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Back to Exhibitions Sharon Kagan Bearing Witness A twenty-five-year survey of Kagan’s practice, exploring knitting as an allegory for human interconnectedness and intergenerational trauma across drawing, painting, installation, and performance. January 31 - April 19, 2026 Ralph and Virginia Bozigian Gallery

The Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH) celebrates the art, history, and culture of the Antelope Valley through engaging exhibitions, educational programs, and community events. With four locations, including MOAH:CEDAR and the Western Hotel Museum, it showcases over 10,000 works and artifacts, highlights local and global artists, and honors the region’s Indigenous heritage and diverse cultural legacy. January 31 - April 19, 2026 FEATURING Nathan Huff, Sharon Kagan Bachrun LoMele, Vojislav Radovanović Francis C. Robateau Jr., Brian Singer & Diane Briones Williams Image Credit: Nathan Huff, Phantom Limbs (detail), 2019, Gouache and watercolor on paper, Courtesy of the Artist Shop The Vault Store Left book: Sages Right book: Osceola Refetoff, Magic and Realism Celebrate reading all season long! Enjoy 20% off select books in honor of I Love to Read Month in February and National Reading Month in March. Shop Now Support MOAH Learn More > Shop Learn More > Rentals Learn More > Blog Posts Learn More > Tours Learn More > Join our mailing list and stay up to date with events & upcoming programs JOIN NOW!

Back to Exhibitions Metaphor Winter/Spring 2026 Season Experience the launch of Metaphor , an exhibition season featuring seven solo exhibitions and projects exploring visual metaphor, memory, identity, and collective experience. This season brings together artists who use symbolism and layered imagery to reveal complex stories about self, place, history, and imagination. Image Credit: Nathan Huff, Phantom Limbs (detail), 2019, Gouache and watercolor on paper. Courtesy of the Artist January 31 - April 19, 2026 Nathan Huff Heavy Hope Main Gallery Learn More Bachrun LoMele Burn Pile/ All Kinds of Murmuring Here and There Atrium Learn More Francis C. Robateau Jr. Halftone Histories: Memory, Erasure, and Belonging Mark and Hilarie Moore Family Trust Gallery Learn More Diane Briones Williams The Precarious Life of the Parol Joseph Stello Family and Jewel Box Galleries Learn More Sharon Kagan Bearing Witness Ralph and Virginia Bozigian Gallery Learn More Vojislav Radovanović Fables from the Valley in Between South Gallery Learn More Brian Singer It was a pleasure to burn North Gallery Learn More

Currrent | Upcoming | Past Exhibitions. Metaphor now on view. January 31 - April 19, 2026 | Winter/Spring 2026 exhibition season. Current Upcoming Past Metaphor Winter/Spring 2026 Season January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Nathan Huff Heavy Hope January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Sharon Kagan Bearing Witness January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Bachrun LoMele Burn Pile/ All Kinds of Murmuring Here and There January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Vojislav Radovanović Fables from the Valley in Between January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Francis C. Robateau Jr. Halftone Histories: Memory, Erasure, and Belonging January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Brian Singer It was a pleasure to burn January 31 - April 19, 2026 Learn More Summer 2026 exhibitions to be announced soon! Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on our Summer 2026 exhibitions. Subscribe Blue Grass Green Skies September 27 - January 4, 2026 Blue Grass, Green Skies brought together works that reflected on the natural world, environmental changes, terrain, and scenery, including pieces inspired by the California landscape. Organized in collaboration with Thinkspace and LACMA, the exhibition highlighted diverse artistic perspectives on these themes. Learn More

Up Empty Vessel Excerpts Amir Zaki Amir Zaki is a photographer interested in the rhetoric of authenticity. Although Zaki’s use of hybridized photography tows the line between reality and the abstract, his documentary style ensures the viewer’s trust in the piece remains intact. His subject matter revolves around the architectural and organic California landscape, mainly the idea that California is symbolic of a metaphorical collage of styles and ideas. Empty Vessels explores the vacant landscapes of California skateparks and juxtaposes these images with still lifes of broken, ceramic containers. Using a DSLR and a motorized GigaPan tripod, each photo taken is a composite of a dozen or several dozen photos that he combines. The result is a hyper-realistic rendering of the space which seeks to explore the stillness and isolation of these places, inviting the viewer to contemplate their existence within these spaces. The visual comparison seeks to highlight the malleability of these structures with the undulating rigidity of the barren, concrete landscapes. What was once seen as static, cold and banal transforms into a magnificent display of movement and meditative contemplation. Amir Zaki received his Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. Zaki has been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries including the Mak Center Schindler House, the Doyle Arts Pavilion, the Dalian Modern Museum in China, ACME Gallery, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, James Harris Gallery, Edward Cella Art & Architecture, and Roberts Projects. He has been included in over 50 group exhibitions in significant venues including The California Biennial: 2006 at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Andreas Grimm Gallery in Munich, Germany, Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York, Flag Art Foundation in New York, Western Bridge in Seattle, Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, the California Museum of Photography, Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Nevada Museum of Art. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Riverside. January 23 – May 9, 2021 Back to list

An assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Up We Are Home Shelley Heffler An assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Cut, slash, crunch, and weave. These words encapsulate the fluidity of motion that defines the work of Los Angeles-based artist Shelley Heffler. Growing up in the Bronx, Heffler’s experiences navigating the subways of New York City root her artistic practice. The traces of transit maps are visible in the lines and forms in the composition of her work. Heffler’s recent work, We Are Home (2020), is an assorted community quilt project portraying visual representations of home, highlighting the humanist aspect of her work. Heffler, in her work, often uses glimpses and collages of various colors and textures to create an urban aesthetic. Heffler’s work combines waste and other byproducts of consumerism meshed with paint to create a trance-like cartographic composition, manifesting into the landscape of an altered world. With We Are Home , Heffler utilizes her artistic process in quilt-making, soliciting local residents to submit a 12” x 12” quilt block using objects and inspiration from their home. These assorted squares are then curated into the community quilt. This end product addresses the feeling of isolation during the quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the thoughts of what home means to oneself. June 5 – September 5, 2021 Back to list

Up The Rule of Progress Rob Grad Southern California native, Rob Grad, is known for his introspective, yet bold 3D collages, sculptures, writing, and music. His heavily layered visuals contrast photographic vignettes of natural and urban environments, with drawing, painting, and his words–an aesthetic largely shaped by his two decades living in Venice Beach, CA. Grad’s approach to using Joshua Trees in his work is largely metaphorical. He references a story of Mormons naming the trees, where they felt the branches were reaching to heaven. This work was inspired by a poem Grad wrote about progress, and how it can’t be measured with a line on a graph. He writes, “it’s a flailing, fussy, slobbery glob.” In this image, Grad is posing the question, what actually is “progress?” What is the benefit? And what is the cost? Lines and shapes move in and around the branches, suggesting how close our relationship is with our environment, even at great distances apart. But it is only the tree that touches the ground and has the ability to find water for nourishment in the barren landscape. The idea of nourishment can also be seen as a metaphor here, for nourishing our desires and our thirst for a better life and a better tomorrow. Is that in fact, what we are creating? Can society as a whole actually learn and grow from its missteps? Grad’s work addresses the existential issues of desire and fulfillment in a society inundated by technology, social media, and politics. His new work is increasingly influenced by his early career as a musician when he was signed to RCA records and appeared on MTV not long after graduating high school. He is a product of the “MTV generation,” which found its identity through a shared global experience before the invention of social media. It was a generation that invented itself as it went along. This ethos is a cornerstone of Grad’s studio practice, always pushing himself into new and uncomfortable territory in an effort to extract the extraordinary from the mundane. He has shown in museums, galleries, and art fairs from Basel to Miami, and Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA, and the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA. He has commissioned work in the San Francisco airport, Hudson Pacific Properties, El Rancho Properties, the Zildjian corporate offices in Boston and Los Angeles, LA’s Griffin Athletic Club, and his work is held in private collections. Rob gave a TEDx Talk in Culver City, CA about authenticity in art and following the internal muse, and participated in a video project for TikTok China. He also writes a blog about his art practice called “Creativesphere,” and speaks to students in schools about the importance of learning to think creatively not only in art but to solve problems in today’s culture and society. January - June 2023 Back to list

