also been featured in several publications such as the Los Angeles Times, ArtForum, and the Huffington Post. Vruwink is currently an assistant professor at ArtCenter College of Design, and is adjunct faculty at Santa Monica College and El Camino College. May 11 - July 21, 2019 Back to list

< Return to Exhibitions Autumn 2012 The Contemporary Figure: Past Presence Hats Off: Sally Egan & Amy Bystedt Mercedes Helnwein: Drawing from the Figure Deli I pity the fool2 arbus_f jennifer-glass-cyanotypes_edited Mercedes Helnwein Creatures MOAH Learn More September 6 - November 24, 2012 Hats Decay Helnwein Cyanotypes Past Presence Artifacts of Desire in Decay: Gregory Martin Although most easily categorized as landscapes, Gregory Martin's paintings can be thought of as contemplative spaces in which to experience dualities and polarities within human nature, the natural world and the practice of painting. For instance; growth and decay, the illusion of depth and flatness, the "truth" of photography and the "fiction" of painting, the differences between our ideals and our actions. The Contemporary Figure: Past Presence Exhibition Statement To embark on a journey through contemporary figurative art is to dive into a rich history of image making as a fundamental means for understanding and interpreting our world in the image of ourselves. In this history, from Paleolithic times to the mid 19th century, the depiction of the human form is plentiful, yet went largely unchanged in both artistic approach and intent until the modern era. From the 30,000-year-old fertility figurines unearthed at Çatalhöyük of Southern Anatolia to the height of the Italian and French Renaissance, art making was primarily focused on the skillful, realistic depiction of the human figure in an attempt to reconcile the place of humans in the world, both physically and spiritually. During the Middle Ages, for example, artists learned their skills through craft guilds and in monasteries—the academy of the time—by creating highly representational and illuminated manuscripts in the service of the church. Similarly, through the height of the Renaissance, an artist underwent rigorous technical training as an apprentice to a master, copying the masterworks until their skills were exquisitely refined. These skills were essential for creating high liturgical art and the finest of paintings, portraiture, frescoes and sculpture for the wealthy. From around 1850 C.E. through the late 1960’s, however, a sea change occurred: the artistic representation of the figure and the means by which creative skills were developed and employed shifted dramatically, ultimately ushering in the new era of Modern Art (1860’s – 1970’s). This remarkable shift transpired at the hands of the avant-garde: a small group of artists who gradually abandoned their rigorously acquired skills and rejected the master-apprentice approach of mimicking historical masterworks in favor of experimentation. Invention and the individual artist’s idea came to the forefront, providing the art world with especially pioneering periods from the mid 19th century in the works of Claude Monet (1840-1926), Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) and the Impressionists. Building upon the Impressionist’s momentum, an increase in creative risk-taking and experimentation occurred from 1900 to the 1920’s when the art of Georges Braque (1882-1963), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Georgia O’Keefe (1887- 1986) emerged. These artists replaced the norms of representation, composition, color, and light with pure form and structure, emotion and intuition, dream imagery and expression, and ultimately pure abstraction. In equal measure, they sought to examine the human form—and the human condition—as a pursuit of the artist’s idea outside a defined set of socially acceptable consumables. These trajectories eventually lead to the wide-spread making of non-representational imagery which remains a popular force in contemporary art today. The Contemporary Figure: Past Presence showcases a group of Southern California figurative artists at the forefront of an equally important development in contemporary art. First and foremost, the works herein depict a shift away from the dominance of non-representational image making in contemporary art. By employing the figure in their work, these artists present an immediate and accessible line of connection to the viewer through the imagery, often affording us the opportunity to identify ourselves within the work. Equally rich are the opportunities to understand the questions these artists are asking—through representational form—about the greater human condition. Like their predecessors working over one-hundred and fifty years ago, many of these artists have undergone rigorous training in traditional drawing and painting techniques through the academy. During a time when such a traditional curriculum is often viewed as passé or considered relevant only to the pre-modern era, these artists have intentionally honed their drawing and painting skills in order to