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< Back Ellen Friedlander Ellen Friedlander’s photography captures life’s imperfections and fleeting moments through bold, complex imagery. Influenced by over a decade in Hong Kong, her work combines in-camera and post-processing techniques, showcasing her technical expertise and fascination with human presence. From the bustling streets of major cities to intimate portraits, artist Ellen Friedlander’s photography offers a rich tapestry of perspectives. Her artistic practice employs a variety of in-camera and post-processing techniques to reveal a style that is bold, complex, and fueled by a fascination with life's imperfections and fleeting moments. After receiving her Master of Arts in Mass Communcations, Friedlander spent more than a decade raising her family in Hong Kong, a city that deeply influenced her street photography and established her professional technical photographic repertoire. Human presence is key to Friedlander’s work. She believes that a portrait consists of elements beyond a simple objective photograph of a subject. This belief is reflected in the ethereal and intimate visuals contained in her work. Layered long exposures help to create a visually rich and textured quality to her images that seem to transcend any temporal bounds. To Friedlander, this process unlocks the hidden depths of a subject that lies beyond their external façade, allowing an individual’s energy and aura to present themselves within their portrait. Previous Next

2021 < View Public Art Projects Cinta Vidal Mural 2021 Permanent Art Project

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with Papercutting Craft Lorraine Bubar Throughout Spring 2025, Elyze Cliford Interpretive Center hosted a series of workshops with papercut artist Lorraine Bubar in celebration of the Lunar New Year and her artist residency. Lorraine Bubar, whose intricate papercuts are inspired by nature and the tradition of papercutting found in cultures around the world, shared her techniques and artistic process with the community. Workshops included an introduction to papercutting to celebrate the Year of the Wood Snake, a “Knowing Notan” workshop exploring the balance of light and dark in design, and a final “Pop Up Preserve” session encouraging participants to capture the wildlife and plants of the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve through pop-up paper techniques. Participants learned hands-on skills while gaining insight into Lorraine’s creative inspirations and the role of papercutting in cultural and environmental storytelling. Workshop 1 Workshop 2 Workshop 3 Desert Cuts Lorraine Bubar July 12, 2025 - December 14, 2025 Artist Lorraine Bubar explored the Prime Desert Woodland Preserve during a six-month period in 2025 as part of the Elyze Clifford Interpretive Center (ECIC) Artist-in-Residence program. In that time, she created beautiful papercut artworks inspired by the Mojave Desert landscape. Her colorful, layered paper pieces capture the unique plants, animals, and natural beauty of this special urban desert oasis. Learn More

Renee Chowdhry < Back Diary Entry By Renee Chowdhry Dear Diary, As I near the end of my high school career, I realized how swiftly time moves. I feel like I remember the first day of freshman year as vivid as the color of a pink rose, as defined as the veins on a flower petal, as distinguishable as a singular rose in a vast desert. Yet, as I am nearing the end of junior year, I feel I have no recollection of the past three years. One bright afternoon I decided to drive to my last house to see where my academic journey began. As I reached the driveway, I suddenly became overwhelmed with a surge of melancholic emotions as I realized that this was once the driveway where I first rode a bike, and now I am driving a car. Soon after, a rose I planted over ten years stood in full glory. At this moment, I was joyous of the perseverance of the rose, so I started admiring its glorified features. I noted that the soil was fertile, that it had been receiving a steady amount of water, and quite shockingly, the bush was now several inches taller than me! Though there were all these differences, I couldn’t help but realize that there were similarities too. Firstly, we both spent our childhood in the same house, and now, after all these years, we have both matured. I wanted to further connect myself to the rose bush, so I put myself in the plant’s shoes, or better said it’s “roots”. I took a more augmented look at the surroundings and came to the conclusion that the rose bush had faced many hardships. First off, roses are not native to a dry, arid desert climate; therefore, there must have been a great struggle to become a thriving bush from just a few seeds. Additionally, I noticed the wear on the roses, as only a few were in bloom. I started to connect this back to my life. I realized that though the plant’s fate was against all odds, it somehow managed to rise stronger than ever. I thought back on all the hardships I have gone through, and every time I reflect, I realize that I have become a more resilient person after. So, I guess, even though my childhood is rearing towards an end, I have blossomed into a more mature person. Previous Next