Up British Invasion Various Artists Featured Artists: Andrew Hall Caroline PM Jones Colin Gray David Eddington David Hockney Dave Smith Derek Boshier Eleanor Wood Gordon Senior Graham Moore James Scott Jane Callister Jeremy Kidd Jon Measures Kate Savage Max Presneill Nathaniel Mellors Philip Argent Philip Vaughan Rhea O’Neill Roni Stretch Sarah Danays Shiva Aliabadi Siobhan McClure Trevor Norris Andrew Hall Born in Cambridge, England, Andrew Hall is best known for his graphically stunning, abstract photography. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts with honors in graphic design from Exeter College of Art and Design. A successful commercial photographer, Hall has worked with some of London’s top creative agencies and design consultancies. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he founded the School of Light, a darkroom and studio that mentors budding photographers in traditional darkroom practices as well as digital photography. Caroline PM Jones Born in Aldershot, England, Caroline PM Jones is best known for her sculpture, plein air paintings and portraiture. She studied sculpture at The Art Academy of London and is self-taught as a painter. Jones has created works of art all over the world—her paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography are part of collections in Hong Kong, North America, Britain, China, India, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Gibraltar, South Africa, France and Bermuda. She has exhibited in several local museums and galleries, including: Long Beach City College, 29 Palms Museum and the Los Angeles Arts Association. Jones currently resides in Culver City, California. Colin Gray Born in Torbay, Devonshire, Colin Gray is best known for his drawings and sculptural work. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Leeds Polytechnic Art Department in the United Kingdom as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gray has had solo shows in several American cities including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco and has installed public artworks in both Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. Notable accomplishments include the Santa Barbara County Individual Artists Award, as well as a The Pollock Krasner Grant. He taught sculpture for nine years at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies, and currently teaches drawing at Santa Barbara City College’s Center for Lifelong Learning and VITA Art Center in Ventura. Gray currently resides in Ventura, California. David Eddington Born in Bedfordshire, England, David Eddington is best known for his large-scale paintings, rendered in acrylic on linen. He obtained a diploma in mural painting from the Central School in Holborn, London, post-graduate diploma in environmental design from Hornsey College of Art in London, and a master’s degree in the social and political influences in art from the University of Trent in Nottingham. In 2000, the artist relocated to the United States from England. The move coincided with an evolution from figurative, almost photorealistic renderings to a style that is more expressive. Eddington has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and has lectured extensively at several institutions, including: California State University, Northridge, Louisiana State University, Loyola University, Tulane University, California State University, Long Beach, Plymouth University in Devonshire and Derby University in Derbyshire. He received the British Council Award in 1987 and 1994. Eddington currently resides in Venice, California. David Hockney Born in Bradford, England, David Hockney is, without question, one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known for the body of work he created during his time in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, consisting of iconic paintings of swimming pools and the photo collages he called “joiners”. One of these collages, Pearblossom Highway, features the stretch of Highway 138 that runs through Littlerock at the southeastern edge of the Antelope Valley. “Pearblossom Highway shows a crossroads in a very wide open space, which you only get a sense of in the western United States…I'd had three days of driving and being the passenger. The driver and the passenger see the road in different ways. When you drive you read all the road signs, but when you're the passenger, you don't, you can decide to look where you want. And the picture dealt with that: on the right-hand side of the road it's as if you're the driver, reading traffic signs to tell you what to do and so on, and on the left-hand side it's as if you're a passenger going along the road more slowly, looking all around. So the picture is about driving without the car being in it,” said Hockney of his work. He attended the Bradford College of Art, followed by a two-year period spent working in hospitals to fulfill national service requirements during World War II—Hockney was a conscientious objector to military service—before entering graduate school at the Royal College of Art in London. As a graduate, he experimented with various forms and styles, including Abstract Expressionism. Drawn to California from an early age, Hockney first visited in Los Angeles in 1963, relocating officially in 1964. In a poll of more than 1,000 British artists conducted in 2011, Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time. Recently, the artists’ ongoing fascination with technology is a driving force behind his work, as evidenced in the series of iPad paintings he began in 2009. This winter, Taschen will unveil a special SUMO edition book featuring over 450 pieces representative of Hockney’s oeuvre, a project that has been in the making since Taschen first began publishing SUMOs in the late 1990s. An extensive retrospective covering six decades of the artist’s work is set to open at Tate Britain in February 2017, one of the largest exhibitions the museum has ever organized. The retrospective will travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris following its British inauguration, then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Today, Hockney actively advocates for arts funding and splits his creative time between homes in London and Malibu, California. Dave Smith Born in Derbyshire England, Dave Smith is best known for his photo-realistic neo-pop paintings. He studied painting at Derby College of Art and Hornsey College of Art before forming the London-based artist’s collective, Electric Colour Company. Primarily serving the vibrant British fashion scene of the late 1960’s, the collective’s first major project was the iconic, Pop-infused Mr. Freedom store at 430 Kings Road in Chelsea. Smith moved to the Bahamas in 1973, ushering in a prolific period of painting in which he showed in a series of 8 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows in Nassau and Miami. He moved to Los Angeles in 1990, where he has worked in television and motion picture studios, painting billboards as well as several backdrops for The Tonight Show. Smith currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Derek Boshier Born in Portsmouth, England, Derek Boshier is best known for his paintings, which helped to establish the British Pop-Art movement in the 1960s. He studied at the Yeovil College of Art in Somerset, England, before attending the Royal College of Art in London alongside David Hockney, Allen Jones and R.B. Kitak, among others. Boshier’s graphic work found immense popularity among music groups such as The Clash and David Bowie, helping to bring the artist’s work to a wider audience. Though he is best known for his paintings, Boshier is not one to be limited by a medium, having worked in metal, neon and plastic as well as with books and film. He taught at Central School of Art and Design in London in the early 1970s, where he met then-student John Mellor (later known as Joe Strummer, of The Clash). Boshier has exhibited in several prominent international museums and galleries, including London’s National Portrait Gallery and Paris’ Galerie du Centre, as well as dozens of institutions throughout the United States. Boshier currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he teaches drawing part-time at UCLA’s School of Arts and continues to create relevant, politically-charged works. Eleanor Wood Born in London, England, Eleanor Wood is best known for her minimalist paintings. She studied at the Hornsey School of Art in London, followed by The Winchester School of Art in Winchester, where she received a Bachelor’s degree with Honors in Fine Art, and the Chelsea School of Art in London, where she received a Master of Arts in painting. Wood has had several solo exhibitions in California and the United Kingdom and has participated in dozens of group shows both in the United States and internationally. The artist currently splits her time between Central California and Norfolk, England. Gordon Senior Born in Norfolk, England, Gordon Senior is best known for his sculptural work, which addresses humans’ relationships to nature through the use of materials such as wood, alabaster, bronze and cement. He studied at the Wakefield College of Art, Leeds College of Art, and Goldsmiths College at London University. The artist has had several exhibitions throughout California and the UK and has participated in group shows both nationally and internationally. Currently, he splits his time between Central California and Norfolk, England. Graham Moore Born in London, England, Graham Moore is best known for his graphic, music-themed collages which utilize pop culture imagery. He studied at the Wimbledon School of Art and the East Ham College of Technology in London, before following his chosen creative career path of graphic design and art direction to the United States. Moore has participated in several group exhibitions as well as two solo shows and has designed work for clients including: Neiman Marcus, Pier 1 Imports, JC Penney, USC School of Social Work, Art Center College of Design, Creative Domain, The Cimarron Group, SRC Advertising, Teleflora, Asian Ceramics, Wise USA, Samsung Records, Quango and Resonance Records. He has taught at several prominent California arts institutions, including: Art Center College of Design, Woodbury University, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, UCLA Extension and the Art Institute in North Hollywood. Moore currently resides in Los Angeles, California. James Scott Born in Wells, England, James Scott is best known for his work in film and both abstract and narrative painting. He studied painting and theater design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The success of his first film, The Rocking Horse, led to an opportunity to work with Tony Richardson, allowing the artist to direct his first feature at the age of 21. Scott won an Academy Award in 1983 for his film, A Shocking Accident, based on the short story by Graham Greene. In 1989, Scott relocated to California following the passing of his father, wherein he decided to focus again on drawing and painting. The landscape of Los Angeles has provided a wealth of inspiration for the artist, and he continues to live in LA while exhibiting in England, Los Angeles and New York. Jane Callister Born on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom, Jane Callister is best known for her abstract paintings, which explore the consequences of action and the movement of paint itself. She received a Bachelor of Arts with honors from the Cheltenham School of Art in England, a Master of Arts from the University of Idaho, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Callister has exhibited at the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York, the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in Santa Monica, the Laguna Art Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona. She was included in the First Prague Biennial at the Veletrizni Palace in Prague as well as the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach. She has been featured in notable publications such as Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting, published by Phaidon Press and Abstract Painting: Techniques and Concepts by Watson & Guptil. In LA Artland: Contemporary Art from Los Angeles, published by London’s Blackdog Press, she is recognized as one of the top California artists alongside Ed Ruscha, Paul McCarthy, and Raymond Pettibone. Callister currently resides in Goleta, California. Jeremy Kidd British-born, L.A. based Jeremy Kidd is best known for his digital photography, which combines up to 100 long exposure photographs into a single piece of art, as a more cohesive way of expressing the overall picture. His artwork presents a condensed vision of multiple photographs as a metaphor for repeated perceptual glances. Kidd received his Bachelor of Fine Art and Sculpture at Du Monfort University in Leicester, England. His work has been shown throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. The artist currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Jon Measures Born in Lilbourne, Northamptonshire, England, Jon Measures is best known for his mixed-media paintings; the pieces shown at MOAH, which represent a personal and psychological journey are a distinct departure from the concepts which informed his previous body of work. Measures obtained his degree from the Falmouth School of Art in England, after which has enjoyed a successful career as a graphic designer, illustrator and educator. Recently, Measures has decided to focus his attention on fine art, exhibiting extensively while developing his own approach to making mixed media which combines multiple views of Los Angeles and other urban areas, slicing and dicing bits of the city’s rich fabric together. The artist currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Kate