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One Exhibit. Nine Unique Artists. Up Structure Various Artists One Exhibit. Nine Unique Artists. In every hero’s journey there comes a point of no return, a single moment in time and space where a decision must be made: to move from the familiarity and comfort of their home or take their first steps into a larger, increasingly perilous and complex world. This human experience is a culmination of the physical and metaphysical structures that are constructed by their interactions across time. Each of the artists featured in Structure, explore the dimensions in which humans organize inner and outer spaces, presenting their unique interpretation and understanding of transformational architectures - and the permeable boundaries that exist between them. The artwork featured in Structure is presented in a wide array of media, from physical sculpture to small-scale collage, illustrating mental spaces and blurring the line between the tangible and intangible elements of life. HK Zamani, Kimberly Brooks, Coleen Sterritt, and Cinta Vidal create work that visualizes time, space, and structure through the lens of human experience. Time plays a key role in the artwork of Matjames Metson, Chelsea Dean, Stevie Love, and Jim Richard, all of whom source their material almost entirely from past eras. Mela M, also influenced heavily by the concept of time, instead looks to future architecture and social structures. Ultimately, these artists hone in on the present social systems, their origins, and the futures they hold. The art presented in Structure provides visual commentary on the spaces where immaterial framework meets concrete structure, calling attention to the system failures of the past. Present issues such as climate change, political corruption, and social inequity are all the result of these archaic constructions. Through lived experiences, the interactions of the interior and exterior resonate beyond any one individual, transforming the communities and environments that so many call home, for, as author Kamal Ravikant writes, “Once you cross the threshold, you will never be the same." HK Zamani HK Zamani is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist and founder of PØST, an alternative exhibition space in Los Angeles. Teetering between the obscure and the objective, his work examines the synthesis of artistic medium, conception, and interaction. Interplay between structural materiality and metaphysical interpretation are prominent in Zamani’s work. He uses this exchange of the indefinite to comment on the current social structures and expectations of society. The physical use of artistic media is put into conversation with the representation of cultural overlap. Body and Immaterial: A Conversation of Sculpture and Painting, A 20 year Survey of Works by HK Zamani comments on the relationship between two prominent art mediums. The exhibition includes works such as Fashion of the Veil (2008), Prague Dome (2004), the Inadvertent Protagonists series, and many more. Works vary in medium. Sculptural and material elements showcase the skeletal and structural aspect of the work. Rigid frameworks such as the metal geodesic support on Prague Dome (2004) are juxtaposed with softer, more gentle textiles that make up the walls of the same work, calling to ideas of duality. Paintings provide preliminary and complimentary concepts that coincide with the sculptural work. Abstracted forms presented in his paintings also mimic the figures that can be seen in works such as Inadvertent Protagonists and Fashion Erasure I-18 (2021), noting the multiplicity of possibility and interpretation discussed in the work. HK Zamani received his Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from California State University, Dominguez Hills and his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Claremont Graduate University. He is the recipient of City of Los Angeles Getty Trust and California Community Foundation grants. In 1995, Zamani founded POST, in 2009 it became PØST. His work is included in the collections at Berkeley Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He currently works and resides in Los Angeles. Jim Richard Through a myriad of paintings, drawings, and collages, contemporary artist Jim Richard construes interior and exterior depictions of Modern architecture. Since the late 1970s, Richard has created a profusion of modernist interiors loaded with art and kitsch objects that settle into multi-hued graphic fields. Richard manipulates interior aesthetics from the 1960s and 70s warping the display of art influenced by the modernist idea of a utopian society. The adornment of objects within Richard’s collages is strategically curated from a selection of 1960s and 70s home decor magazines and furniture advertisements. Visually, his work fuses elements of photorealism, hard-edge painting, and collage, resulting in a 2-D abstract style imbued with an array of rich colors and patterns. Richard’s body of work has a persistent focus on the recontextualization of Modernist art and design. Absent occupants, the clash of decorative objects and imagery against the busy patterns of Jim Richard’s collages evoke the presence of an art collector. The claustrophobic slew of sleek furniture and ornamental ephemera is Richard’s satirical yet humorous commentary on the ambitious goals of Modernism and Modernist art. At this point in time, many artists were striving for pure originality, seeking to advance their art practice beyond acceptable forms of "high art.” By structuring the composition of his collages around curated art-objects Richard’s architectural frameworks act and feel like a mausoleum putting outdated aesthetics and politics to rest. Originally born in Port Arthur, Texas, Richard currently lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans and Inman Gallery in Houston. Richard received his Bachelor of Science from Lamar State College of Technology and his Master of Fine Art from the University of Colorado. Richard's work has been exhibited in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Drawing Center, Oliver Kamm Gallery, and Jeff Bailey Gallery. For several years, he taught painting, served as a Graduate Coordinator, and was in charge of the Visiting Artists Program at the University of New Orleans served as Graduate Coordinator. Richard's paintings can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, The New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Art. Kimberly Brooks Contemporary American artist Kimberly Brooks examines identity, history, and memory by utilizing a combination of landscape, abstraction, and figuration in her work. Stemming from a long tradition of American painting, her scenes depict subject matter that meets the edges of realism and abstraction. Examination of feminine identity is also present in a majority of her work. Projects such as The Stylist Project (2010), Fever Dreams (2019), I Have a King Who Does Not Speak (2015), as well as many others include the depiction of women in relation to their surroundings. Their identities and histories are depicted in loose brushstrokes, hinting to ambiguity and fleeting memories.The hand of the artist is apparent; the painterly quality of her work stands out in her varying compositions. Painting Architecture (2021) showcases the use of the built environment as landscape and subject matter. Both interior and exterior scenes are depicted: Rococo walls adorned with paintings hung salon style, arches and tilework of a mosque, an outdoor gate and pathway flanked by foliage. While these spaces may seem innocuous and arbitrary, these environments carry strong associations that are informed by their architectural styles. Brooks calls forth the provenance and significance of these spaces. The line between contemporary and antiquity is blurred. Instead of deviation, similarities are shown. A quiet, more meditated atmosphere is harmonious between the works. The play of light provides a still and almost objective showcase of these environments. There is a formal rigidity that is present between all of the works that is made apparent by the strong perspective lines that indicate the boundaries of these spaces. Juxtaposed to this is again, the use of loose brushstrokes and painterly techniques that are a mainstay of her practice. Kimberly Brooks was born in New York City, New York and raised in Mill Valley, California. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and studied painting at the University of California, Los Angeles and Otis College of Art & Design. Brooks hosts monthly artists talks on her discourse platform First Person Artist and is also the author of The New Oil Painting. Her works have been showcased internationally. