Search Results

< Return to Exhibitions Spring 2013 Gary Lang: Whim Wham Jorg Dubin: My Facebook Friends Guillermo Bert: The Bar Code Series Susan Sironi: Altered Books Gary Lang Shepard Fairey These Sunsets Are To Die For Thomas McGovern Jorg Dubin Guillermo Bert The Barcode Series Danial Nord Youtopia Susan Sironi Altered Books Learn More March 16 - May 5, 2013 Thomas McGovern: Sign Language, Notes from the High Desert Danial Nord: Youtopia March 16 - April 29, 2013 March 16 - May 11, 2013 Signs and Symbols: From Street Art to High Art Dubin Signs Bert Nord McGovern Lang Signs and Symbols: From Street Art to High Art Signs and Symbols: From Street Art to High Art showcases internationally renowned and groundbreaking works by: Keith Haring, Banksy, Barry McGee, Heretic, Cryptik, David P. Flores, Shepard Fairey, Robbie Conal and MearOne. Now a global practice, the artists in this exhibition span a geographic range from Los Angeles to New York and London and pioneered the street art movement by using the urban matrix as their canvas. They continue to create guerilla works of art using stickers, murals, paint, templates, wheat paste, and video projections to transform the dialogue about where art may or may not be placed and sanctioned. Collectively, the artists are master editors, using only the most relevant signs, symbols and materials to achieve the greatest visual impact in a short period of time. They question the commercialization of art by changing the materials they employ and selecting alternative places in which their works appear. The term street art is used to distinguish between two opposites: government and corporate sponsored public art works and the unsanctioned tagging of territorial graffiti. The practice is a form of visual activism by artists who often feel disenfranchised by the codification and standards of art-making in the public realm. Disenfranchisement is a strong motivator and the street artists represented here have revolutionized the way public space is utilized to convey socio-political messages to everyday people who may not frequent museums and galleries. The artwork is eventually taken out of its local context by commercial galleries and museums, the very institutions many artists intend to avoid. Other street artists welcome the influx of their work in the commercial realm, embracing it as an opportunity for their messages to reach larger audiences. Over the last decade, the street art movement gained considerable notoriety with the public through widespread acclaim for the element of surprise. As a new work of art appeared on the street overnight, neighbors and communities either relished or fought against the phenomena, generating a vibrant social currency that fuels the artists. Most street artists are working for the people and are driven by the effect of mobilizing the community into action. Gary Lang: Whim Wham The Lancaster Museum of Art and History presents Gary Lang: Whim Wham an intimate selection of Lang’s acclaimed circle paintings accompanied by his never before seen word paintings. The two bodies of work may at first appear unrelated, yet they are inextricably linked by a union of opposites and similarities—both through the process in which they are created and in Lang’s quest for reconciling the space between beauty and pain in contemporary times. Lang began working on his minimalist circle paintings in the 1980’s and quickly became internationally renowned for his ability to engender a physical connection to the sublime through his radiating color combinations. When viewed from a distance, his paintings propel the viewer into an unrelenting optical experience that transcends everyday concerns. The colors blend and shift, deepen and soften, and awaken and pulsate in conversation with one another, taking the viewer on a phenomenological joy ride. As one moves closer to the work, the artist’s hand—and his remarkable affection for the materiality of paint—is revealed. In the 1970’s, prior to the birth of his circle paintings, Lang had sustained a quiet practice of writing text on paper and painting words in books that he positioned on his paint mixing tables. He eventually began making word paintings in concert with his large canvasses. On the surface, the word paintings function as an immediate repository for the excess pigment left over from his monumental canvasses: he simply moves from the canvas to the paper to “clean” the brush. Lang’s improvisational cleansing process ultimately yields words and phrases that expose his deeply poetic response to the concepts of truth, religion, power and tragedy. Lang has methodically practiced this private ritual since the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Just days before 9 -11, Lang moved his family from their New York City loft—where the World Trade Center towers were visible from the kitchen window—to Southern California, where Lang was born. Lang expresses that this event turned him toward words “in an effort to understand how they are used, abused, and manipulated by agenda and temper as well as to serve the heart.” He has equally found that he associates the words "real" and "true” with the momentary quality of painting in the here and now. Exhibited together for the first time, Gary Lang: Whim Wham invites the viewer to witness the fruits of Lang’s private ritual, sparking an adventure among color-saturated objects that assist us in transcending the everyday to traversing the intellectual pursuit of words, asking of us to reconcile the beauty and mystery of life with the tragedy of the human condition. Jorg Dubin: My Facebook Friends Jorg Dubin: My Facebook Friends is a contemporary exploration of identity through the fragmented lens of social media. Dubin’s portraits are painted directly from his Facebook friends’ profile pictures, many of whom the artist has never met or whom mostly remain unknown to him. The power of the work emerges from the identity fragmentation that occurs in the virtual world, and is strengthened by the clues into the visage of social media that Dubin provides the viewer. By turning unknown virtual “friends” into his painted subjects, he delivers small treasures from which to begin questioning the motives of identity in the digital age. Dubin, a skilled painter, departed from his classical, representational training and has become well regarded for his expressive explorations of the human condition. His large figurative paintings depict the fragility of human physicality: many of his subjects have undergone physical harm through illness or misfortune or simply through the choices made in life. Dubin explores these realities by blanketing his subjects in oily, acerbic painterly color and roots them in surreal and often grotesque scenes. These larger works are generous visual narratives, whereas his small Facebook oil sketches convey only fragments such as an eye, nose or mouth. These singular sketches ask of us to fill in the gaps, prompting one to contemplate the concept of superficiality through the accumulation of friends. The installation as a whole creates an entirely new friend: one that questions our desire to be needed, to be seen, to be heard