deftly execute their ideas. Once again the artist’s skill and craft is revealed in the work. Finally, the depth of inquiry into the artist’s idea is often expressed through intelligent historical references that question currently established norms inside the art world, academia and the greater society. In doing so, these artists are revitalizing the figurative movement, harkening back to the early days of Modern Art when artists were highly trained, superbly expressive and keenly knowledgeable of the art history canon. By utilizing a more traditional form of academic training in figure and portraiture as a springboard to unleash their contemporary ideas, the artists in The Contemporary Figure: Past Presence honor and acknowledge the past while inviting you to explore skillfully executed works at the edge of a revolution in figurative art. Hats Off: Sally Egan & Amy Bystedt In this series, Bystedt and Egan give reverence to icons of photography that have influenced and inspired them throughout the years, playing the role of both photographer and subject in these emulations. The attention to detail in these recognizable photos was just as significant as choosing which photographer and image to replicate. Hats Off is a salute in the highest form to those who have come before them, whose trail blazing in the arts have paved the way for some of the most progressive images in photography. Mercedes Helnwein: Drawing from the Figure Exhibition Statement Mercedes Helnwein is an Austrian born visual artist and writer based in Ireland and Los Angeles. As a self taught artist, drawing and literature have been the focus of her creative life for as long as she can remember. Although of European descent, Helnwein’s many influences are distinctly American, crossing artistic genres and places including a fascination with the culture and values of the American Midwest and Bible belt, the music of the Delta blues and the literary works of John Steinbeck, Mark Twain and Charles Bukowski. Mercedes Helnwein: Drawing from the Figure showcases a selection of recent works from 2006-2010 including several from her internationally acclaimed series “Whistling Past the Graveyard”, “Temptation to Be Good” and “East of Eden.” These expertly drawn images depict women engaged in quiet, yet unsettling dramas often holding a child’s toy or occupying a vaguely domestic context. Helnwein presents the viewer with the mystery of her character’s circumstance. The artist explains: “Judging by their expressions I’d say there’s probably something the girls in these drawings would rather not talk about – something they’d prefer to sit on. And they’re keeping it in, but it’s kind of leaking out of their faces.” While her figures are drawn with meticulous attention to detail and rendered with the precision and technique of a classically trained artist, Helnwein often bathes her subjects in a harsh, raking light. This tension provides the viewer with an unseen antagonist operating outside of the frame’s edge. Art critic Peter Frank (ArtLtd, January 2010) writes of her work: “A writer as well as visual artist, Mercedes Helnwein does not so much tell stories or even capture moments in her drawings as she triggers possibilities—the possibilities being vaguely unlikely, vaguely unsavory, and not-so-vaguely menacing, rather like inverse Magrittes. Helnwein’s basic ingredient is the fully, fashionably, clothed human figure, more often than not regarding the viewer or about to; occupying a peculiarly lit, but familiar space, they are shown engaged in a solipsistic soliloquy— self-absorbed and drenched in an almost urgent ennui—with someone and/or something else…” Equally mysterious are Helnwein’s short films. Included here are “Whistling Past the Graveyard” and “Temptation to Be Good” where the figures from the drawings jump off the page into film. Like the drawings, her subjects are inundated with a ruthless combination of light and dark yet animated in segmented, slow motion sequences across the screen. Although they are engaged in a kind of indiscernible struggle, the characters are laden with clues: dressed in period clothing, accompanied by purposefully placed objects and moving within a stark, domestic context. Additional clues may be found in the musical scores, which are composed by the artist’s brother Ali Helnwein. Helnwein began paring her drawings with film in 2008 with her debut of “Temptation to Be Good”. Mercedes Helnwein: Drawing from the Figure presents a selection of figurative works set in a series of vaguely defined narratives where someone is missing or something is awry. MOAH invites you, the viewer to engage this work and ask –as art critic Peter Frank suggests—what that someone and/or something else may be. The Lakes and Valleys Art Guild: The Western Figure As part of our continuing local artist series, The Vault Gallery showcases work from the Lakes and Valleys Art Guild celebrating the figure in western themed paintings. The Lakes and Valley Art Guild is located in the nearby hamlet of Lake Hughes, California. This group of artists have