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STORIES OF
THE LAND |
September 7 – November 17, 2021
Santa Ana College |
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STORIES OF
THE LAND Kim Abeles
Mariona Barkus Sharon Barnes Pilar Castillo Danielle Eubank Eloisa Guanlao Meg Madison Maryrose C. Mendoza Naida Osline Pamela J. Peters Sinan Leong Revell Linda Vallejo Gail Werner |
STORIES OF THE LAND explores the relationship between human lives and the earth we share. This exhibition features thirteen Southern California women artists with indigenous, immigrant, enslaved, free, migrant and refugee roots. Their artworks forge connections between human lives and the natural world that are intentionally open-ended, often located in lived experience or tied to less publicized parts of history.
The exhibition was organized by independent curators Suvan Geer and Sandra Mueller Opening Reception
Saturday, September 25, 2–4pm Masks required Why Artists Tell Stories about Lives & Land Recorded zoom conversation here Tuesday, October 12, 2021 Santa Ana College 1530 W. 17th St., Santa Ana, CA 92706 ART GALLERY: Fine Arts Building C GALLERY HOURS: M-W 10am-2pm by appointment only Please call the gallery at 714/564-5615 to make an appointment |
Banner Art: Plantation to Paradise Designing the Caribbean: Handkerchiefs detail, Pilar Castillo
KIM ABELES
Signs of Life unveils life forms in downtown Los Angeles. Using a detailed aerial photograph as the foundation, one artwork identifies tree locations with placed model trees and the other uses illuminated square keyholes to locate impermanent structures used as homes by people needing to live on the street due to soaring rent prices, economic disparities and failing education and health systems. I went by foot to map these locations rather create separation and drive. The diptych includes a laptop cracked open and flattened to reference a backpack. Its video shows photographs of the temporary structures sighted by the keyhole lights. Created in 2005, the map would be more intense today as the homeless population has increased considerably. What has not changed is the connection between the environment and social justice. They are inextricably linked. kimabeles.com
Signs of Life unveils life forms in downtown Los Angeles. Using a detailed aerial photograph as the foundation, one artwork identifies tree locations with placed model trees and the other uses illuminated square keyholes to locate impermanent structures used as homes by people needing to live on the street due to soaring rent prices, economic disparities and failing education and health systems. I went by foot to map these locations rather create separation and drive. The diptych includes a laptop cracked open and flattened to reference a backpack. Its video shows photographs of the temporary structures sighted by the keyhole lights. Created in 2005, the map would be more intense today as the homeless population has increased considerably. What has not changed is the connection between the environment and social justice. They are inextricably linked. kimabeles.com
Signs of Life
Archival ultrachrome prints of aerial view in downtown Los Angeles; model trees; keyhole lights
Laptop with slideshow of photographs from each temporary shelters
12 x 12 in. each print, 32 x 13 in. backpack
Archival ultrachrome prints of aerial view in downtown Los Angeles; model trees; keyhole lights
Laptop with slideshow of photographs from each temporary shelters
12 x 12 in. each print, 32 x 13 in. backpack
Mariona Barkus
A quest for a permanent burial site for U. S. nuclear waste led to Yucca Mountain as the ideal tomb for lethal, long-lived radioactive waste. In thinking about an ideal surface marker to ward off intruders for millennia, we can assume that despite vastly different culture and language that they’ll have basic human bodily functions. So I made Monument For a Nuclear Dump. The next logical next step was Nuclear Waste Toilet Paper, a toilet paper roll of newspaper articles delineating our poisonous legacy. The Nuclear Tourism print reflects a dark side of our romance with the road.The iconic lyrics of Get Your Kicks on Route 66 (“take the highway that's the best”) reframes nuclear waste as a normal part of the environment. The text is a true account of the cleaned up nuclear dump in Weldon, Missouri that was opened as a tourist attraction with more to come. marionabarkus.com
A quest for a permanent burial site for U. S. nuclear waste led to Yucca Mountain as the ideal tomb for lethal, long-lived radioactive waste. In thinking about an ideal surface marker to ward off intruders for millennia, we can assume that despite vastly different culture and language that they’ll have basic human bodily functions. So I made Monument For a Nuclear Dump. The next logical next step was Nuclear Waste Toilet Paper, a toilet paper roll of newspaper articles delineating our poisonous legacy. The Nuclear Tourism print reflects a dark side of our romance with the road.The iconic lyrics of Get Your Kicks on Route 66 (“take the highway that's the best”) reframes nuclear waste as a normal part of the environment. The text is a true account of the cleaned up nuclear dump in Weldon, Missouri that was opened as a tourist attraction with more to come. marionabarkus.com
Monument for a Nuclear Dump Installation
Digital print, holder and roll of nuclear waste toilet paper 24 x 20 in. print, 9.25 in. x 662 ft. long roll |