and investigates how social media has changed human interaction and communication. Dubin lives and works in Laguna Beach, California. He studied at the Art Institute of Southern California and is a lecturer at Laguna College of Art and Design. Dubin shows extensively in the region, with several solo and group shows at Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach; Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, CA; and Blue Gallery, Kansas City, MO among many others. His work is widely published in art journals and magazines including: ArtScene Magazine, Artillery Magazine, Orange County Register, Coast Magazine, Sacramento Bee and Riviera Magazine. Guillermo Bert: The Bar Code Series Chilean artist Guillermo Bert has long been fascinated with the concept of encrypting messages, language and ideas beneath the “skin” of his artwork. He embeds this concept by incorporating contemporary bar codes with Inca, Maya, and Mapuche religious icons, each rendered in gold, thereby creating hybrid relics and proposing a new mythology. His panels are engraved and carved, much like the stonework of ancient civilizations. This process of engraving and encoding allows Bert to question the price of core values such as democracy and justice, while blurring the lines between culture and commodities. Using the bar code—the quintessential symbol of consumerism and branding as a form of contemporary conquest—Bert provides a critical comment on the effects of globalization and the western consumerist model. Bert lives and works in Los Angeles and shows extensively in the United States and South America, including the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach CA, the San Diego Museum of Art in San Diego CA, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the Museum of Tolerance and the Architectural Design Museum both in Los Angeles, and the Pasadena Museum of California Art. He is the recipient of many awards and grants and has been commissioned to create a number of public art works. Susan Sironi: Altered Books Los Angeles based artist Susan Sironi received her BFA from California State University, Long Beach and studied color still photography at Orange Coast College. Her early work in urban photography and assemblage lead to her collecting vintage materials with a focus on vintage books. Since 2003 she has used vintage books to express the inconsistencies and frustrations of a world that clings to past conventions while striving for future ideals. Her first altered books were text only and were meticulously cut page-by-page. The advent of the Internet provided Sironi with the ability to acquire multiple copies of books while scanning technology allowed for the precise cutting of entire books. This blending of old and new technologies is central to Sironi’s approach: each book promotes an alternative reading of the accepted norms and conventions of the past. By altering the information the viewer sees, Sironi transforms the books into new visual and conceptual forms while retaining clues from their former identity and history. Exhibiting primarily in Los Angeles, Sironi's work has also been shown at the Laguna Museum of Art and the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, MA. She is represented by Offramp Gallery in Pasadena. Thomas McGovern: Sign Language, Notes from the High Desert Sign Language, Notes from the High Desert showcases the distinguished work of Southern California photographer Thomas McGovern. McGovern’s new work was made specifically for and about the Antelope Valley and is part of a larger documentary project called Vital Signs. The Vital Signs series documents hand-painted signs and murals throughout the Inland Empire region of Southern California, starting with the City of San Bernardino. The great Mexican muralist tradition has an obvious influence in the region, but these signs and murals also suggest the economics of a recovering city where immigrants and established locals alike set up shop and try to provide for themselves and their communities. For his Sign Language, Notes from the High Desert project, McGovern expanded his range to include the Antelope Valley, a place recovering from similar economic pressures as San Bernardino and other rural communities throughout the country. With the Antelope Valley’s close proximity to Los Angeles and the proliferation of high definition billboards lining the ubiquitous eight-lane highways in our region, McGovern turned his lens toward the hand painted signs, murals and advertisements that punctuate our rural, two-lane highway landscape. McGovern provides a window into the minutia that is often taken for granted among the larger mass of “freeway culture” in the area. The photographs piece together fragments of the Antelope Valley’s vernacular style of architecture with the hand painted signs that are being replaced by homogenous strip malls and master planned communities. Many of the signs are deteriorating or were painted in a by-gone era, indicating how the valley is changing over time. Thomas McGovern is Professor of Art at California State University San Bernardino. He exhibits widely in California, New York and Germany and is represented in distinguished collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; Library of Congress; Museum Fur Photographie; Museum of the City of New York and The New Museum, New York among others. Danial Nord: Youtopia Danial Nord is an interdisciplinary artist who reinterprets the familiar language and trappings of mass communication. Nord’s installations draw from his accomplishments as an award winning designer-animator in the entertainment industry, as an internationally-based fashion designer, and as a scenic and prop artist for film, television and theater. Nord’s humorous new digital video Youtopia pokes fun at electronic communication and how automated search engines control the information we obtain. The video is based on an email he received with a link to a New York Times article titled: Guggenheim and YouTube Seek Budding Video Artists. Nord created virtual assistants to investigate the article. As the automated inquiries progress over time, they are eventually skewed by database hierarchies and software glitches, which produce amusing, convoluted associations and misguided conclusions. Youtopia underscores the current state of affairs in our quick-to-click culture. Nord earned his BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome, Italy. He continued with postgraduate studies in communication technologies and media at the School of Visual Arts and the NYU Center for Digital Multimedia in New York. Nord has exhibited his work in the US and abroad at World Expo 2010, Shanghai, China, Stadsmuseum Ghent, Belgium, and in New York at Freight + Volume and ISE Cultural Foundation. Nord lives, works and exhibits widely in Los Angeles including at California Museum of Photography, Fringe Exhibitions, HAUS, Pacific Design Center, and the City of L.A. Municipal Art Gallery. His work has been covered by the LA Times, LA Weekly, Artweek, Afterimage, and NPR. Sironi View or Download the Spring 2013 Exhibition Catalog by clicking on the cover image or here.

