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Up Imagen Angeleno Various Artists Special Exhibition : Dark Progressivism Artists : Ken Gonzales-Day Linda Vallejo Abel Alejandre Ana Rodriguez In celebration of the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, which is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, MOAH presents its winter exhibition, Imagen Angeleno . This exhibition will include solo exhibits of work by: Ken Gonzales-Day, Abel Alejandre, Ana Rodriguez and Linda Vallejo. The Main Gallery will feature a special exhibition, Dark Progressivism: The Built Environment , guest-curated by Rodrigo d’Ebre and Lisa Derrick. Inspired by the 2016 documentary film Dark Progressivism , written by Rodrigo d’Ebre and co-directed by Rodrigo d’Ebre and James J. Yi, this exhibition highlights the street and public art movements that characterize Los Angeles’ Southland. Dark Progressivism: The Built Environment answers the question of which movements are shaping 21st century art with a multi-faceted approach that looks to the streets of LA, where innovations in design and the idea of vandalism as a form of artistic resistance are embedded in the city’s identity. Artists featured in Dark Progressivism: The Built Environment include: Michael Alvarez, Sandow Birk, Chaz Bojorquez, Liz Brizzi, Roberto Chavez, Gajin Fujita, Peter Greco, Roberto Gutierrez, Jason Hernandez, Juan Carlos Munoz Hernandez, Louis Jacinto, Susan Logoreci, Manuel Lopez, Eva Malhotra, Horacio Martinez, Jim McHugh, Gerardo Monterrubio, Nunca, Estevan Oriol, Cleon Peterson and Lisa Schulte, Felix Quintana, Carlos Ramirez, Erwin Recinos, Rafael Reyes, Joe ‘Prime’ Reza, Sandy Rodriguez, Shizu Saldamando, Alex Schaefer, Jaime Scholnick & Big Sleeps. Dark Progressivism Curated by Rodrigo Ribera d'Ebre and Lisa Derrick The Dark Progressivism: The Built Environment exhibit is a survey of the region’s Dark Progressivism school of thought, which dates back to the Great Depression, and is brought into current day. Special emphasis is placed on the post-war era through the present. The exhibit sheds light on the organic relationship between photography, painting, literature, architecture, sculpture, cinema, mural, and typography. The creation and production of these works derive from a noir cityscape, in a land where the bright colors of flora and fauna, native and transplanted, belief somber secrets and complex histories. The origin of Dark Progressivism begins with the built environment. As a result of restrictive housing covenants against people of color, clusters of orderly and planned suburbs sprouted all over the metropolis, while high density, marginalized, and underdeveloped communities developed elsewhere, forming a belt around Downtown Los Angeles. Far from tourist destinations, these communities were invisible and associated with slum housing. During the Depression, people of color, born and raised in Los Angeles, were fired from public sector jobs so that “White Americans” could find employment, while thousands of Mexican Americans and Mexican-born immigrants were repatriated to Mexico. At the same time, “socially progressive” housing projects were designed by renowned architects as a form of containment to house low-income Mexican and Mexican American communities. Housing projects such as Maravilla, Rose Hills Courts, Ramona Gardens, Pico Aliso Village, Dogtown, and several others became a reality, and thousands were displaced into the shadows of the projects; thus people of color and these communities became more invisible and further fragmented. On the bleak streets of this built environment, the youth responded by writing graffiti on walls in the form of community plaques, and carving names and neighborhoods in cement to show that they too existed in the dark metropolis. From then, through the changes, whether physical and social, violent or benign, of the ensuing decades, contemporary artists in a variety of mediums have been directly informed by this noir cityscape. Dark Progressivism: The Built Environment deconstructs the metropolis’ trajectory through an unprecedented historical lens, with works from artists who are not only impacted by the opaque topography, but who are also contributing to the dialog of progress. Ken Gonzales-Day Profiled Racial profiling and discriminatory treatment of persons of color remains at the center of political debates about criminal justice, terrorism, national security and immigration reform despite the increasing understanding that race has more to do with culture than biology. Many studies have been made involving the literary and art-historical depictions of race in text and painting, but the sculpted figure and the portrait bust have garnered little attention. Ken Gonzales-Day: Profiled addresses these forms. It became evident in Gonzales-Day’s research that historically sculptures and portrait busts were created using other works of art such as photographs or illustrations as reference. Many sculptures are copies of copies and with each new artist comes a reinterpretation of the previous. This cycle of replication has resulted in the progressive distortion of the subjects’ depiction. In others, the busts were not busts at all, but fragments from larger sculptures composited from various models. Profiled is about more than the uncanny double, it is about the fragmented and fractured subject and its visual potential. Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles based artist whom received a BFA from Pratt Institute, an MFA from the University of California Irvine, an MA from Hunter College and is now a Professor of Art and Humanities at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. His work has been widely exhibited including: LACMA, Los Angeles; LAXART, Los Angeles; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The New Museum, New York City; Generali Foundation, Vienna, and more. Ken Gonzales-Day was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2017. Linda Vallejo The Brown Dot Project Linda Vallejo’s The Brown Dot Project continues her work examining the growing Latino population and American’s changing attitudes towards color and class. The Brown Dot Project began with the artist’s consideration of statistics concerning Latino populations and how abstract painted works could spark a dialog about these numbers and their influence on the viewer’s perception of race and class. The “brown dot” abstract image of these Latino data numbers emerged after much trial and error. Once Vallejo’s work led her to the grid, she began dividing them into quadrants and a pattern began to manifest. Vallejo continued the project’s production by experimenting with formal variations based on Latino percentages and her experiences with indigenous weaving. The first images she produced recalled American Indian and Mesoamerican blankets, weavings and ancient ceremonial sites. Later, Mondrian, Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, Charles Gaines, and other grid-oriented modernists came to mind as she was forced to create new variations within the work. Vallejo studies a variety of data sets, including topics such as the number of Latinos in any given city or state, the national number of Latino executives, the number of Latinos involved in the American Civil War. As an example: The population of Los Angeles County is represented by 48,400 total squares. The county’s Latino population (48.3%) is represented by 23,377 dots arranged in 467 sets of 50 dots each (and one set of 27 additional dots). As her dates sets expand, so too have the works, growing in size from 9 square inches to 24 square inches, the largest of which are 36 square inches. Counting of these squares and dots, completing the corresponding mathematics, and “dotting” the page takes hours of concentration on both topic and execution. Abel Alejandre Urban Realism Abel Alejandre spent the first seven years of his life in the rural region of Tierra Caliente, Mexico. In these early years, Alejandre and his family lived without electricity and running water. They emigrated to Los Angeles in 1975, which Alejandre describes as being akin to traveling a century into the future. Looking back to this transformative period, Alejandre aims to examine and reinterpret what it means to be a human being, a man and the member of a community. These themes are explored in his work as his subject matter focuses on discounted and overlooked moments that subversively yet actively shape our culture. By isolating these instances into hyperrealist vignettes Alejandre intends to stimulate the onlookers’ reflection. The autobiographical elements of Alejandre’s work delve into the public and private spheres of masculinity and vulnerability. He frequently uses roosters to symbolize machismo, manhood, valor and patriarchy as they are animals known for their fierce instinct, beauty and determination to fight until its enemy is completely dispatched. Through his work Alejandre evaluates and questions the role of masculinity’s in contemporary society. For over twenty years Abel Alejandre has been perfecting his practice in acrylics, woodblock prints and graphite. Alejandre’s graphite drawings makes up the largest body of work and require upwards of five months to bring to fruition, averaging eleven hours per day and consumes about 700 pencils each. Ana Rodriguez Floral Interiors Ana Rodriguez’ canvases—with their feminine color palettes of pinks and purples and dripping textures that are reminiscent of frosting or cake batter—are at once mysterious, feminine and deeply personal. The artist grew up in the small community of Maywood, California, neighbor to the numerous chemical plants, refineries, public waste areas and foundries of Commerce and Vernon. As a child, Rodriguez recalls being highly aware of how the rancid smells of these factories mixed with the sweet scents of small bakeries and cake shops in her city. Memories of this olfactory sensation are pervasive throughout her current body of work. Rodriguez’ paintings also often incorporate references to the 99 Cent Store decorations that adorned her childhood home, providing a link to her family’s social class in an attempt to acquire a deeper understanding of the nature of classifying beauty and objects of value. Patterns reminiscent of kitchen cabinet liners, linoleum flooring, wallpaper and fabric from childhood toys and clothes emerge from beneath dripping washes of color in an amalgam of neon and pastel hues and abstract forms that seem to melt and ooze in and out of gravity. Allusions to the natural environment are also present in the artist’s color palette: splashes of pink mix with orange and gold, evoking the striking appearance of East Los Angeles’ sunsets, melting over the smokestacks of factories and the rooftops of crowded apartment complexes. Nostalgia and memory, fantasy and whimsy collide, mingle and overwhelm as abstraction and pattern coexist across Rodriguez’ paintings. Ana Rodriguez earned a BFA from California State University Long Beach and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design, where she currently teaches. November 11, 2017 - January 14, 2018 Back to list

Up Photography: Beyond the Surface Various Artists Solo exhibitions: Matthew Finley Rob Grad John Peralta Melanie Pullen Christopher Russell Joni Sternbach Rodrigo Valenzuela Site specific installation: Kira Vollman Selections from the Permanent Collection The Lancaster Museum of Art & History (MOAH) and the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation (LMPAF) invite Antelope Valley residents and visitors to its newest exhibition Beyond the Surface , a survey of contemporary photography. The exhibit will be on display November 9 through January 12, and the opening reception will be November 9 from 4-6 p.m. Beyond the Surface features the work of eight photographers, including a survey of Melanie Pullen’s work in the Main Gallery, Joni Sternbach’s Surfland series in the East Gallery, This Too Shall Pass by Matthew Finley in the North Gallery, Rob Grad’s Finding Foreverland series in the Wells Fargo Gallery, work from Christopher Russel in the Moore Family Trust Gallery, photographic installation by Rodrigo Valenzuela in the South Gallery, along with sculpture by John Peralta, and 16mm , a site-specific installation, by Kira Vollman. Photography has long been associated with its ability to document reality. As a medium, photography has neatly satisfied the human need to search for objective truth. But truth is not objective. Like photography, the truth is crafted, manipulated, and enhanced. In the digital age, with the advent of augmented and virtual reality, the blurring of the line that separates real from unreal has reached an unprecedented level. Beyond the Surface examines these permeable boundaries. Its artists, who each utilize traditional photographic processes, challenge the viewer to look deeper and find a greater sense of truth that lies just beyond the images’ surface. MATTHEW FINLEY: THIS TOO SHALL PASS Matthew Finley creates conceptual portraits that connect with the viewer on an intimate and emotional level. By using the handcrafted photographic processes of tintype and ambrotype, Finley harkens back to the fixedness and inerasable quality of his own personal history. He explores instant film as a way to create portraits as original and authentic works of self-examination, capturing elusive, often fleeting moments of self-realization. In the series, This Too Shall Pass , Finley reflects on his personal journey of coming out as a gay man after being raised in a religious household where being gay was not accepted. Each Polaroid acts as a looking glass, through which the viewer experiences Finely’s “past selves.” His memories, though fuzzy and impressionistic, are a vulnerable look into his youth, realization of his sexuality, and the persistence of time. Shame, fear, and rejection slowly transform into love, desire, and belonging as Finley takes the viewer through his journey to self-acceptance. His goal is to share these memories, set free the ghosts that have haunted his past and connect with andencourage others who are going through similar experiences. Based in Los Angeles, Matthew Finley has been a photographer for ten years and is a core member of the Advanced Photography Critique Group at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. His work has shown in galleries on the West Coast, New Orleans, and Cincinnati. His images have also appeared in publications including Fraction Magazine, Shots Magazine, and Plates to Pixels where he won the Juror Award in The Visual Armistice 10th Annual Juried Showcase. ROB GRAD: FINDING FOREVERLAND Rob Grad’s sculptures are photo-based mixed media. Each piece consists of layered plexiglass parts that combine painting, drawing, and photography in a variety of ways that highlight or conceal various elements. Grad uses his work to address existential issues, using the physical layers of his sculptures to tackle the multiple layers of each issue. These meditations give the viewer license to consider their personal histories and discover their own truth. Finding Foreverland reflects on his interest in nature and the evolution of humankind’s relationship with it. Grad says, “from as far back as I can remember, I’ve always felt at home surrounded by nature. It’s wise. And patient. It was here before us, and will probably be here long after we’re gone.” The artist’s inspiration comes from a poem he wrote while reflecting on the wisdom and authenticity of a flower’s life. He saw the flower as delicate, but also unreservedly tough and unapologetic. Each sculpture in the series is a metaphorical character that struggles to grasp the wisdom that the flower embodies so effortlessly. The complementary environments cropped into hand painted gestural shapes, fused together with colors and text and assembled into a three-dimensional wall hanging brings each character to life. Grad is a current resident of southern California. He won First Place in the “New Media” Category of the Beverly Hills Art Show in 2015. He has shown his work in solo exhibitions at Fabrik Projects in Culver City, California, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, California, and the Frame Gallery in Agoura, California, as well as in group exhibitions throughout southern California and Florida. Grad’s work was included in Art Basel, Switzerland, and at SCOPE Miami in 2017. JOHN PERALTA John Peralta is a self-taught artist whose unconventional style of sculpture incorporates iconic mechanical objects and high-tech materials to produce beautiful and complex representations. His interpretation of what is known in engineering terms as the exploded diagram, is original and demonstrates his imagination, technical expertise, and inventiveness. Peralta’s The Mechanitions Series reverses the fabrication process by taking utilitarian objects from the past and turning them into sculpture. Each three-dimensional exploded diagram makes each object feel vulnerable and approachable, while also creating a sense of reverence as the viewer takes in the intricate