Nuclear Tourism
Archival digital print 24 x 20 in. |
SHARON BARNES
I have often contemplated how seeds can be embedded beneath the surface, unseen, dormant but powerfully potent. The Messages from the Underground painting can be imagined as the seeds of the natural world that can burst up through the hardest, most inhospitable ground, becoming a harbinger for the immense resilience that is required of nature. The piece can also be imagined as a metaphor for the seeds of justice that we must plant, that they may burst through the underground to resist the cruel landscape of tyranny. The shape of the piece is a tondo, a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, often used in 15th century religious works. I think of this piece as both prayer and protest. https://sharonlouisebarnes.com
I have often contemplated how seeds can be embedded beneath the surface, unseen, dormant but powerfully potent. The Messages from the Underground painting can be imagined as the seeds of the natural world that can burst up through the hardest, most inhospitable ground, becoming a harbinger for the immense resilience that is required of nature. The piece can also be imagined as a metaphor for the seeds of justice that we must plant, that they may burst through the underground to resist the cruel landscape of tyranny. The shape of the piece is a tondo, a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, often used in 15th century religious works. I think of this piece as both prayer and protest. https://sharonlouisebarnes.com
Messages From the Underground
Mixed media collage painting on wood
35 in. diameter
Mixed media collage painting on wood
35 in. diameter
Pilar Castillo
The Handkerchiefs installation is a culmination of focused research on Caribbean identity and its representation through the lens of the tourism industry. I used a vintage travel-ad as a historical document re-appropriating its visual language to shift the focus off the romanticized plantation era. Handkerchiefs represents the fabric of human emotion; a cloth that collects blood, sweat and tears. It is a form that most Caribbean people relate to their labor and generations past. The PASSPORT video presents a handmade counterfeit travel document printed on copy paper and made as a practice in 'decolonizing design.’ It interrogates established government narratives to consider the formats by which land is claimed and people are discarded. castlepillar.com
The Handkerchiefs installation is a culmination of focused research on Caribbean identity and its representation through the lens of the tourism industry. I used a vintage travel-ad as a historical document re-appropriating its visual language to shift the focus off the romanticized plantation era. Handkerchiefs represents the fabric of human emotion; a cloth that collects blood, sweat and tears. It is a form that most Caribbean people relate to their labor and generations past. The PASSPORT video presents a handmade counterfeit travel document printed on copy paper and made as a practice in 'decolonizing design.’ It interrogates established government narratives to consider the formats by which land is claimed and people are discarded. castlepillar.com
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Plantation to Paradise Designing the Caribbean: Handkerchiefs
Installation of digital collage on cotton handkerchiefs
17.5 x 17.5 in. each (3 pieces
Installation of digital collage on cotton handkerchiefs
17.5 x 17.5 in. each (3 pieces
Passport
Digital video of hand-made passport, sound by "Jar of Flies” 6:32 minutes View online at https://youtube/iCrXuonD3Ao |
DANIELLE EUBANK
The goal of my work is to join art, culture, ecology and science to create a greater understanding of the planet. The Pyramiden I photograph reveals a Soviet-era coal mining settlement building in Pyramiden, Svalbard. Human interaction began in the 17th century as a whaling and hunting base. Once whales were depleted, humans extracted coal. This is where much of the world’s field research on atmospheric conditions, glaciers, climate and the oceans occurs. The Arctic Antigua III photograph shows where bowhead whales were once hunted (their bones still lay nearby) and Svalbard today as an Arctic tourist attraction. The Arctic VI painting marries natural water forms with historical motifs found in Pacific Northwest indigenous imagery that re-connects human culture and natural surroundings. danielleeubank.com
The goal of my work is to join art, culture, ecology and science to create a greater understanding of the planet. The Pyramiden I photograph reveals a Soviet-era coal mining settlement building in Pyramiden, Svalbard. Human interaction began in the 17th century as a whaling and hunting base. Once whales were depleted, humans extracted coal. This is where much of the world’s field research on atmospheric conditions, glaciers, climate and the oceans occurs. The Arctic Antigua III photograph shows where bowhead whales were once hunted (their bones still lay nearby) and Svalbard today as an Arctic tourist attraction. The Arctic VI painting marries natural water forms with historical motifs found in Pacific Northwest indigenous imagery that re-connects human culture and natural surroundings. danielleeubank.com
Arctic VI
Oil painting on linen 42 x 60 in. |
Arctic Antigua III
Photograph on metal 24 x 16 in. |
Arctic Pyramiden I
Photograph on metal 24 x 16 in. |
Eloisa Guanlao