Bloom 2013 < Return to Exhibitions May 11 - June 29 SuperCallaFragileMysticEcstasyDioecious: Cole Case, Amir H. Fallah, Penelope Gottlieb and Roland Reiss Sharon Suhovy: Ambrosia Elena Manferdini Jennifer Vanderpool/ Patrick Melroy: Astro Flowers Kathleen Elliot: Living Flame Janice Tieken: Orchid Requiem Susan Sironi: Nothing Domestic Rebecca Niederlander: We are Stardust, We are Golden. And We Have to Find our Way Back to the Garden Penelope Gottlieb Susan Sironi Kathleen Elliot Rebecca Niederlander Janice Tieken Learn More Case Niederlander Vanderpool Manferdini Elliot Tieken Suhovy SuperCallaFragileMysticEcstasyDioecious: Cole Case, Amir H. Fallah, Penelope Gottlieb and Roland Reiss SuperCallaFragileMysticEcstasyDioecious highlights the work of four Los Angeles artists who synthesize artistic and ecological concerns through the painting of flowers. Cole Case, Amir H. Fallah, Penelope Gottlieb and Roland Reiss bring disparate painting approaches and varying cultural associations together as an artistic response to the world’s concentrically dizzying spin. “Whereas older traditions of botanical art and still life painting involved calm, studio-bound reflections of natural beauty and visual order, a new paradigm seems appropriate in the more fragile condition of the world in the early 21st century. We’re in a state of accelerated change, possibly teetering on some sort of apocalyptic brink.” -Penelope Gottlieb Sharon Suhovy: Ambrosia Sharon Suhovy sculpts sumptuous three dimensional paintings with cake-frosting utensils. Her sculptures may reflect structures that are familiar in historical architecture and almost always include the use of classic flowers like the rose as a metaphor for beauty. Elena Manferdini Elena Manferdini’s site specific installation is a new addition to the MOAH permanent collection. This acquisition was made possible with funds from the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation. Jennifer Vanderpool/ Patrick Melroy: Astro Flowers This site specific installation recontextualizes the historic propaganda of the Cold War Space Race, imaging an alternative history that subverts patriarchal, nationalistic imagery with botanical iconography – the rocket ship for the flower. Thematically, the work acknowledges Lancaster’s role in space technology, while in a tongue and cheek manner suggesting the beautification of space is as worthy a goal as manifest destiny of unknown galaxies and global dominance. Kathleen Elliot: Living Flame Kathleen Elliot lives in two worlds: the “real” one of luscious flora, fruits and vegetables and in her own Garden of Eden. Her works in glass exhibited at MOAH arose from a great love of plants, their life cycles, the beauty of all of their parts – leaves, seed pods, flowers, bark, etc – and the spiritual connection she feels when she is in nature. Janice Tieken: Orchid Requiem California photographer Janice Tieken’s series Orchid Requiem focuses on the beauty of orchids and other flora after their life cycle is finished. This body of work won the International Silver Prize for Art and Science of Color. Susan Sironi: Nothing Domestic Susan Sironi’s altered garden books are fantastical botanical dioramas. Leftover cuttings from the altered books form the basis for Sironi's "Garden Collage" series of mixed-media wall work. Romantic looking floral bouquets are overlaid with Sironi's handwritten stream of consciousness texts which are modified -- leaving us to ponder the poetic content. Rebecca Niederlander: We are Stardust, We are Golden. And We Have to Find our Way Back to the Garden As an artist, Rebecca Niederlander’s practice is founded in the relationship of the individual to the larger whole. Her art contains an aesthetics of multiples, a commitment to the singular element and how it fits into a larger balanced context of many. Her works invite the viewer to participate on an active level by creating pieces of their own within the installation that add to the whole of Niederlander’s work. Rebecca Niederlander is the Community Engagement Artist working in conjunction with sculptor Brad Howe on the new Los Angeles County Multi Ambulatory Care Center scheduled to open in Lancaster in 2014. Sironi View or Download the Bloom 2013 Exhibition Catalog by clicking on the cover image or here.

Events ALL EVENTS Closed on the following dates: Dec 13 Closed for A Magical BLVD Christmas Dec 24 Closed on Christmas Eve Dec 25 Closed on Christmas Day Dec 31 Closed on New Year's Eve Jan 01 Closed on New Year's Day

2021 < View Public Art Projects Paleolithic Herd by Devin Thor 2021 Permanent Art Project Devin Thor presents three pieces from his raw, unique stone works that make extinct paleolithic creatures live again as a life-size sculptural herd. The use of material makes these flat works fascinating in texture as well as image. In the use of color (russet, gold, brown) and material (sandstone, rebar, and found/discarded materials), they appear as if they arose from the earth itself. The herd, which includes a buck, a doe, and a fawn, makes extinct creatures live again. Seeming tribal in nature, their beautiful simplicity serves as an elegy to the losses of the past, and a pristine prayer for a better future. According to Thor, his paleolithic creatures are “ a homage to our prehistoric ancestors, but also an exploration of the global influence of humans on our environment…” adding that “modern humans have modified the planet and now must take on a stewardship role, otherwise we might face extinction ourselves.” Thor is a geologist as well as an artist, which is likely a reason for his choice of material. The rough brown surface creates an elegant but primal visual perspective, representing a tribute to the beings themselves and the land where they once roamed. His minimal approach is relatable with an easily recognizable shape and universal figures that open the world of the past with hope for tomorrow. A poignant reminder that despite the bulk and weighty purpose of these beings, they were too fragile to survive in the end representing a cautionary tale for the preservation of many species including our own.

