Serving Students and Faculty of Orange County!

It has been a busy couple of weeks at Grand Central Art Center, with many classes visiting our current exhibitions.  Through faculty of Irvine Valley College, Fullerton College, as well as numerous class visits and individual critiques by our Cal State University Fullerton Department of Visual Art faculty, GCAC has been active.

CSUF Prof. Kyung Sun Cho class visits current exhibition of CSUF GCAC Residents exhibition.

Kyung Sun Cho, CSUF Visual Arts Professor and Program Coordinator in Drawing and Painting, brought her class to discuss the current exhibition that features the work of current CSUF MFA students who live on site at GCAC.  The exhibiting artists spoke about their individual work in the exhibition, than the class discussed the individual works and exhibition as a whole.  A very lively conversation!

Fullerton College Prof. Carol Henke’s class tours with GCAC Director/Chief Curator John D. Spiak

Fullerton College Prof. Carol Henke’s class tours GCAC

Fullerton College Art Gallery Director and Professor Carol Henke brought her Exhibition Design class over for a tour.  Our Director/Chief Curator John D. Spiak spoke with the class about curatorial practice and opportunities in the museum and art world, shared his insights into the current exhibitions, and provided the group a full tour of the GCAC facility.  A great group of individuals who we know will be active in the local art scene.

Amy Grimm’s Irvine Valley College class discusses the work of CSUF MFA student Patrick Faulk

Amy Grimm’s Irvine Valley College class is discussion with GCAC Director/Chief Curator John D. Spiak

Amy Grimm’s Irvine Valley College Curatorial Practice class

Amy Grimm, Assistant Professor of Art History & Museum Studies at Irvine Valley College, visited GCAC with her Curatorial Practice class.  Once again, our Director spent time providing full tours and engaged with the class in productive conversation about the current contemporary art world.  The class was a very well informed and intelligent group of students that asked the right questions and were clear with their aspirations.

We know we will see many great activities generated by both the Irvine Valley College and Fullerton College individuals in the very near future.  It is clear that their instructors are inspiring, teaching and exposing these students to the multiple perspectives and approaches of museum and gallery practice.  We hope to see many of them soon as students in our own CSUF programs!

CSUF Prof. Joe Biel with CSUF MFA Student and GCAC Resident Kaitrin Sones Mathew

CSUF Associate Professor in Foundations 2D Design, Joe Biel, has been over numerous times in the past month, doing individual critiques with CSUF students who have work in the current GCAC exhibition.  He has spent quality time in the exhibition talking with the students about their concepts, techniques and vision for their work and directions they might take as the work moves forward.  The exhibition has provided a great opportunity for such engagement between faculty and students, a chance for the students to share insight and receive feedback while their work is hanging on our gallery walls, as well to interact at receptions with the public who are enjoying their creations.

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF Prof. Karin Schnell class presenting docent tours as class assignment

CSUF’s Museum Education program has been using the space as well.  Through classes taught by Prof. Karin Schnell, students visited Grand Central Art Center for a tour, followed by the students presenting practice docent/education tours of our current exhibitions.  Many of the students have been making visits to the center over the past few weeks to see and learn more about the exhibitions in preparation for the tours they created and presented to their fellow students.  It has been wonderful to have multiple visits by these students over such a short period of time, and to work with them as they develop the direction and perspective of their tours.

This is what GCAC is all about, the sharing of inspiration and information to enhance personal education, both formal university and general public, through the world of art and creativity.  We enjoy our role as educational outreach for the arts and invite teachers, professors and instructors from all across Southern California to connect with us.  Just call us, 714.567.7233, as we are happy to schedule a full tour for your class or group!

Saskia Jorda: Unraveling Tradition

Saturday, May 4 – Sunday, July 14, 2013

Opening Reception

Saturday, May 4, 2013, 7 – 10 p.m. during the Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk

Saskia Jorda with Angelica Perez-Aguirre

Unraveling Tradition is an installation that sets out to explore the coming-of-age tradition of the Quinceañera, popular in Latin American cultures.  Through this project, artist Saskia Jorda reflects on what it means for a young girl to experience this rite of passage, and examines the impacts on these young girls families and to their direct communities. During the artist’s two-month Grand Central Art Center residency, Jorda engaged in questions such as: “How do we hold on to tradition and retain cultural identity while assimilating a new culture?” “How does tradition change and evolve over time in a new cultural setting and how is that expressed through second and third generations?” and “What socio-economic impact does this celebration have on a family or community?”