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Matjames Metson Employing skillful assemblage and woodworking techniques, Matjames Metson incorporates found antique objects into elaborate mixed-media sculptures using only paint, glue, and matchsticks from the present era. The re-purposing of discarded and forgotten objects is essential to Metson's work; he spends a great deal of time seeking out items from abandoned buildings, estate sales, and friends' garages, among other places where one might find momentos and personal items. For Metson, each object has an assumed history — a resonance of an unknown past — which triggers an inherent emotional response in the viewer. As a survivor of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina disaster, which displaced more than a million people from the Gulf Coast, Metson is driven by the concept of survival in addition to his obsession with hoarding forgotten objects. The hurricane destroyed his artwork, community, possessions, and livelihood, forcing him to relocate to Los Angeles with only his two dogs and the clothes on his back. The relics used in his artwork are assembled together in a way that reflects Metson's existential need to pick up the pieces of his life and create a new structure for his future while remembering and honoring the past. In Tower, Metson utilizes and modifies myriad antique objects including time-worn rulers, pocket knives, keys, fountain pen nibs, printed ephemera, and children's toys. The wooden materials used to construct the architectural elements of the piece were sourced from vintage furniture, doors, and cigar boxes. Incorporated into the assemblage are Metson's signature motifs (wasps, eyes, skulls, rabbits) and phrases (such as "HARD WORK" and "HEAT KING"). At the top of the structure is a hand-carved golden wasp, a sample of the symbolism used by Metson, and an exemplification of his explorations in craftsmanship. The sculpture also features a crank-operated kaleidoscope displaying an array of vintage photographs. Matjames Metson is a self-taught artist, carpenter, and architect known for his assemblage sculptures and his illustrative work. He has completed several graphic novels including Survivor's Guild, an autobiographical account of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. His work has been shown at Coagula Curatorial gallery, the Fowler Museum, and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others. He was born in Charlotteville, New York and currently lives and creates in Los Angeles, California. Mela M MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL is a new body of work from Mela that captures the artist's concept of "a provocative stream of consciousness as the past informs the present… to imagine multiple future possibilities." For Mela, these works bear witness to species-driven archetypes that result in how humans structure their lives on a physical and emotional level. The acceleration of science and technology have made these cultural systems increasingly complex, and these intricacies are reflected in Mela's structural representations. Mela strives to create visualizations of the different layers of human consciousness as imagined through multiple dimensions and timelines, and hopes her work challenges upcoming artists to draw inspiration from this not-so-common era. There are five distinct but related components from throughout the museum that make up MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL: a set of four acrylic paintings titled THE EVOLUTION OF THE OMEGATROPOLIS THROUGH FOUR SEASONS OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS (lobby atrium), the hand-drawn CITYSCAPES OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS FOR THE COMMON ERA (wall leading to the Jewel Box), a symbolic monument titled THE TOTEM OF THE MOON CASTLE (Jewel Box), and two architectural wooden sculptures titled THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE MOVES THROUGH IRREGULAR ANGLES IN A RISING WALL FROM AN ARCHITECTONIC CITY WITHOUT NAME OR PLACE OR TIME and THE WALL TEMPLE AT THE VANISHING POINT (Ralph and Virginia Bozigian Family Gallery). Mela M has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and an MFA from the Technological Institute of Art and Textile Design in Belarus. Her work has garnered national and international recognition with over twenty solo exhibitions, twenty-seven museum group exhibitions, and dozens of group shows in colleges and universities. She has been honored with numerous prizes and awards internationally, and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, the Southwestern Oregon College at Coos Bay in Oregon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belarus. Stevie Love Challenging herself to explore and adopt new art forms, contemporary artist Stevie Love has expanded her creative practice by taking on the role of adobe builder. In 2001, after attending a four-day workshop at Southwest Solar Adobe School in Bosque, New Mexico, Love and her husband Dr. Bruce Love decided to build their very own adobe house in Juniper Hills, California overlooking the Mojave Desert. Architecturally, the concept of an adobe house is an ancient building technique common amongst historic civilizations in the Americas and the Middle East. The term “adobe” is Spanish for mudbrick or Arabic for brick. Honoring the traditional techniques of adobe building, Love and a small crew hand-sculpted each brick and structural element of her adobe home. Throughout the seven years Love constructed her adobe home, she photo-documented the turbulent yet immersive experience constructing the home, as photographs displayed in this exhibition. From laying the foundation to picking tiles, the Loves put in a great amount of research and effort in building an authentic yet personalized adobe house. When building the foundation, walls and overall base structure of their adobe dream home, Love committed to only using materials within walking distance from the building site. Love also made sure to align the structural orientations of the house with the Earth and sky axis, taking the seasons into account just as the first adobe builders once did. Furthermore, throughout the Love house, one finds design components from a diverse and international pool of influences. For instance, the threshold to enter the structure is fashioned with ancient wooden doors from India. As visitors cross the entryway, they are met with an alcove (a small nook or cut-out in the wall), the Loves decorated with saints and angels to protect all who enter the home. In the master and guest bath one finds Japanese and coin tiles, fossils, and Chinese half-boulder sinks. In the Loves adobe residence, the list of obscure decor goes on — every cranny, cabinet, and doorway in-between tells a unique story. Outside of hand-building her own adobe home, Stevie Love is well known for her self-declared addiction to acrylic paint and its ability to create autonomous forms. She is widely recognized for her paint-sculpture hybrids, inspired by intense energy, nature, visual culture, and open experimentation. Love earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from California State University, San Bernardino and her Master of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been featured in private and public spaces across the United States, Asia, and Europe and can be found in the permanent collections of the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA, and the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA. October 2 - December 26, 2021 Back to list

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

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We’re excited to announce MOAH on the Move, a new program that continues to offer arts and community engagement to the Antelope Valley during the museum’s temporary closure. MOAH will be closed for renovations from August 21, 2022, through May 12, 2023. MOAH on the Move will host artist and community engagement events at different public parks once a month during the closure. View the event schedule below. Saturday, October 15, 2022 10AM - 2PM El Dorado Park 44501 North 5th Street East with artist Vojislav Radovanović Saturday, November 19, 2022 10AM - 2PM Tierra Bonita Park 44910 27th Street East with artist Dani Dodge Saturday, December 17, 2022 10AM - 2PM Deputy Pierre Bain Park 45045 North 5th Street East with artist Dani Dodge Sunday, January 15, 2023 12 - 4 PM Justice Sunday - The BLVD Lancaster Blvd with artists Lori Antoinette and Dani Dodge Saturday, February 18, 2023 10AM - 2PM Whit Carter Park 45635 Sierra Hwy with artist Nicelle Davis Saturday, March 18, 2023 10AM - 2PM Mariposa Park 45755 North Fig Avenue with artist Nicelle Davis Saturday, April 15, 2023 10AM - 2PM Forrest E. Hull Park 2850 West Avenue L-12 with artist Nicelle Davis