Savage Born in Sussex, England, Kate Savage is best known for her paintings, sculpture and works on paper, which deal with folktales as well as the artist’s personal history. She studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris before completing her Master of Fine Arts with honors at California State University, Long Beach. Savage’s work has been exhibited in several galleries, both nationally and internationally, including: Curve Line Space, Gallery 825, Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Haus Gallery, L.A.C.E. (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Her work has been written about in Artweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and various other publications. The artist currently resides in Mar Vista, California. Max Presneill Born in London, England, Max Presneill is an artist and curator, best known for his abstract paintings, which he uses as a means to explore multiple avenues of inquiry simultaneously. As an artist, Presneill addresses existential questions, masculine codes and an awareness of presence and mortality in his work. He received a Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Fullerton. Presneill has exhibited throughout the world, including New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, Sydney, Guanzhoe and Tokyo. His work has been shown at several art fairs including The Armory Show and the NYC and Miami Projects; it was included in the Istanbul Biennial and the Yokohoma Triennial and has been exhibited in several museums, including the Ucity Art Museum in Guanzhou, China, the Van Abbemuseum and the Hudson Museum in The Netherlands, and the Mappin Museum in the UK. Says the artist of his work, “When I die, my paintings are what will remain. They contain my memories, hopes and dreams. An identity of sorts and the drive towards cognitive meaning, all within the political possibilities of painting.” Presneill currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Nathaniel Mellors Born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, Nathaniel Mellors is best known for his video and installation work. He studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, the Royal College of Art and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Mellors also plays bass in the alt-rock group Skill 7 Stamina12 and is an accomplished musician, having released tracks with bands such as Toilet, God in Hackney and Mysterious Horse. As an artist, he has exhibited all over the world in museums and galleries such as: The Box, Los Angeles, Stiger van Doesburg, Amsterdam, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Art: Concept, Paris, The View, Switzerland, UCLA’s Hammer Museum, Galway Arts Centre, Ireland, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Monitor, Rome, Malmo Konsthall, Sweden, Salle de Bains, London, Matt’s Gallery, London, I.C.A., London, Monterhermoso, Spain, Lombard-Freid Projects, New York, South London Gallery and The Collective, Edinburgh. Mellors currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Philip Argent Born in Southend-on-Sea, Sussex, England, Philip Argent is best known for his paintings, which marry the influence of technology in the digital age to the practice of hard-edge abstraction. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the Cheltenham School of Art in England, Master of Arts from the University of Idaho and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Widely credited with bringing Los Angeles painting back into the spotlight in the early 2000’s, Argent has had several solo exhibitions at numerous museums and galleries, including: Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin, Tate, New York City and Post Los Angeles. An artist whose work is truly internationally renowned, Argent has shown in cities such as: Dusseldorf, Germany, Kwangui, Korea, Graz, Austria, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Turin, Italy and Zurich, Switzerland. Currently, Argent lives and works in Santa Monica, California. Philip Vaughan Born in Dorset, England, Philip Vaughan is perhaps best known for his large-scale neon sculptures, though he also works extensively in drawing and painting. He studied at Brighton College, Cambridge University and the Chelsea School of Art. Vaughan has installed sculptures in California and Japan as well as throughout United Kingdom, including his famous Hayward Tower, which sits atop the South Bank’s Hayward Gallery in London. Says the artist of his work, “Despite the apparent deliberate and planned nature of my sculptural end products, the origin of all my work is often a mystery to me. It may be years before I become aware of the connection between a part of my work and its origin. This is one of the pleasures of being an artist. There are things that are not always explainable, both within the individual and in history. At heart, life and art are still mysterious.” Vaughan currently resides in Altadena, California. Rhea O’Neill Born in Reading, United Kingdom, Rhea O’Neill is best known for her color-focused figurative and landscape oil paintings. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts with first class honors from the University of Reading and a Master of Arts in painting from the Wimbledon College of Art. The artist has work in the United Kingdom Government Art Collection and has exhibited both nationally and internationally at numerous museums and galleries, including: Goethe University, Frankfurt, National Center of Performing Arts, Beijing, Lush, Hamptons, Rollo Contemporary Art, Westminster, Long and Ryle Gallery, London and Rollo Contemporary Art, London. O’Neill currently resides in Scott’s Valley, California. Roni Stretch Born in St.Helens, Merseyside, England, Roni Stretch is best known for having pioneered the dichromatic process, exploring photorealistic under-paintings that emerge ghost-like from a void of color. He studied at St. Helens College of Art and Design. Stretch has been exhibited throughout California including shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Geffen Contemporary Museum, the Westmont Museum of Art in Santa Barbara and the Cooperstown Museum in New York. His work has recently been included in the permanent collections of the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the Museum of California Design, the Cooperstown Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Sarah Danays British-born artist Sarah Danays is best known for her synthesis of sculpture and photography, which is inspired by gesture and antiquity, particularly fragments of broken sculptures. She obtained a joint honors degree in fine art and art history from Camberwell College of Arts (now part of University of the Arts, London), a Master of Arts in Textiles as Contemporary Art Practice from Goldsmith’s, University of London, and studied Stone Carving for Contemporary Sculptors at City and Guilds, London. In 2008, she was shortlisted in Le Prix de la Sculpture Noilly Prat as one of the UK’s top five emerging sculptors. Danays has exhibited internationally and her work is in public and private collections in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Europe. She currently works out of studios in Los Angeles, Tuscany and the United Kingdom. Shiva Aliabadi Born in London, England, Shiva Aliabadi is best known for her sculptural, mixed-media relief paintings, which are reminiscent of assemblage work. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, a Master of Arts in English from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and a Master of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Aliabadi has held several residencies and won awards for her work throughout the United States, and has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries, such as: Fine Arts Complex 1101, Tempe, Arizona, Proxy Gallery, Los Angeles, The Gamble House, Pasadena, Elephant Art Space, Los Angeles, University of Buffalo Art Gallery, New York, Yokohama-Tokyo-Los Angeles Triennial, Yokohama, Japan, The Institute of Jamais Vu, London, Studio 17, San Francisco, Torrance Art Museum, California, and The Vortex Gallery, Los Angeles. The artist currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Siobhan McClure Born in Margate, England, Siobhan McClure is best known for her narrative works which feature children rendered in paint and graphite. She obtained a Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach. In her work, the artist seeks to bear witness to the degradation of the environment, the rise of displaced populations and the impact of today’s consumption on future children. McClure has had solo exhibitions at several galleries throughout Los Angeles, including: Richard Heller Gallery, Laura Schlesinger Gallery and Jan Baum Gallery. She has also participated in numerous group shows at the Torrance Art Museum, Irvine Fine Art Center Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California, and the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento. She was featured in New American Paintings no.97 and was a finalist in the 2011 Google Invitational for Site Specific Projects in Venice, California. Her work has been reviewed in The Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times. McClure currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Trevor Norris Born in Hertfordshire, England, Trevor Norris is best known for his abstract paintings. He obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the Central School of Art in London and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has over 20 years of experience teaching art and design at institutions such as the University of Southern California (USC), California State University, San Bernardino and Orange Coast Community College. He has curated extensively at Orange Coast College, Long Beach City College, College of the Canyons, Muzeumm, Los Angeles and USC’s Fischer Art Museum. Norris has participated in several group and solo shows at museums and galleries such as: Jan Baun Gallery, Los Angeles, Vita Art Center, Ventura, Wallspace Gallery, Los Angeles, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, the LA International Art Fair, the Chicago International Art Fair, LACMA Rental Gallery, Los Angeles, and Victory Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles. Norris currently resides Los Angeles, California. November 19, 2016 - January 22, 2017 Back to list