Up The Light of Space Various Artists Solo exhibitions: Laddie John Dill Jay Mark Johnson Kysa Johnson Shana Mabari Ruth Pastine Mary Anna Pomonis Robert Standish Site specific installations Gary Lang Edwin Vasquez Video installation Jeff Frost New Works by Ruth Pastine The Light of Space - A film by Eric Minh Swenson. "These Photos Bend Time and Space—Literally" MICHAEL HARDY on Jay Mark Johnson for WIRED Laddie John Dill Laddie John Dill is a Los Angeles artist whose work focuses on nature by portraying cycles and moments rather than a singular moment in time using light and space. He achieves this by utilizing materials like glass, cement, and pigment as a metaphor. With influences like Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier, Robert Smithson, Dennis Openheim, and Robert Irwin, Dill has learned to use the physical space around him as opposed to a stationary canvas on an easel. This practice results in a magnificent scene of candescent light and sand that envelopes the viewer, entering a form of metamorphosed reality. Contained Radiance Lancaster demonstrates his use of space as his canvas and distributes light creating a dreamlike, ethereal quality. His use of light, sand, and hard materials like aluminum 6061 within the surrounding space each work to create a harmonious and tranquil atmosphere, diffusing light and shadow to create a transcendental experience for the viewer. He portrays the light, sky and earth as parts of a whole that cannot function without the other, bearing witness to the oneness of nature and ultimately demonstrating reasons why nature should be protected and respected. Dill was born in Long Beach, California in 1943. He graduated from Chouinard Art Institute in 1968 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. After graduating, Dill became a printing apprentice and worked closely with established artists, like Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Laddie John Dill’s work is in the permanent collections of national and international institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, California; High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Chicago Art Institute in Chicago, Illinois, The Smithsonian in Washington DC, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark, Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, Italy, Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, California, and Museo Jumex in Mexico City, Mexico. He currently lives and works in Venice, California. Jay Mark Johnson Jay Mark Johnson’s unconventional method of timeline photography examines human space and time, broadening established understandings about linear temporal space. He combines the storytelling abilities of a cinematographer with a handmade German scanning device to create an image that effectively melds the ideas of time and space into a single artwork. In his series of work, the subject remains clear while the background appears to be distorted and in a constant stream of motion and colors altering time and space. Instead of standard photography which favors space and stagnation, these images are captured through the rate of movement of the subject. This project began when Johnson tested the effect of a rotating slit-scan camera had when he stopped the rotation and focused on a fixed area. The camera takes photographs of a single moment represented by a single vertical sliver and over time a series of vertical lines are created of the moving subject resulting in a composite series of strips. Depending on the rate of motion of the subject, the object can appear elongated or crushed. The rendering of reality in conjunction of time into space provides powerful interpretations of the way humans move through time and space. Johnson was born in St. Petersburg, Florida and studied architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans and at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City. He produced more than fifty series of images that have been presented in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions. The artworks can be found in the permanent collections of the Riechstag building of the German Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles, California, the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Langen Foundation in Hombroich, Germany, the Peter Klein Museum Kunstwerkin Eberdingen, Germany, the collection of Michael G. Wilson, the Milken Family Foundation in Santa Monica, California, and the Fidelity Corporate Art Collection in Boston, Massachusetts. He currently lives and works in Santa Monica, California. Kysa Johnson Kysa Johnson conceptualizes the microscopic and the macro landscapes of subjects like molecular structures, maps of the universe and diseases transforming them into lively still lifes and landscape paintings. She effectively introduces scientific concepts that would normally be invisible to the naked eye and magnifies its contents, exposing the viewer to the world’s most fundamental parts of our structural universe. Providing meaningful, emotional, and historical relevance, this magnification of the microscopic and macro allows for the viewer to connect to scientific concepts and phenomena providing a newly found appreciation of our reality. Inspired by images gathered from the Hubble telescope and particle accelerators, Faraway, So Close utilizes subatomic particles to portray the cycle of death, rebirth, and transformation from supernovas to the formation of new stars in nebulae. She shows both the fragility and sheer power of these happenings with elegantly placed loops of particle decay to demonstrate the life cycle of these celestial events. The images are made up of hundreds of ink markings contrasted with a stark, black background symbolizing the darkness of space and the universe resulting in a newly realized perspective of life and death. Born in Illinois in 1974, Johnson trained at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Johnson has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, Roebling Hall Gallery in New York City and The Nicolaysen Museum in Casper, Wyoming. She has been featured in a number of group shows including exhibitions at The 2nd Biennial of the Canary Islands, the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York, The Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts and Standpoint Gallery in London, England. Johnson has created site-specific installations for KK Projects in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2008, Dublin Contemporary in Ireland in 2011 and for the New York Armory Show in 2013. She is a 2003 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, a 2009 Pollack Krasner Grant recipient and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Shana Mabari Shana Mabari’s work revolves around the use of color, light and geometric forms to relate ideas about visual perception and our surrounding space. Inspired by the Light and Space movement that occurred in the 1960s, she pulls the west coast artistic movement from key figures like Robert Irwin and James Turrell and explores the philosophy of human perception and the highly technical and advanced scientific fields of astrophysics and psychophysics. In Mabari’s series, she records her astronomical observations during the summers of 2018 and 2019 in Ibiza, Spain. Her prints focus on the overlapping views of the same object - the positive and the negative. In this case, the “positive” view would be the object looking up from earth and the “negative” would be the view of the object looking down on earth. She also makes the choice of incorporating aluminum into the drawing to demonstrate aluminum’s historical importance to aerospace and its natural occurrence in space. The prints in Planeta and Stella incorporate mathematical information like right ascension, declination, apparent magnitude, radial velocity, distance from Earth in light years, eccentricity and synodic period into the intricately placed geometric lines and forms demonstrating the inherent beauty and structure in space. Mabari was born in Los Angeles, California. She has traveled extensively, and lived in Paris, Northern India, and Tel Aviv.  