Up It Takes a Village Various Artists Artists: Betye Saar Lezley Saar Alison Saar Wyatt Kenneth Coleman Richard S. Chow Lisa Bartleson Scott Yoell Jane Szabo Rebecca Campbell It Takes a Village is comprised of six exhibitions addressing the dynamic of working as a community through the subjects of family, race, gender, and age. Featured in the Main Gallery at MOAH are the works of celebrated assemblage artist Betye Saar and her daughters, artists Alison Saar and Lezley Saar. It Takes a Village will also showcase solo exhibitions of Wyatt Kenneth Coleman, Jane Szabo, and Richard S. Chow, with site specific installations by artists Lisa Bartleson and Scott Yoell. Each of the artists featured in this exhibition explores the relationships and responsibilities of community. Betye, Alison, and Lezley Saar’s work consists of two and three-dimensional assemblages that examine history and identity through the juxtaposition of objects, photographs, mixed media, and fabric. The documentary photography of Lancaster resident Wyatt Kenneth Coleman chronicles the importance of engagement and oral history and the role it plays emphasizing the value of serving one’s community and family. Jane Szabo and Richard S. Chow present different work stylistically, but address similar themes of home, displacement, and sentimentality through conceptual photographs. Szabo records family history through objects while Chow’s images fabricate an imaginary history of what might have been if he had not been an immigrant. Lisa Bartleson’s large scale installation of hundreds of small hand-made houses explores the act of healing through community and engagement. The site specific work of Scott Yoell’s “Tsunami,” consisting of three thousand four-inch tall businessmen figures installed in a giant wave, represents the artist’s thoughts on the global economy and automation. Memory & Identity: The Marvelous Art of Betye, Lezley & Alison Saar Betye, Lezley and Alison Saar have created some of the most powerful, important and deeply moving art in our contemporary world. Their compelling works forge idiosyncratic constructions of social memory and personal identity, as well as the cultural histories underlying them. All three Saars assemble two- and three-dimensional works based on unexpected juxtapositions of form and content. They deploy the flotsam of material culture, from discarded architectural components (old windows, ceiling tiles, wall paper) to domestic detritus (washboards, buckets, shelves) to historic photographs and printed fabrics. “I like things,” Betye asserted in a recent interview. “Every object tells a story. If I recombine them, they tell another story.” In their aesthetic practice of collecting and recombining objects, the Saars become what French philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss called bricoleurs: creators who arrange preexisting articles and images to produce dramatic visual compositions. Levi-Strauss expanded the French term bricoleur (a “Do-It-Yourself” handyman) to include anyone who works with the materials at hand, cobbling together disparate parts to create novel solutions. All of the Saars use recycled materials not generally considered “appropriate” art media. Modern art academies, founded in Europe in the seventeenth century, had privileged oil paint on canvas and cast bronze as elite, “high art” media. In contrast, creations in jewelry, textiles and ceramics were considered “low art” or crafts. When the Saars employ objects like handkerchiefs and old books as painting surfaces, or tin ceiling tiles and buckets as sculpture, they violate long-held boundaries between high and low arts. Their material contraventions parallel the artists’ transgressions of identity-based binaries such as male/female, culture/nature and master/slave. Wyatt Kenneth Coleman: Beyond the Village Wyatt Kenneth Coleman is a freelance photojournalist whose career spans more than fifty years. While serving in the military during the Vietnam War, he studied at the U.S. Air Force Photography School, gaining skills that would benefit him in both his military and artistic careers. Coleman has dedicated his life to documenting social justice movements and people who strive to make a difference in the world around them. Coleman’s dedication to helping others is evident in both his artistic practice and humanitarian contributions. In addition to documenting the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coleman established a collaboration with Coretta Scott King in 1979, which remained active until her death. Coleman was interested in the effect that the Civil Rights Movement had on the lives of ordinary people, stating, “When a person is committed and makes a contribution to their community, lives are changed and doing the right thing is really key.” His work documents every-day people participating in non-violent activism by committing acts of kindness and working towards social justice. Coleman seeks to emphasize the importance that engagement and oral history play in passing down the value of serving one’s community and family. Wyatt Kenneth Coleman has certifications from the Winona School of Professional Photography, the University of Minnesota and Santa Fe Photographic workshops. Coleman’s work has been shown in publications including 3M , Ebony and Jet Magazines and The Daily Word . Coleman has also been awarded for his selfless volunteer service in the communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and was recognized for his volunteer work at the Elm Avenue Community Garden by Assemblyman Tom Lackey, in addition to receiving an award from Lancaster City Council for his contributions to the community. Richard S. Chow: Distant Memories Richard S. Chow’s photography focuses on aesthetic, documentary and conceptual images. Technical precision and composition remain the hallmarks of his work, but Chow continues to examine all aspects of the artistic medium including homemade shooting devices, film, phone and high tech digital cameras. Chow’s interest in photography began during his formative years in Hong Kong. His family moved from Hong Kong to Los Angeles when he was sixteen. Those first years were difficult for an immigrant teenager due to language and culture shifts, and at times were overwhelming as he tried to find his place in this new world. As the American culture was slowly absorbed, southern California was a place that eventually provided him with comfort and inspiration as a young man. Chow now frequents the beach regularly as a place for relaxation and observation. With this series, Distant Memories, he captures the childhood that he could have experienced. Like finding shells on the shore, Chow collects visual memories and while they might not be his own memories, they allow him to imagine a childhood in a place he now calls home. Chow has widely exhibited in solo and juried exhibits across the United States and his work has been internationally published and is featured in several private and public collections. He is a producer/curator for global OPEN SHOW (Los Angeles Chapter), a non-profit that provides a forum for dialog between the public, artists, galleries and collectors. Chow earned awards in Lucie Foundation’s IPA International Photography Awards four years in a row (2013-2016) and he was honored with gold, silver and bronze awards from Tokyo International Foto Awards. Chow lives and works in Los Angeles. Lisa Bartleson: Kindred Lisa Bartleson, known primarily as a sculptor, is an artist who uses resin and ceramic material in both two and three dimensional work. She is known for using natural pigments, inviting a calm, constant and enduring contemplation from the viewer. Lisa Bartleson’s Kindred is a large-scale installation composed of over 200 slip casted porcelain houses that have been manipulated and traumatized, displaying various stages of physical and emotional restoration that explores healing in and by the community. In this work, Bartleson references the Japanese tradition of kintsugi as an exercise of restoration. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer as a way to emphasize and celebrate the history of a piece rather than disguise its past. The multitude of houses are bound together by their shared experience and placement. From a standing position one views the entire installation from a bird’s-eye view, similarly to how people perceive and rearticulate memory. The object as body, scarred but beautiful, strong and elastic, becomes central to the experience. The onlooker is asked to examine their cracks caused by physical and/or emotional suffering and the communal foundations of memory and recovery that filter, shift and support identity. Bartleson layers the experience with her own heartbeat and the sound of a baby’s heartbeat in the womb, reminding us that we are all built from material, memory and a universal cycle of life. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Northern Colorado. Her work is in many prominent public and private collections including the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. Bartleson has been featured in many publications such as White Hot Magazine , Fabrik Magazine , Huffington Post , LA Art Diary , Architectural Digest and Sunset Magazine . Lisa Bartleson was born in Seattle, Washington and currently resides in northern California. Scott Yoell: Tsunami Scott Yoell has delved into traditional and electronic media with his most recent works being drawing, sculpture and video/sound installation. Yoell’s fascination with trinkets and the nostalgia they provoke inspired the Tsunami installation. Yoell first conceived the idea of Tsunami many years ago when visiting a shop in Omaha, Nebraska. He found “a trinket figure, a little metal business man.” The tiny trinket reminded Yoell of the figures atop of trophies, but wondered what a suited man could represent. Intrigued by the unknown, he bought the figure and from it stemmed the idea of Tsunami. This installation consists of three thousand figures, all standing approximately four inches tall. Each figure is of a man in a business suit and hat holding a briefcase. The figures are cast in a “flesh-toned” plastic and are formed from the same mold. The mold deteriorates over time, causing each figure to have minor differences, making each one unique. These individual, tiny men come together to form a tsunami, an unusually large waved caused by a shift in the earth’s foundation. Yoell has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Windsor, Canada and a Master of Fine Art in Imaging and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland. His work has been featured in The Contemporary Museum’s Biennial of Hawaii Artist Exhibition , Honolulu, Hawaii, the Galleria Art Mûr, Montreal, Quebec and Artcite, Windsor, Ontario. Yoell has been featured at the Videoholica 2010 International Video Art Festival , Varna, Bulgaria. Scott Yoell, originally from Windsor, Ontario now lives in Waimea, Hawaii. Jane Szabo: Family Matters Merging her love for fabrication and materials with conceptual photography, Jane Szabo investigates issues of self and identity in her latest body of work, Family Matters. Szabo uses still life as a vehicle to share stories from her life. The objects photographed, isolated on a black field, provoke thoughts about home, displacement and sentimentality. Family Matters incorporates memory, metaphor and allegory to express the challenges, anxieties and joys as Szabo’s role as a daughter and her parents’ caretaker. This series uses objects from their family home, mementos from her childhood, to illustrate the story of their relationship. Using these childhood possessions and simple items that have been in their family for years, she creates tableaus that hint at complicated family dynamics. The presentation of these objects is not merely a catalog of possessions, but a catalog of feelings; of pain and disappointment, loss, burden and hope. Jane Szabo is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who earned an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Her background in the film industry, creating prop and miniatures for theme parks, and overseeing set construction for film and television undoubtedly informs her creative process. Szabo’s photographs have been featured in many publications including Huffington Post , Lenscratch , Bokeh Bokeh , L’Oeil de la Photographie , F-Stop Magazine , Diversions LA and ArtsMeme among others. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Oceanside Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Colorado Center for Photographic Arts, San Diego Art Institute, Los Angeles Center for Photography, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, and the 2015 Kaohsiung International Photographer Exhibition in Taiwan. February 10 - April 22, 2018 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 Made in America Various Artists NASA Flight Research: Probing the Sky MOAH Collection 30th Anniversary: Recent Acquisitions Exhibition Astronaut Karen Nyberg's Star Quilt The New Vanguard : Scott Listfield Gerald Clarke The New Vanguard : Group Exhibition Curated by Thinkspace Albrigo Examines Pettibon and Baseball Jae Young Kim: Blah, Blah, Blah The Wired Presidents The New Vanguard Murals: Bumblebeelovesyou and MEGGS The New Vanguard : Alex Yanes Installation NASA Flight Research: Probing the Sky In late 1946, 13 engineers from the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia arrived at Edwards Air Force Base to establish what is now known as NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, participating in the first supersonic research flights by the Bell X-1 rocket plane. Just a year later, on October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager flew his Bell X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards, reaching an altitude of 40,000 feet and exceeding speeds of 662 mph, breaking the sound barrier for the first time in aviation history. Today, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center is the primary hub of atmospheric flight research and operations in the United States, housing some of the most advanced aircraft in the world. Critical in carrying out missions of space exploration and aeronautical research and development, the Center continues to accelerate advances and make important discoveries in the fields of science, technology, operations and testing. The Center also houses a fleet of manned and un-manned environmental science aircraft which support new developments in the fields of Astrophysics and Earth Science, fulfilling NASA’s goals of enhancing education, knowledge, innovation, economic vitality and stewardship of the Earth. Probing the Sky features over 50 pieces borrowed from the Flight Research Center’s collection, detailing the illustrious history of aviation innovation in Southern California. Featured works include “The Apollo Story” by the late aerospace artist Dr. Robert T. McCall, Robert Schaar’s painted portraits of the NACA/NASA pilots inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor on The BLVD and various paintings, drawings and sculptures by artists known for their work in and about the aerospace industry. Dr. Robert T. McCall’s “The Apollo Story” is a suite of five original cold stone lithographs depicting the legacy of the Apollo moon-landing program. Cold stone lithography is a printing process in which artists use greasy drawing materials to make original images on limestone, which is then chemically etched. Exhibiting artist Robert Schaar is a highly regarded portrait painter who is one of an elite group of artists comprising the NASA Art Program; his work was included in NASA’s Visions of Flight program, viewed in museums worldwide. Schaar’s “Walk of Honor” portraits feature test pilots whose aviation careers were marked by significant achievements beyond one accomplishment. Shown together, these works comprise a vivid retelling of some of the most significant figures and achievements in aeronautics. MOAH Collection: Recent Acquisitions As an institution, MOAH is dedicated to strengthening awareness, enhancing accessibility and igniting the appreciation of art, history and culture through an ever-growing collection of both artifacts and art. One of a museum’s primary functions is stewardship—the responsible planning and management of resources. At MOAH, this objective is implemented is through a focus on preserving Southern California’s unique history via the Museum’s extensive collection. As such, the art in this retrospective includes contributions by both local and internationally known artists, featuring pieces that represent our region both literally, with the inclusion of early California landscapes, and conceptually, with a nod to community involvement in the aerospace industry and artists’ use of new materials, resin and plastics. Beginning in 2012, the Museum developed its Juried Collection, which features the work of local artists who took top awards at MOAH’s annual All-Media Juried Exhibition. Through its dynamic collection, MOAH celebrates the richness of the region and the unique qualities that encompass the Antelope Valley. Karen Nyberg: Star Quilt When astronaut Karen Nyberg launched for her mission aboard the International Space Station, she brought with her some unusual items, including: a spool of ivory thread, five needles, and three “fat quarters” of fabric. During the five month stint that she spent living aboard the Space Station as a flight engineer, Nyberg became the first person to quilt while in orbit. As one might imagine, the astronaut and artist ran into some unique difficulties while striving to complete her zero-gravity project, including figuring out how to best store her sewing supplies (Velcro and Ziploc bags kept needles and strips of fabric from floating away) and how to cut floating fabric. Of the latter, Nyberg states, “Imagine if you take a piece of fabric and hold it out in front of you. Now, take your scissors and try to cut it and that is exactly what it is like. Because you can’t lie it down on the floor, and you can’t use a rotary cutter, you just have to cut.” Despite these difficulties, Nyberg successfully completed a nine-by-nine inch, red, white and blue quilt square. Upon returning to Earth, Nyberg expanded upon her “Astronomical Quilt,” calling for quilters from all over the world to submit star themed fabric blocks to be included in the final product. Nyberg received over 2,200 submissions, which were sewn together to create 28 quilt panels, with the original star at the center. “With a project like this, what I think is really cool, is that you can take somebody from every part of this world and find something that you have in common with them. And we really do have something in common with people from everywhere,” Nyberg said. Born in Vining, Minnesota, Karen Nyberg graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Dakota where she received a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. She then earned a Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin, for her work researching human thermoregulation and metabolic testing at the Austin Bioheat Transfer Laboratory, with special focus on thermo neutrality in space suits. Nyberg is currently an American mechanical engineer and NASA astronaut. Scott Listfield: Once an Astronaut Scott Listfield is a contemporary artist known for his paintings featuring a lone exploratory astronaut lost in a landscape cluttered with pop culture icons, corporate logos and tongue-in-cheek science fiction references. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a vision of the future which never quite came to pass, Listfield combines images of modern day landscapes with his signature astronaut, fully clad in space garb. Having grown up with the space-age perception of the future depicted in popular media, Listfield finds our present to be strange and unusual, worth exploring in its own right. He approaches modern existence in a way that makes it seem estranged and alien, allowing audiences the rare chance to interpret the contemporary society we live in from an outsider’s viewpoint. Scott Listfield was born in Boston and studied art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In 2000, after some time spent abroad, Scott returned to America where, he began painting astronauts and, sometimes, dinosaurs. Listfield has been profiled in Wired Magazine, Juxtapoz, the Boston Globe, New American Paintings and on WBZ-TV Boston. He has exhibited his work in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Boston. Gerald Clarke: Manifest Destiny Gerald Clarke is a Native American artist from Southern California whose artwork focuses on drawing attention to the contemporary existence of indigenous peoples. With views of Native American culture being driven by popular stereotypes, Clarke aims to give back the essence of humanity to these groups. He searches for unconventional beauty in the world, often found through exploring his reality as a contemporary Native man. Clarke’s craftsmanship conveys pride, respect and authority, both celebrating and mourning what is revealed in his search for newfound appreciation of the world. The artist seeks to teach through his work, attempting to express the passion, pain and reverence of contemporary Native life, invoking a greater understanding of these marginalized groups through an emotional response from his audience. A self-proclaimed “kitchen-sink” artist, Clarke has no definitive visual genre, utilizing whichever format, tools or techniques most effectively express his desired message. He often explores aspects of installation, mixed media, video and performance, while incorporating Native American craft techniques such as traditional basket-weaving. Gerald Clarke is a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians located about 40 miles southwest of Palm Springs, California. He is an artist, educator, cattle rancher and small business owner, taking an active role in preserving Native languages and culture. Clarke teaches sculpture and new media at Idyllwild Arts Academy, where he is the Visual Arts Department Chair, and will begin teaching Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. In the past, he has served as an Assistant Professor of Art at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. In addition to teaching, Clarke has been part of a variety of exhibitions featured both nationally and abroad. In 2007, he was awarded the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art. Clarke resides in Anza, California, tending to his family’s ranch on the Native reservation where he served as Vice-Chairman on the Tribal Council from 2006-2012. Learn More The New Vanguard The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, in collaboration with Los Angeles' Thinkspace Gallery, is pleased to present The New Vanguard, featuring works by over 55 artists from the New Contemporary Movement. The exhibition will present one of the largest cross-sections of artists working within the movement's diverse vernaculars, ever shown within a museological context in California to date. An ambitious compilation, The New Vanguard will bring together some of the most relevant and dynamic artists currently practicing from all over the world. The exhibition, opening August 13, will take place in tandem with this year's installment of POW! WOW! Antelope Valley. The exhibition will feature site-specific murals and installations within the museum by Alex Yanes, Bumblebeelovesyou, Meggs, and Yoskay Yamamoto, a solo presentation of works by Scott Listfield in the Vault Gallery, and a diverse group exhibition of works in the South Gallery, including pieces by Aaron Li-Hill, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Amandalynn, Amy Sol, Brett Amory, Brian Viveros, C215, Carl Cashman, Casey Weldon, Chie Yoshii, Cinta Vidal, Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker, Cryptik, Dan Lydersen, Dan-ah Kim, Derek Gores, Dulk, Erik Siador, Felipe Pantone, Fernando Chamarelli, Glennray Tutor, Henrik Aa. Uldalen, Icy and Sot, Jacub Gagnon, Jaime Molina, James Bullough, James Reka, Jana & JS, Jean Labourdette (aka Turf One), Jeremy Hush, Joel Daniel Phillips, Josie Morway, Juan Travieso, Kyle Stewart, Linnea Strid, Lisa Ericson, Low Bros, Lunar New Year, Mando Marie, Marco Mazzoni, Mark Dean Veca, Mark Warren Jacques, Martin Whatson, Mary Iverson, Matt Linares, Matthew Grabelsky, Meggs, Mike Egan, Nosego, Pam Glew, Ricky Lee Gordon, Scott Radke, Sean Norvet, Tony Philipppou, Wiley Wallace, X-O, and Yosuke Ueno. The POW! WOW! Antelope Valley project will include public works by Amandalynn, Andrew Schoultz, Bumblebeelovesyou, David Flores, Julius Eastman, Kris Holladay, Mando Marie, Mark Dean Veca, Meggs, Michael Jones and Yoskay Yamamoto. All the works will be centered around the area of the museum, with David Flores actually adorning the backside of the museum with a massive new mural. Historically, the New Contemporary movement has largely been relegated to spaces outside of art institutions and other arbiters of the "high," whether it be urban spaces or subcultural haunts. The movement, having had to create contexts for the reception of its work and support of its community, has never had the fixity of a singular genre - or its limitations for that matter - but rather has prospered under a fluidity, expanding into all manner of techniques, expressions, media, and spaces. This exhibition is significant in that it marks a period of transition in the vetted visibility of this movement and its artists, as it has become increasingly celebrated and acknowledged, not only within the context of popular culture but the institutional framework of museum spaces. No single art movement in recent memory has grown as exponentially in acceptance, visibility, and popularity in as relatively short a period, a phenomenon that attests to the power and sway of its cultural presence. Perhaps most unified by its lack of stylistic exclusion, the New Contemporary movement, long helmed by its simultaneous embrace of multiple elements, incorporates narrative, the surreal, the gestural, the abstract, the figurative, and the illustrative. With no single defining formal or conceptual armature, the work produced by this new generation of artist is responsive, reactive, emotive, and grounded in the social. The New Vanguard highlights the imaginative breadth of these New Contemporary artists, showcasing the limitless potential of an art movement that began without walls and has now infiltrated galleries and museums the world over. Daniel Albrigo: Albrigo Examines Pettibon and Baseball Daniel Albrigo is a Southern California based artist, drawing influence from aspects of modern American culture. Albrigo predominately works with the medium of painting, but also includes photography, drawing and various printing methods in his work practice. Mostly self-taught, he explores classical and contemporary themes of realism, touching on American culture both appropriated and observed. Instead of the more traditional use of photography as reference for his paintings, he began taking portraits of artists in their studio spaces as part of an ongoing project of new American imagery. Beginning in April 2015, Albrigo focused on artist Raymond Pettibon, photographing him in his New York City studio. Over the course of a few visits, Albrigo captured Pettibon with various pieces of sporting equipment and was guided through the vast collection of sports memorabilia he had, filling up almost every corner of his studio. In this series of photos, the audience will be privy to the raw passion for the great American sport of baseball in the working space of an iconic American artist. Baseball with Pettibon is the beginning of an ongoing series of Raymond Pettibon and his collection of diverse equipment, highlighting sports through revealing its longstanding influence on American culture. Daniel Albrigo was born in Pomona, California in 1982. Albrigo has had solo exhibitions at the Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, Muddguts Gallery in New York City, and a split show at Western Exhibitions in Chicago with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. The collaborative work he created with P-Orridge has been shown at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. Albrigo currently resides and works in Long Beach, California. Jae Yong Kim: Blah Blah Blah Jae Yong Kim is a Korean native who has spent the majority of his life traveling, observing and developing the themes of his art. His