In Aves, the one-hundred sewn birds are relics of my two daughters’ childhoods made from their outgrown clothes. They are also a relic of family hiking and camping trips when natural history is observed, appreciated, collected or discovered as fossils, feathers, flora, or deteriorated animal bones. The ambrotype images of “stuffed” birds perch as poignant, but pale souvenirs of real birds migrating over real places. Darwin’s Finches offers a fossilized record and a critical examination of our prevailing Anthropocene myopia. Wet collodion glass ambrotypes capture images of “stuffed” birds, threatened or endangered as a result of habitat loss and rising temperatures. Housed in a stylized view camera that harkens to the early days of field photography, they compel deliberate meditation on the benefits and pitfalls of human made technology on the circadian rhythm of living species. eloisaguanlao.com
In Aves, the one-hundred sewn birds are relics of my two daughters’ childhoods made from their outgrown clothes. They are also a relic of family hiking and camping trips when natural history is observed, appreciated, collected or discovered as fossils, feathers, flora, or deteriorated animal bones. The ambrotype images of “stuffed” birds perch as poignant, but pale souvenirs of real birds migrating over real places. Darwin’s Finches offers a fossilized record and a critical examination of our prevailing Anthropocene myopia. Wet collodion glass ambrotypes capture images of “stuffed” birds, threatened or endangered as a result of habitat loss and rising temperatures. Housed in a stylized view camera that harkens to the early days of field photography, they compel deliberate meditation on the benefits and pitfalls of human made technology on the circadian rhythm of living species. eloisaguanlao.com
Aves
Installation of sewn birds, fabric from outgrown children’s clothing 36 x 60 in. |
Darwin’s Finches
Freestanding sculpture of ambrotypes, wood and fabric 54 x 9 x 8 in. |
Meg Madison
In total, 270 million acres or 10% of all land in the United States were settled under the Homestead Act. Source: National Park Service www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/historyculture/homesteaders.htm
I am the third owner of a 5-acre parcel of homestead land in the Mojave Desert. Inspired by the concept of homesteading, I began to map the land with my cyanotype prints, using the sun, wind, passage of time and shadow of the living plants. Making them brought me close to the land and filled me with love for everything on it. I soon realized that this land had been given by the government to mostly white homesteaders to build homes had been stolen from the indigenous people who lived here for 10,000 years before settlers arrived.* I continue my Jemez Homestead / Stolen Land project in respect and acknowledgment of the Serrano People who once occupied this place that they called Ate ‘Ivyat or the rocky place. megmadison.com
In total, 270 million acres or 10% of all land in the United States were settled under the Homestead Act. Source: National Park Service www.nps.gov/jotr/learn/historyculture/homesteaders.htm
I am the third owner of a 5-acre parcel of homestead land in the Mojave Desert. Inspired by the concept of homesteading, I began to map the land with my cyanotype prints, using the sun, wind, passage of time and shadow of the living plants. Making them brought me close to the land and filled me with love for everything on it. I soon realized that this land had been given by the government to mostly white homesteaders to build homes had been stolen from the indigenous people who lived here for 10,000 years before settlers arrived.* I continue my Jemez Homestead / Stolen Land project in respect and acknowledgment of the Serrano People who once occupied this place that they called Ate ‘Ivyat or the rocky place. megmadison.com
Jemez Homestead /Stolen Land Project
No.179, 180 181, 182 Mojave Yucca photograms
Cyanotype photogram of yucca plants on Fabriano artistic pair
Paper, iron ore salts, native plant, sunlight, wind, water
54 x 70 in.installation, 20 x 22 in. each print
No.179, 180 181, 182 Mojave Yucca photograms
Cyanotype photogram of yucca plants on Fabriano artistic pair
Paper, iron ore salts, native plant, sunlight, wind, water
54 x 70 in.installation, 20 x 22 in. each print
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza
Although originally born on an island immigrating to the U.S. as a child distanced me from my country of origin. My illusions of paradise are reflected in Isla as I consider the disruptions, extractions, and intrusions of man. Educated in the U.S. public education system since the early 70s, my definition of an island or isla, was as a symbol of untamed beauty, paradise, a place to get away – however, through decolonization we observe how consumption erodes the illusion. maryrosecmendoza.com
Although originally born on an island immigrating to the U.S. as a child distanced me from my country of origin. My illusions of paradise are reflected in Isla as I consider the disruptions, extractions, and intrusions of man. Educated in the U.S. public education system since the early 70s, my definition of an island or isla, was as a symbol of untamed beauty, paradise, a place to get away – however, through decolonization we observe how consumption erodes the illusion. maryrosecmendoza.com
Isla
Pastry box, scenery materials, acrylic, found trash
13.5 x 9 x 13.5 in.