Her education includes studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. In 2016, Mabari’s Astral Challenger, a 20-foot-high rocket-shaped sculpture, was installed in the center of a roundabout at the intersection of Challenger Way and Avenue L in Lancaster, California, in honor of the City’s ongoing achievements in the aerospace industry, and in commemoration of the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster. She holds a patent for the design of “Dynamic Spatial Illusions,” a portable version of a visual and sensory experimental environment. She is a recipient of the Center for Cultural Innovation Artists’ Resource for Completion (ARC) grant. Mabari currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California. Mary Anna Pomonis Mary Anna Pomonis’ work functions at the crossroads of mysticism, abstract painting, geometry, and popular culture. She utilizes a multitude of different source materials including quilt squares, sacred geometry, icons, and abstract painting tapping into themes concerning personal power. She channels these ideas with symbols like crests and banners using historically revered artwork to emotionally move the viewer. Mary Anna Pomonis’ new exhibition Iris Oculus, focuses on the eight point star or temple rosette and is a visual celebration of Inanna, the Mesopotamiam goddess of war and sex. Inspired by images seen of Mother Mary and the Greek Orthodox church, Pomonis joins the sacred images of mandorlas and the architecture of churches to celebrate goddesses of antiquity. Utilizing sacred geometry and geometric forms allows the viewer to transcend beyond the physical realm and invokes the mystic nature of the work. In turn, she creates a space of personal strength connecting to both the artwork and the otherworldly. Pomonis is a Los Angeles based artist. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Illinois and her Master of Fine Arts at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Her work has been included in exhibitions at galleries and institutions including the Western Carolina University Museum of Fine Arts in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, California, the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St Louis, Missouri, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, California, and I-space Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. Her artwork and projects have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, Artillery Magazine, Art Forum, Frieze, Hyperallergic, National Public Radio, Whitehot Magazine, Yale University Radio and Artweek. Additionally, her curatorial projects and essays have been featured at commercial and institutional galleries, such as the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California, Whittier College Greenleaf Gallery in Whittier, California, PØST in Los Angeles, California, and the Peter Miller Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art Education at California State University Fullerton. Robert Standish For 12 years, Los Angeles painter Robert Standish had been representing his perceptions of the undercurrents of the human condition through photorealistic paintings of people and blurred lights. Seven years ago, Standish shifted away from constructing life-like replicas based solely on his photos to delving deeper into the unconscious unknown and new psychological depths. His choice to explore pure abstraction unlocked an organic spontaneous paint process of his own making, which is evidenced in both his current Rhythmic series and Anti-Sporadic series . With an interest in metaphysics, Standish uses basic elements like line, color and texture, to represent the dynamism, constance and transcendent flow of the universe. Standish’s lusciously colored, abstract paintings appear to be in the tradition of both American Abstract Expressionism and German Expressionist painting. There are no finite borders or endings in his works as every stroke bleeds into one another in an eternal unbroken chain that seems to extend far beyond any conceivable edge of the canvas. The painting’s many layers, strokes and scrapes of color may thus appear as “beautiful” as anything found in nature that came into existence partly according to a predetermined structure (such as DNA), as well as by way of unpredictable occasions of pure chance and the action of outside forces. Standish taps into a universal and organic language as his traces begin to take on the shape of fractal patterns, earth frequencies and topographies and biorhythmic waves. As he once manipulated the real into the un-real, Standish now transforms the natural into the supernatural. Robert Standish graduated from Antioch University in 1996 with a Bachelors of Art in Psychology. His works can be found in the permanent collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, The Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles, California, JP Morgan Chase, the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York City, Larry and Marilyn Fields, Patricia Arquette, Bryant Stibel, along with numerous acclaimed private collections. His paintings have been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, with a recent group show at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California in 2019, and is now excited to share his first solo show with us here at The Lancaster Museum of Art and History. He currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California. Gary Lang Gary Lang is a widely-known Western contemporary abstract painter whose work is centered around color theory and the study of time. Recognized for his intense and brightly colored circles, he combines the precision of his brush, hand, paint and canvas to his hypnotic paintings that simultaneously convey an immense amount of sharpness, gradiance and permeability. In Lang’s Glitterworks, he strays from his iconic circles to a playful rendition of color and space. However, these works still continue to explore Lang’s fascination with effervescent colors and visual consciousness. He uses 120 six inch fabric squares from clothing that he wore while working with dabs of different colors, glitter and reflective film placed into square wooden frames, creating a sense of order in the energetic splashes of color. This contrasts sharply with the carefully controlled, concentric circles one witnesses of previous works. The result challenges traditional ideas about formal composition while exploring Lang’s themes of color and space. Gary lang received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of Art and his Masters of Fine Arts from Yale University. In 1975, Lang received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Barcelona where he studied the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. Lang’s work has been shown in more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Austria, France, Japan, The Netherlands and Spain. His work is also featured in permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine; the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, New York, Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, Detroit Institute of the Arts in Detroit, Michigan, Gemeentemuseum den Haag