Presents What's in a Landscape? What’s in a Landscape? is a project undertaken by Art in Residence, in partnership with the Museum of Art and History, to uncover the diverse and multivalent relationships Antelope Valley residents have to the landscape they call home. The goals of the project focused on documenting the people of the Antelope Valley and their relation to its landscape and history. Using the work of Rackstraw Downes as a jumping off point, Art In Residence organized four workshops at Quartz Hill High School, each building on the next, giving students the opportunity to explore plant-centered narratives, documentary filmmaking, landscape painting and mural design, and oral histories. What’s in a Landscape? is generously supported by the California Arts Council’s Artists in Communities grant program and the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation. Plant-centered Narratives Landscape Painting & Mural Design Art Talk Series Oral History Interview Documentary Filmmaking Made possible by A Workshop on Plant-centered Narratives In this workshop, Jenny Yurshansky took Richard Rosenblatt’s 11th grade English class through a guided writing exercise. Students collected a clipping from a plant, and then wrote a narrative embodying that plant’s point of view. Some students went personal, some went speculative. Writing took various forms, from prose, to poetry, to diary entries. In writing this way, students gained empathy for the landscape as a living companion to its human inhabitants. Adriana Orozco Diary of Letitia Read Now Brandon Kim October 18th, 2020 Read Now Edward Lee Desertion Read Now Lara Cruz Roses Read Now Patrick Park My Name is Winky Read Now Tanisha Alam Spring Festival Read Now Kendall Segale Ripped from the Ground Read Now Alayna Boyd The Fiddleneck in Me Read Now Brooke Jurgenson ROSE Read Now Eric Chen The Siren Read Now Tahlia Campbell This Was the End Read Now Martin Bozikovic Untitled Read Now Om Baboolall Taking It All In Read Now Jillian Stebbins A Pine Tree Doesn’t Know English Read Now Alex Kim Untitled Read Now Camille Murray From an Oleanders View Read Now Emily Schneider The White Rose and I Read Now Sarah Valdez Ocampo Fighting Against Weakness (A slightly dying) Zebra Haworthia Read Now Samantha Martinez Rosemary Read Now Sophia Rocha The Periwinkle Read Now Riley Briones Yellow Rose Read Now Ashna Pradhan Green Is a Color as Well Read Now Destiny Solis Stuck Read Now Gabriela Valiente Reborn, Here Read Now Renee Chowdhry Diary Entry Read Now Valeria Munoz The Alien Read Now Renee Odoi The Fern Plant Read Now Joanna Vazquez A Plant’s Life Read Now As an extension of this workshop and as a warm up exercise to the Documentary Filmmaking workshop, Richard Rosenblatt shared the writings with the students in Chris Hall’s class. Each of the four groups took one of the written works, recorded a voice over, and gathered footage to accompany the text. Play Video Play Video 02:55 Untitled by Alex Kim Play Video Play Video 02:46 The Siren by Eric Chen Play Video Play Video 04:25 A Pine Tree Doesn’t Know English by Jillian Stebbins Play Video Play Video 02:02 Green is a Color as Well by Ashna Pradham Plant Centered Narratives A Workshop on Landscape Painting & Mural Design Muralist Nuri Amanatullah led students in Deepak Dhillon’s art class through lecture and discussion on the landscape as a subject in drawing and painting, with an emphasis on symbolism and expressing identity through natural elements. Students created landscape sketches, and used those sketches as the basis for proposed mural design. Amanatullah then combined the work done by the students into a single mural to be executed on the campus of Quartz Hill High School. Hover over the s on the mural below to learn more about this collaboration. In this sketch by Makalya Ojeda we see the inspiration for the sky – your classic AV sunset – as well as the more profile pose of the pronghorn. This initial sketch by Diego Vargas incorporates abstract wavy lines, as well as a suggestion of architectural elements which inspired the map seen inside the pronghorn's form. From Erin Segovia's digital rendering we receive the overall palette and look of the mural. Her detailed renderings of the flora were important to capture in the final image. Landscape Painting and Mural Design A Workshop on Documentary Filmmaking Robin Rosenthal and Dave Martin partnered with Chris Hall’s Intermediate Production class to create short documentary videos. Students were tasked with creating a piece about a particular landscape they have a personal connection with, or interviewing a person or group with a particular relationship to the landscape in some way. Play Video Play Video 05:47 The Isolated Community of Green Valley Play Video Play Video 01:59 Rough Beauty Play Video Play Video 05:18 Littering In The Landscape Play Video Play Video 05:02 The Mojave Desert Documentary Filmmaking Public Art and Monuments An Oral History Interview with Margaret Rhyne In her interview for What’s in a Landscape? Margaret Rhyne focuses on the role of conservation and stewardship in preserving land. She offers unique insights into how the Antelope Valley landscape has been changed by the hands of people who, like herself, have dedicated their lives to maintaining and preserving the local land and its wildlife. An Interview with Margaret Rhyne 00:00 / 46:34 Art Talk Series In this art talk series Art in Residence invited 4 artists to discuss their work in relation to the theme of landscapes. They explored how this theme plays a role in each of their art practices. Art Talk Series: Whats In a Landscape? Play Video Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tumblr Copy Link Link Copied Now Playing Art Talk Series: Whats In a Landscape? | Mood & Meaning 58:50 Play Video Now Playing Art Talk Series: Whats In a Landscape? | Monuments Now: Joel Garcia 01:15:33 Play Video Now Playing Art Talk Series: Whats In a Landscape? | Jenny Yurshansky 01:06:45 Play Video Art Talk

< Back Stevie Love Featured Structure Artist Challenging herself to explore and adopt new art forms, contemporary artist Stevie Love has expanded her creative practice by taking on the role of adobe builder. In 2001, after attending a four-day workshop at Southwest Solar Adobe School in Bosque, New Mexico, Love and her husband Dr. Bruce Love decided to build their very own adobe house in Juniper Hills, California overlooking the Mojave Desert. Architecturally, the concept of an adobe house is an ancient building technique common amongst historic civilizations in the Americas and the Middle East. The term “adobe” is Spanish for mudbrick or Arabic for brick. Honoring the traditional techniques of adobe building, Love and a small crew hand-sculpted each brick and structural element of her adobe home. Throughout the seven years Love constructed her adobe home, she photo-documented the turbulent yet immersive experience constructing the home, as photographs displayed in this exhibition. From laying the foundation to picking tiles, the Loves put in a great amount of research and effort in building an authentic yet personalized adobe house. When building the foundation, walls and overall base structure of their adobe dream home, Love committed to only using materials within walking distance from the building site. Love also made sure to align the structural orientations of the house with the Earth and sky axis, taking the seasons into account just as the first adobe builders once did. Furthermore, throughout the Love house, one finds design components from a diverse and international pool of influences. For instance, the threshold to enter the structure is fashioned with ancient wooden doors from India. As visitors cross the entryway, they are met with an alcove (a small nook or cut-out in the wall), the Loves decorated with saints and angels to protect all who enter the home. In the master and guest bath one finds Japanese and coin tiles, fossils, and Chinese half-boulder sinks. In the Loves adobe residence, the list of obscure decor goes on — every cranny, cabinet, and doorway in-between tells a unique story. Outside of hand-building her own adobe home, Stevie Love is well known for her self-declared addiction to acrylic paint and its ability to create autonomous forms. She is widely recognized for her paint-sculpture hybrids, inspired by intense energy, nature, visual culture, and open experimentation. Love earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from California State University, San Bernardino and her Master of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been featured in private and public spaces across the United States, Asia, and Europe and can be found in the permanent collections of the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA, and the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA. Previous Next