One Exhibit. Nine Unique Artists. Up Structure Various Artists One Exhibit. Nine Unique Artists. In every hero’s journey there comes a point of no return, a single moment in time and space where a decision must be made: to move from the familiarity and comfort of their home or take their first steps into a larger, increasingly perilous and complex world. This human experience is a culmination of the physical and metaphysical structures that are constructed by their interactions across time. Each of the artists featured in Structure, explore the dimensions in which humans organize inner and outer spaces, presenting their unique interpretation and understanding of transformational architectures - and the permeable boundaries that exist between them. The artwork featured in Structure is presented in a wide array of media, from physical sculpture to small-scale collage, illustrating mental spaces and blurring the line between the tangible and intangible elements of life. HK Zamani, Kimberly Brooks, Coleen Sterritt, and Cinta Vidal create work that visualizes time, space, and structure through the lens of human experience. Time plays a key role in the artwork of Matjames Metson, Chelsea Dean, Stevie Love, and Jim Richard, all of whom source their material almost entirely from past eras. Mela M, also influenced heavily by the concept of time, instead looks to future architecture and social structures. Ultimately, these artists hone in on the present social systems, their origins, and the futures they hold. The art presented in Structure provides visual commentary on the spaces where immaterial framework meets concrete structure, calling attention to the system failures of the past. Present issues such as climate change, political corruption, and social inequity are all the result of these archaic constructions. Through lived experiences, the interactions of the interior and exterior resonate beyond any one individual, transforming the communities and environments that so many call home, for, as author Kamal Ravikant writes, “Once you cross the threshold, you will never be the same." HK Zamani HK Zamani is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist and founder of PØST, an alternative exhibition space in Los Angeles. Teetering between the obscure and the objective, his work examines the synthesis of artistic medium, conception, and interaction. Interplay between structural materiality and metaphysical interpretation are prominent in Zamani’s work. He uses this exchange of the indefinite to comment on the current social structures and expectations of society. The physical use of artistic media is put into conversation with the representation of cultural overlap. Body and Immaterial: A Conversation of Sculpture and Painting, A 20 year Survey of Works by HK Zamani comments on the relationship between two prominent art mediums. The exhibition includes works such as Fashion of the Veil (2008), Prague Dome (2004), the Inadvertent Protagonists series, and many more. Works vary in medium. Sculptural and material elements showcase the skeletal and structural aspect of the work. Rigid frameworks such as the metal geodesic support on Prague Dome (2004) are juxtaposed with softer, more gentle textiles that make up the walls of the same work, calling to ideas of duality. Paintings provide preliminary and complimentary concepts that coincide with the sculptural work. Abstracted forms presented in his paintings also mimic the figures that can be seen in works such as Inadvertent Protagonists and Fashion Erasure I-18 (2021), noting the multiplicity of possibility and interpretation discussed in the work. HK Zamani received his Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from California State University, Dominguez Hills and his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Claremont Graduate University. He is the recipient of City of Los Angeles Getty Trust and California Community Foundation grants. In 1995, Zamani founded POST, in 2009 it became PØST. His work is included in the collections at Berkeley Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He currently works and resides in Los Angeles. Jim Richard Through a myriad of paintings, drawings, and collages, contemporary artist Jim Richard construes interior and exterior depictions of Modern architecture. Since the late 1970s, Richard has created a profusion of modernist interiors loaded with art and kitsch objects that settle into multi-hued graphic fields. Richard manipulates interior aesthetics from the 1960s and 70s warping the display of art influenced by the modernist idea of a utopian society. The adornment of objects within Richard’s collages is strategically curated from a selection of 1960s and 70s home decor magazines and furniture advertisements. Visually, his work fuses elements of photorealism, hard-edge painting, and collage, resulting in a 2-D abstract style imbued with an array of rich colors and patterns. Richard’s body of work has a persistent focus on the recontextualization of Modernist art and design. Absent occupants, the clash of decorative objects and imagery against the busy patterns of Jim Richard’s collages evoke the presence of an art collector. The claustrophobic slew of sleek furniture and ornamental ephemera is Richard’s satirical yet humorous commentary on the ambitious goals of Modernism and Modernist art. At this point in time, many artists were striving for pure originality, seeking to advance their art practice beyond acceptable forms of "high art.” By structuring the composition of his collages around curated art-objects Richard’s architectural frameworks act and feel like a mausoleum putting outdated aesthetics and politics to rest. Originally born in Port Arthur, Texas, Richard currently lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans and Inman Gallery in Houston. Richard received his Bachelor of Science from Lamar State College of Technology and his Master of Fine Art from the University of Colorado. Richard's work has been exhibited in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Drawing Center, Oliver Kamm Gallery, and Jeff Bailey Gallery. For several years, he taught painting, served as a Graduate Coordinator, and was in charge of the Visiting Artists Program at the University of New Orleans served as Graduate Coordinator. Richard's paintings can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, The New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Art. Kimberly Brooks Contemporary American artist Kimberly Brooks examines identity, history, and memory by utilizing a combination of landscape, abstraction, and figuration in her work. Stemming from a long tradition of American painting, her scenes depict subject matter that meets the edges of realism and abstraction. Examination of feminine identity is also present in a majority of her work. Projects such as The Stylist Project (2010), Fever Dreams (2019), I Have a King Who Does Not Speak (2015), as well as many others include the depiction of women in relation to their surroundings. Their identities and histories are depicted in loose brushstrokes, hinting to ambiguity and fleeting memories.The hand of the artist is apparent; the painterly quality of her work stands out in her varying compositions. Painting Architecture (2021) showcases the use of the built environment as landscape and subject matter. Both interior and exterior scenes are depicted: Rococo walls adorned with paintings hung salon style, arches and tilework of a mosque, an outdoor gate and pathway flanked by foliage. While these spaces may seem innocuous and arbitrary, these environments carry strong associations that are informed by their architectural styles. Brooks calls forth the provenance and significance of these spaces. The line between contemporary and antiquity is blurred. Instead of deviation, similarities are shown. A quiet, more meditated atmosphere is harmonious between the works. The play of light provides a still and almost objective showcase of these environments. There is a formal rigidity that is present between all of the works that is made apparent by the strong perspective lines that indicate the boundaries of these spaces. Juxtaposed to this is again, the use of loose brushstrokes and painterly techniques that are a mainstay of her practice. Kimberly Brooks was born in New York City, New York and raised in Mill Valley, California. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and studied painting at the University of California, Los Angeles and Otis College of Art & Design. Brooks hosts monthly artists talks on her discourse platform First Person Artist and is also the author of The New Oil Painting. Her works have been showcased internationally. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Matjames Metson Employing skillful assemblage and woodworking techniques, Matjames Metson incorporates found antique objects into elaborate mixed-media sculptures using only paint, glue, and matchsticks from the present era. The re-purposing of discarded and forgotten objects is essential to Metson's work; he spends a great deal of time seeking out items from abandoned buildings, estate sales, and friends' garages, among other places where one might find momentos and personal items. For Metson, each object has an assumed history — a resonance of an unknown past — which triggers an inherent emotional response in the viewer. As a survivor of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina disaster, which displaced more than a million people from the Gulf Coast, Metson is driven by the concept of survival in addition to his obsession with hoarding forgotten objects. The hurricane destroyed his artwork, community, possessions, and livelihood, forcing him to relocate to Los Angeles with only his two dogs and the clothes on his back. The relics used in his artwork are assembled together in a way that reflects Metson's existential need to pick up the pieces of his life and create a new structure for his future while remembering and honoring the past. In Tower, Metson utilizes and modifies myriad antique objects including time-worn rulers, pocket knives, keys, fountain pen nibs, printed ephemera, and children's toys. The wooden materials used to construct the architectural elements of the piece were sourced from vintage furniture, doors, and cigar boxes. Incorporated into the assemblage are Metson's signature motifs (wasps, eyes, skulls, rabbits) and phrases (such as "HARD WORK" and "HEAT KING"). At the top of the structure is a hand-carved golden wasp, a sample of the symbolism used by Metson, and an exemplification of his explorations in craftsmanship. The sculpture also features a crank-operated kaleidoscope displaying an array of vintage photographs. Matjames Metson is a self-taught artist, carpenter, and architect known for his assemblage sculptures and his illustrative work. He has completed several graphic novels including Survivor's Guild, an autobiographical account of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. His work has been shown at Coagula Curatorial gallery, the Fowler Museum, and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others. He was born in Charlotteville, New York and currently lives and creates in Los Angeles, California. Mela M MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL is a new body of work from Mela that captures the artist's concept of "a provocative stream of consciousness as the past informs the present… to imagine multiple future possibilities." For Mela, these works bear witness to species-driven archetypes that result in how humans structure their lives on a physical and emotional level. The acceleration of science and technology have made these cultural systems increasingly complex, and these intricacies are reflected in Mela's structural representations. Mela strives to create visualizations of the different layers of human consciousness as imagined through multiple dimensions and timelines, and hopes her work challenges upcoming artists to draw inspiration from this not-so-common era. There are five distinct but related components from throughout the museum that make up MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL: a set of four acrylic paintings titled THE EVOLUTION OF THE OMEGATROPOLIS THROUGH FOUR SEASONS OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS (lobby atrium), the hand-drawn CITYSCAPES OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS FOR THE COMMON ERA (wall leading to the Jewel Box), a symbolic monument titled THE TOTEM OF THE MOON CASTLE (Jewel Box), and two architectural wooden sculptures titled THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE MOVES THROUGH IRREGULAR ANGLES IN A RISING WALL FROM AN ARCHITECTONIC CITY WITHOUT NAME OR PLACE OR TIME and THE WALL TEMPLE AT THE VANISHING POINT (Ralph and Virginia Bozigian Family Gallery). Mela M has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and an MFA from the Technological Institute of Art and Textile Design in Belarus. Her work has garnered national and international recognition with over twenty solo exhibitions, twenty-seven museum group exhibitions, and dozens of group shows in colleges and universities. She has been honored with numerous prizes and awards internationally, and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, the Southwestern Oregon College at Coos Bay in Oregon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belarus. Stevie Love 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. October 2 - December 26, 2021 Back to list