dedicated themselves to the traditional painting techniques of watercolour, oil on canvas and representational imagery as well as mixed media compositions. Jennifer Glass: Cyanotypes Cyanotype Greek: kyano (blue; dark blue) + Greek: typos (type or form; print) English 1835-1845 Jennifer Glass captures moments in the life of women through her cyanotypes of vintage gowns. Selected from her private collection, these gowns are reproduced as cyanotypes through a process that the artist sees as a deeply metaphorical statement on the roles of women, politics, power, and fashion. Specifically, this body of work emphasizes the artist’s affinity for fashion as a polarized narrative. The large-scale reproductions are strong in their Prussian blue impressions while fragile in their ghost-like translucency. Glass explains that her connection to the world of fashion elicits a “strong emotional response to how [fashion] may either empower or constrain a woman depending on how she uses it”…she continues: “fashion has been used as a tool by women for years and although it has confined them in many ways, it also has liberated them…these garments belonged to someone.” Glass notes that although the women who wore these garments are now gone, in their time they danced, brought about new life, felt pleasure and pain, and likely changed policy, leaving their own imprint on the world however large or small. Glass’ prints are created through the deceptively basic methods of light exposure and chemical preparation on fabrics. The cyanotype was pioneered in 1842 by Sir John Herschel as a photographic method to quickly duplicate technical drawings that are normally time-consuming to draw and reproduce. Herschel discovered that when iron salts react with sunlight they leave a permanent blue imprint. When paper or porous fabric is treated with a solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, almost any image may be reproduced if it is drawn on a transparent surface, placed over the photosensitive paper in a darkroom and then exposed to sunlight. The areas of the photosensitive paper (or canvas/fabric) that are concealed by the lines of the drawing remain white while the exposed areas turn into an insoluble blue, resulting in a reverse silhouette. In 1843, shortly after Herschel developed the cyanotype, his friend and colleague Anna Atkins, a recognized botanist, utilized the cyanotype method to catalogue her extensive botanical collection. By placing her algae specimens on the photosensitized paper, she created the first known volume of cyanotype photograms. Atkins went on to self-publish her cyanotypes in her book: Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Atkins published three volumes and only seventeen copies were reproduced. As a photographer, Jennifer Glass is carrying on this tradition in contemporary times, a method that has gone underutilized since the advent of digital reproductions. A Florida native, Jennifer Glass earned a Bachelor of Art degree in Social and Political Science from Florida State University. Glass went on to study photography at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale along with taking workshops in New York with well-regarded photographers Debbie Fleming Caffery and Mary Ellen Mark. Glass currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark. Western August 9, 2012 - September 16, 2012 Artifacts of Desire in Decay: Gregory Martin September 22 - October 22, 2012 The Western Figure: Lakes and Valleys Art Guld September 29 - October22, 2012 Jennifer Glass: Cyanotypes View or Download the Autumn 2012 Exhibition Catalog by clicking on the cover image or here.

Up CountMeIn - 2020 Census Project Various Artists Featuring artwork by: Robin Rosenthal Jane Szabo Nuri Amanatullah Clovis Blackwell Video installations by: Edwin Vasquez Art in Residence A.I.R Special exhibition: Collaborate and Create First People, First Communities The Lancaster Museum of Art & History (MOAH) and the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation (LMPAF) invite the public to its newest exhibition #CountMeIn , a celebration of the community recognizing their value in civic life through engagement and education on the topic of the 2020 United States Census. Every decade, the U.S. Census counts every resident in the nation and uses the data to allocate billions of dollars in federal funds to local communities and determines the number of seats each state receives in the House of Representatives. The neighborhoods surrounding the museum have historically have been undercounted, and therefore underrepresented and underfunded, due to various barriers such as education, languages spoken, poverty level, houselessness, race, immigration status and levels of trust. #CountMeIn began in summer of 2019 and is an ongoing project that builds on community trust by embedding local Artists-in-Residence to lead various art workshops, community gatherings, artist interactions, candid portrait photography sessions and creative place-making activities with the overall goal of encouraging the community to participate