in The Netherlands, among many others. Gary Lang currently lives and works in Ojai, California. Edwin Vasquez Edwin Vasquez’s work ranges from a multitude of different mediums including photography, digital images, poetry, and mixed-media utilizing art as a vehicle for social commentary about his surrounding environment and human nature. His art expands on his universe and his perspectives on today’s controversial social and political climate tapping into themes about immigration, freedom, and Latinidad. Vasquez’s new body of work combines a logical, mathematical analysis of shapes with digital photographs of space and purposefully deconstructs these images creating a harmonious depiction of the planets and constellations. His art relies on his intense saturation of colors and forms to promote the reactions of the viewer. Vasquez achieves this with the use of fractal geometry, a mathematical approach to describing, measuring, and predicting systems occurring in nature. The installation consists of more than 200 images that Vasquez has manipulated through different software melding various colors and shapes until finding an image that he is satisfied with. The use of fractal shapes, bright colors, abstract shapes, and space function to create structure and pattern inside our tumultuous universe. Vasquez is an artist, photojournalist, published author, and videographer in the Antelope Valley. He has participated in a number of different exhibits including: Refractions, Metro Gallery, Pomona; dA Gallery 16th Annual d’Aztlan: El Movimiento; Hispanic Heritage, Latino Art Museum; Convergence From Pixels to Picote, Colleen Farrell Gallery, Tehachapi; Vasquez has been featured in several group exhibitions including The State Latin American Visual Arts in Rhode Island (where his work was recognized by Governor Lincoln D. Chafee), Communication at Casa 0101 in Los Angeles, Don’t Sleep! at the Latino Art Museum in Pomona, Day of the Dead Installation at the MOAH, and regularly participates in the Museum of Art & History’s Annual All-Media Juried Art Exhibit. He is currently an Artist-in-Residence for #CountMeIn and a Kipaipai Fellow. Jeff Frost Jeff Frost explores time and space through different sub-mediums like painting, photography, video and installation. In combination with short films that traverse themes about creation and destruction. He often works with time-lapse and stop motion to portray notions of science and physics to understand the subtleties of our physical world. This process is achieved by taking photos from several points in time and coupling them into a smooth, chronological flow of spatial events. The use of time-lapse and stop motion is also utilized in the painting of empty, abandoned buildings, capturing a fluid motion of events that appears to have seemingly materialized on their own. In the series, GO HOME , Frost dissects the meaning of “home” through a series of optical illusion paintings in derelict, abandoned structures in southern California. Typically, abandoned locations don’t conjure up feelings associated with the idea of home, Frost challenges the physical representation of home by questioning our emotional alignment with these ideas. “In order to maintain our world view, our emotional alignment must be very precise. One step to the left or right and the illusion breaks.” Frost said. The work examines the physical and ideological notion of what one considers to be a home and explores the frailty of these concepts through the different layers of illusion. Frost was born in Utah and graduated from the University of Eastern Utah in 1998. His work has been shown at his own independent Desert X 2019 parallel installation, Los Angeles Art Association curated by Leslie Jones for LACMA, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Center for European Nuclear Research (CERN), and LAX. He has been selected for the Nordic LA residency at the ACE Hotel in Palm Springs & the Facebook Artist in Residence program in 2019. He performed a soundart set at the Desert Daze music festival in 2019. He was both a producer and subject of the 2017 Netflix docuseries, Fire Chasers. He has been featured in numerous online publications and TV interviews such as PBS Newshour, TIME Magazine, Artnet, and American Photo. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) named him one of the best photographers of 2014. U2 and Ladytron have commissioned him for artwork used on tour and in album art. He has spoken at TEDx in Switzerland, the Seattle Art Fair, University of Southern California, Palm Springs Art Museum, Orlando Museum of Art, Snap! Orlando, and photoLA Ruth Pastine Ruth Pastine’s painting practice is an ongoing contemplative and reflective investigation focusing on the austerity of the three complementary color systems which, although seemingly finite, access limitless possibilities. Her paintings evolve in concert with and in juxtaposition to one another furthering the perceptual interaction of color contexts while challenging phenomena of color perception and the relativity of color and light. Working serially, Pastine’s process is informed by the systematic understanding of color developed at the Bauhaus and the 19th Century research of Michel Eugène Chevreul and his discovery of simultaneous contrast. Confronting the unknown is always at the edge of discovery and is the onramp to new work. Pastine’s minimalist color field paintings explore essential tensions that drive her work: presence and absence, surface and depth, materiality and immateriality, the finite and the limitless. She continues to evolve pure abstraction and follow the concepts of Minimalist theory, furthering the phenomenological experience of light and space in her work. Pastine explores the subtle character and nuance of color, color and light are reduced to their most elemental form, working with oil paint on canvas thousands of small brush strokes resolve and appear visually seamless, producing an image that is both objective and dematerialized. Challenging preconceptions about color, her investigations into the manipulation of color, light, and matter question the perceptual experience and redefine the visual field. Born and raised in New York City, Ruth Pastine received her B.F.A. from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and upon graduating was awarded an independent residency grant to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She received her M.F.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York where she focused on painting, color theory and critical studies. In 2009, Pastine began site-specific work with a public commission entitled Limitless, composed of 8 large-scale paintings, installed as two series in the adjoining lobbies of Ernst & Young Plaza, in downtown Los Angeles. In 2014, Ruth Pastine had her first museum survey exhibition titled: Attraction: 1993-2013 at MOAH Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA with exhibition catalog essays by Donald Kuspit and Peter Frank, with an appreciation by De Wain Valentine. In 2015, she opened Present Tense: Paintings and Works on Paper 2010-2015 at the CAM Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA. Ruth Pastine’s paintings are included in numerous private and public collections, including the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MCASD Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles; MOAH Lancaster Museum of Art and History Lancaster; Brookfield Properties, Ernst & Young Plaza, Los Angeles; AXA Art, Cologne, Germany; Qualcomm, San Diego; CIM Group Headquarters, Los Angeles, among others. Ruth Pastine lives and works in Southern California. February 8 - April 19, 2020 Back to list