Pedestal 22 x 22 x 22 in.
Pastry box, scenery materials, acrylic, found trash
13.5 x 9 x 13.5 in.
Pedestal 22 x 22 x 22 in.
Naida Osline
In the Tattooed Tobacco series I used tobacco leaves as a surface for imagery to suggest that the plant, which has a complex relationship with humans, has inherited its own history that has grown out on its leaves. Tobacco was often used in the Americas as a sacred plant. For 500 years, the human use of tobacco has contributed significantly to global economies, challenged morality, caused violence, fueled addiction and generated legislation. In its current form, tobacco is no more “natural” than the world we inhabit. “Coming to Terms” the opening chapter of GRINGOTOPIA’ is based on interviews I did with 25 people from the US, Canada and Mexico living south of Guadalajara in the Lake Chapala area. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have left the US for Mexico in search of a better quality of life. These insightful, intimate and humorous stories of their life-changing moves are about much more than simply crossing a geographic border. naidaosline.com
In the Tattooed Tobacco series I used tobacco leaves as a surface for imagery to suggest that the plant, which has a complex relationship with humans, has inherited its own history that has grown out on its leaves. Tobacco was often used in the Americas as a sacred plant. For 500 years, the human use of tobacco has contributed significantly to global economies, challenged morality, caused violence, fueled addiction and generated legislation. In its current form, tobacco is no more “natural” than the world we inhabit. “Coming to Terms” the opening chapter of GRINGOTOPIA’ is based on interviews I did with 25 people from the US, Canada and Mexico living south of Guadalajara in the Lake Chapala area. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have left the US for Mexico in search of a better quality of life. These insightful, intimate and humorous stories of their life-changing moves are about much more than simply crossing a geographic border. naidaosline.com
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Tattooed Tobacco #1, #3, #7
Photograph of tobacco leaves
43.5 x 31.5 x 2.5 in.
Photograph of tobacco leaves
43.5 x 31.5 x 2.5 in.
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GRINGOTOPIA: Coming to Terms (chapter one)
Digital video of interviews made between 2015-16
10 minutes
View online at https://vimeo.com/channels/gringotopia
Digital video of interviews made between 2015-16
10 minutes
View online at https://vimeo.com/channels/gringotopia
Pamela J. Peters
I share people, cultures and environments through still images, short films, video poems and essays. In the Cheyenne Phoenix/ Venice Beach and “Viki Eagle/ Union Station photographs shown here, I present the significance of Native Americans to the cultural fabric of the United States. I utilize different media to tell Native American stories in the multifaceted ways they deserve to be told, in contrast to historically narrow depictions. I call this work Indigenous Realism, as it situates contemporary Native narratives in nostalgic historical environments that allows history to be retold through the participation of Native Americans in a modern context. My overall work pushes viewers to critically analyze the psychological and historical structures of Native Americans in mass media. We are here, we’ve always been here. My Once Life is a hybrid video poem about the continuing impact of colonization on tribal peoples. I asked twelve native female friends to read my poem to show the diversity of tribal nations living in Los Angeles and the passion and collective connection we share as Indigenous women to our tribal history.