While many of these questions are only partially answered, Unraveling Tradition has engaged in a direct dialogue with a variety of residents and businesses throughout Santa Ana, a community where the Quinceañera is relevant. For many, it is an important ritual that expresses family values and identity.

A key element in the visual vocabulary of Unraveling Tradition is the ruffle, a ubiquitous fashion element found in the elaborately ornate dresses in window displays of the numerous Bridal and Quinceañera shops along Santa Ana’s Fourth Street. With the assistance of California State University Fullerton BFA student Angelica Perez-Aguirre, community members, additions CSUF faculty and students, and GCAC staff, the artist hand-gathered a strip of fabric that is approximately the length of Santa Ana’s Fourth Street’s shop district (nearly 1/4 mile long) – a continuous ruffle to metaphorically connect this long-standing tradition and its community.

In Unraveling Tradition, the long ruffle strand wraps around a sculptural frame (reminiscent of the historic hoop skirts) in a kinetic installation that will unravel throughout the course of the two and a half month exhibition: gradually the skirt frame becomes more and more exposed. As the skirt frame becomes uncovered, the ruffles build up into an excessive pile of ruffles, allowing the visitor to experience a revolving installation – a complex layer of meaning of this coming-of-age tradition.

Grand Central Art Center and artist Saskia Jorda would like to thank Quinceañera Magazine for their generous in-kind support of this project.

 

Past Blog Posts of the Artist Residency and her Public Engagement:

https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/saskia-jorda-wraps-first-part-of-residency/

https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/workshop-317-update-on-artist-in-residence-saskia-jordas-unraveling-tradition/

https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/unraveling-tradition-explore-the-quinceanera-saskia-jorda-artist-in-residence/

 

 

Divested Interest: Exchange Dialogues with Cog•nate Collective & Ramiro Gomez

Curated by Martha Lourdes Rocha & Emily D. A. Tyler

Saturday, May 4 – Sunday, July 14, 2013

Conversations #4

Saturday, May 4, 2013, 6 – 7 p.m.

Join the curators for an informal discussion with the artists as part of GCAC’s ongoing public program event series Conversations.

Opening Reception

Saturday, May 4, 2013, 7 – 10 p.m. during the Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk

Closing Reception (TBD)

Ramiro Gomez

Cog•nate Collective

Divested Interest: Exchange Dialogues with Cog•nate Collective & Ramiro Gomez features artistic exchanges, interruptions and interventions by artists Misael Diaz and Amy Sanchez of Cog•nate  Collective and artist Ramiro Gomez.  The artists have been invited to Grand Central Art Center to create artwork that is responsive to the current social climate, built environment and locational identity of Santa Ana through an ongoing series of installations, interviews and workshops.  GCAC will transform into a space of exchange, an open forum to discuss dialogues about gentrification.  Both gallery installations and site-specific works aim to explore labor and migration in Southern California.  Through strategies of Urban Interventionism, the artists will create a current critical analysis of social, economic and cultural situation within historic downtown Santa Ana.

To stimulate community participation and create new awareness of social issues, Gomez will place a series of painted cardboard cutouts into various public spaces, an extension of his Happy Hills, Beverly Hills series. Gomez utilizes materials of protest, found and repurposed cardboard, to make visible the invisible plight of an often-overlooked Latino workforce. Also included in the exhibition are 20 torn out pages of luxury home magazines, hand painted to include figures of the laborers charged with maintaining these polished domestic environments. As a former live-in nanny, Gomez pulls from personal experience challenging viewers to see what he has seen. He interrupts the communities in which he works to bring to light candid moments of social divide.

An installation of Something to do with Crossing… by Cog•nate Collective will introduce an informal system of exchange in the exhibition space that replicates the same actions occurring in border towns. Visitors are encouraged to exchange a photograph of clothing hanging on a clothesline for an article of their own that will take its place – the articles left will be donated by the artists to charities.

Cog•nate will also conduct interviews with local activists, artists and shop owners about recent and ongoing transformations in historic downtown Santa Ana. The interviews will be recorded and played within the gallery and around the downtown area using a mobile listening station equipped with an FM radio transmitter.In addition to the interviews, Cog•nate’s project will take the form of a series of workshops inside of the exhibition space with interviewees, artists, and the general public about issues relating to gentrification. The objective of these workshops will be to stage a performance or intervention at the end of the exhibition. The specific form and tactics of this final act will be developed through the workshops and will aim to further engage political and economic policy makers dictating the current and future direction of Santa Ana.