Up Mojave Meditations Chloe Allred Artist and printmaker Chloe Allred’s art residency at the Prime Desert Woodlands started in January 2024 focusing on the contemplation of preserving natural spaces and access to nature. Through her plein-air and studio works, Allred creates oil paintings, linoleum blocks, and intaglio prints inspired by the flora and fauna, animal bones, and taxidermy found the Elyze Clifford Interpretive Center. For Allred, preservation is not only important for maintaining the health of the environment, but also fundamental to our physical and mental well-being. In her walks and painting trips to the preserve, Allred’s work represents a whimsical and gestural amalgamation of quiet contemplation and introspection. Chloe Allred is a painter, writer, and educator based in Yucca Valley. She is a contributing artist and writer for the book, "We Believe You" (published by Henry Holt in 2016) and the cover artist for the poetry collection “Preposition” (published by Undercurrent in 2021.) Her paintings and writing have been featured in Orange Coast Magazine, Huffington Post, USA Today, and the BBC. She is a tenure-track art professor at Copper Mountain College in Joshua Tree. Allred’s subjects range from surreal portraits to whimsical landscapes that celebrate the Mojave; empathy is at the core of both her artmaking and teaching practice. July 6 - December 8, 2024 Back to list

A critique of these large-scale industrial complexes a the damaging processes of unsustainable agricultural production Up Citrus Series David Koeth A critique of these large-scale industrial complexes a the damaging processes of unsustainable agricultural production Describing himself as restless and eclectic, David Koeth works with citrus peels, paint, coffee, and graphic design. His artworks reflect humanity's long-fought struggle with pollution and humanity’s attempt to combat the destruction of Earth's natural resources and living species. As a self proclaimed capitalist, Koeth’s acquisitive tendencies have led him to amass a collection of various objects that eventually find their way into his artistic practice. Additionally, Koeth has created works relevant to endangered species, concepts of recycling, and negatively impactful industrial processes. Koeth’s Citrus Series on view critiques of these large-scale industrial complexes, most directly, the damaging processes of unsustainable agricultural production. June 5 – September 5, 2021 Back to list