work greatly reflects the turmoil of a highly mobile existence, with the question of “home” appearing as a recurring theme as he explores what this concept means to him. On the subject of his art, Kim states, “We live in an incredibly fast paced culture that encourages and requires people to have confidence and strength, and there is seldom any room for failure and doubt, even though these are essential elements in life and absolutely necessary for growth.” Kim primarily works with ceramics and installation, displaying a consistent, quirky and eccentric style that accurately reflects the artist’s own personality, making his work truly recognizable. Donuts first appeared in Kim’s work as a symbol of greed and gluttony, representative of his somewhat negative experiences while endeavoring to understand the financial world of New York City. “The donuts I see as a possibility of working out problem situations in my life and addressing how money is handled and treated in America,” said Kim. Rather than focusing on how to make money and learning a business-based jargon that the artist didn’t particularly care to understand, Kim decided to instead create his own language to say what he thought was important. “I started making more donuts because this is what made me happy,” said Kim. “Donuts are a treat but they aren’t all good,” he said, “Donuts, sweets and junk food are typical fare for those living in poverty or just above it. Cheap and yummy, donuts also give a quick burst of energy which lets you keep going. They can also provide a satisfying balm when life and trying to get by is difficult.” Created from clay fired with three different types of glaze, these sculptures come in several shapes and finishes, representing the varieties of the actual treat as well as the artist’s interest in paying homage to the works of relevant art-historical figures such as Yayoi Kusama and Jackson Pollock. A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Kim has stated that each donut is unique and carries the mark of the artist’s hand. Jae Yong Kim spent a significant portion of his early childhood traveling, having lived in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia before moving back to South Korea. After high school, he moved to the United States by himself in order to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts from the University of Hartford. From there, he went on to earn a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts for Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Kim has participated in both group and solo exhibitions and shown internationally in settings such as the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art in Japan, the Korean Craft Promotion Foundation Gallery in Seoul, the Art and Industry Gallery in San Diego, the Lyons Wier Gallery, Marshall M. Frederick’s Sculpture Museum, The Dennos Museum Center, Hunterdon Art Museum, Kate Shin Gallery at Waterfall Mansion and Philadelphia Art Alliance, as well as numerous group exhibitions worldwide. Kim lives and works in both Seoul, South Korea and the New York City area; he is currently a professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology. The Wired Presidents The artists that have produced this work are an unnamed collective of local creators that seek to promote inquiry-based interactions in art. These questions are explored in the collection of works from this group of artists, who come from diverse backgrounds and specialties. Their experiences range from blockbuster films to special effects, props, puppetry, video games, toys and technology. What does the effect of technology have on the electoral process or the office of the presidency? How does information and technology craft our narrative of what constitutes a perfect candidate? Why is it that Abraham Lincoln is considered one of America’s favorite leaders? What qualities did he have that warranted that categorization? How did the technology of Lincoln’s time impact the public conversation? Do we design our own ideal leader within an information-based society? How does that affect our expectations? Bumblebeelovesyou Born and raised in southeastern Los Angeles County, Bumblebee takes the largely ignored parts of the city and uses it as his personal canvas by remodeling urban furniture, such as newspaper boxes and telephone booths, to tell stories of everyday life and comment on the collapse of the bee population through the rise of cell phone usage. He also utilizes the technique of stenciling and mixed media to create images of children on the unloved, deserted walls of his hometown in Downey. Considerate and thoughtful, Bumblebee’s work also deals with issues such as child homelessness and the impact modernity has on nature. Despite the seriousness of his subject matter, his works are not heavy for the viewer. Instead, they are whimsical, playful and exude a sense of childish innocence, freedom and joy. Bumblebee has participated in numerous group exhibitions at various institutions, including: Carmichael Gallery, Thinkspace Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, Street A.K.A. Museum in conjunction with the Portsmouth Museum of Art, and Outside/In, a partnership with the Art Center College of Design. His art has been covered by numerous media outlets including LA Weekly, TedX Illinois, Complex Magazine, Unurth, Arrested Motion, and Downey Beat. In 2015, he was awarded the Readers’ Choice award for Best Street Artist in LA Weekly MEGGS David “MEGGS” Hooke is one of Australia’s most progressive street and fine artists recognized for his unique, expressive and energetic style with references to pop culture, the natural world and socio-cultural issues. His technical use of color and movement combines clean, bold, illustrative elements with intuitive, textural and free flowing design. By constantly searching for the harmony between form, abstraction, order and chaos, MEGGS pours his all-or-nothing personality into every inch of his work. His life manifesto is that the “journey is the reward” and his work reflects this eternal search for balance. MEGGS’ emphasis on constant growth and passion for travel is demonstrated by his continual exploration of artistic techniques and mediums. Adapting his street art and graffiti to fine art has granted MEGGS extensive opportunities to travel, professionally exhibit his work and participate in mural festivals around the globe. His street art and gallery works are recognized nationally and internationally in cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, London, San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo, Hawaii, Mexico, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. MEGGS’ art works are included in the permanent paper collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) of London. MEGGS has traveled and contributed his art to support the ambitions of numerous not-for-profit organizations, including Fareshare, Pangeaseed, and POW! WOW! HAWAII. His cooperative practices have led to collaborations with various artists and brands from cultures worldwide. His commercial work with companies such as Nike, Stussy, Addict, New Balance, Burton and Endeavor Snowboards has contributed to the constant evolution of his talent and furthering his range of designs and ideas. MEGGS was born and raised in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia and completed his Bachelor’s degree in Design from Swinburne University School of Design in 2000. He is a founding member of the Everfresh crew, a unique collective of street art pioneers who opened the world renowned Everfresh Studio in 2004. MEGGS’ adoration of comic book art, sci-fi fantasy, skateboarding, graffiti culture, heavy metal and punk rock music are at the core of what inspired him to pursue his career in fine art. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Alex Yanes Alex Yanes is a Miami artist drawing influence from his family’s Cuban roots through his exploration of local Miami culture. It was there that he was exposed to the gritty, fast-paced and ever-evolving nature of art. Much of his work closely relates to his exposure to the skateboard, tattoo, hip-hop and rock culture present in Miami during the 1980s and ‘90s, creating his own form of reality through combinations of materials like wood, acrylic, resin and enamel in three-dimensional installation pieces that seek to reveal elements of Yanes’ own personal history and the impacts of fast-paced city life. In this sense, his art serves as an autobiography, directly associated with Yanes’ individual experiences through his lifetime. Through the innovative use of color and his whimsical and imaginative style, Yanes’ art takes on a form that is widely relatable, speaking volumes to both collectors and new art lovers alike. Alex Yanes was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He has been interested in art since childhood, having won his first award at the age of six. Yanes began pursuing art full-time in 2006. Since then, he has worked with Adidas, Red Bull, Sony, The Learning Channel, Vans, Kidrobot, Neiman Marcus, St. Jude’s Hospital, The Dan Morino Foundation, Miami Children’s Museum, NBA Cares and The Children’s Trust, spreading his art to as many corners of the world as possible. Yanes’ work is now a staple in Wynwood, Miami’s art district, and he awaits upcoming exhibitions to showcase his art worldwide in locations such as New York, Illinois, California, Germany, The United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. August 13 - October 30, 2016 Back to list

