WOMEN MAKING IT IN THE ARTS

Moderator

Scarlet Cheng - former managing editor of Asian Art News magazine, she writes frequently on film and the visual arts for the Los Angeles Times and other publications. She also teaches cinema studies at Otis College of Art and Design.

Curators' Panel

Connie Butler — curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Among the many exhibitions she has curated are Flight Patterns and Afterimage: Drawing Through Process. Currently, she is working on the landmark show WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, scheduled to open Fall 2006.

Karin Higa — director of Curatorial and Exhibition Development at the Japanese American National Museum. She has organized many notable exhibitions highlighting Asian American artists of the past and present, including Sights Unseen: The Photographic Constructions of Masumi Hayashi, Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date, and The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945.

Christina Ochoa — chief curator and gallery director of Self-Help Graphics & Art of Los Angeles, a leading community center for the visual arts. She has been in the forefront of organizing exhibitions of Chicano and Latino art, some of which have traveled nationally. One of her special interests is contemporary painting on velvet.

Lynn Zelevansky — curator and head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has organized a number of important contemporary exhibitions, including Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties, Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, and most recently, Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-1970s.

Artists' Panel

Lita Albuquerque — an internationally renowned installation and environmental artist, painter, and sculptor. She has developed a visual language that brings the realities of vast time and space to a human scale and is widely known for her ephemeral works and public art. Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions and is widely collected. She currently teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

Rebecca Morales — a graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, she focuses on closely observed still lifes and landscape paintings with environmental themes. She is represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery and has shown in various group shows.

Synthia Saint James — an award-winning artist and designer, she is self-taught and finds inspiration from her mixed heritage (African American, Native American, Haitian, and German Jewish). She has written and illustrated children’s books, poetry and prose, and designed major public works for the Ontario International Airport, California State Capitol in Sacramento, and West Tampa Library in Florida.

Alexis Smith — an artist who divides her time between small-scale collage work and large-scale public commissions. the latter for such highly visible venues as Ohio State University and the Getty Center. Her striking work has been featured in many solo and group shows, including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Location

Gin D. Wong FAIA Conference Center (formerly Harris Hall 101 Auditorium), University of Southern California – off Exposition Boulevard between Vermont Avenue and Figueroa Street. Wheelchair accessible.