workings of the device. It allows the viewer to connect their own intimate experiences with the object, “like the typewriter your grandfather used in the war, your grandmother’s sewing machine, your father’s pocket watch, an iconic electric guitar,” as Peralta explains. These memories evoke a strong emotional connection to these objects and invite the viewer to imagine the vast memories each object holds. Peralta is a native of New Mexico and, although he now lives in Austin, Texas, his New Mexico family and heritage remain major influences on his life and work. Some of his earliest memories are of him and his brother pulling their red wagon around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, collecting broken radios, televisions, tape players – anything they could get their hands on – opening them up to see what made them work. He received no formal training in the arts, and it wasn’t until his thirties that he found his creative voice. Peralta is currently represented by the George Billis Galleries in New York and Los Angeles, Galerie Goutal in Aix-en-Provance France, Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Gerald Peters Projects in Santa Fe, and Cinq Gallery in Dallas. He has had major exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, and Santa Fe. SCENE OF THE CRIME AND THE FASHION OF VIOLENCE : A SURVEY OF PHOTOGRAPHER MELANIE PULLEN Melanie Pullen’s photography tells a story in a single frame. Her work is cinematic and theatrical, often taking inspiration from film, photojournalism, forensic photography, and war journalism. This retrospective features work produced over the course of the last 14 years, including images from her High Fashion Crime Scenes, Violent Times, and Soda POP! series . Widely known for her work in the fashion industry, Pullen often uses fashion and media consumption as themes in her work to express the subtleties of her ideas. In her most extensive series, High Fashion Crime Scenes (2013-2017), Pullen outfits her models in haute-couture while staging them in re-enacted vintage crime scenes. The outfits distract and draw the viewer’s attention away from the gruesome scene of the crime. In Violent Times (2005-2009), Pullen focuses on the history of violence and its glamourization from early documentation in historical painting to the contrasting reality of modern photojournalism. Her series Soda POP! (2015) takes the idea of iconic soda ads and flips it on its head, making the viewer feel uneasy by placing the models in questionable nighttime settings. Melanie Pullen was born in New York City in 1975. She is self-taught and was raised in a family of photojournalists, publishers, and artists. Currently she lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Pullen has both exhibited and her work is in the permanent holdings of The Getty Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California and Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Pullen has been recognized in numerous publications including Art Forum, Art Review, CBS News, CBS Radio, Elle, Fortune, GQ, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, New York Times Magazine, Nylon, Photo, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, and W. CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL: FALLS Christopher Russell analyzes the use of photography as technology has advanced over time. Originally, chemical photography was used to faithfully record people and places around the world, often feeling as if the viewer saw or experienced the actual place or thing firsthand. With the progression to digital photography, that sense of truth and reality is lost due to the complete malleability of images. Russell takes these digital images and emphasizes their changing position in the world from objective truth to subjective realities by scratching, cutting, folding and painting on the print, often creating his own narrative. In this series Falls , Russell fictionalizes a travelogue of a highly acclaimed Western photographer from the 1860s, Carleton Watkins. Russell travels to locations that Watkins previously photographed and photographs them himself, looking at them from the opposite end of a historical continuum. As he photographs each location, he manipulates the light that enters the lens to ensure they are fuzzy and hard to follow. As Russell scratches into the emulsion of the print, ghost-like patterns and fictional narratives begin to appear, warping Watkin’s original travelogue. Each of the images in this exhibition is “waterfalls.” This connecting theme is portrayed in a variety of ways throughout the work. It can take form in a sudden change in the flow of a pattern, an interpretation of a historical photograph of Willamette falls, or a muddle of ships approaching a watery precipice. Born in 1974, Russell received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Center College of Design in California. In 2009, he produced a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California. He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Tokyo Institute of Photography in Japan, The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida, Armory Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, California, White Columns in New York, New York, De Appel Arts Center in the Netherlands, Oakland Museum of California in Oakland, California, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California among others. He has published numerous critical articles in addition to being a featured subject of positive review by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, Artillery, Frieze, and ArtForum. JONI STERNBACH: SURFLAND This exhibition of tintype portraits was made during Sternbach’s visit to Oahu in December 2017 and 2018. It is part of a larger body of work, entitled Surfland, depicting various sized large format portraits of surfers, made on location around the globe. Surfland explores the real and conceptualized state of the surfer in the American imaginary. This project is a latter-day ethnographic document that unites different ages, genders, cultures and geographies through sport. The artist’s project places the everyday “soul surfer” (those who surf for the sheer pleasure of surfing) next to the elite, pro-surfing competitor just as they might exist in the water, waiting for the next wave. Sternbach’s work examines the ever-changing juncture between land and sea. This series was born out of her life-long desire to clarify the connection between humans and nature and her enduring love of the ocean. Surfland is an in-depth body of work that delves into the nature of identity and the character of portraiture. It’s an endeavor that can engage an entire community at any given time. What started as a local project on Long Island developed into a broader global study of people and place, sport and culture. Each tintype uses a liquid emulsion (collodion) that is poured onto the plate just minutes before it’s exposed and developed. All of Sternbach’s photographs are processed on site using a portable darkroom. The plates are fixed in daylight, allowing the image to be shared immediately with her sitters, which is crucial to her interaction and relationship with her subject. The attention to time spent making and evaluating each detailed collodion plate transforms the standard photographer/subject connection to a shared experience. Joni Sternbach is an artist and educator based in New York. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the School of Visual Arts and a Master of Arts degree from New York University and the International Center of Photography in 1987. She is an advisory board member and founding faculty at Penumbra Foundation in New York City, where she teaches wet plate collodion. Sternbach’s work is part of many international and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London, Joslyn Museum, MOCA Jacksonville, Nelson Atkins Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is the recipient of several grants including New York Foundation for the Arts and Creative Artists Public Service and Santo Foundation. Her monograph Surf Site Tin Type was published in the Spring 2015 by Damiani and is now sold out of the second edition. She is represented in Los Angeles by Von Lintel Gallery and in Paris, France by Galerie Hug. RODRIGO VALENZUELA: STATURE Rodrigo Valenzuela’s work in photography, video, and installation is rooted in contradictory traditions of documentary and fiction, often involving narratives around immigration and the working class. The artist often expands upon his own personal experiences, such as feelings of alienation and displacement, to inform universal concepts throughout his work. Valenzuela’s photographic technique involves orchestrating “performances for the camera,” which entails creating complex spaces by using his own photographic work as a backdrop against which additional installations are seamlessly built and rephotographed. The illusionistic quality of these spaces engage the viewer in questioning the way their own experiences influence their view on truth and reality. Valenzuela’s new series, Stature , is a progression of his previous studio constructions. In this series, the artist casts discarded electronics packaging in clay and concrete. These abstract constructions appear sterile, harsh, and sometimes even monsterlike, reminiscent of Brutalist architecture that was popular in the 1950s. None of these forms are glued or connected in any way. Instead, each object is precariously balanced in each arrangement. By taking these cast off items and making them permanent, structural and valuable, Valenzuela indirectly examines capitalist endeavors. Rodrigo Valenzuela was born in Santiago, Chile in 1982. He completed an art history degree at the University of Chile in 2004, then worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Evergreen State College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington. His work has been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries including the Upfor Gallery in Portland, Oregon, New Museum in New York, New York, Laurence Miller Gallery in New York, New York, Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, Mexico, USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, Florida, Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, Light Work in Syracuse, New York and the Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer in Vienna, Austria. He is a professor of art at the University of California, Los Angeles and represented by Klowden Mann Gallery in Los Angeles. KIRA VOLLMAN: 16MM Kira Vollman’s installation, 16mm , combines photography, painting, sculpture, and sound into an interactive experience. Vollman collects refuse from scrap yards, thrift and surplus stores, combining these disparate objects and synthesizing new meanings in this next phase of their life. As a visual and sound artist, Vollman sees each medium in constant interaction with one another, as “parts of a whole” rather than separate entities. Byincorporating music into her work, she curates a connection between the artwork, the viewer, and herself,orchestrating a moment of unity via interaction. 16mm is an abstract, static film clip which takes the viewer on a narrative of their own choosing. As the viewer travels down the 16 foot piece, the provided score, along with the photography, collage, and painting invites the audience to imagine themselves on an adventure, drama, or even a romance. Vollman muses, “Danger might be lurking around the next corner. There are escape routes. There is a serious pitfall at the center of your journey. Can you avoid it? The red threads are your lifelines.” The undulating frames draw viewers deeper as the plot thickens. The score for the piece is incorporated via steel frames that have been woven onto diffusion frames used in lighting for film. Kira Vollman is a Los Angeles based artist, curator, and vocalist. She is currently the owner, director, and curator of ARK Gallery Studios in Altadena, California. She is also a composer and vocalist for the group, Non Credo. Her artwork has been shown in galleries such as The Neutra Institute Museum & Gallery, Sylvia White Gallery, SOPA Studios Gallery, and MOAH:CEDAR. In 2017, she won first place in the All Media Exhibition at the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Irvine, California. November 9, 2019 - January 12, 2020 Back to list

Up Play.Create.Collect Various Artists The Art of Toys: A Left Coast Retrospective of Designer Toys Guest Curated by Julie B. & Heidi Johnson Main Gallery Davis & Davis: Planet X Wells Fargo Gallery Moshe Elimelech: Arrangements East Gallery Thumperdome: History of the Pinball Machine South Gallery Woes Martin Mural Main Gallery Teddy Kelly Mural Entry Atrium Hueman Mural Second Floor HCA Presents: Munny on My Mind Marroquin Classroom The Art Of Toys: A Left Coast Retrospective The Art Of Toys: A Left Coast Retrospective: Is the 20+ year evolution of the designer toy, as a celebrated art medium. A thriving movement, art toys are establishing a spot in American art history. So many artists have used this medium as a platform to extend their reach to fans and collectors, without the isolating costs associated with collecting original Pop Surrealism works. Pop Surrealism, also known as Lowbrow Art, was an underground visual art movement originating in Los Angeles around the 1970’s. It reflected the underground street culture and was filled with sarcastic and gleeful humor. Our perspective as curators is from that of the creator, enthusiastic fan, the passionate collector and the cultural instigator. It’s a true collector's paradise with a massive history, that includes some of the biggest players in pop art today. By starting with West Coast popular culture we begin to begin to tell the story of designer toys from a historical, cultural, and social perspective. This exhibit explores a community of 80+ artists, including; Frank Kozik, Mark Ryden, Gary Baseman, Buff Monster, Joe Ledbetter, David Flores, Tristan Eaton, and Luke Chueh. Toys include fan favorites, as well as works significant to the creator’s careers. Many pieces are developed from original artwork that shares the creative process with the viewer. As important as the artists’ creation is the artists relationship with the producers and distributors of art toys. Companies like, Munky King, 3D Retro, Toy Art Gallery, DKE Toys, and Giant Robot to name a few, have built the bridge between art originals and limited editions to create a cultural phenomenon within the larger context of Pop Surrealism/Lowbrow Art. The resulting show brings together an awe inspiring collection of toys, sculpture installations, a variety of artwork including original sketches and molds, site-specific murals, and a curated retail space that is indicative to the world of Art Toys. This is an art toy paradise, sure to tickle just about anybody’s nerd bone. -Julie B. & Heidi Johnson Davis & Davis: Planet X “The search for Planet X began in 1841 as the search for the eighth planet in our solar system and continues today as the search for the eleventh. Planet X was first renamed Neptune, then Vulcan (Urbain Le Verrier's intra-Mercurial planet), then Pluto, then Niburu (Zecharia Sitchin's "12th planet") and now Xena (the recently discovered tenth planet). Planet X is not a real planet, but rather a placeholder for planets yet to be found. In a mathematical sense, it is a variable: X = n + 1, where n is the number of the last discovered planet. Planet X, in its role as the perpetually undiscovered sphere located at an ever-greater distance from the Earth, embodies both our hopes and our fears for the future. Toy spacemen of the late 40s and early 50s combine a pre-Sputnik naiveté about space travel with a cold war paranoia about all things alien. Their art deco space suits feature bell jar helmets and back-slung, oxygen tanks; their elaborate ray guns bulge with deadly, high technology. Because they appeared before the dawn of the Space Age, they don't look like the astronauts we know today and seem to recall a future yet to come. For this series, we photograph these spacemen as they struggle with robots and other technology, with monsters and aliens, and with themselves in the barren, cratered landscape of Planet X .” -Davis & Davis Davis & Davis have collaborated on a variety of photography, video, sculpture and installation projects over the last several years. Their interests include cinema, psychology, pop culture and fringe sciences. Davis & Davis have exhibited at the Riverside Art Museum, the Chelsea Museum of Art, the Ulrich Museum of Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among other venues. Their work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Ulrich Museum of Art, California State University Los Angeles, Cal Polytechnic University Pomona, Cypress College and the Kinsey Research Institute as well as many private collections. Davis & Davis have Masters of Fine Arts degrees in Art/Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts. Santa Monica Press published a book of their photographs, Childish