Up Estate Italiana Various Artists Curated by: Cynthia Penna & Art 1307 Alex Pinna Antonella Masetti Carlo Marcucci Marco Casentini Carla Viparelli Marco Casentini Max Coppeta Nicola Evangelisti Italian Summer by Cynthia Penna The Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH) celebrates the rich and vibrant history of Italian artistic tradition by showcasing seven contemporary Italian artists in its newest exhibition, Estate Italiana. MOAH will be kicking off this exhibition with a free opening reception on Saturday, August 26, from 4 – 6 p.m., where the public may view the exhibition and meet each artist. Estate Italiana (Italian Summer) will be on view from Saturday, August 26 through Sunday, October 22. The exhibition is part of a cultural exchange program between the Lancaster Museum and ART1307, an arts institution headquartered in Naples, Italy. The exchange began in 2015 when ART1307 hosted an exhibition originating at MOAH. This summer’s exhibition features a breadth of work including paintings, sculptures, video installations, and murals. Guest curator Cynthia Penna writes, “There is no doubt that the great and immense history of Italian art hovers like a heavy and complex cloud over artists today.” Like the sons or daughters who live in the shadow of a famous parent, many contemporary Italian artists are crushed under the weight of the legacy of such masters as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, or Raphael just to name a few. The artists taking on this challenge in Estate Italiana are Alex Pinna, Antonella Masetti, Carla Viparelli, Carlo Marcucci, Max Coppeta, and Nicola Evangelisti. Marco Casentini, originally from La Spezia, Italy, will be joining the artists of Estate Italiana with the launch of his own traveling exhibition, Drive In, which will transform MOAH’s main gallery and showcase his vibrant collection of abstract paintings inspired by metropolitan architectural structures. With Drive In, the gallery becomes an immersive installation that envelops the spectator in geometric shapes and colors, created specifically in relation to the gallery itself. In doing so, Casentini aims to develop a complex relationship with the larger space and modify the perception of the viewer. This exhibit will also celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Fiat 500 by wrapping the vehicle in a complementary design, which audiences will be able to visit at the Hunter Alfa Romeo/Fiat showroom at the Lancaster Auto Mall. Drive In will travel to Milan, Italy at the Bocconi Art Gallery of the University Bocconi and finish at the Reggia Reale di Caserta in Caserta, Italy after its launch here in Lancaster. On Sunday, September 3, at 2 p.m. visiting Italian artists will host a gallery walk-through, where they will speak about their work and artistic processes. Carla Viparelli will host a free artist talk to engage the community in conjunction with Estate Italiana on Sunday, October 8, from 2p.m. in the Museum’s South Gallery. The presentation will include an overview of her experience as a contemporary Italian artist and her current work on display. Estate Italiana is generously supported by the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation, ART 1307, Best Western – Desert Poppy Inn, Hunter Alfa Romeo/Fiat, Fregoso Outdoor Foundation, Visco Financial Insurance Services, LookUp, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. Alex Pinna Alex Pinna began his artistic practice with a focus on the world of childhood culture, comics and fairy tales. Since those early days, he has created many divergent works, breathing life into a world of essential figures constructed from a variety of materials, including bronze, rope, wood and glass, whose main features are elegance, balance and irony. In a series of site-specific sculptures created specifically for Estate Italiana, Pinna tackles the theme humanity in moments of action, reflection, meditation and solitude; his aim is not the physical body but the existential condition of man. These genderless bodies, with gigantic limbs attached to slender trunks and shaved heads that give no indication of sex, symbolize the condition of being human, rather than that of having a personality. Slender figures that seem to face efforts that go beyond what a human being can manage, who support enormous walls with their bodies to prevent them from collapsing, who lift the globe or rest on it, sitting in precarious equilibrium—we seem to be dealing with a hero from Greek mythology, a Hercules tackling challenge after challenge. Pinna has recreated a mythological metaphor within a contemporary world. His personalities are merely the heroes of the past. These themes have also inspired the artist’s “puppet theatres,” made from Moleskine® notebooks turned into pop-outs that reveal different characters and personalities. In these works, Pinna uses an object that travellers have utilized for decades to jot down their experiences, a journal that is personal yet universal, a diary we may all identify with, which tells stories once opened. It is the quintessential theatre. Indeed, what is theatre, from Greek tragedy to comedy, but an uninterrupted telling of a story, of lives and explorations? The Moleskine® becomes at the same time theatre and book, opening to reveal a pop-out scene, a fragment of life, an instant or an eternity, a kind of theatre “set,” of collective and individual life. Alex Pinna was born in Imperia and attended Brera Fine Arts Academy in Milan, earning a Master of Fine Arts in painting. In 1991, he collaborated with Allan Kaprow, creating the 7 Environments exhibition, which showed at the Mudima gallery in Milan and Naples. He began teaching in 1996 has continuously exhibited in museums and galleries since 1997. Pinna is currently a professof of sculpture at the Cantanzaro Academy of Fine Arts. Antonella Masetti In the artists’ universe the viewer may recognize a thread within the Italian tradition that has progressed from the landscapes just visible in the background of de Vinci’s paintings, to the more massive and powerful bodies of Michelangelo, to the intellectual sophistication of the works of Piero della Francesca or Bronzino. Antonella Masetti Lucarella has made the Italian tradition of painting from Humanism to Mannerism her own, rendering it on her canvases. Her color choices further confirm the fact that her works are part of the Italian traditional heritage. Masetti’s women are immersed in their everyday life, there is no banal or empty sentimentalism in them, but pulsating sentiments: they suffer, laugh, participate and fight. These women, to whom a considerable body of the artist’s work is dedicated, are gentle warriors; they sometimes show complicity, but are also self-aware and conscious of their power. The female universe is finally seen and described from within. Masetti’s women have no need to show off, assume attitudes, or play a role. Her women are, and they know; in other words, they are conscious of their existence and interiority. Antonella Masetti Lucarella is an internationally known painter who has worked in Milan for over 25 years. She has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions in art galleries, museums, cultural centers and art fairs throughout Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Peru and Japan. In 1991, she received D&D Art Magazine’s III International Prize and in 2000 her sketch, commemorating Rome’s International Symposium on Breast Cancer, was printed and issued as a stamp by Poste Italiane (the Italian General Post Office). Carla Viparelli Carla Viparelli is a self-taught figurative artist who graduated in philosophy from the University of Naples. Her paintings have evolved over about 30 years, in the course of which she has experienced with different kinds of figurative art. Viparelli’s artistic research centers principally on nature, its different aspects and its countless transformations, but she also explores social happenings and the contemporary common sentiment. A consistent part of her work has been dedicated to language and its different means of expression: mainly through images but also sometimes through writing. In many of her works the artist has connected the two modes of expression, creating a kind of vocabulary by images and writings that dialogue among them, with mood that vacillates between serious and facetious. Carla Viparelli was born in Naples and received both a Bachelor and Master cum laude in Philosophy at the University of Naples, where she completed a thesis in Contemporary Art. Throughout her career, she has received many awards, including: first prize at the International Painting Contest, Borgo San Severino, in 2009, first prize in the Postcards Assissi contest in 2014 and first prize in 100 Cubed—100 Rooms for 100 Artists, at Art Hotel Grand Paradiso in Sorrento. In 2012, she founded and directed Chi cerca, Crea, a workshop in the Municipality of Maratea. She currently lives and works in Naples and Maratea. Carlo Marcucci Italian born but Californian by choice, Carlo Marcucci embodies the benefits of embracing two cultures which are quite different in many aspects. The fusion of two traditions takes place at the moment when acceptance of what is new and different is assimilated and included among the treasures of a more remote past, without sacrificing either the old nor the new heritage. What makes Marcucci unique is that he succeeds in merging morals, usages and traditions without any reverential fear of altering a particular reality or tradition. The equilibrium necessary to achieve this takes the form of an innovative and unusual use of materials, in this case from the culinary heritage of the artist’s native country. Spaghetti, which plays an important role in the collective imagination of Italian culture, both in Italy and abroad, is deprived of its original function and used to create works of art. Wheatfields was made primarily from spaghetti, as if to confirm that the blending of customs and traditions is an appanage of the arts. Marcucci succeeds in decontextualizing pasta from its basic, traditional function as food, making it serve as nutrition for the mind and spirit, in an arrangement that is both constructivist and geometric, its elements combining to create a mural of sculpture. The goal is to of alter the intrinsic nature of the object, effecting a transformation meant to instate another function. The works featuring binders utilize a similar process: these stationery items are selected and catalogued by colour and dimension, then reassembled as geometric structures. When hung on the wall, the metal of the binders reflects light, transforming the original material into a work of art. Carlo Marcucci was born in Florence, Italy to American artist Sallie Whistler Marcucci and Italian journalist Moreno Marcucci. He grew up in downtown Rome, where he attended St. Stephen's International School, located next to the Circus Maximus, before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, to study design at the Atlanta College of Art (now SCAD Atlanta). He worked as a graphic designer and signage expert at Jan Lorenc Design and Wagner/Bruker Design in Atlanta. His first solo exhibition was held at the Ann Jacob Gallery in Atlanta. After moving to Los Angeles in 1990, Marcucci worked at Disney Imagineering in signage and graphic design, for the EuroDisney park in Serris/Coupvray, France. His first California exhibition was held at the Creative Art Center Gallery in Burbank. Marco Casentini: Drive In Born in La Spezia, Italy in 1961, Marco Casentini was brought up surrounded by large metropolitan structures. Inspired by urban spaces, Casentini’s work is an abstraction of geometrical architecture. Both chaotic and serene, his work rejects the concept of a compositional center which has always been a historically important approach to traditional Italian and European art; a choice that allows the spectator’s eye to focus on the painting as a whole. As individual paintings they add rhythmic tension to otherwise quiet and relaxing spaces, thereby achieving the ability to evoke emotions through his striking juxtapositions of color and complexity of shape and composition rather than through the use of concrete imagery. His early work was composed from advanced planning, notes and precise drawings. Over time Casentini felt this implementation gave his work