in the 2020 Census. The selected Artists-in-Residence directly reflect the communities in which they live and work and provide opportunities for other community members to be seen and heard through public exhibition. Artists-in-Residence for #CountMeIn include creative-placekeeper and Lead Artist for the project, Robin Rosenthal; fine art photographer, Jane Szabo; artist and blogger, Edwin Vazquez; muralist and illustrator, Nuri Amantullah; and the artist collective, Art In Residence. Artworks in the #CountMeIn exhibition at Lancaster MOAH stem from collaborative efforts between the Artists-in-Residence and members of the community, featuring crocheted portrait-embedded wall-hangings created in partnership with needle-crafters living at the Antelope Valley Senior Center and three Housing Corporation of America locations, interviews with #CountMeIn participants, and As a Day, a Decade -- an immersive aural/visual installation created by Art In Residence members Nathanial Ancheta, Dave Martin and Janice Ngan. In addition, the exhibition boasts a mural by local artist Nuri Amanatullah, screen-printed works by Clovis Blackwell, and a historic look at the Native Americans as the first communities of the Antelope Valley presented by anthropologist Dr. Bruce Love. Collaborate and Create, a collection of collaborative artworks by Kipaipai Fellows emphasizing the benefit of networking and community, will also be on display. The Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation (LMPAF), the Museum of Art and History and the City of Lancaster believe that organizations and community leaders must be proactive in educating, encouraging and empowering residents to participate in the Census! The Artists of #CountMeIn , A 2020 Census Project Discussion Saturday, June 6, 2020 | 1 PM Join the artists of #CountMeIn , A 2020 Census Project, for a lively discussion on the importance of trust, the census, and the power of the art to activate a community! Moderated by Shana Nys Dambrot. Panelists include: Robin Rosenthal, Lead Artist-in-Residence Jane Szabo, Artist-in-Residence Edwin Vasquez, Artist-in-Residence Nuri Amanatullah, Artist-in-Residence Nathaniel Ancheta, Artist-in-Residence David Edward Martin, Artist-in-Residence Janice Ngan, Artist-in-Residence Robert Benitez, Art Program Coordinator Cassandra Morga, Antelope Valley Partners for Health #CountMeIn , A 2020 Census Project, is supported by the California Arts Council and the California Community Foundation. The Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation is a member of the #WeCountLA coalition of non-profit and community-based organizations which seeks to increase participation in the census. May 9 - December 27, 2020 Back to list

Up 300-Miles to Wounded Knee: The Oomaka Tokatakiya, Future Generations Ride Ken Marchionno Ken Marchionno has been pursuing photography since the age of 15 and after working with video, installation, interactive design, digital works and performance, documentary photography is Marchionno's preferred medium and methodology. Marrying his artwork with his passionate social practice, he records the fragility and complexity of life in a quick-moving contemporary world, and through his photography gives voice to moments, people and places that might have otherwise been overlooked. Marchionno is also known for his large-scale panoramic landscapes comprising dozens of separate frames shot using a telephoto lens. 300 Miles to Wounded Knee: the Oomaka Tokatakiya Future Generations Ride is a community-engaged photography project that documents the three hundred-mile memorial horseback ride to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. Often braving the piercing South Dakota Winter, the journey to Wounded Knee is meant to be an homage to the Lakota people who lost their lives one hundred and thirty years ago, but riders also regard it as a spiritual, cultural and intellectual experience. Machionno’s portrayal of the event strays from the typical exploitative depiction of stoic, poverty-stricken Native Americans and reservation life and offers an empowering representation of their journey. His documentation offers a contemporary lens that highlights the autonomy and self-empowerment of the Lakota people. Ken Marchionno is an artist, writer and curator living in the Los Angeles area and is currently a Professor in Photography and Imaging at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. His work has been presented in Dr. Betty Ann Brown’s Art and Mass Media and Robert Hirsch’s Exploring Color Photography. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press and his photography has been featured in a number of magazines and newspapers including the contemporary art quarterly, X-TRA. His creative writing has been included in the literary journals Errant Bodies and Framework. His ongoing project, 300 Miles to Wounded Knee: the Oomaka Tokatakiya Future Generations Ride has been exhibited in The Smithsonian Institution; the U.S. Embassy in Prague; and Yuchun Museum, Suzhou, China. January 23 – May 9, 2021 Back to list