Things , in 2004. Moshe Elimelech: Arrangements Moshe Elimelech’s exhibition Arrangements showcases modular acrylic cube paintings that are colorful and interactive. Rectangular cradles house gridded cubes that invite viewers to turn, move and rearrange each piece. Influenced by a background in design and by the modernist art movements of optical and kinetic art, Moshe fuses formal elements of art with play. Elimelech employs elements such as line, color, pattern, texture and tone to create varied designs on each cube that goes into Arrangements. Those cubes in turn, when placed beside others create new designs that could essentially be limitless, when placed at random by each individual that interacts with the artwork. Arrangements allows for viewers to express their unique vision of design aesthetics while at the same time enlivening their experience of paintings that are historically expected to be static. Elimelech states “I paint these abstracted landscapes in a way for people to admire and interpret openly, leaving them visual cues for the play of imagination.” Moshé Elimelech was exposed to the artistic process by observing his father’s technique as a master craftsman. He began his course of study at the Avni Art Institute in Israel and then went on to study at The Polytechnic Institute of Design in Tel Aviv. After two and a half years in the army working as an art director for the Israeli army publication house, Maarachot, Elimelech went on to Paris where he assisted the internationally known artist Yaakov Agam. Elimelech was selected as a contributing artist for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and is a recipient of the Windsor Newton award by the Watercolor West Society. In addition to his current studio practice as a fine artist, Elimelech’s design work has been featured internationally, in galleries and museums, such as the Palm Springs Desert Museum, Las Vegas Art Museum, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Korean Cultural Center, Gallery 825, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art; as well as in the museum stores of Museum of Modern Art in New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Thumperdome: History of the Pinball Machine The modern pinball machine is a direct descendant of the French bagatelle games of the 1700s, which featured a playfield with wooden pegs, and balls that were introduced into the playfield with a pool cue. The French brought this amusement device to America during the American Revolution when they served as our allies against Great Britain. Here in America, the game further evolved using metal pins instead of dowels and the revolutionary introduction of the shooter rod in the early 1800s. The addition of the coin mechanism in the 1930s allowed people to play their troubles away for a penny and even win back some of their money as these “trade stimulators”, as they were called at the time, started becoming gambling devices. The game resonated with people in the U.S. wanting cheap entertainment through the Great Depression-era economy. At that time most drugstores and taverns in the US operated pinball machines, with many locations quickly recovering the cost of the game. The entire machine was designed to be as eye-catching as possible, in order to attract players and their money; every possible space is filled with colorful graphics, blinking lights and themed objects, and the backglass is usually the first artwork the players see from a distance. Pinball was considered gambling; even the act of winning a replay is still banned in several states to this day. As time went on video games replaced pinball in the market, and manufactures were forced to enhance the technology within the pinball machines to be in competitive. Thumperdome is the historic pinball collection of Amanda Cole and Art Perez located in Pasadena, CA. Both grew up in awe of the game with the silver ball, saving up their quarters to drop into the nearest pinball machine they could find. A chance find of a decaying [Evel Knievel” pinball machine gave Art the opportunity to restore his favorite] childhood machine and start the collection that would grow into Thumperdome. Amanda, who works in technology and art, is an artist/photographer with a background in engineering and together their combined interests and expertise are utilized to restore and rejuvenate machines which they have collected throughout the country. The goal of Thumperdome is to preserve the history, technology, artwork and culture of pinball in America and promote pinball to future generations. Thumperdome houses one of the largest and most diverse private collections of pinball machines in the nation. The ever-rotating collection traverses the development of pinball machines from the early bagatelle-like games of the 1930s, to the introduction of pinball flippers in the 1940s until the 1980s and 90s when the threat of video games finally toppled pinball from the hearts of American fun-seekers. This collection shares the beauty of the machines and the challenge of the games to entertain, educate and captivate a new generation as technologies changed. Aaron Woes Martin Aaron “Angry Woebots” Martin aka “Woes Martin” grew up between the Hawaiian island Oahu and the western United States. He was greatly influenced by Saturday morning cartoons, kung fu and comic book cultures, which led him to be involved in the process of creation in some form. His strong passion for toys provided the avenue to design his own resin sculpture with partner Palmetto of Silent Stage Gallery, and through KidRobots Dunny platform. His focal medium is acrylic paintings on wood and canvas. Using minimal colors with detailed character design, these paintings are usually composed of aggravated pandas or bears conveying extreme emotions. The pandas tend to represent the story of struggle, humble beginnings and rolling with the punches. From Hawaii to the mainland U.S. and across the globe he continues to leave his mark, connecting with other artists and other cultures. His creations have been shown in galleries throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, South Pacific and Europe. Woes has worked with many companies like Converse, Disney and Samsung, as well as been part of multiple publications for the art, designer toy and hip hop communities. His custom vinyl toys, Resin figures and collaborations have been showcased at Comic-Con San Diego, Comic-con New York, Designer Con Pasadena and Singapore Toy Con. Teddy Kelly Teddy Kelly is an artist and illustrator whose life and designs are the product of converging cultural influences. He grew up in Mazatlan, Mexico. He has been creating art since he could pick up a pen, drawing influence from both the Disney characters he’d see during childhood visits to the United States and his perspective of the immigrant-influenced culture of his hometown. Kelly grew up immersed in the subculture of surfing and skateboarding, inspired from a young age by the skateboard art that defined this culture. He moved to the United States after high school in search of an education, and fortunately also found a mentor and friend who taught him how to conceptualize his ideas. Teddy was awarded an honorable mention for Illustration by the American Institute of Graphic Arts while attending San Diego City College. His work has been featured in international exhibitions alongside some fine and skate art icons that have also inspired him throughout his life. Hueman Hailing from northern California, Hueman is a Los Angeles based graffiti artist whose work can be found on common walls and in galleries worldwide. She works between the delicacy of canvas and massive city walls, playing with ideas of abstraction and figurative art mashed up with grotesque subjects. Playing is part of her creations, just as it is with her name she brings movement portrayed through various two-dimensional, flat surfaces and places them on the domineering walls of cityscapes. She states, “I am constantly seeking balance: between the beautiful and the grotesque, the abstract and the figurative, and that golden moment between being asleep and awake.” This balance can be found in the way Hueman creates, she is known for beginning a piece by energetically throwing paint and then conjuring up the composition through the stream of consciousness that follows. Hueman earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Design and Media Arts from UCLA in 2008. Her work has been featured in the LA Times, Hypebeast, Juxtapoz, and caught the attention of CNN, The History Channel, NPR, and international magazines such as Players Magazine and Grab Magazine. She has had solo exhibitions in multiple L.A. based galleries, and exhibited in shows across the United States as well as internationally. Her featured client base includes Disney, Nike, Converse and American Express. She lives and works in Los Angeles. HCA Presents: Munny on My Mind Munny on my Mind is a unique, inter-disciplinary art class that blends design, sculpture, painting and conceptual art into one project. Youth from Arbor at Palmdale and Village Pointe in Lancaster were tasked with creating an art piece of their choosing by carefully establishing a theme and applying their concept to a Munny. Students used templates provided by Kid Robot to design their creations before moving on to customizing their Munny by using a wide range of materials including clay, markers, paint and yarn. July 18 - September 6, 2015 Back to list

Up Vanity Various Artists Justin Bower: Thresholds Roni Stretch: Not Vanity Austin Young: To Be Determined / TBD The Musical Shana Mabari: Diametros Petals Laura Larson: Grace and Glory Leigh Salgado: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Tina Dorff: Human Story Told Ted Meyer: Scarred for Life Justin Bower: Thresholds San Francisco native Justin Bower paints his subjects as de-stabilized, fractured post-humans, a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human, in a nexus of interlocking spatial systems. His paintings juxtapose how individuals define themselves in this digital and virtual age and the impossibility of grasping such a slippery notion. Bower compares his use of paint to an instrument of dissection and inquiry into the idea of the body as an original prosthetic subject. Flesh acts as the complex layer of biological boundary from externalized technologies; all the while revealing that the same externalized technologies are already inside the body. Bower paints his subjects in a world where humanity and materiality are interwoven symmetrically, where the purity of human nature is being replaced by new forms of creation and evolution. His paintings are influenced by today’s culture that privileges patterns of information by using optical art configurations as the context for most of his artwork. Bower’s paintings open a dialogue of the destabilizing effect and trauma technology has on the individual. He shows this through the technique of doubling features - multiple eyes, spliced noses, melting mouths – and a whiplash-like motion invoked in his abstract expressionist process. Bower received a Bachelor Degree in Art and Philosophy from the University of Arizona and his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Claremont Graduate University. Since receiving his MFA, Bower’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills, Unix Gallery in New York City, and has been part of a group show at Patrick Painter and many international exhibitions. Bower has been the recipient of several awards, among those the Feitelson Fellowship Grant and the Joan Mitchell Award. His artwork has been published by Art Forum, New American Paintings, American Art Collector, Bl!sss Magazine, Modern Painters, Artillery Magazine and the LA Times. Ronic Stretch: Not Vanity Roni Stretch has pioneered the dichromatic process, exploring photorealistic under-paintings that emerge ghost-like from a void of color. His dichromatic oil paintings are meticulously created by executing a layering process whereby two different colors are alternately applied and built up over many weeks. The subjects play against a sharply lined border intended to ground each painting in the physical and force a visual meditation. The image is not so much painted over as optically embedded within the multiple layers of the alternating colors. Stretch’s work is a lesson in contradictions: photorealism and abstraction, light and dark, reality and altered states, smooth and rough textures all ultimately leading to an emotional experience. British artist Roni Stretch grew up in St. Helens, Mereyside, England where he attended the 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. Austin Young: To Be Determined / TBD The Musical “I am fascinated by identity. Who am I? Who are you? How do we arrive at these conclusions? We all have stories about growing up, making friends and our first loves. These experiences form our relationship to the world and ourselves. Our fears and experiences solidify our identities and make them real. If our identity becomes fixed, it can keep us in a box. Some of us never stop wishing we were something other or more. I continually talk myself out of doing things. For example, I always wanted to make a musical but my fear got in the way. So, recently, I decided to just set up the dates and announce it. I invited the public to join in for a series of workshops where they shared their stories and experiences around the topic of identity and ‘coming of age.’ The call was heard by many amazing people and LA-based artists as we collectively placed emphasis on radical authenticity and spontaneous creativity. For this show at MOAH, I recreate my studio in the gallery, showing behind-the-scenes footage, intimate coming of age stories, notes, photos and final edited scenes from the musical in progress. In short video interviews, participants delve into the stories that formed their identities then sing or act them out in this unusual and revolutionary musical experience.” -Austin Young Austin Young is a photographer and trans media artist. Young has been documenting pop and sub-culture since 1985 through portraits. Young confuses personality and identity issues in confrontational and unapologetic image-making of people who often mix gender roles or otherwise confound stereotypical constraints of socially-constructed identities. In addition to photography and filmmaking, Young is co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a contemporary art collective established in 2004 that uses fruit as a material for projects that investigate the hyper-synergistic qualities of collaboration. Young's video works explore pop-culture, celebrity, gender and identity. TBD The Musical explores the new realm of performance, installation, video and public participatory art. Through a series of workshops, Young invites the public to co-create this project alongside him, sharing stories and experiences around the topic of identity and “coming of age.” In turn, he creates an ongoing, experimental, collaborative musical that emphasizes radical authenticity and spontaneous creativity. Young brings individuals who are pushing boundaries in their respective disciplines together, including musicians, dancers, fashion designers, singers, drag queens and the public. As new collaborations take place, scenes are added to TBD The Musical , as well as the documentary and exhibition of behind the scenes footage, photography and notes. Shana Mabari: Diametros Petals Shana Mabari is an American contemporary artist working in Los Angeles. Working through the intersections of art, science and technology, Mabari orchestrates light, reflection, color contrast and geometry with the intent to play with and expand the reality and experience of physical space. Through her sculptures, installations and environments, she investigates the ways in which worldly stimuli and phenomena are absorbed and processed through sensory and visual perceptions. Mabari is part of the continuum of the Light and Space movement, which originated in California in the 1960s. Science has fueled her artwork, leading her to collaborate with world renowned scientists at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, Switzerland. Shana Mabari was born in Los Angeles, California. She has traveled extensively and lived in Paris, Northern India and Tel Aviv. Her education includes studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. She holds a patent for the design of “Dynamic Spatial Illusions,” a portable version of a visual and sensory experimental environment. She is a recipient of the Center for Cultural Innovation ARC grant. She has exhibited work in the United States and internationally. Laura Larson: Grace and Glory Laura Larson grew up in Chicago surrounded by the influence of the Chicago Imagists, a group of artists that were known for representational work that drew references outside of fine art. Her work reflects the dual interests of story-telling and theatrical production – the building blocks for her consistent interest in sculptural installations and narrative Tableau. In