an undesirable machine-like quality. In an attempt to breathe intimacy back into his work he stopped planning and began relying on his own intuition and improvisation. Galleries exhibiting Casentini’s paintings are often transformed into vibrant and immersive installations that match the colors and patterns of the work on display. Wall paintings are developed in relation to the particular interior space involved and are birthed separately from the work on display. Once together, the paintings are no longer isolated and instead interact harmoniously with each other and the space as a whole. In doing so Casentini is able to develop a complex relationship with the larger space and modify its perception by the viewer. It is virtually impossible for one to separate the paintings from the installation due to being encompassed within a body of shapes and colors that communicate with each other with such intense solidarity. Marco Casentini attended Accademia di Belle Arti and College of Art in Carrara, Italy, resides both in Los Angeles and Milan today and has exhibited internationally with galleries in Italy, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, and Austria, exhibiting over 40 solo shows since 1983. Max Coppeta Max Coppeta is an artist for whom the heritage of traditional kinetic art, developed throughout the last century, rests heavily on his shoulders. This movement is thought to have begun in Europe with the optical experiments of artists such as Vasarely, but the real birth of a specific kinetic art can be attributed to the studies of those influenced by the group of Argentinian artists who moved to Paris in 1958, creating the GRAV movement at the Denise Renè Gallery. Coppeta’s artistic research centres on a number of fundamental aspects: the countless possible views which a work of art offers the onlooker, the necessary and inevitable participation of the spectator in the enjoyment of the work—which may be defined as a kinetic aspect of the whole—and the distortion of visual perception. The artist’s Synthetic Rains were created by calculating and calibrating the fall of a crystalline liquid onto a glass support, with maniacal precision. The descent of the drop is regulated by a gesture that is a function of the time it takes for the drop to fall, its space and distance from the support, and occasionally the climatic conditions of drying. There are always more than two drops and two glass supports, which are aligned in such a way that the drops of liquid are encompassed by one another visually, with such precision that the onlooker may look through their succession. The resulting view appears distorted, giving the observer an impression of being deformed, through a kind of destabilizing vision. This experience may be defined as a journey within vision. A movement, enacted as the onlooker is placed in front of the work, determines an unreal movement in the piece; the user, relating physically to the art through his or her movement, gets an impression of him or herself that may be defined as a new “discovery” or a new kind of visual perception. Max Coppeta was born in Sarno; he received a Bachelor’s in art at Accademia di Belle Arti Napoli in Naples, and a Master’s in Interaction Design at Istituto Superiore Design in Torino, Barcelona and Stockholm. He currently lives and works in Bellona. Nicola Evangelisti The central theme of Nicola Evangelisti’s work focuses on visual perception and how the onlooker relates to his works and the effects created by light radiating from them. Trained with traditional materials and techniques, Evangelisti’s practice originates and evolves from a legacy of Italian sculpture. Experimentation led the artist to follow what he describes as “a transcendent path:” using crystals, mirrors, glass, holograms and LEDs, his works gradually dematerialize in time, ultimately becoming pure light in the form of video projections that interact with urban space. Most of the artist’s work explores the relationship between order and chaos as well as other cosmological theories. Hexagons is conceptually inspired by the theme of sacred geometry. Consisting of a structure made from thirteen reflecting hexagons that in turn form another hexagonal image, the sculpture is based on the principle of self-similarity in universal structures. The work, seen as a whole, superimposes the archetypal image of the flower of life, symbol of birth and creation, which represents a constant in different cultures and beliefs throughout the history of Man. The diagram features the same form as the single mirrored parts, creating a correspondence between detail and the whole, a fractal development which could, in theory, continue in an infinity of scales, thus forming a continuity between microcosm and macrocosm. The lines of electroluminescent wire crossing the hexagons creates a complicated weave, wherein the five Platonic solids can simultaneously be perceived. The “constellation”—inspired by Kepler’s theory of polyhedra in which polyhedral faces are continually extended until they meet again—is formed by intertwining luminescent fibres that create the illusion of a diamond structure, wherein different coexisting regular polygons can be distinguished. If Evangelisti’s work is wholly contemporary in terms of technological composition, it is rooted in an ancient historic and artistic heritage: Roman mosaics. Hexagons draws inspiration from the modular geometry found in Roman tessellations. The aesthetics of the home have always been a vivid and faithful mirror of culture: if we consider the characteristics of the Roman domus—and especially what is left of such mansions in Pompeii—one of the essential aspects appears to be the way rooms are divided and arranged in space, forming a domestic plan with precise and complex geometries, as Vitruvio described so instructively in his “De Architectura”. The geometric elements used to decorate sumptuous patrician mansions formed symmetrical images which often featured symbols associated with war: swords, daggers, and stylized mythological creatures, testimonials of a civilization that never ceased to transcend itself. This is the peculiar “thirst for power” which, in the role of master of the Roman mansion, took the form of elaborate decorations. Nicola Evangelisti was born in Bologna, Italy, and graduated with a degree in sculpture from the Bologna Fine Arts Academy. In 2016, his solo show beWARe opened at Area 35 Art Gallery in Milan; analyzing the emotional states induced by violence and mass media propaganda, it explores the social and political themes related to war and terrorism. August 26 - October 22, 2017 Back to list

Up The New Vanguard III Various Artists Solo exhibitions: Kathy Ager Alex Garant Inga Guzyte Kayla Mahaffey Kevin Peterson Special group show curated by: Thinkspace Projects Special Installation by: Spenser Little The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, in collaboration with Los Angeles’ Thinkspace Projects, is pleased to present The New Vanguard III , a dynamic group exhibition of works by international artists working in the New Contemporary art movement. The highly anticipated follow up to 2018’s successful second iteration of The New Vanguard, on view in tandem with this year’s POW WOW! Antelope Valley will feature special solo projects by artists Kevin Peterson, Kayla Mahaffey, Kathy Ager and Alex Garant. The New Vanguard III , in keeping with the first two installments, will present a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. In addition to the solo exhibitions on view from Mahaffey, Peterson, Ager and Garant, we will also be presenting our ’ Small Victories ’ group show focusing on suicide prevention and mental health. We’ve lost one of our greatest allies and friends and one of our rising stars to this ever growing epidemic in recent years. Sadly this issue is very wide spread in the creative community and we want to help raise awareness and funds. If it helps guide just one person out of the darkness, it was more than worth it to mount this collection of works. This special showcase will include new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Ador, AKACORLEONE, Allison Sommers, Angel Once, Anthony Hurd, Anthony Solano, Atomik, Brad Woodfin, Brian Mashburn, Bryan Valenzuela, Carl Cashman, Charlie Edmiston, Chloe Becky, Cinta Vidal, Clare Toms, Collin van der Sluijs, David Rice, Derek Gores, Dovie Golden, Dragon76, Drew Young, Edith Lebeau, Eduardo F. Angel, Erik Mark Sandberg, Frank Gonzales, Ghost Beard, Goopmassta, Hilda Palafox, Hola Lou, Huntz Liu, Imon Boy, Jaime Molina, Jeff Ejan, Jimmer Willmott, Kaplan Bunce, Kate Wadsworth, Kelly Vivanco, Ken Flewellyn, Kim Sielbeck, KOZ DOS, Lauren Hana Chai, Lauren YS, Linsey Levendall, Mando Marie, Manuel Zamudio, Mari Inukai, Max Sansing, McKenzie Fisk, Meggs, Molly Gruninger, Mwanel Pierre-Louis, Nicola Caredda, Patch Whisky, Ricky Watts, Roos van der Vliet, Saturno, Sergio Garcia, Shar Tuiasoa, Stephanie Buer, Tati Holt, Telmo Miel, TMRWLND, Waylon Horner, and Wiley Wallace. A movement unified as much by its diversity as its similitude, ‘New Contemporary’ has come to denote an important heterogeneity of styles, media, contexts, and activations over the course of its establishment since the 90s. Unified in its fledgling beginnings by a founding countercultural impulse searching for its own nomenclature, the New Contemporary movement’s shifting and inclusive designations have offered alternative narratives over the years to those popularized by the dominant art establishment and its conceptual predilections. Though stylistically disparate, the work belonging to this rapidly expansive movement reveals a desire to reference the popular, social, and subcultural domains of contemporary experience, grounding, rather than rarifying, imagery in the familiar. Looking to the urban landscape and the kaleidoscopic shift of individual identities within it, these artists use the figurative and narrative to anchor their work in the accessible and aesthetically relatable. A fundamentally democratic stance governs the ambitions of this new guard, ever in search of novel ways to expand rather than to contract. Kayla Mahaffey – Adrift Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Kayla Mahaffey (also known as KaylaMay) is quickly becoming one of the city’s most sought-after artists with her unique blend of flat, cartoon elements with brilliant photo-realism. Mahaffey’s work gives voice to the unheard stories of contemporary youth and, as explained by the artist, “serves as a guide to bring hope back into our daily lives by cherishing each moment, not in the mindset of an adult, but with the fresh eyes and imagination of a child.” Being born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, only ignited Mahaffey’s love for all things art. The artist elaborates, “seeing the struggle and the support from the community made my work evolve to a concept that is personal to me. I continue to further my technique and creativity in my field in order to paint a beautiful picture of a new world for those around me. Living in our society can be tough and most of the time we have to make the best of it. A wild imagination can take you so far, but at the end of the day we need to realize and observe the world around us. And the world around us is where I find my inspiration to paint. Colorful paintings that contain hints of whimsy and realism that tell a story of inner thoughts and personal issues that sometimes go unheard.” Inga Guzyte - Kindred Spirits Inga Guzyte is a sculptural-portraiture artist who melds her love of sculpture and skate culture into intricate, larger-than-life interpretations of powerful women. Guzyte utilizes recycled skateboards complete with scratches and scrapes conveying a sense of character, adding a “lived in” quality to her works, and portraying the authenticity of her art subjects. Her deconstruction of materials allows her to create the colors and shapes needed to produce a three-dimensional quality to her works. Through the exploration of important historical figures and social movements, Guzyte explores her humanity and encourages female viewers to ponder their thoughts on their own terms. Guzyte’s series of work, Kindred Spirits, pulls from her own experiences as a woman in male dominated fields such as: skateboarding, woodworking, and sculpture and the traumatic experience of being abandoned by her father in her formative years. From powerful female figures like Malala Yousafzai, to influential artists like Patssi Valdez and Alison Saar, Guzyte places the central crux of her works on the female experience. Her materials are discarded and broken, however, the end result is that which embodies graphic power and grace. Despite her use of recycled skateboards, every piece is carefully selected, providing a dimensional and complex quality to her pieces. Guzyte’s work provides a sense of catharsis in her own experiences, as she reflects and re-creates the stories of these influential women, she gains courage and strength. Guzyte was born in Lithuania and emigrated to Germany. Inspired by the skateboard culture of California, Guzyte moved to Santa Barbara, California. In 2011, she had her first exhibition in Santa Barbara and would soon move to New York City, showing her artworks in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, she would move to Switzerland to complete an art residency in Vienna, Austria. Guzyte would display her first piece in Switzerland and in 2017, her pieces would regularly be featured in group exhibitions. Guzyte received her Associate of Arts degree at Santa Barbara City College. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California. Kathy Ager - Fool’s Gold Kathy Ager creates detailed still lifes that feel simultaneously Baroque and acerbically modern. Inspired by the 17th-century Golden Age of Dutch and Spanish painting, her imagery uses historical visual rhetoric to deliver intensely personal and emotively charged themes. A professional graphic designer-turned painter, this is Ager’s first complete body of work to date and includes ten new paintings. Ager begins her process with language – an idea or expression often gleaned from music, a book, or some other source that resonates personally. She then endeavors to resolve the concept visually through objects and composition, assembling a patchwork of references – some collective and shared from pop culture, others steeped in the idiosyncrasies of the personal. Both poetic and revelatory, Ager’s works feel charged with the simultaneous misery and beauty of contemporary appropriation – and express the current world through the formal repositories of the past to create anachronistic moments of resonance and delivery. Ever present amidst moments of undeniably expressed disappointment and disillusionment are redemptive linings, beautifully poignant discoveries, and playful, irreverent mirth. The seductive darkness with which Ager reveals universal human longings is both disarming and consuming. Broken hearts are offered up as organs in a bowl, skeletal memento mori abound, and dating feels about as abject in the modern world as butchery; books are stacked with suggestive spines, and flowers wither while fruit threatens to decay. The abattoir is never far from the transcendent ambitions of classical statuary in Ager’s world, while beauty is embroiled in the vulnerability of intimacy and self-exposure. Alex Garant - Deconstructing Identities Toronto-based, Canadian, Québéquois artist Alex Garant is a painter known for her hyper-realistically rendered Op Art portraits in which the faces and eyes of her subjects seem to skip their registers through image redoubling and superimposition, Garant is in search of the frenetic internal life of the sitter. Not unlike the fugitive flicker of a screen or the spectral layering of multiple film exposures, her portraits reveal an unsettling multiplicity, shifting beneath the subject’s surface. Garant creates faces that challenge the optics of identity and the reductive way in which it is perceived, with a visual gimmick that quite literally dislodges and displaces its coherence to produce skittering psychological images of fracture and ricochet. Garant has long been fascinated by the interaction of patterns and symmetry, and the resulting optics of their graphic repetition and layering. Her portraits begin with a series of superimposed drawings based on her sitters, actual individuals, and muses from her life, and pushes the familiar confines of portraiture to a newly strange and re-sensitized place of sensory confusion. Her subjects and their energy seem to erupt from within, testing the tensile seams of the skin, the body, as always, an insufficient vessel for the incongruous experience within. The artist’s labor-intensive oil paintings are meticulously executed, often incorporating patterning or other graphic elements and motifs to produce reverberating visual effects. Garant’s color palette ranges from the subtlety of realistic flesh tones to hyper-colored gradients, saturated pastels, and translucent gem-like washes of color. Her stylizations of these vertiginous portraits thrive in surreal kitsch to interrupt the apprehension of the subject, activating a process of invested viewing, that is of trying to “see” the person amidst the trappings of hallucinatory visual interference. The compelling and somewhat unsuccessful process of attempting to stabilize the image produces a fundamental feeling of perceptual instability, one that intensifies our stolen communion with an evasive subject. Kevin Peterson – Embers Kevin Peterson, a gifted hyperrealist painter, creates a fictional world in which innocence and collapse are brought into difficult proximity. His arresting images combine portraits of children accompanied by kindly sentient beasts in a state of kindred displacement. Alone, though together, in strangely desolate, richly graffitied urban scenes, these babes and their benevolent conspirators appear interchangeably as beacons of hope and symbols of dispossession. Peterson’s works harness a dystopian social hyperrealism through painstaking attention to every possible fraction and detail of the mundane in their execution – every contour is excised, every surface meticulously rendered. The weird crystal clarity of the hyperreal in the depiction of these desolate underpasses and structural ruins provides a starkly strange backdrop for elements of fairytale, like the fantastic alliances proposed between children and animals, and the magical narratives these allegiances imply. A psychologically poignant, if not ambiguous, feeling of transformation and hope lingers in these impossibly arresting scenes of solitary kids. The resilience they suggest is haunting, while the unsettling verity with which these vulnerable fictions are cast strike something in our shared fear of literal and figurative exposure. Always in search of poetic tension and compelling contrasts, Peterson alloys unlikely parts: beginnings and ends collide, the young appear in worn and weathered worlds, innocence is forced into experience, and the wild infringes upon the ‘civilizing’ city limits. In Wild, Peterson explores themes of protection and marginalization, staging wild animals, ironically, in the humanizing and civilizing charge of caregivers. Though a recurring suggestion in previous works, the role of the animal in a nearly shamanistic role as protector and watcher appears more overtly in the new. Small children are attended by wild bears, watchful raccoons, gentle fawns, mythic looking ravens, owls, and jungle cats, among others, as they hold a living and protective vigil against the crumbling architectures around them; their guardianship staged like a protective bulwark. Peterson’s hyperreal paintings are at times uncomfortably close in the pathos of their offerings; they remind us, too, of something uneasily present in us all, a childhood that haunts the posturing of all of our adulthoods. Ultimately, Peterson’s works offer beautifully jarring reminders of the need for redemptive outcomes in a disappointed time. Spenser Little - Illumination Devices Spenser Little is a self-taught artist who has been bending wire and carving wood for almost 20 years, allowing his creativity to morph into images that range from simple wordplay to complex portraits. He has related his wire work to a mixture of playing chess and illustration, as the problem-solving component of the work is what continues to inspire himself to create larger and more complex pieces. Some works contain moving components and multiple wires, but mostly the pieces are formed from one continuous piece of wire that is bent and molded to Little’s will. He has left the wire sculptures all over the world, in locations that range from the Eiffel Tower to the bottom of caves, their location selected with little discernment, only for the piece to be finally realized at the moment that someone discovers the surprise piece of art. Little has taken part in numerous POW! WOW! mural festivals in the past few years, which has exposed his work to an entire new audience via their network of art sites/blogs and having his work shared all over the world including the likes of the Antelope Valley (Lancaster, California); Long Beach, California; Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Honolulu, Hawaii; Israel; and San Jose, California. Regarding his new body of work, Spenser shares “To me, all art is a form of illumination devices. For this exhibition I have built a new series of mixed-media kinetic lamps. The lamps serve as bright facades for inner, hidden chambers. Looking through their constantly closing and opening doors, viewers are offered a peek at what makes them tick. Like the different layers we develop throughout our lives, we only allow certain people to see our most inner workings, while the majority are only able to see our polished exteriors. The lamp building process begins with the wood carving of the central character’s head. I then weld a round bar frame for the outline of the body. I don’t put much forethought into where the design will go, aesthetic or engineering wise, which allows me to adapt any spontaneous idea during the build. Once I have the legs and body welded out and sized to the wooden head, I begin to problem shoot the kinetic portion of the build. Which is the unnatural part for my purely sculptor’s brain. Once all of the kinetic components are complete, I clean and bake the paper skin on the lamp, allowing them to come to life.” Small Victories A group show focusing on suicide prevention and mental health. This special showcase will includes new pieces by Adam Caldwell, Ador, AKACORLEONE, Allison Sommers, Angel Once, Anthony Hurd, Anthony Solano, Atomik, Brad Woodfin, Brian Mashburn, Bryan Valenzuela, Carl Cashman, Charlie Edmiston, Chloe Becky, Cinta Vidal, Clare Toms, Collin van der Sluijs, David Rice, Derek Gores, Dovie Golden, Dragon76, Drew Young, Edith Lebeau, Eduardo F. Angel, Erik Mark Sandberg, Frank Gonzales, Ghost Beard, Goopmassta, Hilda Palafox, Hola Lou, Huntz Liu, Imon Boy, Jaime Molina, Jeff Ejan, Jimmer Willmott, Kaplan Bunce, Kate Wadsworth, Kelly Vivanco, Ken Flewellyn, Kim Sielbeck, KOZ DOS, Lauren Hana Chai, Lauren YS, Linsey Levendall, Mando Marie, Manuel Zamudio, Mari Inukai, Max Sansing, McKenzie Fisk, Meggs, Molly Gruninger, Mwanel Pierre-Louis, Nicola Caredda, Patch Whisky, Ricky Watts, Roos van der Vliet, Saturno, Sergio Garcia, Shar Tuiasoa, Stephanie Buer, Tati Holt, Telmo Miel, TMRWLND, Waylon Horner, and Wiley Wallace. September 12 – December 27, 2020 Back to list