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

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

The Longest Shift < Back Sam Comen The Longest Shift May 14 - August 21, 2022 Sam Comen, "Carlos Arevalo, Jason Calixto, Esbeida Refugio, and Ray Miller Custodial Staff, Los Angeles County + USC Hospital", 2021, Photograph Sam Comen, "Amado Montejo Port of Los Angeles Trucker", 2021, Photograph Sam Comen, "Hector Robles, Hyun Joo Kim, Kim Chow, Maria Alviso, Lance Goosby, and Nicole Luckie USPS Letter Carriers, photographed at Los Angeles’ Foy Station", 2021, Photograph Sam Comen, "Carlos Arevalo, Jason Calixto, Esbeida Refugio, and Ray Miller Custodial Staff, Los Angeles County + USC Hospital", 2021, Photograph 1/4 Previous Next In December 2020, as COVID-19 infections and deaths skyrocketed in Los Angeles County, everyday workers designated “essential” continued working under dire conditions, exacerbating existing societal and economic inequities. The Longest Shift explores these disparities through photographs, motion portraits, and interviews of these workers — most of them Black and Latinx — throughout Los Angeles County. In The Longest Shift , artist Sam Comen celebrates his subjects and their contributions during the pandemic while allowing the viewer to question the overall conditions of the workers in our society and the value of their labor. This fascination towards representing the lives of everyday people is rooted in Comen's documentary photography practice. Comen argues the unwavering reverence that society places on opulence, fame, and celebrity is slanted — lacking the entire breadth of the human experience, namely that of the working class. The all-encompassing lens that Comen brings to The Longest Shift focuses on themes of American identity, community, and social justice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic with the purpose of building empathy and justice. Sam Comen is a Los Angeles based artist who received his Bachelor’s degree in Communication from Northwestern University in 2002. Comen has worked as a magazine photographer for 15 years, shooting for publications that include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and Esquire . His work has been recognized by Communication Arts, American Photography, Photo District News, The Center for Documentary Studies, and the Sante Fe Center for Photography. Currently, Comen has three exhibitions on tour which include: Working America : portraits of immigrant and 1st generation Americans at work; The Newest Americans: portraits of U.S. citizens before and after the taking the oath of citizenship; and The Longest Shift at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH). Sam Comen has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and his work is held in permanent collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Library of Congress.

Adriana Orozco < Back Diary of Letitia By Adriana Orozco I am a plant, I have long branches and multiple leaves, I live in a big house, but I’m stuck in the dining room corner. I sit there all day with some water next to my pot. Though I come from a faraway place, a place call Ikea. But being at a place called Ikea was a nightmare; my past was a whole nightmare. But the past is the past. My slender leaves are everywhere; sometimes, it blocks me from seeing the small glimpse of the sun. It reminds me of hair, like a human’s hair. The family that lives in this house all have hair, but sometimes I wish my leaves were thin and long like the women. But not curly hair like one woman from the household, wasp, and spiders can fly into that mess. Though sometimes I wish I can have a chance in a personal change. A change of appearance, a change from my life, I want a new life. A house plant is boring; I sit there all day and sit there all day. Sometimes it is nice when there is food in the air to breathe into, but there is no use in being a plant; I wish to explore and travel! The only time I traveled was to enter this house that I have been there for too long. Like my past brought me here, and I am ungrateful for that. But I still long for a change in my life. I want to be different; I want to change the world, I want to learn how to write, but all I am is a plant. I am a plant with long branches, with small leaves, that live in a big house that longs for a change, but I am always a plant. Previous Next

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