the late 1970s Larson moved to Los Angeles where she became a member of a collaborative group of women and men, working with Judy Chicago to create The Dinner Party , a controversial, ground–breaking feminist art piece rendered in porcelain, china painting, textiles and embroidery, recognizing significant women in history who were forgotten or under–recognized. Over the last 10 years Larson’s work has touched on two topics: our relationship between nature and our animal co-inhabitants; and investigations of the cultural, historical and spiritual through lines of the female trinity: mind, body and spirit. Completed through three different bodies of work, Grace and Glory will be the final part of Larson’s trinity. Larson states: “This serial investigation examines the cultural, historical and spiritual through–lines of the effects of religion – Christianity in particular – on women. Its genesis was my reaction to the Getty Center’s exhibition “Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture.” While Bernini’s gorgeous busts glorified popes, cardinals and kings, I wanted to re-imagine the exhibit by flipping the gender to female – shifting the focus from power and piety to grace and glory, celebrating historical (mythical) women who have shown grace under pressure and who have been bestowed or sought glory for their actions. This series has been created in opposition to the Baroque artists’ “dazzling virtuosity” and their ability to create a "speaking likeness" from the intractable medium of stone. The faces of these women are made of immobile Styrofoam wig heads. However, each head is treated in a different way to exemplify their life’s situation using various mediums such as paint, modeling epoxy/resin, paper mache, fabric, leather, or beads. The bust in general personifies the woman in a symbolic, rather than expressive way. The materials used have associative powers such as black and white leather gloves, which become hair and headpiece for the Queen of Sheba, and handkerchiefs collected over a lifetime, which become a bouquet of roses for Aimee Semple McPherson." Laura Larson has exhibited her work extensively throughout Southern California, and has shown her work internationally. In 2004, she received the Artist Resource for Completion Grant from the Durfee Foundation. Larson graduated from Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, receiving a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in fine art and theatre arts. Leigh Salgado: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Leigh Salgado’s sculptural drawings incorporate an organic yet precise process through cutting paper by hand and burning some parts of the composition along with the use of ink and paint. These labor-intensive finished pictures are of abstracted imagery that occasionally morph into recognizable subject matter including lace, lingerie, netting, fabric, clothing patterns and original woven abstractions. Salgado’s current work includes an ongoing interest in subjects and forms that have associations developed during her girlhood and womanhood. Salgado states: “What drives me: Attraction to patterns, fabric, fashion objects, elaborate ornamentation and respect for labor. My work is about persistence in spite of the impossibility of perfection. My memories, experiences and women who have formed my worldview are present in the work.” Leigh Salgado received her Bachelor’s Degree in painting, sculpture and graphic arts from the University of California, Los Angeles and her Master’s Degree in clinical art therapy from Loyola Marymount University. After practicing art therapy professionally for several years, she renewed her fine art studies at Santa Monica College of Design in Art and Architecture. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally. Tina Dorff: Human Story Told “Some emotive narratives in these paintings can be quite obvious, but most are undercurrents of a story told by the figure. My painting themes run the gamut from darkly emotive to lovely trickeries on canvas. Watch the playful antics of the fuzzy headed girl naked and chatting with a figurine. If you listen carefully the woman in the blue shirt will tell you her special tale. There is a woman standing on a half shell reaching out to you because the self-shame is killing her. Turn again and you see a naked nymph lazing in the grass under the breeze of a fan. The black sweaty torso of a soldier reaching up to the skies in despair on those awful human decisions made. Then there is the 21st century knock off of an Ingres countess with her black lace dress and blank stare.” – Tina Dorff Tina Dorff’s oil paintings delve into emotional narratives taken from personal experiences and external observations. She uses canvas as a journal and release. Growing out of years of emotional turmoil and disappointments, Dorff uses her work to access emotions and establish a bridge to the outside world. Most of her models are close friends or family, Dorff feels fortunate to have models with a sharp insight into painting. For her, the relationship between the model and painter is powerful and to be cherished, she states “there is always a story behind my faces.” She hopes that when viewers take in her art their sense of reality will be altered for that viewing time and that they can relate to it. She states “I tell my stories through the painted figure for you to interpret...and now it is your story.” Dorff studied at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, Hussian School of Art and received an Associate of Science degree from Temple University. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally. She currently lives and works in Lancaster. Ted Meyer: Scarred for Life Ever since he was a small child with a serious illness, Ted Meyer has mixed art and medical images as a way to understand his experiences. Through his art he highlights the emotional impact of pain and healing on everyday people—patients, families and medical personnel. When medical treatments improved his own situation as an adult, Meyer began to work with other survivors of traumatic health issues. Scarred for Life is a multi-faceted project that includes printing on paper from the subject’s body, interviewing the participants about their experiences and photographing the process. The resulting, ever-expanding, presentation of monoprints, narratives and photographs has received press coverage from the New York Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune . Scarred for Life, has been exhibited nationally, including at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., New York University School of Medicine, Bravard Museum of Art in Melbourne, Florida, the Museum of Art and Culture in New Rochelle, New York, and at Sierra College in Rocklin, California and Biola University in La Mirada, California. Meyer has lectured on art and health at Yale University, New York University and UCLA. Ted Meyer is an artist and designer living in Los Angeles. He earned his Bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University. He is owner of and principal designer at Art Your World, a full-service design studio. He is currently an Artist in Residence at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine and Visiting Scholar at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. Ted has exhibited his paintings and photographs internationally, including at the Chicago Art Institute, the United Nations in New York City, in Osaka, Japan and Istanbul Turkey. December 5, 2015 - January 24, 2016 Back to list

Up The Robot Show Various Artists Solo exhibitions: Dave Pressler Jeff Soto Cristopher Cichocki Chenhung Chen Alex Kritselis Robert Nelson Karen Hochman Brown Patrick McGillligan The Robot Show is comprised of eight exhibitions exploring the place robots, and other forms of artificial intelligence, have in a contemporary social landscape – from popular culture to nature and spirituality. Featured in the Main Gallery at MOAH is a retrospective of Emmy-nominated artist and animator, Dave Pressler. The Robot Show also showcases the solo exhibitions of Jeff Soto, Patrick McGilligan, Robert Nelson and Karen Hochman Brown, with site specific installations by artists Cristopher Cichocki, Alexander Kritselis, and Chenhung Chen. Dave Pressler’s 20-year retrospective, Idea to Object , is a narrative of his career, which focuses on how he made his ideas a reality. Pressler’s robots are fixtures in popular culture and he is best known for his Emmy-nominated Nickelodeon series, Robot and Monster . “Pressler’s work appeals to audiences of all ages,” says Andi Campognone, Curator at MOAH. “His work is a great example of the combination of strong contemporary concepts and expert craft, and we are so excited to exhibit his work for both the Lancaster and greater Los Angeles communities.” Jeff Soto, in the East Gallery, is a pop-surrealist who also features robots prominently in his bold paintings and murals, which are meant to evoke nostalgia and the natural environment. In the South Gallery, Cristopher Cichocki furthers this connection between the artificial and the natural with his newest body of work, Divisions of Land and Sea , which combines audiovisual performance and black light painting into an immersive environment. Karen Hochman Brown’s digital photographic compositions will be highlighted in the North Gallery joining Robert Nelson’s robot paintings in the Wells Fargo Gallery along with Patrick McGilligan’s work in the Museum’s lobby and atrium. Alexander Kritselis will feature one of his multimedia installations in windows of the Museum’s Hernando and Fran Marroquin Family Classroom. Rounding out this exhibition is Chenhung Chen, a Los Angeles-based artist, who will be installing her technology-based towers in the Vault Gallery. Dave Pressler: Idea to Object Dave Pressler is a Chicago born, Los Angeles based artist and character designer who has used sculpture and illustration to fuse together his passions for fine art and pop entertainment. He is a self-described “blue-collar artist,” meaning he subscribes to the notion that there is no such thing as high or low art because all art requires skill, technique and imagination regardless of medium or intent. This exhibition is a survey of Pressler’s 20 year career, focusing on whimsical portraits of robots and fantasy creatures. Dave Pressler’s Idea to Object exhibition gives the public the opportunity to view the thought process in character designing, and the transformation from idea to object. This installation includes work made over two decades, as well as themes of demystifying the art process, and demonstrated through learning technique and hard work that anyone who wants to can pursue art. Pressler has collaborated with many notable artists including Mark Ryden, Camille Rose Garcia and Ron English. Pressler has worked from the smallest scale to sculpting large scale robots both for exhibition and for fun. He recently created a custom printed robot in partnership with Pretty In Plastic. This robot is hand painted and a limited edition, the Shut Up And Draw! robot will come with a custom pencil and stand 8 inches tall. In addition to sculpting, character development and animation Pressler is a celebrated illustrator and recently released the Scholastic book Back to School with Big Foot. Dave Pressler is an Emmy-nominated television producer, character designer, animator, illustrator, sculptor and painter. Over his career he has designed characters and IPs for a variety of children’s entertainment companies and co-created Nickelodeon’s Robot and Monster and the stop-motion animated series How to Do Everything with Garrick and Marvin for DreamWorksTV. Concurrently, his designer toys and artwork have been sold in galleries all over the world. Dave Pressler currently resides in Los Angeles and is committed to creating at least one robot a day. Jeff Soto: Futuregods In his formative years, Jeff Soto discovered traditional painting and street graffiti at the same time. This simultaneous exploration of both worlds conceived his unique style and continues to inform his work to this day. His distinct color palette, subject matter and technique bridges the gap between pop surrealism and street art, inspired by youthful nostalgia, nature and popular culture. Soto depicts friendly creatures and personifications of earth’s forces that thrive in a dystopian environment plagued by the complexities of modern living. The robot-like creatures wear friendly smiles that may mask their real intentions. They are super complex beings, just as we are; some are good and some are evil, but most are somewhere in between. Soto’s otherworldly creatures roam the surreal landscape and are surrounded by overgrown greenery, deteriorating technology and overall societal decay. Plants and wildlife are taking over technology and in many cases merging together. However, Soto’s use of vibrant colors and organic shapes evoke a sense of hope and effort to revitalize, communicating themes of family, nature, life and death. In addition to painting and commercial illustration, Jeff Soto has been painting murals internationally including New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Miami, London and Paris. Soto shows with Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York City. He is represented by B&A Reps for illustration work. He will be one of the featured POW!WOW! Antelope Valley artists in Lancaster this October. Jeff Soto received an Associate’s degree from Riverside City College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and currently resides in Riverside, California. Cristopher Cichocki: Divisions of Land and Sea Cristopher Cichocki encapsulates the cycle of decay and renewal through an examination between humankind, the natural world and industrial production. Expanding upon the historical trajectory of Land Art, Cichocki underlines the increasingly toxic global environment confronting our planet in the new millennium. Situated on the fringe of art and natural science, the artist’s environmental interventions reflect on the timeline spanning from prehistoric oceans to present-day transmutations. For decades, Cichocki’s work has been immersed in the desert of southern California, responding to the dynamic ecology and water issues of the region through interconnected works of painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, sound, installation and architectural intervention. The contrasting application of fluorescent color in Cichocki’s palette stems from his earlier explorations of street markings used for construction and infrastructural development. In the midst of desert landscapes once submerged underwater, these fluorescent applications become further amplified as suggestions of deep sea bioluminescence when exposed under the ultraviolet radiation of black light. Divisions of Land and Sea merges both as excavations and restorations distilled from elements Cichocki regards as surviving seeds from an ancient ocean. Cichocki received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of Art, CalArts, Valencia, California. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world in such institutions as the Museum of Image and Sound, São Paulo; Bienalle Urbana, Venice; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janerio; Museum of Moving Image, New York; Portland Museum of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California; Artere-A, Guadalajara; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California; MM Center Cinema, Zagreb, Croatia; and The Paseo Project, Taos, New Mexico. Cichocki works and resides in the Coachella Valley in California. Chenhung Chen: I Ching in America 2.0 In her work, Chenhung Chen is completely involved with line, having first recognized its power in Chinese calligraphy and painting, and later American Abstract Expressionism. Through her line focus, she is able to express feelings of delicacy, power, buoyancy, strength and constant motion. The linear qualities inherent in nature also inform her assemblage process and creative vision. Her work refers to dichotomy: concord and dissonance, stillness and chaos, the beautiful and the grotesque, the subtle and the powerful. From her urban recluse experience, through mixed media works, Chen strives to express her perception of the inner existence: its simplicity and its profundity. Included in her freestanding 3D work are recycled materials, or the detritus of technology, such as copper wire, electrical wire and an array of electronic and computer components. The fact that this material’s original function was to harness electrical power and transform its potential, bending it to the will of man, is fascinating to Chen. In her 2D work, she experiments with materials from graphite to ink, oil to acrylic, paper to canvas, as well as daily use objects with linear qualities. Chen graduated from the Chinese Cultural University and received her Master of Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has traveled the world spending time in India, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, North Eastern China as well as Beijing and Rome, as a volunteer for the Prem Rawat Foundation working for global peace. Her artwork has been exhibited across the United States and internationally including locations throughout the Los Angeles and San Diego area, New York, Utah and Taiwan. Chenhung Chen was born in Beigang, Taiwan, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Alex Kritselis: Predator/Prey Alex Kritselis is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Athens, Greece. Over the past 10 years, along with his paintings and sculptures, he has created numerous private and public site-specific installations, video presentations, and mixed media works, often collaborating with his wife, cinematographer Joey Forsyte. Kritselis moved to the US in the mid seventies to be part of the discourse surrounding contemporary issues in the visual arts. His work involves the examination of ancient myths, their relevance to traditional linear storytelling, influence on contemporary mores and present-day discourse on contemporary mythology and its links to the past. Kritselis is greatly influenced by Greece. He integrates classical rendering techniques with digital and other contemporary modalities. His art reflects on the individual and collective memory, as well as the friction of values past, present and future in our pursuit of self-determination and self-knowledge. The art he makes resemble fragmented pieces of memories and personal and collective histories. Traditional narrative and modern communication are woven together and “pixelated” into individual panels of wood, paper and metal. Painted, printed or engraved, they are in and of themselves complete works of art - free-floating thoughts, symbols, and impressions. When assembled, they embody the fragmentation of time and memory in history and mythology. Alex Kritselis received his MFA in Sculpture and Painting from Hornsey College of Art in London, England. With a scholarship from the Greek Academy of Arts and Sciences, he continued with postgraduate studies in sculpture at the Academia Della Beli Arti in Florence, Italy. He has taught at institutions in California and Texas, including Otis College of Art and Design, Pomona College, Claremont Graduate University, Texas University and Pasadena City College where he served as the Dean of the Visual Arts and Media Studies Division from 2002 to 2012. Kritselis serves on the Board of Armory Center for the Arts and has exhibited nationally and internationally in more than 25 solo and 50 invitational exhibits. Robert Nelson: Awakening The influence of Renaissance master painters is immediately apparent in Robert Nelson’s work, seen through his incorporation of faces from the paintings of Raphael or Bronzino, combined with the shape of his paintings which are often reminiscent of Medieval or Renaissance palace windows. Robert Nelson’s work mixes the hyper-realistic and the surreal, likewise, his subjects combine the familiar with the unexpected. Nelson’s work is about juxtaposition, using images that convey meaning on both an immediate and personal level, images that also seem to require the viewer to find a deeper meaning for themselves behind the themes and ideas that the artist explores. Robert Nelson’s work makes for a peculiar but intriguing union as he combines 16th century Italian Renaissance with modern imagery and concepts of our contemporary, technologically inclined world. He is transfixed by technology and also the compression of time. As our world is engulfed by the likes of computers, robots or other forms of evolved intelligence, Nelson takes a more analog approach to the work and does not use computers. All of his pieces are hand drawn using multiple layers of colored pencil and acrylic then sealed, giving the final product a glossy finish. Nelson studied Fine Art/Studio Art in college, and later joined the Navy. After retiring from the Navy, he went back to school and attended Platt College in San Diego where he studied graphic design and multimedia design. He worked as a graphic designer for over fifteen years and for the last eight has been working seriously as a fine artist. His works have been included in exhibitions since 2008 in San Diego and Los Angeles. Among the galleries where he has exhibited are The Los Angeles Art Association / Gallery 825, Los Angeles, Southwest College Art Gallery, Chula Vista, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Santa Monica. Karen Hochman Brown: Elementals Karen Hochman Brown’s fascination with tessellations began as a young girl looking through her own handmade kaleidoscopes. Juxtaposing photography, digital processes and print with natural imagery, Hochman Brown continues this ritual exploration by creating her mandala-like images, examining the relationship between technological and natural environments. Hochman Brown turns and spins her brightly illuminated, photographic reflections creating a composition that is unbound by the limitation of the three-way reflection or a flat mirror technique of traditional kaleidoscopes. This process allows her artwork to play in the realm of infinite imagery, as she alters layer after layer to create a single, new composition from multiple, disparate reflections. Combining her digital process with a more traditional mixed-media approach, Hochman Brown furthers her examination of the virtual and physical manifestations of nature. Hochman Brown’s exploration of the natural and artificial are inspired by the distinct, immediate marriage of mathematical precision and aesthetic beauty. As exemplified in Elementals, Hochman Brown utilizes the four classical elements of air (aer), water (aqua), fire (ignus) and earth (terra) and both simple and complex machines as tools to reinterpret and manipulate the naturals world. Aer should feel like breath; Terra is solid yet fertile; Ignus is unstable and volatile; Aqua is powerful and ever-changing. Returning to the act of physically creating artwork composed of charmeuse, silk dupioni, wool, wood, aluminum and acrylic paint, Hochman Brown offers a softer quality to buffer against the technological noise that clutters daily life. Hochman Brown received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pitzer College in Claremont, California. She continued to study math and post-graduate work at California College of Arts and Crafts, creating a course titled Construction Geometry via Art. She has spent time teaching this curriculum at the Arts Magnet High School in Oakland and The Waldorf School in Altadena, California. She has studied graphic design at the University of California, Los Angeles and Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Patrick McGilligan: Robot and Friends Iconoclastic, irreverent and yet somehow sympathetic, Patrick McGilligan depicts dreamlike characters rising from the depths of popular culture and his own personal narrative. In fleeting moments of interaction, McGilligan examines tropes of popular culture: flying monkeys, aliens, cyclopes, killer robots and grotesque bodies with helpless facial expressions in concentrated moments of abject despair. McGilligan rejects the notion that this world is one of grace, beauty and simplistic perfection with his portraits, inventing his own garish, surreal pop-mythology. Inspired by his childhood growing up in the late 1970s, McGilligan references classic monster and horror movies of the day including Japanese and American staples such as Godzilla and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He uses these icons as an entry point, delving into a futuristic realm of science fiction - exploring an alternate reality inhabited by giant robots in a world where humankind is subjugated and machines are worshipped as the new gods. Patrick McGilligan, also known as “The Lethargic Artist”, is a southern California-based artist known for his work on the windows of the Santa Monica VIDIOTS video rental store. McGilligan grew up in Norwalk, California and is a self-taught artist. He has exhibited at Art Share L.A., Coagula Curatorial, MuzeuMM and Keystone Art Space, with shows such as Never Have I Ever , Exquisite Pittoresco , Nude Survey Five , The $99 Painting Show and The PussyCat Challenge . McGilligan has recently published a book called The Lethargic Artist Coloring Book . August 4 - September 27, 2018 Back to list

Artist in Residence Up Gouache Plein Air Paintings Chloe Allred This art workshop will cover plein air painting techniques in gouache. Plein air painting is the act of painting outside from direct observation of the landscape. There is something magical that happens when you sit in one place for a time, observe, and paint that place. The cotton tail rabbits stop noticing you and come out to explore. Lizards come out to sun themselves in the open. Crows carry on with their clicking conversations. For this workshop Chloe Allred will demonstrate a variety of painting techniques in gouache and participants will discover beautiful areas in the preserve to make paintings from. March 27 - July 6, 2024 Back to list

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

Up Green Revolution Various Artists Jeremy Kidd: The Interrupted Landscape Lynn Aldrich: Water Feature / Silver Lining Fawn Rodgers: Subject Charles Hood: Under/Water Christine Mugnolo: California Hydroscape Coleen Sterritt: Selected Works from 2010 - 2016 Ann Weber: Jewel LAGI: The Future of Energy is Here HCA: Glue Zoo Green Revolution utilizes art and environmental education as a creative catalyst for leading greener, more sustainable lives. Sponsored by Lancaster Choice Energy and sPower, the diverse artworks on display will incorporate recycled materials; addressing urban farming and gardening, sustainable design, water harvesting and renewable energy such as wind and solar power. Jeremy Kidd: The Interrupted Landscape British-born, Los Angeles based artist Jeremy Kidd approaches landscape photography innovatively, by combining sculptural elements and condensing up to 100 long exposure photographs into a single work. He believes this to be a more cohesive way of expressing a landscape pictorially to an audience. Incorporating sculptural elements invigorates the viewing experience. Through this process, Kidd explores movement and condensed time; all the while exemplifying the transcendental and the essence of place in the urban or desert landscape. “It seems unrealistic to expect a single photographic shot, a single moment in time, to convey the human experience of seeing.” - Jeremy Kidd His artwork presents a condensed vision of multiple photographs as a metaphor for repeated perceptual glances. This in turn engages the viewer by conveying an animated experience of the dynamic natural or urban infrastructure. Kidd’s current body of work explores the presence of Wind Farm Turbines whose placement interrupts the natural landscape with a beautiful array of upright forms that possess a surreal presence and scale. Combining the wind farm components with his photographic process, Kidd believes, will draw awareness to both the arts and alternative energy and bring into question their aesthetic placement. Integrating sculpture with his photographs, Kidd includes replicas of the windmills that move forward out of the images as sublime objects embracing and interacting with the viewer. The works attempt to explore our relationship to these interrupted landscapes as places for spiritual renewal and functional utility. Jeremy Kidd received his Bachelor of Fine Art and Sculpture at Du Monfort University in Leicester, England. His work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe. He has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Art LTD, Art & Text Wired Magazine and The Observer UK. He has taught at the California Institute for the Arts and Otis Parsons School of the Arts in Los Angeles. He has upcoming one person shows at Imago Gallery Palm Desert and Panorama Masdag Museum in the Netherlands. Lynn Aldrich: Water Feature / Silver Lining The art of Lynn Aldrich is inspired by landscape, light and color in nature, and aspects of various natural environments, focusing on familiar objects from the everyday world and transforming them structurally in order to create a deep sense of mystery for the viewer. The objects are deviated from function, and added to with imaginative aspects, altering their state to a greater significance, but not in a theatrical sense. The objects must remain familiar to the viewer to celebrate and question the ordinary in its new form. She creates the new objects with references to the experience of living in a culture that is fragmented and oriented toward artificiality and consumerism. The incentive for her artwork is to increase perception and wonderment while instigating powerful questions – to create a platform for both conceptual analysis and poetic reflection in the mind of the viewer. She invokes a sort of transparent alchemy that allows these ordinary objects to remain common even as they may take on a more precious value, carrying metaphorical weight or spiritual significance. Lynn Aldrich received a Bachelor degree in English Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a Bachelor of Fine Art from California State University, Northridge and a Master of Fine Art from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Her work has been exhibited nationally and across Europe. Aldrich is part of the public collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2014, she received the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Creative Arts. Fawn Rogers: Subject Fawn Rogers is a LA based contemporary artist. Rogers’ interest of entropy, anthropology and evolution come together in a deck of cards entitled Subject inspired by a produce truck driveshaft and the most fertile soil (Terra Petra) found in California. The installation creates a propositional composition of a closed system with man-made objects, nature and the by-product of biotechnology. The artist invites the viewers to watch super weeds grow from the soil under the resurfaced produce truck drive shafts where organic and inorganic compounds slowly reach chemical equilibrium through the sedimentation of time, as nature gradually re-establishes its ecological balance beyond our existence. As part of the installation Rogers invited 52 California artists to represent produce currently farmed in California as works of art on a deck of oversized playing cards through their own interpretations knowing water would be represented on the joker cards. The artists represent a vast spectrum from very established to outsider.Fawn Rogers’ wide-ranging practice reflects and challenges the interrelations between nature, structures of ideological power and various models of social constructs. Her work has been featured in ArtNET News, Forbes Magazine, The Creators Project, Italian Vogue, and the Huffington Post. Charles Hood: Under/Water “Resource allocation is always a tricky business. Who has priority if a commodity is scarce? The 400-mile-long Los Angeles Aqueduct cuts through the west end of the Antelope Valley on its journey to Los Angeles, and at full capacity, 5,000 gallons of water per second roar through its well-bolted, 12 foot diameter pipes. How much of that is allocated for local use? None. In a classic case of ‘look but don’t touch,’ the water races past us, headed for wealthier towns.” – Charles Hood Charles Hood seeks to consider the visual and political statements this engineering project makes; his photography installation surveys a generous portion of the Aqueduct itself. The documentary photos fill 30 feet of gallery wall in two parallel rows. The top half captures the stark, modernist beauty of land, pipe and sky, often creating two intense bands of abstract color. Beneath that, each panel has a mirrored twin, and in those inverted shots, the sky becomes a parallel river beneath the main Aqueduct itself—the memory or echo of the resources being taken from one landscape and delivered to another. Water’s importance in our daily lives is further explored with an immersive soundscape. The sound fills the gallery in a subtle way, and is built out of recordings of everyday household water uses (washing hands, changing the water in a fish tank) when combined into a sound experience, create an aural river to complement the visual one. Charles Hood teaches at Antelope Valley College and is a research fellow with the Center for Art Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. He also has been an artist-in-residence with Playa Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the Annenberg Beach House. His tenth book, illustrated by Christine Mugnolo, won the 2016 Kenneth Patchen Innovation Fiction Award and will be released next summer. Christine Mugnolo: California Hydroscape Christine Mugnolo seeks to help residents, visitors and community groups appreciate the value of water—and the ingenuity and complexity of its delivery infrastructure—via a wall-sized, watercolor map of California’s water network showing the state’s major water resources, storage facilities and distribution systems. Layering complex data sets, this map