Participating Readers: Nanabah Hill (Navajo-Oneida), Diana Terrazas (Paiute), JaNae Collins (Dakota-Crow), Xelt’tia Temryss Lane (Lummi Nation), Viki Eagle, Sicanqu (Lakota-Sioux), Cheyenne Phoenix (Northern Paiute-Navajo), Stephanie Mushrush, (Washoe Tribe), Hakekta Winyan Jealous Of Him (Lakota), Chrissie Castro (Navajo), Neyom Friday (Cheyenne-Arapaho and Mskoke Creek), Vivian Garcia (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) and Deja Jones (Eastern Shoshone). https://pamelajpeters.com
I share people, cultures and environments through still images, short films, video poems and essays. In the Cheyenne Phoenix/ Venice Beach and “Viki Eagle/ Union Station photographs shown here, I present the significance of Native Americans to the cultural fabric of the United States. I utilize different media to tell Native American stories in the multifaceted ways they deserve to be told, in contrast to historically narrow depictions. I call this work Indigenous Realism, as it situates contemporary Native narratives in nostalgic historical environments that allows history to be retold through the participation of Native Americans in a modern context. My overall work pushes viewers to critically analyze the psychological and historical structures of Native Americans in mass media. We are here, we’ve always been here. My Once Life is a hybrid video poem about the continuing impact of colonization on tribal peoples. I asked twelve native female friends to read my poem to show the diversity of tribal nations living in Los Angeles and the passion and collective connection we share as Indigenous women to our tribal history.
Participating Readers: Nanabah Hill (Navajo-Oneida), Diana Terrazas (Paiute), JaNae Collins (Dakota-Crow), Xelt’tia Temryss Lane (Lummi Nation), Viki Eagle, Sicanqu (Lakota-Sioux), Cheyenne Phoenix (Northern Paiute-Navajo), Stephanie Mushrush, (Washoe Tribe), Hakekta Winyan Jealous Of Him (Lakota), Chrissie Castro (Navajo), Neyom Friday (Cheyenne-Arapaho and Mskoke Creek), Vivian Garcia (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) and Deja Jones (Eastern Shoshone). https://pamelajpeters.com
Viki Eagle, Union Station
Digital photography 21.25 x 14.5 in. |
Cheyenne Phoenix / Venice Beach
Digital photography 21.25 x 14.5 in. |
My Once Life with 12 Indigenous Women
Video poem , 3 minutes View online at: buttonpoetry.com/pamela-j-peters-life-contest-winner |
Sinan Leong Revell
Rousseau wrote in 1762 that “The fruits of the earth belong to all. The earth belongs to no one.“ Yet people fight wars over territories, goods and natural resources destroying the earth. Our widening wealth gap threatens clean air, water, space and food. The four DoppelgANGER self-portraits show how we have the potential to do both good or bad, depending on circumstances. These staged photos show the social divide — a homeless woman panhandling, a sunbather relaxing as her gardener works, a vigilante ‘arresting' an immigrant crossing the border and a news reporter documenting a wounded refugee in a war-torn landscape. As scarcity increases, so do the dangers people face as they seek safer places, By playing each character in these images, I strive to demonstrate our shared humanity. sinanrevell.com
Rousseau wrote in 1762 that “The fruits of the earth belong to all. The earth belongs to no one.“ Yet people fight wars over territories, goods and natural resources destroying the earth. Our widening wealth gap threatens clean air, water, space and food. The four DoppelgANGER self-portraits show how we have the potential to do both good or bad, depending on circumstances. These staged photos show the social divide — a homeless woman panhandling, a sunbather relaxing as her gardener works, a vigilante ‘arresting' an immigrant crossing the border and a news reporter documenting a wounded refugee in a war-torn landscape. As scarcity increases, so do the dangers people face as they seek safer places, By playing each character in these images, I strive to demonstrate our shared humanity. sinanrevell.com
DopplegANGER—Border Patrol
Archival inkjet print on aluminum 19 x 29 x 2 in. 
DopplegANGer — Homeless & Hungry
17 x 29 x 2 in. Archival inkjet print on aluminum |
Click DopplegANGER—World News
Archival inkjet print on aluminum 18 x 29 x 2 in. 