DIVERSEart LA 2024 Up Repairing the Future Osceola Refetoff Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH) is proud to present Osceola Refetoff: Repairing the Future , a multi-media exhibition focusing on global sea level rise. The centerpiece of the installation is a large-scale immersive audio-visual projection of the artist’s 8-minute film, Sea of Change . The film’s original footage was shot by Refetoff in Svalbard, Norway, near the North Pole during his The Arctic Circle Artist & Scientist Residency. These visuals are paired with NASA satellite images of the Earth and graphics depicting NASA’s scientific measurements of current climate disruptions. AI-generated animation envisions possible future climate outcomes. The project was edited with Juri Koll during Refetoff’s 2023 artist residency at Building Bridges Art Exchange in collaboration with Dr. Eric Larour, manager of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The original soundtrack is written and performed by award-winning composer Paul Cantelon and Sultan + Shepard. Blending hard science, documentary video, and impressionistic imaginaries, Refetoff is known for using aesthetic strategies to define and communicate an urgent need for both personal and systemic engagement, leveraging the natural beauty of remote regions to command our global attention toward local climate issues. The exhibition will be accompanied by a performance from Hibiscus TV artists Kaye Freeman and Amy Kaps, and will also include a talk with Refetoff, curator Andi Campognone, and Rosanna Xia, L.A. Times climate journalist and author of California Against the Sea . LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER – WEST HALL 1201 South Figueroa Street Los Angeles, CA 90015 OPENING NIGHT PREMIERE Wednesday, February 14, 2024 I 6pm - 10pm GENERAL ADMISSION Thursday, February 15, 2024 | 12pm - 8pm Friday, February 16, 2024 | 12pm - 8pm Saturday, February 17, 2024 | 12pm - 8pm Sunday, February 18, 2024 | 12pm - 6pm For more information, please visit laartshow.com . To purchase tickets, please visit https://wl.seetickets.us/event/THE-LA-ART-SHOW-2024/564086?afflky=TheLAArtShow February 14 - February 18, 2024 Back to list

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Up Movers and Makers Various Artists Charles Hollis Jones Chris Francis David Jang Lisa Schulte Lori Cozen-Geller Sedi Pak Terry Cervantes Charles Hollis Jones: Fifty Chairs, Fifty Years Throughout the art world, Charles Hollis Jones is known as the “King of Lucite”, and for good reason—he has continued to redefine the use of acrylic in furniture for over fifty years. Words such as innovative, craftsmanship, luxury, and transformation populate descriptions of Jones’ work, beloved by classic Hollywood icons such as Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, in addition to several prominent architects, designers, and collectors. At the age of sixteen, Jones founded his firm, CHJ Designs. Following his high school graduation two years later, he moved from Bloomington, Indiana to Los Angeles, pursuing his already successful career as a furniture maker. Although Jones is known today for his stunning and buoyant acrylic designs, his earliest pieces were constructed primarily in brass, earning him his first art-world nickname, “The Chrome Kid.” Jones has said that he was initially attracted to acrylic due to its aesthetic similarity to glass and facile manipulation, which allowed him, in some of his earliest artistic endeavors, to reinterpret the Bauhaus designs he admired into a translucent medium. Lauded for its malleability, plastic has long been utilized in everything from the medical field to the fashion industry, but people do not generally think of it as an artisanal material. In this respect, Jones is unique, a pioneer, and a visionary. In his elegant furniture designs, plastics are elevated from their commercial status into the realm of fine art. Where other makers saw a basic material, he saw a miracle of alchemy, which needed to be respected and understood in order to be utilized to its fullest potential. While glass merely reflects light, acrylics allow each ray to pass through the material, carrying it in such a way that, when utilized effectively, it appears to be illuminated from within. Fascinated by this transmissivity, Jones quickly became enamored with the alchemical intricacies of acrylics, mastering the material in ways that his predecessors had not. In his skilled hands, the joints marrying multiple planes of Lucite together disappear, while the light that passes through is embraced and amplified, resulting in an unequivocal oeuvre of design. Charles Hollis Jones has received many awards for his craftsmanship and has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institute for his pioneering use of Lucite. In 1971, the German government presented Jones with a Brilliance of Design award for his Edison lamp, while the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors gave him an award for his Metric Line tables in 1976. In 1992, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation honored the artist with the Carl Beam Sculpture Award, recognizing his volunteer work on behalf of the American Society of Interior Designers. The Pacific Design Center awarded Jones with the 2004 Product Designer of the Year Award , recognizing his lifetime of achievements. In 2007, Design Within Reach hosted a retrospective of his work at its flagship locations in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Jones’ work has also been published in numerous magazines, such as Architectural Digest, Desert Living, Designers West, Elements, Hollywood Life, Home and Garden, Modern Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Chris Francis: Versatility--A Five Year Survey Chris Francis is a self-taught shoemaker and designer whose life experiences are often reflected in his art. He spent most of his young adult life traveling throughout the United States on freight trains, working on ships, and in carnivals, theater houses, and cabarets. Francis’ eclectic personal story is infused into a collection of work that is as diverse as the artist’s job history—he has hung from skyscrapers, worked as a chimney sweep and even found employment as a tree topper. Inspired by everything from the punk movement to architecture, industrial design and the Bauhaus, characteristics of Francis’ work often include bold color, a strong silhouette, sharp lines and simplicity. Each piece is created in-house, allowing for the artist to maintain complete control over the design process. He often works with found materials, which are experimental and alternative to traditional shoemaking. In keeping with the spirit of experimentation, many of the pieces in this collection were inspired by the Bauhaus School of Art and Design in Germany, made famous in the early twentieth century for combining craft and engineering with a variety of fine art mediums, including sculpture, painting, and architecture. Francis has stated that he operates his own workshop under many of the same principles that drove the Bauhaus movement, seeking to fuse fine art, architecture, fashion, and design into one act, thus creating shoes that are both beautiful and functional, as all of the artistic disciplines invoked are valued as equals. Francis’ designs are worn regularly by celebrities and musicians, and have been featured in publications such as Vogue, Metropolis, and Ornament . He has exhibited in several museums, including Palm Springs Art Museum, Architecture and Design Museum , and a solo exhibition at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles . He was also invited to exhibit as an artist at FN PLATFORM in Las Vegas, wherein he moved his entire workshop into the venue to act as a display. David B. Jang: Deflection Production Both an artist and an inventor, David B. Jang is known for his imaginative kinetic installations, which employ hacked consumer electronics and subverted household appliances. These vestiges of technology, with their life’s instructions literally coded into their motherboards, are the building blocks of Jang’s practice. By deconstructing, re-programming, and reconstituting industrial and commercial castoffs, Jang creates immersive works that are, as described by art critic Peter Frank, “at once hilarious, frightening, charming, and strangely reassuring.” Ultimately, Jang’s work is about survival, or what he refers to as “life tactics.” His installations explore the short life expectancy of cast-off materials and their relationship to organic mortality. Rooted in a playful critique of capitalism combined with a thirst for novelty, Jang shifts attention away from the product, toward process and consumer. If property ownership is a pathway to the “American Dream,” Jang’s intention is to subvert, dissect, comprehend, and redirect property to verify its potential and truth, or expose its lie. His