attempts to communicate a simple, pressing concept: the huge and cumbersome discrepancy between the state’s supply and demand for water. While maps assert knowledge and authority over resources, they also function as sentimental emblems for one’s love of place. California Hydroscape straddles and navigates both operations. By turning the state 90 degrees to its side, this map pushes against two concepts implied by California’s iconic vertical status: that California is proudly self-sufficient and that water flows logically from north to south. This assemblage of hand-painted panels combines the practice of mapping with the aesthetics of painting. Together, the paper panels create a legible map of California while showing how the Colorado River, California Aqueduct, Los Angeles Aqueduct and groundwater aquifers all combine to provide water that is anywhere from three years to 10,000 years old. Saturation is used to indicate the age of the water (vibrant colors at the source and less saturated colors for the final destination). Further, this does not operate as purely an informational map, as the liquid properties of the medium are exploited to create chaotic and dynamic transitions. Liquid properties are intended to reference water’s animation and call attention to the map as an image of the lifespan of water, rather than as an objective record of cataloged data. This visceral visual language likens California to a body and its water systems to life-giving vascular operations. In this way, Mugnolo uses the sensual properties of watercolor to help create a more personal, intimate connection to California’s water systems. Christine Mugnolo is Associate Professor in the Art Department at Antelope Valley College. She received her Bachelor Degree in Art History from Princeton University, a Master Degree in Early Modern British Art from Courtauld Institute of Art in London, a Master of Fine Art concentrated in painting and printmaking from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Fine Art in painting from Indiana University. Mugnolo has been exhibited nationally. Coleen Sterritt: Selected Works from 2010 - 2016 For close to 40 years, sculptor Coleen Sterritt has worked with a variety of materials ranging from plaster and tar, pinecones and fishing line, found furniture and studio waste. With this range of materials, she focuses on the interactions between organic and geometric forms, balance and imbalance, the intimate and remote. Sterritt explains her technique as being both immediate and studied while also abrupt and fluid. The sculptures Sterritt creates play with movement and chance; doubt, discomfort and desire, beginning sometimes in one direction and then turned upside down upon completion. She creates forms indicative of a nature to culture convergence. As a process of re-creation the material rehabilitates and reinvents itself to become rediscovered by the viewer and interact with them in a new way. She fashions a visual language both formal and evocative while exploring the many possibilities the sculpture itself can hold. All these elements combined, act as a barometer for lived experiences Sterritt hopes the viewer will find familiar as they interact with the pieces. Coleen Sterritt was born in Morris, Illinois. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Fine Art from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles. She began teaching in 1983, including positions at Otis College of Art and Design, University of Southern California and Claremont Graduate University. She has been a professor and the faculty coordinator of the sculpture program at Long Beach City College since 1998. Sterritt is a recipient of residencies, grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986, Art Matters in 1994, the Roswell Art-in-Residence Program in 1994, the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Art/California Community Foundation in 1996 and the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship in 2007. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Ann Weber: Site Specific Ann Weber began her artistic journey with ceramics, creating functional pottery. Inspired by her days working with Viola Frey at California College of Arts and Crafts, the scale of her artwork shifted to monumental forms. She began working with cardboard as a way to create lightweight forms, while eliminating the cumbersome process of the clay. Weber sees her abstract sculptures as metaphors for life experiences, such as the balancing act that defines life. Ultimately, Weber’s interest lies in expanding the possibilities of making beauty from a common and mundane material. She views the psychological component of her artwork as one of the most important aspects. Being between representational and abstract, Weber invites the viewers to bring their own associations to the artwork. The artwork is composed with a palette of simple circles and cylinder forms, representing the symbolic male and female forms in the natural world, and tying in architecture and art historical references to evoke memories, relationships and morality in the sculptures. When it comes to her public art, Weber casts ordinary cardboard into bronze and fiberglass, illustrating that things are not always what they appear to be. Even when cast in other materials, it is easy to see the details of the former lives of cardboard boxes and individual staples. Born in Jackson, Michigan, Ann Weber now works and resides between Emeryville and Los Angeles. She received a Bachelor of Art degree in art history from Purdue University and a Master’s of Fine Art from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Weber has been an artist in residence at the International School of Beijing, China, and Schwandorf, Germany, as well as a visiting artist at the American Academy of Rome. In 2004, she was awarded the Public Art Award by Americans for the Arts. Her artwork has been chosen as part of public art and private commissions across the United States. LAGI: The Future of Energy is Here The main goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct public art installations that have the added benefit of utility-scale renewable energy generation. Each sculpture continuously distribute sclean energy into the electrical grid, resulting in thousands of homes powered by art. Presenting the power plant as public artwork—simultaneously enhancing the environment, increasing livability, providing a venue for learning and stimulating local economic development—is a way to address a variety of issues from the perspective of the ecologically concerned artist and designer. By nature of its functional utility, the work also sets itself into many other overlapping disciplines from architecture and urban design to mechanical engineering and environmental science. This interdisciplinary result has the effect of both enhancing the level of innovation and broadening the audience for the work. The Land Art Generator Initiative utilizes the design competition model as a free and open platform to engage as many interdisciplinary teams of artists, architects, scientists, ecologists, landscape architects, and engineers around the world as possible to conceptualize aesthetic and pragmatic solutions for 21st century environmental challenges. The results of the competition are made public in exhibitions, workshops, literature, and educational materials to inspire the general public about the potential of our energy landscapes. HCA: Glue Zoo Glue Zoo combines art, design and science into a one-of-a-kind program serving multiple affordable-housing communities in the Antelope Valley. Free of cost to residents and under the guidance of on-site instructors, participants of Glue Zoo produced papier-mâché sculptures of endangered animals. Through creating life-sized versions of our planet’s disappearing species, students focused on building both engineering and design skill sets. In addition to making sculptures, students also learned about the animals being created as well as current conservation efforts and what they can do at home to help minimize their carbon footprint. Participants of the program were asked to bring in recycled newspaper, cardboard and other materials to help bring the creations to life. February 13 - April 17, 2016 Back to list

Up The New Vanguard II Various Artists Artists: Sandra Chevrier | Cages and the Allure of Freedom Seth Armstrong | Lil' Baja's Last Ride Craig 'Skibs' Barker | Suzy is a Surf Rocker Brooks Salzwedel | Rut in the Soil Featured Installations: Andrew Hem Dan Witz HOT TEA Isaac Cordal Jaune Laurence Vallieres Spenser Little The New Vanguard II, a dynamic group exhibition of works by international artists working in the New Contemporary art movement. The highly anticipated follow up to 2016's successful first iteration of The New Vanguard, on view in tandem with this year's POW WOW! Antelope Valley will feature special solo projects by artists Sandra Chevrier, Seth Armstrong, Craig 'Skibs' Barker, and Brooks Salzwedel. A sequel to what was in 2016 the most extensive presentation of work from the New Contemporary movement in a Southern Californian museum venue to date, The New Vanguard II, in keeping with the first, will present a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. The group show will include new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Alex Hall, Alexandra Manukyan, Amy Sol, Andrew Schoultz, Benjamin Garcia, Brian Mashburn, Carl Cashman, CASE, Dan Witz, Drew Merritt, EINE, Ekundayo, Ermsy, Esao Andrews, Evoca1, Fernando Chamarelli, Fidia Falaschetti, Fintan Magee, Helen Bur, Hueman, Hula, Huntz Liu, Jaune, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Juan Travieso, Kaili Smith, Kathy Ager, Kikyz1313, Laura Berger, Lauren YS, Lonac, Mark Dean Veca, Mars-1, Martin Whatson, Masakatsu Sashie, Meggs, Michael Reeder, Milu Correch, The Perez Bros, PichiAvo, RISK, Robert Xavier Burden, Robert Proch, Ronzo, Saner, Scott Listfield , Sergio Garcia, Seth Armstrong, Snik, Stephanie Buer, Super A, Super Future Kid, TikToy, Tran Nguyen, Van Arno, and Yosuke Ueno. Alongside the focused solo presentations by Chevrier, Armstrong, Barker, and Salzwedel, the exhibition will include site-specific installations by Andrew Hem, Dan Witz, HOTxTEA, Isaac Cordal, Jaune, Laurence Vallieres, and Spenser Little. 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. Sandra Chevrier - Cages and the Allure of Freedom Chevrier creates work that explores identity as a locus of competing imperatives and complex contradictions. Drawing parallels between the assumed invulnerability of the superhero and the impossible demands placed upon the contemporary individual, Chevrier creates literal and metaphoric masks by combining comic book imagery assembled from found and imagined sources. Her dystopian spin on the iconic figure of the superhero looks to reveal the flaws in the staged extroversion of a superficial veneer. In Cages and the Allure of Freedom, her first significant solo museum presentation, Chevrier showcases large-scale sculptural works for the first time including three massive portrait based reliefs alongside three life-sized, hand-painted busts complementing some of her largest two-dimensional acrylic on canvas works. Sandra Chevrier is a Montréal-based Canadian artist. Her work has been shown in Canada as well as in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Asia and in collections in Europe, the United States, Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and Russia. Seth Armstrong - Lil' Baja's Last Ride Seth Armstrong creates paintings that arrest a sense of time. Some offer expansive views and others a contracted intimacy, moving freely in and out of public and private spaces to create intersecting narratives. Known for paintings that self-consciously capture the act of looking - whether as a voyeur in trespass or a participant in the landscape - Armstrong apprehends the simultaneity of the city as a place of endless, contingent narratives, jarring interruptions and suspenseful pauses. In Lil' Baja's Last Ride, the artist presents a sequential vignette of over ten new paintings in which his own car becomes an unlikely protagonist. His immersive approach to his subject matter often produces anecdotal adjuncts. Following several pilgrimages into the landscape between his home in LA and Lancaster for the exhibition, a route, incidentally, which also happens to have personal childhood significance for the artist, Armstrong's beloved beater and proverbial instrument of research, 'Lil' Baja,' caught fire and was partially incinerated in the museum's parking lot. The overarching narrative structure of the works feels ambiguously suspended somewhere between fiction, social realism, and personal history. In an ending befitting Armstrong's own penchant for cinematic turns, poetic hooks, and absurd knacks, Lil' Baja's Last Ride is an unexpected swan song in memoriam to an old friend's final expedition. Armstrong is a Los Angeles-based painter who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from California College of Arts in San Francisco. His paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. He is represented by Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, Vertical Gallery in London and Bold Hype Gallery in New York. His work has been featured in international art fairs such as SCOPE and the LA Art Show. Craig "Skibs: Barker - Suzy is a Surf Rocker Barker has been immersed in both the punk rock and surf culture of southern California since the early 1980s. His imagery, being informed by the print media and graphics of the subcultural terrain shaping the time period, reflects this upbringing. Influenced and surrounded by punk flyers, album covers, and surfing magazines, Barker began testing his artistic skills by initially making flyers and t-shirts for his punk bands and his friends. Barker’s work explores the junctions between past and present, memory and imagination, fantasy and reality, while creating a dialog between image and viewer. Barker’s most recent paintings infuse his long-standing love for painting and rendering the human female figure with his punk-fueled graphic design aesthetic. Mixing different approaches, techniques and mediums, he creates a sense of memory, personal history, and appreciation for the female form. Combining elements of pop culture and literary censorship, he creates layered scenes of voyeuristic playfulness. His artworks feel surreal and partial, yielding results of decontextualization. The way Barker frames his figurative subjects, his compositions feel like spontaneously taken polaroids. Born and raised in Huntington Beach, Barker has been exhibiting installations and his paintings in places such as Long Beach Museum of Art, Thinkspace Projects Los Angeles and was featured at MOAH in 2014. His work has been included in Newbrow and Juxtapoz magazines. Brooks Salzwedel - Rut in the Soil Obscuring the boundaries between actual and imagined landscapes, Salzwedel constructs light, delicate and translucent vistas that fluctuate between solid and ethereal states. These assembled works explore the juxtaposition of natural and simulated scenes, bringing together scant terrains and fabricated sierras with hazy atmospheres and primordial vegetation. Eroding woods and frosty, glacial peaks veil repressed settings, evoking a landscape untethered from this reality existing on the periphery of dreams. Salzwedel continues this series of ghostly, celestial worlds that are suspended indefinitely, the scenes often feel almost real but are undoubtedly conjured from vivid imagination. Salzwedel induces a sense of solitude through ephemeral, surreal fantasies of supernatural scenery using a combination of materials to create his mixed-media works. His drawings are comprised of graphite, mylar and resin, tape, colored pencil and ink. Salzwedel earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors and distinction at Pasadena Art Center College of Design in 2004. He has been featured in more than 50 blogs and publications and he has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His work has been displayed at renowned museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, MOCA, Honolulu Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Salzwedel was born in Long Beach and works in Los Angeles, California. The New Vanguard II 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. A sequel to what was in 2016 the most extensive presentation of work from the New Contemporary movement in a Southern Californian museum venue to date, The New Vanguard II, in keeping with the first, presents a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. This group show includes new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Alex Hall, Alexandra Manukyan, Amy Sol, Andrew Schoultz, Benjamin Garcia, Brian Mashburn, Carl Cashman, CASE, Dan Witz, Drew Merritt, EINE, Ekundayo, Ermsy, Esao Andrews, Evoca1, Fernando Chamarelli, Fidia Falaschetti, Fintan Magee, Helen Bur, Hueman, Hula, Huntz Liu, Jaune, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Juan Travieso, Kaili Smith, Kathy Ager, Kikyz1313, Laura Berger, Lauren YS, Lonac, Mark Dean Veca, Mars-1, Martin Whatson, Masakatsu Sashie, Meggs, Michael Reeder, Milu Correch, The Perez Bros, PichiAvo, RISK, Robert Xavier Burden, Robert Proch, Ronzo, Saner, Scott Listfield , Sergio Garcia, Seth Armstrong, Skewville, Snik, Stephanie Buer, Super A, Super Future Kid, TikToy, Tran Nguyen, Van Arno and Yosuke Ueno. October 21 - December 30, 2018 Back to list