DopplegANGER—The Gardner
Archival inkjet print on aluminum 19 x 29 x 2 in. |
Linda Vallejo
Beginning in 2010, I began a series of “brown” works that visualize what it means to be a person of color in the US. In 2015 I began collecting data and asking how statistics could change attitudes about color and class—and about the Latino place in the American Dream. The Datos Sagrados works are data-based “pictographs” that tell stories about contemporary US Latinos. I hand-draw the form, count the spaces, multiply that number by the data to be represented and paint the appropriate number of spaces brown.* Critic and curator Shana Nys Dambrot has noted, “By taking a simple mathematical process that connects to her own experience, Vallejo has generated a rarefied language of mark-making that is only brown paint on paper, and yet comprises a wealth of holistic meaning from the deeply personal to the political, spiritual, philosophical, and psychological.” lindavallejo.com
Beginning in 2010, I began a series of “brown” works that visualize what it means to be a person of color in the US. In 2015 I began collecting data and asking how statistics could change attitudes about color and class—and about the Latino place in the American Dream. The Datos Sagrados works are data-based “pictographs” that tell stories about contemporary US Latinos. I hand-draw the form, count the spaces, multiply that number by the data to be represented and paint the appropriate number of spaces brown.* Critic and curator Shana Nys Dambrot has noted, “By taking a simple mathematical process that connects to her own experience, Vallejo has generated a rarefied language of mark-making that is only brown paint on paper, and yet comprises a wealth of holistic meaning from the deeply personal to the political, spiritual, philosophical, and psychological.” lindavallejo.com
“Datos Sagrados: 30% of US Population will be Latino in 2050
Gouache and pencil on handmade paper 22 x 22 in.diameter *112 drawn spaces x 30% = 34 painted brown spaces 
Datos Sagrados: 66% of Unauthorized US Latinos Have Lived in US at Least a Decade
Gouache and pencil on handmade paper 12 in.diameter *124 drawn spaces x 66% = 82 painted brown spaces |
Datos Sagrados: 63% of US Labor Trafficking is Latino
Gouache and pencil on handmade paper 22 x 22 in.diameter *116 drawn spaces x 63% = 73 painted brown spaces 
Datos Sagrados: 60% of US Latinos Experience Good Relations with Blacks
Gouache on handmade paper 12 in.diameter *64 drawn spaces x 60% = 38 painted brown spaces |
Gail Werner
I am part Cupeño, Luiseño, and Kumeyaay (three Native American tribes located in San Diego County). I think about my connection to the land through my ancestors who have called this area home for thousands of years. I think about how we are connected to the land through our stories and songs. My works are a reflection on the Southern California desert and mountain landscapes, as well as the creation stories and traditional songs called “bird songs” that are sung throughout this area. In these stories and songs, plants and animals are the characters and are considered to be people. The stories and songs in Sage III, Rock Wren VI, Bird Dreams V and Birdsong tell about how the world came to be and how the people came to be where they are. Some of the “bird songs” tell about what the people see on their journey, a journey which is said to parallel the migration of the birds. gailwernerart.com
I am part Cupeño, Luiseño, and Kumeyaay (three Native American tribes located in San Diego County). I think about my connection to the land through my ancestors who have called this area home for thousands of years. I think about how we are connected to the land through our stories and songs. My works are a reflection on the Southern California desert and mountain landscapes, as well as the creation stories and traditional songs called “bird songs” that are sung throughout this area. In these stories and songs, plants and animals are the characters and are considered to be people. The stories and songs in Sage III, Rock Wren VI, Bird Dreams V and Birdsong tell about how the world came to be and how the people came to be where they are. Some of the “bird songs” tell about what the people see on their journey, a journey which is said to parallel the migration of the birds. gailwernerart.com
Rock Wren VI
Oil and pencil on wood panel 24 x 18 in. 
Bird Dreams V
Encaustic on wood panel 14 x 11 in. |
Sage III
Oil and pencil on wood panel 36 x 24 in. |
artist bios
Kim Abeles is an artist whose artworks explore biography, geography, feminism, and the environment. Her work speaks to society, science literacy, and civic engagement, creating projects with science and natural history museums, health departments, air pollution control agencies, National Park Service, and non-profits. In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the smog in the air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to national and international attention. In 2019, she worked with Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow to create smog portraits of world leaders with quotes from climate summits. National Endowment for the Arts funded two recent projects: a residency at the Institute of Forest Genetics where she focused on Resilience; and, Valises for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections, and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains in collaboration with Camp 13, a group of female prison inmates who fight wildfires. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Her work is in forty public collections including MOCA, LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Her process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment.
Mariona Barkus has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States as well as internationally. Barkus’ work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Getty Research Institute, UCLA, Franklin Furnace Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Museum, Long Beach Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Carnegie-Mellon University, UC Berkeley, Houston Contemporary Art Museum, and Eastern Washington University, among others. Her work has been reviewed in numerous catalogues and periodicals including The Los Angeles Times and Artweek. Some of the books featuring her work are Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern by Arlene Raven; Other Visions, Other Voices by Paul Von Blum with a forward by Lucy Lippard; Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook by The Visual Studies Workshop; From Site to Vision: the Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture, edited by Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton, and most recently, American Artists Against War 1935—2010 by David McCarthy, University of California Press.