Up Artist As Subject Various Artists Rebecca Campbell Andrew Frieder Kent Anderson Butler Eric Minh Swenson Jane Szabo Nataša Prosenc Stearns Rebecca Campbell: The Potato Eaters Rebecca Campbell is a figurative artist, whose work focuses on themes associated with human existence in contemporary society. Embracing both realism and abstraction, Campbell makes paintings, drawings and sculptures that frequently revolve around the day-to-day lives of average people, to whom she lends a heroic quality. Campbell’s new series of work, entitled The Potato Eaters , examine aspects of family and cultural history, memory, documentation and nostalgia. The title is taken from Vincent van Gogh's 1885 masterpiece that portrays Dutch peasants gathered at a meager meal. As in van Gogh’s celebrated work that addresses themes of noble human existence and connection to the land, Campbell references her family history and relatives who lived in Idaho during the early and mid-twentieth century. The series includes paintings that convey disappearing rural and sub-urban landscapes, as well as figurative works inspired by old black and white photographs. In addition, Campbell both honors and reflects upon oft-ignored domestic activities, such as canning and cleaning, through several sculpture installations. Campbell earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Oregon in 1994, and Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona; the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida; the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; The Portland Art Museum, Oregon; the Central Utah Arts Center and Brigham Young University, Utah; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and L.A. Louver, Venice, CA, among others. Campbell has taught at Art Center College of Design, Claremont Graduate University and Vermont College of Fine Art, and is currently assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton. Rebecca Campbell lives and works in Los Angeles. Andrew Frieder: Waiting for Divine Inspiration On the western edge of the Mojave Desert, Lancaster is not a town known for its art scene, but it is where Andrew Frieder spent his most productive years as an artist, working day and night for several decades to produce a vast body of work in a variety of mediums. Andrew frequently depicted scenes from classical mythology and the Old Testament scriptures with which he was so conversant: figures wrestling with serpents, communing with skulls and struggling with rocks, as well as hybrid beasts of his own design. A gentle and subtle coloration of soft pastel and muted earth tones distinguishes the work, sometimes scrawled upon with text (“Was it worth it? Vanquishing the serpent: Can it be done?”) and frequently pierced, perforated, sewn, glued and otherwise driven into aesthetic submission, resulting in a strangely harmonious combination of the visceral and meticulous. Andrew had an extraordinary sense of design all his own. He rebuilt and repaired several industrial sewing machines, some mechanically modified to be foot-treadle powered, with which he sewed intricate cotton quilts and constructed his own jaunty hats – ‘chapeaux’, as he called them. He was a licensed barber. A hobbyist cobbler, he made and repaired shoes. An incessant tinkerer who continually re-purposed every manner of objects, he would grind, weld and machine his own customized tools, and myriad objects both sculptural and practical. Andrew had found a measure of peace with whatever impression the world may have taken of him, cutting a unique figure as he rolled his customized cart to source materials such as scrap iron and lumber for his projects, discovered everywhere from alleyways to yard sales, thrift shops and scrapyards. As a teenager, Andrew spoke fluent French and was a nationally ranked tournament fencer, a sport he relinquished due to injuries and as he became more involved in art. A mental breakdown interrupted his art school education and he began to experience the schizophrenia with which he struggled for much of his adult life. Through the chaos and pain of his illness Andrew destroyed his entire body of work three times, as well as a number of finished novels. By the two decades of life preceding his demise, however, he had stabilized and experienced no episodes or hospitalizations, a healing process facilitated in no small part by deep immersion in his art, and only after his death was the full range of his output discovered. Andy admired the work of artists from Vermeer to Basquiat. The museum presented a solo show of his work in 2014. As well as a massive archive of artwork, Andy also left behind many written accounts expressing an acute awareness of his own work and mental state, as well as rigorous and compassionate essays on history and religion; he cared deeply about political injustice and ruminated on his work as painstakingly as any professional artist. Kent Anderson Butler: Drowning with Land Still in Sight Kent Anderson Butler is a Los Angeles based artist that focuses his work on the spiritual, mental and physical experiences that the body encounters. Anderson Butler works with multiple mediums including video installation, photography and performance. Drowning with Land Still in Sight is a series that communicates pain, pleasure, struggle, redemption and restoration of the body through mixed media, including installation, portrait photography, sculpture, performance and video. Inspired by the religious philosopher Teilhard De Chardin, Anderson Butler exposes his personal religious thinking in terms of life, death, and transcendence through this collection. Through his artwork, he aims to express and stress the importance of the human experience and, in turn, show how we live in our own body. Kent Anderson Butler studied video and film, receiving his Bachelor degree from Biola University and his Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Fullerton. Anderson Butler is the director of visual arts and a professor at Azusa Pacific University, teaching art at both the undergraduate and graduate level, with an emphasis on photography. He has also been involved in a range of exhibits including both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions. His pieces have been displayed both nationally and internationally, being shown at the International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Venezuela, the Cave Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, the Pasadena Museum of California Art, among many others. In 2012, the Kellogg University Art Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona presented an exhibition featuring a decade of work by Anderson Butler. In 2014, Anderson Butler was chosen to be an Artist in Residence at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia. Eric Minh Swenson: Art Stars Art Stars , Eric Minh Swenson's latest body of work focuses on celebrating women's influence and impact on the Art World. In collaboration with Coagula Art Journal , Art Stars , is an expansive series of over 200 photographs that build public awareness and celebare female contributions as artists, curators, gallerists, etc. Eric Minh Swenson grew up in San Antonio, Texas and through his father discovered the craft of photography. Swenson captures moments that are spontaneous and impromptu while utilizing color and texture to expand his artistic horizon. He shares that the inspiration comes through architecture, vibrant landmarks, music, and various other art forms, relating to Fauvist techniques. After a move to Hollywood in the 1990’s, Swenson found a passion in cinema and began to produce documentaries and promos for other artists, curators and fine art collectors. His art focuses on celebrating the culture and art of Southern California and how it is always developing just like he is. Swenson was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but relocated shortly after. Though he never took an art class prior to college, he graduated with a Fine Arts Degree after attending both the University of Texas in San Antonio and Brigham Young University in Utah. Upon receiving his degree, Swenson went on to form a film society, producing over 600 short films as well as producing and directing four feature length narrative films and a documentary. Swenson has also relentlessly photographed art openings across the Southland, ardently bringing the milieu to the public eye while capturing artists, collectors and enthusiasts in situ. In 2001, he moved to the Southern California. Through his emphasis on the documentation of the Los Angeles art scene, Swenson focuses much of his attention on bringing public awareness into the realm of art as a cultural experience. Jane Szabo: Sense of Self and Reconstructing Self Jane Szabo has a passion for the human condition and studies the ways we live today, how we relate to each other, how we feel about our identity as individuals, and how it fits together collectively as a community. Szabo merges everyday fabrications with conceptual photography in a series of self-portraits as a means to interpret the psychological complexity of what it is to be human. In her series Sense of Self, Szabo utilizes in-motion self-portraits against a harlequin pattern wall to convey issues of control over herself as well as the external environment, revealing her own vulnerability. Through the use of elements such as light and movement, she aims to capture a sense of chaos and the internal struggle to maintain order as well as the conflicts that occur in the process. She also creates still life images, using inanimate objects to portray a story which invites viewers to draw their own interpretation of meaning, generally relating to feelings of alienation and loneliness. She explores issues of identity through the juxtaposition of fashion, sculpture, installation and photography, seeking to highlight the necessary balance between one’s self and the outside world in her series Reconstructing Self. Szabo has a background as a painter and installation artist with some experience in creating custom props and scenery, which continues to contribute to her artistic style. Jane Szabo is a Los Angeles based photographer known for her award winning fine art photography. Her work has been published and reviewed in The Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Szabo’s photography has been displayed in multiple exhibitions at institutions such as: Oceanside Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, Colorado Center for Photographic Arts, PhotoSpiva, San Diego Art Institute, The Los Angeles Center for Photography, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art and Gallery 825 in Los Angeles. In 2014 her work Sense of Self was featured as a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. In 2016, her work Sense of Self and Reconstructing Self were shown as a combined set in Arizona under the title Investigating Self. Nataša Prosenc Stearns: Night Spring Local California artist, Nataša Prosenc Stearns works with film, video art, installations and prints to explore the human body in juxtaposition with the natural and technological worlds. Stearns delivers gravitating pieces that reveal her passion and desire for undiscovered potential of the human body. Working with the effects of anxiety and angst with a bodiless cyber-space, Stearns’ focus on the human body is pushed deeper as she continues to find more complex meaning relating technology to physical life. As her style progressed, she has gradually started to engage her own body, discovering new ideas for her growing passion. Night Spring , featured at the 2015 Venice Biennale, consists of an HD single-channel video with a series of digital prints. The video is composed of a geyser that eventually erodes due to natural effects revealing a human form. She combines organic forms with inorganic ones that are both subjects of transformation, while also putting on display their simultaneous abstractions. Nataša Prosenc Stearns was born in Slovenia and began her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Slovenia. She moved to California as a Fulbright scholar to pursue her Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts. Since completing her education, she has been the recipient of the Soros Grant and the Durfee Foundation Grant, among others. Stearns has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as film screenings and lectures. Her work has been shown internationally at the ARCO Fair in Spain, the Douloun Museum of Art in Shanghai, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel and numerous venues in the United States. Stearns currently resides in Southern California, where she continues to work. May 7 - July 24, 2016 Back to list