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

Up The Forest for the Trees Various Artists Artists: Sant Khalsa, Constance Mallinson, Greg Rose, Timothy Robert Smith, High & Dry, Robert Dunahay Forest for the Trees is comprised of five exhibitions addressing the complex relationships between people and the living and built environments they inhabit, specifically focusing on humans’ symbiotic connection to trees. Featured in the Main Gallery at MOAH is a survey of work documented over the course of eight years by artist Greg Rose. Featured in the South Gallery is 40 plus years of work by Sant Khalsa. With solo exhibition by Constance Mallinson, site specific installations by artists Timothy R. Smith and High & Dry, a collaboration between Osceola Refetoff and Christopher Langley. Each of the artists explore the environment and the impacts, both positive and negative, that humans have upon it. Greg Rose’s work documents his, nearly decade long, excursions into the San Gabriel Mountains as he catalogs, analyzes, and paints various trees across the forest. Sant Khalsa’s, Prana, brings together work from her more than forty years as an artist, examining humanity’s existence within nature, specifically their connection to trees. Constance Mallinson’s work takes a closer look at the massive amounts of material waste that humans generate, magnifying the remains of landfills and garbage “patches” by painting them on oversized canvases. Timothy R. Smith is constructing a site specific installation regarding the built environment that will span two stories and multiple exhibition spaces. High & Dry’s dispatches takes a look at humans and their impact on the environment, specifically concerning the Mojave Desert region and what we leave behind as a culture. Joining Forest for the Trees at MOAH:CEDAR on Saturday, June 16 from 6 to 8 p.m. is artist Miya Ando. Inspired by her upbringing, Ando’s installation will transport visitors to the redwood forests of northern California. High & Dry LAND ARTIFACTS High & Dry comprises a long-term exploration of the California desert and the people who live there. Balancing images and words with the personal and historical, the cross-platform collaboration between photographer Osceola Refetoff and writer/historian Christopher Langley focuses on the remnants and future of human activity across these vast open spaces, territory that has traditionally been used for resource extraction, toxic dumping and military exercises, and currently faces a future dominated by immense wind and solar arrays. The exhibit Land Artifacts examines the things we leave behind and what they reveal about ourselves, our past and our future. Nowhere are these instructive legacies and endowments more exposed than in the barren California desert. Whether from ruins, artifacts, memorials and/or waste, there is much we can learn about lives, attitudes and the things that we value. It has been said that we borrow our land from our grandchildren. What legacy do you want to leave? Osceola Refetoff’s interest is in documenting humanity’s impact on the world – both the intersection of nature and industry, and the narratives of the people living at those crossroads. The landscape photographs in Land Artifacts are infrared exposures, which accentuate the raw intensity of vast arid spaces and the graphic relationship between land and sky. Though Refetoff does not work exclusively in black and white, what links the diverse forms of his practice is his commitment to render not only what a place looks like, but also how it feels to be there. To that end, his black and white infrared photographs tap into classic historical and visual tropes from the medium’s earliest days, confronting evolving questions of truth, beauty, dispassion, reportage and artistry that have always been a part of how photography functions in our culture. Christopher Langley, a life-long educator, has lived in and studied the Mojave Desert for more than forty-five years. Working as a film historian, founder of the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine and Inyo County Film Commissioner, he focuses on the desert’s complex relationship with cinema, and how land plays an essential role in the story of our lives. Co-founder of the Alabama Hills Stewardship Group, Langley’s environmental advocacy has won the National Conservation Cooperation Award. His writing is widely syndicated and includes three books on California’s arid landscape. High & Dry is a regular feature on KCET’s Emmy-winning program Artbound. Greg Rose Tree Fiction Greg Rose has been documenting individual trees and the changes they undergo for the past eight years. It began while taking regular hiking trips through the San Gabriel Mountains. He started noticing the trees of this region were made rugged from enduring extreme weather conditions. Over time, he began regarding the trees by their individual characteristics and started to document them. First he maps, illustrates and photographs the trees, then he paints them. In his series, Tree Fiction , Greg Rose presents detailed gouache renderings of trees which he has isolated in a plane of vibrant gradients. His work takes on the quality of a narrative, mirroring both the tension and sense of connection one may find in their own life such as within families and other relationships. The titles of each painting suggests a variety of complicated exchanges between the trees like characters in a play. Greg Rose is most interested in the concept of change and how much change trees undergo throughout their lifetime, particularly in regard to wildfires. Greg Rose is a Los Angeles based artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from California State University, Long Beach, California and a Master of Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. Greg Rose has been exhibited in both group and solo shows in California, New York, Texas, Missouri and Columbia and has been featured in a number of publications including Artillery magazine, The Huffington Post, Artweek, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle and more. Sant Khalsa Prana: Life with Trees Sant Khalsa is an artist and activist whose projects develop from her impassioned inquiry into the nature of place and complex environmental and societal issues. Her artworks create a contemplative space where one can sense the subtle and profound connections between themselves and the natural world. The subject of trees has been a focus in Sant Khalsa’s creative work for nearly five decades. Prana: Life with Trees is the first in depth survey of Khalsa’s intimate connection with trees – her explorations, observations, perceptions and interpretations. Her unique perspective is expressed through a style that encompasses the documentary, subjective and conceptual. Her work evokes a meditative calm to what we often experience as a chaotic and conflicted world. Khalsa is concerned with both the micro and macro aspects of forests: what is seen and unseen; historical, scientific and spiritual; and personal and universal. She is mindful of our symbiotic relationship with trees and forests, grounded in the life-sustaining connection through the breath (exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen). Her beautiful, distinctive and sometime disquieting works express the cycle of life (birth, life, death and rebirth), the destruction and memory of the forest, as well as the promise of new growth. The exhibition includes her earliest landscapes (self-portraits and photographs of orange groves); images of trees from her three decades photographing in the Santa Ana Watershed and other locations in the American West; and mixed-media sculptures and installation works inspired by her research on air quality and life-changing experience planting more than a thousand trees in 1992 as part of the reforestation of Holcomb Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains. In her recent color photographs, we witness the fruits of her activism, a healthy, thriving and hopeful forest eco-system. Sant Khalsa’s artworks are widely exhibited internationally, collected by prestigious museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art and Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and published in numerous art books and periodicals. Khalsa is a recipient of prestigious fellowships, awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, California Council for the Humanities and others. She is a Professor of Art, Emerita at California State University, San Bernardino and resides in Joshua Tree. Constance Mallinson ME, ME, ME Constance Mallinson depicts monumental assortments of post-consumer items that are reminiscent of trash dumps, ocean gyres and urban alleyways. Her art unveils the complexities and moral dilemmas of living in a technological, consumerist, disposable world as humans simultaneously contribute to its demise. Evoking the past, present and future, the content of her work examines the complexities and moral dilemmas that come with living in an imprudent consumerist culture. Post-apocalyptic, darkly humorous, critical and celebratory at once, Mallinson’s images of degraded commodities situate the viewer in a provocative endgame. Mallinson’s art features paintings composed from both natural and manufactured waste that the artist has collected from the streets on her daily walks through her neighborhood. The discarded contents found on city streets are not often associated with the sublime, but in Constance Mallinson’s paintings, they are rendered at a disturbing scale. Decaying plant materials and a fantastical assortment of post-consumer items are deftly interwoven. The rich details, dazzling color, variety of objects and interplay of forms nod towards 17th century Dutch still life painting as well as Cubist collage. Mallinson renders kitsch advertising images in an Old Masters technique with an underlying desire to push for a newer paradigm that reflects globalism and awareness to the threatening of the world’s ecosystems by population, industry and pollution. In their scale and execution her art pieces have been appreciated for their ability to simultaneously seduce and deliver a critique and to share a continuing relevance for painting in an era of ubiquitous mass media. Constance Mallinson received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia and has exhibited her work throughout California. In addition to her recent commission for the EXPO Line MTA Bergamot Station permanent artwork installation, she has designed a poster for the MTA Red Line, been a finalist for a mural for the California Supreme Court in San Francisco and numerous libraries in Southern California. Mallinson has taught at many universities and colleges in Southern California including University of California, Los Angeles and Claremont Graduate School. She was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as the City of Los Angeles’ Artist Grant. Many of Constance Mallison’s paintings can also be viewed in major private and public art collections including LACMA and the San Jose Museum. Timothy Robert Smith Revised Maps of the Present Timothy Robert Smith is a Los Angeles based oil painter and muralist interested in multi-dimensionalism, which he describes as an attempt to understand how one’s personal experience in the world fits into the greater picture of the universe. Smith’s work does not replicate reality as we perceive it, but rather asks the viewer to consider the realities they do not see, questioning the realness of their perspective both visually and metaphysically. Revised Maps of the Present is a multi-room interactive installation that combines painted walls, sculpted figures, lights, sound and video projections. The installation begins with the scene of a train station in a city. As the observer moves through the installation, layers of reality disconnect and unfold into a labyrinth of warped angles, hidden spatial dimensions and alternative versions of the present. The installation aims to simulate a present moment as if one were to view it from all perspectives at once. The installation as seen here at MOAH is the first incarnation of this exhibit. With each new installment hereafter, Revised Maps of the Present will reconfigure and expand with added rooms and features. Timothy Robert Smith invites the viewer to reexamine the world without their familiar mental filter and to see again as a child sees: enormous, mysterious and full of possibilities. Timothy Robert Smith received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio art from California State University Los Angeles and a Masters of Fine Arts degree for studio art from Laguna College of Art and Design. He also teaches at Laguna College of Art and Design, California State University Long Beach, California State University Los Angeles and Saddleback College. Timothy Robert Smith has also been featured in various media outlets including Juxtapoz Magazine and NBC News and his paintings have shown in solo exhibitions at TEDx Conferences and Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, California. Robert Dunahay He Man Distinguished patrons worldwide collect Robert Dunahay’s art including the Royal Family Al Thani of Qatar, Baroness Monica Von Neumann of Switzerland and celebrities Pierce Brosnan, Kelsey Grammer and Linda Hamilton. His work is part of the corporate collections for Pepperdine University, The Financial Times, The Packard Foundation and the W Hotel. Dunahay is most known for his Palm Series of paintings depicting grand-scale palm trees in vibrant colors. By depicting his subject in face-to-face portraiture style on a solid background, he replaces traditional references to landscape with the transcendentalism of iconography. American artist Robert Charles Dunahay currently lives and works in Palm Springs, California. May 12 - July 15, 2018 Back to list

Up Peace On Earth Various Artists EXHIBITING ARTISTS: David Adey Tami Bahat Clayton Campbell Catherine Coan Emily Ding Nancy Evans Jane Fisher Matthew Floriani Simone Gad James Griffith Laurie Hassold Chie Hitotsuyama Kim Kimbro Debbie Korbel Laura Larson Emily Maddigan Luke Matjas Zachary Mendoza Jen Meyer Lori Michelon Cynthia Minet Bobbie Moline-Kramer Stephen O’Donnell Lori Pond Robb Putnam Margo Ray Samuelle Richardson Laurie Sumiye Devin Thor Scott Yoell Tami Bahat A deep love for imperfect beauty and the belief that art is in everyone fuel my portraiture. As a conduit to other lifetimes, Bahat constructs stories of the past through the people of her present-day life. This series, Dramatis Personae, has given her a unique opportunity to exhibit her personal connection to history, and to share her deep longing for times that no longer exist. Bahat's father introduced her to the Old Masters when she was very young, which had an indelible impact on her. These artists spoke directly to her heart from hundreds of years away, never needing to utter a single word to explain themselves. This showed that it was possible to convey all kinds of emotion through window light, a quiet moment of reflection or even a simple object. Thus began her transition into painting through the use of a camera. The animals exhibited in this series are real. These beautiful creatures have a mind of their own which she admire and fully embrace. She respect their curiosity about the world, and that they bring immense wonder and unexpected moments to these scenes. She acquired a diverse collection of antique furniture, props and frames that carry their own stories and maintain an authenticity throughout the work. Through these items, a piece of history becomes entwined within a contemporary piece of art. It lifts her soul that their existence continues indefinitely. Clayton Campbell The two pieces in the show Peace On Earth are from a larger series called Wild Kingdom, created in 2014-15, and first exhibited at Coagula Curatorial. The show received a favorable critical response from writers Christopher Knight of the LA Times, Peter Frank in Artillery Magazine, and Lisa Derrick from the Huffington Post. He thinks these writers had interesting observations. Derrick said of his work, "In Wild Kingdom Campbell shows us that as individuals, our dependency on technology blind us to precipices and predators, to each other. We are living vicariously when we look at a diorama, we live vicariously-and allow each other to live vicariously- through social media." Christopher Knight hits the right note when he says "The signal being sent is sardonic-an elaborate engagement with the self absorbed condition of worldly disengagement. Perhaps they're as oblivious to one another as to the predators around them-or to the