Autumn 2013 < Return to Exhibitions August 3, - October 13, 2013 Free Enterprise: The Art of Citizen Space Exploration Curated by Tyler Stallings and Marko Peljhan Main & Vault Gallery Tim Youd: The Right Stuff Jewel Box Gallery When I'm Sixty-Four Curated by Rebecca Trawick East, South, Wells Fargo Jorg Dubin: Dog Fight Lobby Atrium Free Enterprise Image Courtesy of Tyler Stallings, Artistic Director UCR Culver Center for the Arts & Sweeney Art Gallery Troy Aossey Tim Youd Jorg Dubin Free Enterprise: The Art of Citizen Space Exploration Curated by Tyler Stallings and Marko Peljhan Occupying the entire ground level, MOAH presents the first contemporary art exhibition in the U.S. to showcase an international array of artists and organizations who are exploring the intersection between artistic production and civilian space travel. The possibility of fulfilling the human dream to fly into space has been encouraged by a major political and cultural shift away from federal-sponsored space activities towards a private enterprise model. This exciting exhibit includes a variety of media such as drawing, photography, video, sculpture, painting, and artifacts by international participants. Locally based XCOR Aerospace, Inc. (Mojave, CA), has installed a full scale working rocket and other hardware in the Museum as a major feature of the show. Free Enterprise originated from the University of California Riverside ARTSblock. Participants : The Arts Catalyst (London, U.K.), Lowry Burgess (Pittsburgh, PA), Center for Land Use Interpretation (Culver City, CA), Richard Clar (Paris/Los Angeles), Skeith De Wine (Santa Ana, CA), Kitsou Dubois (Paris), Final Frontier Design (New York), MIR - Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research (international participants), Forrest Myers (New York), Carrie Paterson (Los Angeles), Connie Samaras (Los Angeles), and XCOR Aerospace, Inc. (Mojave, CA). Tim Youd: The Right Stuff Continuing with the theme of space and flight, Los Angeles-based artist Tim Youd will perform the typing of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff on the original typewriter used to create the novel. Youd’s performance involves typing the novel on a single page run through the machine over and over again, thereby embedding the entire manuscript into one sheet. Youd travels the world, performing the works in locales geographically related to either the author’s life or the plot of the novel. When I'm Sixty-Four Curated by Rebecca Trawick When I'm Sixty-Four explores the lives of our country's 50+ population. California alone is projected to have a population of 6.5 million people over the age of 65 within the first two decades of the new millennium. All aspects of life will be impacted including politics, public services, the economy, family structures, and healthcare. As our population ages we have to ask ourselves the role this group will play in our culture and whether or not our perception, acceptance and politics will mature along with them. The contemporary artists in When I'm Sixty-Four use diverse approaches to explore the realities of the lives of our senior population, often through extremely private investigations into their own aging or the lives of their loved ones. Their work poses questions about our concepts of growing older, and what we can do to access our senior community members. The Museum of Art and History is presenting an in-depth schedule of public programs, lectures, film screenings and special performances featuring amazing seniors in our communities. Artists include Deborah Aschheim (CA), Troy Aossey (AZ), Jeanne C. Finley (CA), Gina Genis (CA), Nancy Macko (CA), Peter Riesett (NY) and Shari Wasson (CA). Jorg Dubin: Dog Fight Jorg Dubin’s Dog Fight sculptures capture the form and structure of military aircraft. Constructed from metal, Dubin finishes the surfaces with corporate logos painted directly on the work. Suspended in the Museum’s atrium in a configuration resembling an aerial dog fight, the title of the work comes alive from multiple vantage points as viewers walk through the first and second floors of the facility. The Corporate Jet Series is a playful and ironic look at the influence or perhaps the merging of the power of corporate America, politics and the innate desire for the good life, all of which is protected by the military. Enterprise Youd Dubin Trawick View or Download the Autumn 2013 Exhibition Catalog by clicking on the cover image or here.

Event Sign-in Welcome! Please sign in to help us track our attendance and improve your experience. First Name Email Phone Last Name Zipcode Mobile Carrier Choose an option Choose your location I want to subscribe to the newsletter to learn about Exhibitions & Community Art Projects, Activities for Kids & Families, and Free Community Events I agree to receive SMS Text Messages from the Museum of Art and History. Submit Thanks for registering.

Galia LinnVessels and GuardiansSurrounded by archeological sites and spaces in war-torn Israel, Galia Linn gained inspiration from ancient and contemporary relics from past and present civilizations. She reacts to these relics and stories through her sculptures, paintings, and site-responsive installations. < Back Galia Linn, Stone Guardian Galia Linn, Studio Shot Galia Linn, Ancient Vessels of the Divine Galia Linn, Stone Guardian 1/6 Galia Linn Vessels and Guardians Surrounded by archeological sites and spaces in war-torn Israel, Galia Linn gained inspiration from ancient and contemporary relics from past and present civilizations. She reacts to these relics and stories through her sculptures, paintings, and site-responsive installations. Linn creates imperfect vessels used to relay the elemental tensions between the material she works with and the stories and relics that emerge. Through the cracks, fissures, ruptures, and fractures within Linn’s ceramics, metalworks, paintings, and installations, she imbues an aged aesthetic that references layers of Middle Eastern history. For Linn, the imperfect nature of her works is meant to show the vulnerability of humankind and the grandeur and form allude to the interior strength and resilience. Brokenness should be embraced as the objects come to symbolize perseverance and healing, where there is no separation between the vessels she creates and her physical body. Previous Next

Western Hotel Museum 557 W Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster, CA 93534 Open Friday and Saturday | 11 AM - 4 PM Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays, and Holidays westernhotel@cityoflancaster.gov (661) 723-6250 Closed Holiday Dates Friday, November 28, 2025 In observance of the Thanksgiving holiday, please note that the Western Hotel Museum is regularly closed on Thursdays and will therefore also be closed on Thursday, November 27. Saturday, December 13, 2025 Our team will be onsite at the Magical BLVD. We invite you to visit Lancaster BLVD and join us in celebrating the holiday event. Wednesday, December 24, 2025 - Thursday, December 25, 2025 In observance of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the Western Hotel Museum will be closed. As a reminder, the museum is regularly closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday, December 31, 2025 - Thursday, January 1, 2026 In observance of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the Western Hotel Museum will be closed. The museum is regularly closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Western Hotel Museum is one of the Antelope Valley’s most visible links to our past heritage. We hope that you will enjoy your visit and encounter nostalgic recollections when you see photographs and artifacts that depict the history of the people who built, worked, and lived in early Lancaster. Admission to the museum is free, but we accept and appreciate all donations History Blog Request a Tour Book a Tour Explore the the rich history of Lancaster's Western Hotel Museum, by booking a tour today! Learn More > View The Self Guided Tour Enjoy the Western Hotel Museum at your own pace by following along with the self-guided tour. Learn More > Read about Myrtie Webber Learn more about the woman behind the Western Hotel Museum: Myrtie Webber. Learn More > Visiting one of our museums? Let us help you plan your trip!

