Winter 2020
Mark Strickland: Between Heaven and Hell, Fears and Desires
A Retrospective 2001-2011
Opening: Thursday January 30, 7-9 PM
"When I create, I often look at what was expressed through my awareness as if I hadn’t created the work. From time to time I discover a previous painting and do not remember having created it, as though the work came to be from its own longing for itself and not from me. Painting or any other art form can be a way to turn pain, fear, and anxiety into flowers of calmness and wisdom. It can be used as a meditation for facing our fears from a sacred place of compassion for others, as well as for ourselves. The exercise of “feeling” that we are made more of light and compassion than of flesh allows us to break down the barriers between us.
In this exhibit Between Heaven and Hell Fears and Desires, I intend to share with you, the viewer, my convictions and beliefs as a humanist artist."
Mark Strickland
"Mark Strickland, who defies the mainstream with his unsparing depictions of the worst we human beings do to each other. He requires us, no matter our discomfort, to look at it, and to confront our own responsibility. He does so in a scale, and with a passion that brooks no avoidance on the part of anyone who shares his courage to look barbarity, and cruelty, and misery in the face. His works- look at it! Really, look at it! That’s all he asks- is a maelstrom of conflicting emotion: anger, pain, sadness, grief, shame, guilt, it’s all there, upfront, unavoidable.
And then, finally- let’s not forget this, because it might be overlooked- there’s the bottom line, the one below the suffering. Or above the suffering, perhaps. It’s Strickland’s omnipresent, deeply expressed hope for peace and justice in the world."
-Peter Clothier
This exhibition will run through March 20, 2020
Susan Cooper
Opening: Thursday January 30, 7-9 PM
Art serves as a compass to determine and explore our place in the world. It is a fulcrum, linking the physical world with ideas, memory and vision. I have the honor of constantly reflecting a continually changing, perplexing, and marvelous world that we all occupy.
The studio work is a personal view. I strive to visually connect conceptual views to history and to nature. I often combine two and three dimensions. Two-dimensional images create illusions of depth, while three-dimensional art is typically object oriented. Combining the two affords the opportunity to build illusion out of objects and objects out of painting, thereby creating a paradox. This contradiction of dimension mimics our imaginations, perceptions feelings and daily lives. The studio work often addresses life cycles, changes in time and place, and the nature of art itself.
Los Angeles is my original home. My art education was in painting at the University of California, Berkeley, where I earned BA and MA degrees. After two years in New Mexico, I moved just outside of Denver where a former barn is my studio.
Susan Cooper
“Story Line” is a joy to read, partially because the information is so specific. Partially, too, because the imagery is done with such care and feeling. The booklet-like catalog that identifies buildings that figure into your family history was a brilliant idea. What you wrote about each site makes an engaging story.
Jim Melchert, artist, Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley
Former head of Visual Arts, National Endowment of the Arts
Former Director of National Academy in Rome
This exhibition will run through March 20, 2020
Mary Leipziger
India through a Jewish Lens
"The photographs show people in their spaces, already, but with the assurances that realism always illustrates what you haven’t seen yet, the connections, colors, the geometries suggested by human form and direction, the hidden hand, usually demeaning, and not signifying like a subject engaged and exposed, and both the photographer and the subject fully enjoying the surprise of human contact."
Mary Leipziger is a Los Angeles based Canadian Jewish photographer whose photographs have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Dallas Times Herald, National Museum of American Jewish History and many other publications.
Ms. Leipziger holds an M.A. from California State University, Northridge, CA, a B.A. in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture Los Angeles, CA and a B.F.A. from Boston University in Boston, Mass.
Click here for an interview with Mary Leipziger & The Daily Bruin
This exhibit runs until June 15, 2020
Hillel Smith
Parsha Posters
Begun at Simchat Torah 2015, the Parsha Poster project is a series of posters "advertising" the parshat hashavua (weekly Torah portion). The posters utilize innovative Hebrew typography--each one integrates the Hebrew name of the parsha in Hebrew somehow into the illustration--and a bold, graphic aesthetic to tell Biblical stories in a new way.
Will be on view in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (1st Floor)
New Cuts
by Corrie Siegel
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition,
for speech is what makes man a political being” - Hannah Arendt
New Cuts is an exhibition of flat and sculptural works created from single sheets of paper. Alternately delicate and spiked, the works are formed by overlaid matrixes of texts that are incised to obscure the original message and reveal a pattern composed of symbols. Each piece is built from statements made during the rise of the Third Reich or the Trump Administration. Through the form of a traditional paper-cut; these loaded texts are abstracted into jagged landscapes and fragile lace.
Corrie Siegel is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist who has exhibited nationally and internationally. Mining individual and collective histories, she uses labor intensive approaches to occupy a position between objectivity and interpretation. Her projects have been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, Mousse Magazine, Droste Effect, and Flash Art International. Siegel is currently an Armory Fellow, she was also awarded a Word Grant, Dream Lab Fellowship, Culture Lab Fellowship, and Six Points Fellowship. She is the director of the artist run gallery and community space Actual Size Los Angeles. Actual Size collaborates with established and emerging artists to animate the exhibition experience and engage the public. She received her BFA from Bard College and is currently pursuing an MFA with a concentration in Curatorial and Critical Studies from University of California, Irvine.
Student Facebook