theatricality of the animals' representation. Who is tracking whom? And what's the difference between the insentient animals, wild or human?" And Peter Frank observes, "Keeping his production values modest-not tacky but not slick, either-Campbell piles the ludicrous on the poignant, pathos on bathos, in a hall of mirrors satire that keeps unfolding long after you've looked at his art works- and maybe taken a selfie with them." Catherine Coan Coan's hybrid taxidermy, installations, collages, Canary Suicides, and dioramas explore the psychological, sexual, and cultural intersections between wilderness, domesticity, and humanity. Imaginary creatures perch on human furniture in domestic spaces; Victorian prints become reflections on the relationship between child, adult, and pet; and jewel boxes translate as modern reliquaries for the saints’ bones of mice, insects, and HO-scale miniatures, all asking the viewer to engage with his or her own animal inside. Her looking glass reveals surprising details and a sense of humor at once dark and life-affirming, inviting the viewer to linger and become part of each tableau and installation. Coan's background in English literature and poetry (I am an English professor and published poet) imbues her work with literary reference and even some of her own writing. Nancy Evans The sculptures grow out of the bodily suggestions of plants. The figurative characteristics distorted by a construction process which pieces together various organic textures to form a whole. The stitched together appearance of the sculptures make sense; like the husks left behind by the transient body, they are both solid and illusionary. These sculptures anticipated a movement in contemporary sculpture that is totemic, crude, violent, and timeless. Archaic concepts, such as animism, infuse these works, suggesting that natural forms are the common thread that link the world to the collective unconscious. So the question that she ponders is where do images come from? How do es she track her influences? What does she understand and what does she misrepresent? James Griffith The ambition of the large painting, CORPUS COLLOSUS, is to imply that all living creatures are a part of one whole fluid process. The composition is held together by a gesture that suggests the double helix of a DNA molecule. The painting is populated by a range of animals that includes a fox/rabbit push-me-pull-you to represent process of Natural Selection, the primary force in evolution of species. The conceptual framework of the piece is further aided by the medium with which it is painted: tar. The tar is collected from the La Brea Tar Pits. To make his own asphalt um paint from this tar, he added thinners and stabilizers. His interest in tar is not only its unusual appearances, but also in the ideas associated with it. Tar is a primordial residue of extinct organisms concentrated by geological process over millions of years. Using tar as a substitute for traditional paint, places my images in the context of deep time so that his subjects can be considered in relation to the long cycles of evolution and extinction. Tar is also a type of the petrochemicals used to fuel our economies, a process at the heart of our contemporary ecological crisis. This fact tars the subjects of these works with the potential of their own extinction. Debbie Korbel Everyone knows what it is like to lie on their back and “see” images in the clouds. When she was a child, she would see images not only in the clouds but in many circumstances. The random patterns of linoleum flooring, plaster ceilings or even the way shadows fell across a wall would suggest figures or landscapes to me. As an adult, she approaches her sculpture materials the same way by standing back and looking for what she “see” emerge. She creates her assemblage sculptures by using the original sculpted elements combined with an assortment of objects she has collected. Often the initial impetus for the sculpture occurs when she finds some interesting fragment of metal or wood. Then an idea takes root and evolves from that “catalyst” piece. Every sculpture is like a puzzle for which she finds and fit each seemingly unrelated piece together in its most expressive form in order to create something new. Luke Matjas Over the past several years Matjas has developed a body of work that seeks to uncover the relationship between natural and unnatural histories. These explorations are largely representational, but far from traditional. Quite often his work looks like a cross between a natural history museum and the local Home Depot. More recently, these explorations have taken shape in a project called “Trail Work,” a series of vividly colored and crisply drawn trail signs inspired by time spent outside in open spaces. In many ways, these rambling little pieces are the result of literal rambles—in nearby mountains, through the scars of recent wildfires, and amidst fierce deserts. As a trail ultrarunner, he sometimes travel quite far on foot, and many of the visual cues found in this series are the result of direct encounters with regional flora, fauna, and geology. “Trail Work” combines a longtime interest in the aesthetics of scientific illustration, signage, and the irreverent renderings of skateboard graphics. These clean, sharply stylized pieces seem to stand in contrast to the gritty surroundings they portray, but there is a sense of immediacy in the graphic, hard-edged language. Although these trail signs are unconventional, they are still functional and directional. They seem ideally suited for the intersection of the expanding wildland-urban interface—they hint at the ecological fragility of our environment, and the not-so subtle ways we continue to impact our surroundings. Jen Meyer This triptych stems from a melding of two complimentary, yet individual, bodies of ongoing work from the artist. In one series, Meyer explores our traditional understanding of and relationship with animals. For this exhibition, her focus is on animals native to the Antelope Valley area: the coyote, the hare and the disappearing antelope. In the other series, Meyer explores the ways roses have been used to communicate to each other, both the living and those long since passed. Roses have since ancient times been left on gravestones as a symbol of regeneration. Merging these two bodies of work together for the first time for this exhibition, the viewer is left with a testament to the depiction of the natural impact of the human condition on ourselves, our planet, and our cohabitants in the plant and animal kingdoms. Laurie Michelon Pippa is from a series (Galaxial Gamines) where I sought to engage the viewer in a conversation about the clothing choices we all make everyday before going out to face the world. Pippa is an alien/human hybrid in haute couture and she represents us as well as our hidden selves - do we use clothing to hide? Provoke? Be admired? To belong? I believe it's all that and more. Cynthia Minet Migrations is an immersive installation of six illuminated sculptures of the Roseate Spoonbill. Carefully constructed of brightly colored plastics, LED lights and sound, the installation combines whimsy, serious social and political commentary, and a deep commitment to the preservation of our natural environment. First presented at the IMAS in McAllen, Texas, Minet's interpretations of the aquatic bird are intended as artistic surrogates for human experiences in the region. Native to the Southeast coastal regions, the Roseate Spoonbill migrates all the way to South America, and the Audubon Society considers this bird an indicator of the environmental health of the Gulf Coast. Minet’s sculptures are based on close study of the bird’s anatomical structure with a result that is highly realistic yet painfully fantastical. Additionally, artifacts found along the border with Mexico such as ear buds and Homeland Security bags are imbedded into the sculptures of Migrations. Motion-activated sounds of bird calls and footsteps enhance the viewer's experience. The use of found materials, whether migrant dropped or sourced from recycled household objects, expresses the underlying meanings of the installation. Through these discarded objects, Minet explores both the risks migrants take to escape intolerable situations and the specter of plastic which slowly erodes in our landfills but never disappears. Given the worldwide migrant crisis, Migrations is strikingly timely in its exploration of the complex social and political issues of borderlands, whether in the United States or worldwide. It is a conceptually and politically astute body of work that exudes a wry hope for our future: that we will commit to the care of our natural and human worlds. Stephen O' Donnell Throughout my career, animals - squirrels, dogs, monkeys, birds, mice - have played a frequent supporting role in his work; always an enlivening - humorous, tender - addition. In recent years, though, they've often begun to take center stage. This body of work explores the confrontation between the simplicity of Nature and the extreme artificiality of the most precious of our human craft: wild or mostly wild animals juxtaposed with fine jewelry, Nature versus the highest level of civilization. In most of these paintings my opposing "objects" - the animal and the jewel - are placed on a sort of stage: a simple wooden platform and a plain, flat background. An animal's imperatives are food, sex, and safety; only very rarely do animals display any impulse for adornment. An emerald necklace has utterly no use to a bird. So it's the unexpected proximity, the tension inherent in these meetings that tells the story; together on stage, in relationship but mutually purposeless. Humans have the striving intelligence and creativity to take shiny rocks, lumps of metal, grains from a seashell, and craft objects so desirable that people have killed one another to possess them. But it's ironic then that we could never assemble anything the equal of a mouse or a bird, never craft the muscle or claw, feather or fur. With all man's greed for beauty, for rarity, how is it so easy for us to overlook the infinitely more precious creation that is any of the seemingly insignificant creatures we share the planet with? Lori Pond When danger flares, what do you do? Since humans first experienced the fight or flight reflex, the subconscious brain has told us what, when, and whom to fear. This remains so. When faced with peril, our bodies respond with intensified adrenaline and racing heart beats. Survival depends on our instantaneous emotional response instructing us to run or stay, a millisecond before our rational self can decide. While our brains have not changed, what we fear has. It is rarely a carnivorous beast that triggers our instinct to run. It is pictures of burning skyscrapers, reports of schoolchildren crouching behind desks to hide from bullets, or a gathering of teens in hoodies that make us tremble: Our 21st Century litany of what to fear. But are these threats real? Pond's series “Menace” challenges us to question what we “know.” “Menace” confronts us with frightening, darkened, wild animals that trigger the ancient instinct, while our rational mind knows we are in a safe, civilized space, viewing images. We look longer, closer, and realize the threat was never there: these are taxidermied animals, their images captured in bright sunlit shops, manipulated later by the artist to ferocity. They frighten, but are impotent. Menace asks us to consider if our modern fears are justified, or if our contemporary bogeymen are figments of our imagination, mere empty threats manipulated by an unseen hand. Margo Ray ‘The Rat and the Octopus’ is a myth told throughout Polynesia that tells the story of an Octopus that was tricked into helping a deceptive Rat. The Rat was adrift at sea and made a deal with an Octopus to be carried safely to shore and in return it would give the Octopus a reward. Instead, it left a pile of dung on its head and ran away, the Octopus felt tricked and angry. Fishermen to this day still play on this anger, making rat-like lures to entice Octopus who still want to avenge the Rat This visual interpretation of the myth deals with contemporary local and global issues of broken agreements and kept promises through the personification of the Rat and Octopus characters; such as climate change, water rights, homelessness and humanities relationship to animals, spirituality and each other. The animals are set on a Polynesian navigation pattern, locating them adrift at sea trying to find their way to shore as well as in Polynesia, where the myth originated. The 10 Handshakes placed on a map key each represent the kept promise and broken agreement in each pair of characters. Samuelle Richardson Richardson sees our attraction to predators as a manifestation of human longing for things that are dangerous and beautiful. She believes that passion is evoked by the things that can annihilate us and shares a fascination for untamed realms, remembering close encounters with disquieting vulnerability. In Ghost Dogs, Richardson depicts wild dogs in the African Bush, isolated from human intervention. This group of sculpture conveys a dichotomy between savage and benign as the structures come together with opposing qualities. The gnarled and rough wood is paired with the crush and pull of fabric as it relates to skin over bone and attention is given to craft while embracing flaws in the material. Stitching the fabric over the finished structure secures it in place and unto itself, the stitching becomes a form of mark making. Most of the materials are found or discarded, such as tree branches and recycled clothing. Richardson’s process involves researching scores of pictures to find those that highlight the animal’s expression and movement. Each structure begins with attention to the skeleton and muscle groups emphasizing the asymmetry of the form. As she works with the pictures in front of her, she strives to create a sense of believability rather than realism, knowing that new information will lead to discovery. Educated in New York, Richardson’s art training ran for more than a decade in a self-directed curriculum. She studied at FIT, Parsons, School of Visual Art and the New York Academy of Art. She entered the industry as a commercial artist and was in charge of developing original artwork for the fashion industry. As for having an impact on her vision, she gives credit to years of travel, seeking venues that upend our everyday sense of normal. Laurie Sumiye - Ohana o Ka Manu Video Sumiye is a Hawai‘i-based artist, animator and documentary filmmaker who investigates environmental tensions between humans and nature. Her background in digital media informs her cross-disciplinary practice in drawing, painting, animation, video, sculpture and installation. She has exhibited her art in New York, Los Angeles, Hawai‘i and internationally, in the UK, South Africa and Brazil and screened her award-winning films at DOC NYC, BAM cinemaFest and PS1MoMA. She has an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, BA & BS in Art and Communications from Bradley University, and studied art at Lorenzo De Medici in Florence and Pratt Institute in New York. She spent 16 years working as an art director and designer in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. She returned to Hawaiʻi to work on her first long-form documentary, A PARADISE LOST, about a Hawaiian bird that sued to save itself from extinction. Laurie serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Media/Transmedia at the University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu. She lives and works in Mililani, Hawai‘i. Devin Thor Thor's newest series of sculptures, Paleolithic Creatures, is an homage to our prehistoric ancestors and the animals they painted on cave walls. Those paintings provide powerful depictions of man's inherent drive to express himself through art. Hidden for millennia, but many looking as fresh as the day they were made, this ancient art shows representational animals that inhabited their world and sustained them with food and clothing. However, at the end of the last glacial period, about 10,000 years ago, the climate warmed dramatically and many Paleolithic animals became extinct. The only history of their ghostly existence are fossils and cave paintings. “With my art, I am inspired…to challenge the viewer to feel the natural spirit of inclusion. There is no corner of this planet that man does not live in, and no corner of which man has not caused change. We must be good stewards of this planet Earth, and remember that extinction is forever.” Scott Yoell Sometimes it came by road, other times it came by sea II This sculpture is composed of a flesh tone replica of Columbus’s mother ship, the Santa Maria. The ship is floating on the backs of bio-morphed rodents with human noses in place of their heads. The work explore the sociological and political weight of ideology, similes of plague and invasive dogmas coexisting in a utopia that has gone wildly wrong. January 26 - April 21, 2019 Back to list