Gorgeous Venue & Great Staff "I booked the rooftop terrace and Lantern Room for my dad's 90th birthday. The setting was stunning. It would be perfect for a wedding or any other special event...The MOAH staff was professional, helpful, and communicative throughout the 9 months of planning and also during the party." -R Oberdorf, Weddingwir e "I booked the "Lantern Room" atop the roof of the Lancaster Museum of Art & History. The space is very modern and clean; metal beams cross in front of floor-to-ceiling windows and the space is filled with natural light." -Katherine, Weddingwir e View or Download the Facility Rental Application by clicking here. Rental FAQs Rental Fees Photo: Pixels&Prints Photo: Pixels&Prints Photo: Danielle Bacon Photography Photo: Candace Benjamin Photography Photo: Pixels&Prints Photo: Pixels&Prints

Colorimetry < Return to Exhibitions January 18 - March 16 Ruth Pastine: Attraction 1993 - 2013 Main Gallery Gisela Colon: Glo-Pod Jewel Box John Eden: Roundel Series Second Floor - Staircase Atrium Johannes Girardoni: Chromasonic Field Blue/Green, 2013 Second Floor East Gallery Phillip K Smith III: Lucid Stead: Four Windows and the Doorway Vault Gallery Karl Benjamin Entry Atrium Dion Johnson: Light Sequence - Aquarium' 2013 Education Gallery January 23 - March 13 Innovations 29th Annual All-Media Juried Art Exhibition South Gallery Ruth Pastine Gisela Colon John Eden Karl Benjamin Dion Johnson Phillip K Smith Johannes Girardoni Anita Ray Innovations 29th Annual All-Media Curator's Award Eden Pastine Girardoni Johnson Benjamin Innovations Colon Ruth Pastine: Attraction 1993-2013 In the world of human perception, perhaps no single stimulus evokes a more complex cascade of responses than that of the phenomenon of color. Our perception of the color spectrum is completely dependent upon light and is encountered thousands of times a day in seemingly infinite combinations. Whether in our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, cities, in film, in art, even in our dreams, these encounters have the ability to trigger emotional, physiological, intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual responses. Creating this phenomenological interplay between color, light and perception is where renowned painter and color theorist Ruth Pastine thrives. Pastine’s oil paintings and pastel works on paper provide a contemplative field in which we may dwell and absorb the intimate relationships she presents between warm colors and cool colors, between light and dark tones, between two-dimensions and the illusion of three-dimensional space. Pastine’s life’s work is dedicated to evolving the visual experience of color and redefining the perceptual field by combining contrasting color systems that challenge our preconceptions and ask us to move beyond the immediate attraction into the optical realm. The work is best experienced in person, which reveals the optical and visceral resonance of the hand painted surfaces. Through her work, color and light are reduced to their most elemental form. Thousands of tiny brush strokes appear visually seamless, producing an image that is both objective and pure and filled with nuance and subtlety that engages the viewer in the present tense of discovery. This journey parallels her painting process of being in the moment, in the here-and-now as she transforms a neutral canvas into a rich field of color. The square, vertical, and horizontal-rectangular framework of the canvas provides a gateway for departure, a means to access the future work, beyond that which seems finite. Ruth Pastine was born and raised in New York City. She received her B.F.A. from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY in painting and art history, and her M.F.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York in painting, color theory, and critical theory. She received the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Grant in 1999, and in 2000 in conjunction with The Shifting Foundation matching grant. In 2001 she relocated to Southern California where she currently works and resides. In 2009, she received a public commission from Brookfield Properties and created a site-specific installation titled Limitless , which is comprised of eight large-scale vertical paintings permanently on view in the lobbies of Ernst & Young Plaza in Los Angeles, CA. The Museum of Art & History is pleased to present Pastine’s first museum survey show with exhibition catalog essays by Donald Kuspit and Peter Frank. She has exhibited widely in the United States and Japan, and is included in many public and corporate collections across the nation. Gisela Colon: Glo-Pods The work of Los Angeles-based Gisela Colón has been associated with California Minimalism, specifically the Light & Space and Finish-Fetish movements more broadly referred to as “Perceptualism.” Colón’s sculptures investigate the properties of light in solid form and luminescent color through the use of industrial plastic materials. The Glo-Pods body of work—meticulously created through a proprietary fabrication process of blow-molding and layering acrylic—mark Colon as part of the next generation of southern California artists using light as exploratory media. The light appearing to emanate from the objects is an illusion based on color and form. Colón's use of amorphous, organic, asymmetrical lines and light-reflecting and radiating media make her objects appear to pulsate with light and energy. They simultaneously appear to both actively materialize and dissolve into the surrounding environment, allowing the experience of pure color and form in space. Colon’s goal is to bring about intriguing perceptual contradictions between visual elements such as: mass/lightness, solidity/delicacy, opacity/ transparency, muscularity/femininity, and intensity/nuance thus allowing for the exploration of the phenomenology of light, color, materiality, and space as we experience it through the human lens of the senses. Colón was born in 1966 in Vancouver, Canada, to a German mother and Puerto Rican father. She was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and attended the University of Puerto Rico, graduating magna cum laude in 1987 with a BA in Economics. Colón moved to Los Angeles to pursue graduate studies, receiving a Juris Doctorate degree from Southwestern University School of Law in 1990. She was given a Congressional Scholarship Award by the Harry S. Truman Foundation in recognition of her outstanding academic excellence. She was able to turn to art full-time in 2002, quickly developing a following for her abstract paintings. Colón’s increasing interest in light and space and issues of visual perception brought her to her present series of work and her conscious association with Light-and-Space and Finish-Fetish artists such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Craig Kauffman, DeWain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, Larry