Sharon Barnes is an inter-disciplinary Los Angeles-based artist born in Sacramento, CA, and raised in Los Angeles. She studied at Otis College of Art & Design where she recently returned to complete her MFA in Fine Arts, and previously earned a BA in Television & Film from CSULA. Barnes has exhibited nationally and internationally, including group shows at the California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Aqua Art Miami, the Los Angeles Tom Bradley Airport and a site installation at the Arco Chato in the Republic of Panama. She has completed residencies at the Ox-Bow School of Art & Artist Residency in Saugatuck, MI and the Spelman College Art Colony at Taller Portobelo in Panama. Barnes’ work is part of the permanent collection of the UCLA Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies, as well as private and business collections.
Pilar Castillo is a Belizean-born artist based in Los Angeles, and proudly represents the Caribbean diaspora. She has dedicated twenty-years as an art practitioner and professional in the L.A> art community with a focus on public art. As a painter and illustrator, she applies handmade processes to design work ranging from publication to product design. In 2018 she ventured into entrepreneurship opening CastlePillar Design studio. Most notably designing artwork for the 2018 launch of LAX
Terminal 1 for Los Angeles World Airports. Since 2017 she’s been a featured designer with the city’s LA Original brand. Pilar holds an M.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design, a B.A. in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA’s School of Art & Architecture, and has completed field studies in Amsterdam, Belgium and Cuba.
Danielle Eubank is a painter exploring the relationship between abstraction and realism. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Eubank conceived One Artist Five Oceans, a 20-year project as an expedition artist sailing and painting the waters of every ocean on Earth. Culminating with an expedition to Antarctica in 2019, the Southern Ocean is Eubank's fifth and final ocean. It caps her decades-long quest to paint every ocean on the planet to raise awareness about the state of the oceans and climate change. Eubank is the Expedition Artist for the Phoenicia Ship Expedition, a replica 600BCE ship that sailed from Syria and circumnavigated Africa. Eubank was invited to participate in the UNESCO approved Borobudur Ship Expedition. As Expedition Artist she traveled 10,000 miles with the replica 8th century Indonesian boat from Indonesia to Ghana. Eubank also sailed aboard the barquentine tall ship The Antigua on an expedition to the High Arctic that sailed to the northernmost settlement on Earth. She painted the Henley Royal Regatta 2011-2014. A film documentary about her work, Mozambique VI, premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival. She was a 2018 Creative Climate Award nominee and received the WCA/United Nations Program Honor Roll Award in 2019.
Eloisa Guanlao cis a multi-disciplinary artist and scholar. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota, California State University in Long Beach, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and LACHSA for her art and art history training.She currently makes a home in California with her husband and two daughters. Three threads converge in her artwork: migration, technological dependence, and colonialism She finds that one thread inevitably runs into the other two, forming a muddled jumble that can only be sifted through and examined via art–a means of corporeal and spiritual survival.
Meg Madison is an artist who uses photography to conceptually examine contemporary life. She was born and raised in New York City, studied film at San Francisco State and came to art late with her first solo exhibit at the Kristi Engle Gallery in 2005. Madison embraced art making with community projects, collaborations, and exhibitions in galleries, non-profit spaces, and museums in Los Angeles and beyond. Madison’s early work explored memory, ritual, and the ecological transition from being wanted to being discarded; this was followed by projects on land use, measuring, mapping and the human connection to the land. Jemez Homestead: Stolen Land is a long-term project using the sun to create cyanotype photograms that map a five-acre homestead parcel in the high desert. The paper is snuggled into shrubs and braced against desert plants- the elements of the sun, the wind, the iron salts, the physical presence of land ( the plants shadow) and finally the local well water to develop — all collide creating a print that has touched the land —leaving marks, holes, and scratches on the paper, a metaphor for the contact of land stewardship.
Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator, has crafted her own visual language of transformation, exalting the everyday in drawings, sculpture, and installation for nearly 30 years. Using memory, material significance, and personal narrative, her work investigates colonized and decolonized perspectives reflecting circumstances of cultural amnesia and assimilation through processes of the handmade. Mendoza is an Associate Professor in Drawing in the Visual Arts and Media Studies Division at Pasadena City College and earned an MFA from the Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been exhibited at the Pacific Asia Museum, Los Angeles’ Municipal Art Gallery, Commonwealth and Council, Baik Art, Solway Jones, HudsonJones Gallery, PlugIn Gallery, YYZ Artist’s Outlet, and many others. Her most comprehensive solo exhibition, Navigating Technics, is currently on display at the Orange County Museum of Art. Mendoza was honored as a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (2019), and with C.O.L.A. Individual Artist, L. A. Artists’, and Art Matters Fellowships, as well as honorariums from the YYZ Artist’s Outlet, the PlugIn Gallery, and the Pacific Asia Museum. She has enjoyed internships and artist residencies at Art Space Yosuga in Kyoto, Japan, Joshua Tree Highlands Residency, Yaddo Artist Retreat and the Socrates Sculpture Foundation.