work is engaging and subtly provocative, confronting viewers with their complacent habit of experiencing the environment indirectly, through a version of the world that humans have contrived. In Jang’s work, viewers must first lose themselves to find themselves. Through his ongoing investigations, the artist undertakes a documentation of the industrial era, not by representation, but by reusing and reworking existing technologies, and through them, exposing their inherent human and fallible elements. David B. Jang has exhibited both nationally and internationally at several museums and galleries, including: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Laguna Art Museum; Nagasaki Museum of Fine Art, Japan; Paju Kyoha Art Center, Korea; Shone-show Gallery, China; Heritage Art Center, Philippines; Locust Projects, Miami; AAF, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada . He has been featured in several publications, such as Miami New Times, Wall Street International, Huffington Post Arts, Art Ltd., Korean American Magazine, ARTPULSE, Artillery, KCET Artbound, Coagula Art Journal, California Contemporary Art Magazine, and Art Week LA. Lisa Schulte: Full Circle Transfixed by the act of bending and shaping light through mixing different gases, glasses, and fluorescents in her studio, Lisa Schulte says that she sees everything in neon. “My love for ‘light’ started in my late teens,” the artist states. “I had a friend who was a DJ at a disco. I was underage, so I would get in under the guise of ‘working the lights.’ I loved it! I discovered neon lights in the early 80s and never veered from that peculiar source.” Self-taught, Schulte’s work combines her experience in the film and television industry with her love of fine art. For the past thirty years, she has owned and operated Nights of Neon, a full-service fabrication studio, while also focusing on her own art practice, which, until recently, has marked a divergence from the artist’s commercial neon work. For several years, Schulte’s sculptural works consisted solely of different temperatures of white light, woven throughout amorphous pieces of dried wood, while the custom signage that she produced for Nights of Neon utilized traditional applications of the medium—bright signs and colorful lights. The former comprise the artist’s Essence of Time series, a group of meditative and painstakingly crafted sculptures imbued with symbolism, meant to transcend the infinite changes of the natural landscape and the journey of the human experience. Recently, however, Schulte’s work has been reinvigorated as she returned to the origins of her practice, producing a body of sculptures that are more free-form in spirit and alive with the full spectrum of color. Somewhat frustrated and seeking to propel her practice in a new direction, Schulte says that she began making random piles of the colorful neon words that she had created in her studio. This intuitive, action-based approach fostered the series of sculptures currently on display, which mark both a divergence from and return to the artist’s original practice. “Neon is a unique and remarkable medium,” Schulte states, “It does not operate at a 2D or even 3D level. It is multi-dimensional luminescence; it is light extracted from air—and manifested into form.” Lisa Schulte has shown her work at several museums and galleries, including: the Museum of Neon Art, Glendale; Scion Gallery, Culver City; Butterfield’s on Sunset Blvd.; Broadway Art Space, Santa Monica; Joanne Artman Gallery, Santa Monica; Rebel Ark Studio, Hollywood; Hinge Modern Gallery, Culver City; Fabian Castanier Gallery in collaboration with graffiti artist Risk , Studio City; Art Project Paia, Maui . She was also commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to create a sculpture based on Diane von Furstenberg’s handwriting for the museum’s Feel Like a Woman exhibit. Lori Cozen-Geller: The Edge In her practice, Lori Cozen-Geller looks to capture the emotions of the heart and mind. This process is kinetic, beginning with a feeling that evolves into a powerful emotion which is then transformed into art. By freezing these emotions and translating them into concrete form, Geller is able to visualize the strength and meaning that lies within the created piece, the artist’s passion manifested as art. The feelings themselves dictate the specifics of each piece, such as color and finish, which represent the power of the emotion that each work is born out of. Other details, such as the decision to use sharp angles or soft curves, are informed by the nature of the emotions represented. The Edge represents a visual culmination of the moment when a split decision is about to be made, which will forever alter one’s fate. A barrage of emotions fuses together to spark the end result: the decision. The scale of each cube along with its finish represents the power of the decision at hand. “Although my art is an expression of my own personal feelings, these emotions are universal to all mankind,” Geller states, “Human beings share the same emotional palette even though each of us has a differing set of life circumstances. The energy of life is the fuel that ignites my passion to express.” Lori Cozen-Geller has shown her work at several museums and galleries, both nationally and internationally, including: Madison Gallery, La Jolla, Russeck Gallery, San Francisco, BGH Gallery, Bergamot Station, George Billis Gallery, New York, Phoenix Art Museum, Fellini Gallery, Berlin, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Sedi Pak: A Moment in Time From very early on in my life I have observed nature closely—the shape of a tree, the shape of a leaf, the veins on that leaf, how it all comes together—nature at its most basic form. I study the light, texture and patterns of organic life. I find a rhythm in nature and strive to replicate it in my art. I am fascinated by the harmony and disharmony between man and nature. I draw most of my inspiration from this, how our actions impact our future. What we do sets off a chain of events, hard to predict or control. -Sedi Pak A contemporary painter and sculptor, Sedi Pak has spent a lifetime developing her personal approach to the visual arts. After painting professionally for eighteen years the artist began to explore three-dimensional mediums. This led to the creation of her recent body of work, comprised of environmental installations and sculptures that capture the visceral dimensionality of the natural world. Though seemingly frozen in space, Pak’s large-scale wooden sculptures evoke movement and appear to defy gravity as their carved, spiraling curves illustrate the science of nature and its continual transformation, a moment in time memorialized like the rings in a tree: silent, but present. Sedi Pak has shown her work in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally, including: Galerie Metanoia, Paris; Galerie 825, Los Angeles; MB Abram Galleries, Los Angeles . She participated as an exhibiting artist for Project Heart: Uganda’s annual Fundraising multimedia Art Benefit from 2010 to 2013 and has been featured on Huffington Post’s Arts and Culture page. Terry Cervantes: Lunatopia Terry Cervantes combines her skills as a production potter with her talent as a visual artist, creating pieces that are at once beautiful, whimsical, and often functional. She draws inspiration from Asian and Native American storytelling, surrealism, and the natural world. In regards to her creative drive, the artist states, “I fulfill my desire to paint with my need to play in clay.” The pieces that comprise Lunatopia are inspired by images from a surrealist fantasy of Cervantes’ imagination. Relating her story, the artist writes: Somewhere in the universe, in a different dimension, there is a world where only a moon illuminates the sky…The many faces of the moon govern this magical world. It isn’t based on time, but rather emotions and feelings of mad devilry, happiness, glee, pain, and sorrow. The moon and the eyes of this world have an affinity for each other—as the moon’s face changes its demeanor from young to old, and from male to female, the eyes look up in wonder, sorrow, surprise, and awe. Nature glows like bleached bones, insects scurry in the moonlight, and all are attracted to the vibrations of the light. Things become amiss: fish grow feet and run and dance with skeletons in the radiance of perpetual night. Teapots come to life and hop along with moonlit, furry foxes. And if you look closely, you can see that the Alligator and Platypus have finally taken the plunge into marriage. Who would have thought! This is the world that Cervantes dreams of as she creates. As a conduit for stories that seem to have emerged from times past, the artist believes that it is her duty to bring these parables to life, so that people may learn of the illuminated world, Lunatopia. Terry Cervantes is a local artist who has spent several years serving her community as a visual arts teacher and has exhibited throughout Southern California. She has won first place and Best in Show at the Antelope Valley Fair in 1984. Her work has also been featured in Rothko Art Magazine. February 11 - April 16, 2017 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