Bell, Ronald Davis, Mary Corse, and Peter Alexander. Colón has exhibited at national and international venues. In 2014, she will be featured in the survey exhibition “Trans-Angeles” at the Museum Wilhelm-Morgner Haus in Soest, Germany. John Eden: Roundel Series In his Roundel Series , Sculptor John Eden presents multicolored disks that are interpretations of the symbols and colors used to identify military aircrafts’ country of origin. These 'Roundels' were originally inspired by the tricolored Cockade uniform ribbon of the French Revolution and repurposed again during WWI for aerial combatants. Mr. Eden further abstracts these symbols into pure shape and form. Eden started the Roundel Series in the late fall of 2012 and to date has created twenty-nine discs in various sizes, with twenty-five different Roundel designs. Like many of his contemporaries within the Southern California Finish-Fetish movement, he works solo in his studio, attending to every detail with pride and dedication to his craft. His work is grounded in his lifelong fascination with hidden or secret meanings: things that appear to be one thing, but are quite the opposite—in this case beautiful objects with lethal intent. This series explores the idea that “all that glitters is not gold” and the dark side of beauty. Eden’s Roundel Series builds upon the pioneering legacy of Southern California artists who married industrial materials and the Los Angeles car culture with political activism in the early 1960s. Eden credits the feminist artist Judy Chicago and her 1964 Topical Car Hood Series as an inspiration for his Roundel Series . Chicago sprayed acrylic lacquer on Corvair car hoods in precise, bold patterns thereby ushering in a new era of materials and content in Southern California art. John Eden received his Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Southern California; Master of Arts in inter-media from California State University of Northridge; and Bachelor of Fine Arts in independent filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. Eden attributes his skills in handling sensitive pigments, high polish surfaces and non-traditional materials largely developed by the California aerospace engineering industry to his advanced training under Jack Brogan in his world renowned fabrication studio. Since the 1960s Jack Brogan has been an important facet of the art scene in Southern California, working closely with artists such as John Eden, De Wain Valentine, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Helen Pashgian and John McCracken as a conservator, fabricator, and collaborator. MOAH is proud to continue exhibiting this legacy of artists and the fabricators who have helped pioneer the Light and Space and Finish-Fetish movements, all unique to Southern California. Eden shows widely in California and has published in The Los Angeles Times, Art Review and The San Diego Union Tribune. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Johannes Girardoni: Chromasonic Field Blue/Green, 2013 Johannes Girardoni is an American-based sculptor and installation artist. Girardoni is known for work that blurs the line between virtual and material content. Dispersed throughout a gallery filled with natural light, Chromasonic Field-Blue/Green is a series of semi-translucent blue cast resin beams. White LED’s illuminate them from within, projecting artificial light as well as allowing the surrounding natural light to pass through. The installation is outfitted with sensors calibrated to measure the specific color frequency emanating from the resin as well as the ambient light. The sensors drive a tone generator, which converts the light information to sound, essentially making light audible. These sensors also register the presence of the viewer moving through the space, which further modulates the sound. The boundaries between natural and digital phenomena are blurred in a field of luminous sound. Johannes Girardoni's work has been widely shown at museums and galleries in the US, Europe and Asia. In 2011, Girardoni's light and sound installation The (Dis)appearance of Everything was included in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy. Selected other exhibitions include Personal Structures at the Ludwig Museum, Germany, 30 Years of Contemporary Art at the California Center for Contemporary Art and Creative Migration at The Austrian Cultural Forum, New York. His works are represented in public and private collections, such as the Harvard Art Museum, The Progressive Collection and The Margulies Collection. Girardoni has been the subject of features and reviews both nationally and internationally including: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ArtNews, Art in America and Sculpture. In 2013, Girardoni completed a major in-situ permanent work, Metaspace 1 (The Infinite Room) , a light and sound sculpture conceived as part of architecture in collaboration with Smithsonian/Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winner Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects. Girardoni’s Metaspace V2 , a groundbreaking interactive sculpture project that brings together art, technology, and science was first presented at the exhibition Off and On at Nye+Brown in Los Angeles. Phillip K. Smith: Lucid Stead: Four Windows and the Doorway Drawing inspiration from the optic sensation of California’s Light and Space movement, Phillip K. Smith III creates deceptively simple objects that seem to breathe and move as they are observed and experienced. This exhibition showcases one aspect of Smith’s Lucid Stead, 2013 an entirely site specific installation that incorporated LED lighting with mirrored panels on a 70 year old homesteading shack in the Mojave desert. Smith’s design of Lucid Stead was deeply influenced by his relationship to the desert, where he lives and works, and the inherent qualities unique to the Mojave: the quiet, expansive space, the reduced pace of change, and the uninterrupted color fields that occur as day shifts to night over the horizon. Using these ephemeral qualities as material and medium through the reflection of light and mirrors mounted on the homestead, Smith was able to place the building in direct conversation with the surrounding landscape. The four windows and doorway were outfitted with LED panels that slowly drenched the viewer in color. The desert context disappeared as day transformed into night and the colored panels appeared to float into the black sky. Smith happily pulled these light panels away from their desert home and into the MOAH to enable him to strictly focus the eye on pure color. His usual mode of working with light is from the inside-out, meaning he imbues his objects with light from within. Now, the interaction of color occurs as colors reflect and mingle on the gallery walls, washing the gallery in shifting changing light and color. Lucid Stead: Four Windows and the Doorway provides a direct path to the human sensory system, and the installation itself takes on human physicality, as if the color is breathing light into the participant. Smith is concerned with time and the ephemeral nature of life. In the past was Lucid Stead. In the present is: Lucid Stead: Four Windows and the Doorway, a bridge to the future where Smith will take re-site a monumental installation into the landscape, where the Southern California desert and the purity of his solar powered light panels interact seamlessly. Phillip K. Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. From his Indio, California studio he continues to push the boundaries and confront the ideas of modernist design. Drawing inspiration form the rigidity of the Bauhaus movement in its pure shapes, colors and forms, with the reductive geometries of minimalism and the optic sensation of light and color, Smith III attempts to resolve the complex challenge of finding a natural state of life and spirit within these ideological constrictions. Commissioned to create more than a dozen monumental public art works in the last 5 years in Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Arlington, VA, Phoenix and several sites in California, Smith has enjoyed rapid success with a 2008 feature in the Art in America Annual Review. In addition to these larger scaled works, Smith continues to work on an ever-growing list of smaller scaled works for private collections. Karl Benjamin (December 29, 1925 – July 26, 2012) Born in Chicago, Karl Benjamin began his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1943. Interrupted by service in the US Navy during WWII, Benjamin resumed his studies at Southern California's University of Redlands in 1946. Graduating in 1949 with a BA degree in English literature, history and philosophy, Benjamin began his career as a teacher with no intention of becoming an artist. However, his relocation to Claremont California in 1952, shortly after he had begun "playing" with paint in 1951, galvanized his career path. Though he continued to teach in public schools and, later to great acclaim, for Pomona College, the artist's work blossomed amid the lively art, design and architecture scene in Los Angeles in the mid twentieth Century. Numerous gallery showings of his work during the 1950s culminated in 1959 with his inclusion in Los Angeles County Museum of Art's ground-breaking exhibition "Four Abstract Classicists: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin." The exhibition garnered national attention along with the creation of a moniker for Benjamin's meticulously orchestrated color and form: Hard Edge Painting. Subsequently Benjamin's work was included in the exhibit Purist Painting traveling to Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse and the Columbus Museum of Art. The Whitney Museum included his work in Geometric Abstraction in America. Museum of Modern Art (NY) also featured the artist in their watershed exhibit The Responsive Eye. Benjamin was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Visual Arts in 1983 and 1989. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and is included in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, Israel; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY among others. Benjamin taught for many years at Pomona Valley institutions and was named Professor Emeritus at Pomona College. Dion Johnson: Light Sequence – Aquarium, 2013 Dion Johnson is activating the Education Gallery with an animated video projection of slowly evolving abstract fields of color, stripes and architectural forms. This is a site specific work of art that Dion has created exclusively for MOAH. Mr. Johnson imagines the projection as a moving painting that draws inspiration from how he senses and experiences the environment. From observing shadows stretching across his living room floor, watching the curvature of the freeway interchange while driving to his studio, and seeing the Southern California light filtering through urban structures, Light Sequence – Aquarium holds a full range of associations and perceptual cues that percolate as the video animation unfolds. Dion Johnson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio State University and his Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University. He exhibits nationally with solo shows in museums and galleries across California, New York, Florida, Ohio and Texas. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Innovations 29th Annual All-Media Juried Art Exhibition Highlighted in the 29th Annual All Media Exhibit are 107 pieces created by 73 talented High Desert Artists. The entries were judged by Southern California artist Ray Turner, an American artist known primarily for his portrait and landscape painting and award winning sculptor Sarah Perry who currently resides in Tehachapi. All work in this exhibition was produced in the past three years and has not previously been shown at the Museum of Art & History. All forms of artistic media, including, but not limited to, painting, photography, and mixed-media were welcomed. The award winners were chosen by the esteemed judges with aditional awards given by community members and City leaders. Best of Exhibition • 1st (Best of) Christine Kline - Origins • 2nd (Best of) Stevie Love - Paint Thing 2 • 3rd (Best of) Antoinette de Paiva - Afterthought Series #5 Minors: • 1st Place Hanna Creech (age 13) - The Peacock • 2nd Place Elizabeth Engeda (age 10) - Northern Cardinal • 3rd Place Jack Kozlovsky (age 7) - Jack's Magic Dragon Beryl Amspoker Award • Tina Dorff - Portrait of the Young Countess Deirdra Rose Lakes and Valleys Art Guild Award • Sal Vasquez - Harris Vineyards Harvesters Dean Webb Memorial Photography Award, Presented by the Lancaster Photography Association • Betsy Batish - Unhitched Mayor’s Award • Tina Dille – E.B. City Manager’s Award • Michael Evans – Steampunk Top Hat Director’s Award • Regis R. Gagnon – Cotton Belt on the Outskirts Curator’s Award • Anita Ray – Loose Ends Honorable Mentions: • Nay Schuder – Crackin’ Up #1 • Michael Evans – Steampunk Media Player •Antoinette de Paiva - Afterthought Series #7 • Thaddeus Grzelak - Plein Air - Old Gold Mine • Frank Dixon - The Machine Age • Dennis Borak - Field of Sun Flowers • Dennis Borak - Artist Considering a Painting • Susan Cunningham - Dreaming of Zion • Nancy Scherich - Bitter Sweet • Hossen Mofarrah - Particles in the Air • Ralph Richeson - The Circus Came to Town • Christine Kline - Drowning Man • Jarnold - Meat Head • Tina Dorff - Deirdra & Jacques • Dennis Adams – Old Barn • Cynthia F. McConnell - Voids • Karyl Newman - Inter-Airspace Velvet • Stevie Love - Paint Thing 3 • Bruce McAllister - Sarah Says (As Neptune Swims) • Katherine Shannon - Kidding Around Smith View or Download the Colorimetry Exhibition Catalog by clicking on the cover image or here.