Naida Osline is a photo and video artist who combines images sourced from analog and digital processes, blending conceptual and documentary practices. Based in Southern California, she works throughout the Americas, exploring themes of community, identity, gender, aging and transformation, along with the mystical and natural worlds in tension with the human-built environment. Osline’s work has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Southern California and internationally. She has done extended residencies in Colombia, SA and Mexico as well as in U.S. national parks. Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Artillery Magazine, Huffington Post, the OC Weekly, Culture Magazine, Coast Magazine, Artweekand ArtScene. The gallery features a screening of a series of twelve, ten-minute video shorts that comprise Gringotopia (2018), which explores an area south of Guadalajara in Mexico that is a magnet for expatriates from the U.S. and Canada who moved there for a better quality of life. The video series, seen by over 8,000 viewers worldwide, includes English and Spanish subtitles. Osline’s most recent project is a feature length film (with Tyler Stallings) called Hometown Proud (2020) that explores attitudes related to growing up LGBTQ in rural Ohio.
Pamela J. Peters is a Diné multimedia documentarian and artist from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Pamela is from the Táchii'nii (Red Running Into the Water People clan). She is a multimedia artist, producing works she regards as "Indigenous Realism" exploring the lives and diversities of real American Indians. As an artist and curator, she pushes viewers to critically analyze the psychological and historical structures of Native Americans in mass media through a Native lens while expressing creative sovereignty. She lives in Los Angeles.
SINAN LEONG REVELL iis a multi-disciplinary artist who works in different art media including painting, photography, ceramics, encaustic and performance. Her work has revolved around the experiences of cultural displacement, politics and identity , referencing both global and personal perspectives on migration and cultural diaspora .Born in China, Sinan migrated to Australia as a child .Buddhist -Taoist and Catholic school attitudes blended disparate cultures. After graduating from Sydney University, she went on to study art, drama and butoh before joining “SPK”,an industrial band in England, After re-locating to the US and spurred by the events of 9/11, she began the “Doppelg-ANGER” series. Inspired by Cindy Sherman’s portraits, Revell channelled an outsider’s outrage at the apathy towards such scenes as gun violence, mass shootings, racism, war. In these staged, photographs, she assumes the character of each of the principal players — victim and oppressor. In portraying the self as capable of both roles-good or bad, Revell shows how we are all connected.
Linda Vallejo consolidates multiple, international influences gained from a life of study and travel throughout Europe, the US and Mexico to create works that investigate contemporary cultural and socio-political issues. Recent solo exhibitions include LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes (2019-2020); Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA (2018); bG Gallery, Santa Monica (2017); Texas A&M University Reynolds Gallery (2016); and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Los Angeles CA (2015). Brown Belongings was featured in the NY Times “Visualizing Latino Populations Through Art” by Jill Cowan (11- 26- 9) and in LA Times “Linda Vallejo and a decade of art that unapologetically embraces brownness” by Matt Stromberg (7-20-19). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA, Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, East Los Angeles College Vincent Price Museum, Los Angeles CA, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago Ill, and UC Santa Barbara, California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA).
Gail Werner earned her M.F.A. in drawing and painting from California State University, Long Beach in 1985. She is a painter working in oil and encaustic. She also specializes in the monotype printmaking process. The Southern California desert and mountain landscapes, plant and animal life, and cultural elements related to her Native American background inspire her work. She is part Cupeño, Luiseño, and Kumeyaay, three tribes located in Southern California. Recent shows include The Skies Above,sponsored by the Autrey Museum at the Historic Southwest Museum Mt. Washington Campus in Los Angeles, Protecting Mother Earth, at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, Meditations, a four-person inaugural exhibit of the new Long Beach arts registry at the Collaborative gallery, and The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Indigenous Arts of the Neshkinukat Artists at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden Library. She was also included in the juried exhibits, 4th National Monotype/Monoprint Juried Exhibit, Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, Massachusetts, 2015 California Open Exhibition, Tag Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, and Ink and Clay 41, Kellogg University Art Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona. In addition, she painted a mural for the 2016 POW! WOW! Mural Festival in downtown Long Beach.