2014 EXHIBITION / ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE PREVIEW – Grand Central Art Center

GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER
A Unit of California State University, Fullerton
College of the Arts

2014 PREVIEW
EXHIBITIONS AND ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
*confirmed to date – more programs being developed

EXHIBITIONS

Matthew Moore and Braden King: Cumulus
Curated by John D. Spiak, GCAC Director/Chief Curator
Residency/Exhibition with support of the Metabolic Studio and Casio
Continues through January 5, 2014

Cumulus marks the first collaboration between these two accomplished artists. Through the residency, the artists set out on journeys – a series of driving trips along the Los Angeles Aqueduct – marking its 100th anniversary. They connected with people who work, live and engage along its path. Their travels allowed them the opportunity to listen to the land and then the water as it rushed down the cascade near Newhall Pass; flowed through massive piping in the Antelope Valley; traversed under slabs of concrete through the Mohave Desert; diverted from the Owens River.

Through the use of building materials, specifically used scaffolding planks, the artists have created a massive pipeline that emerges from one side of the gallery before quickly disappearing into the other. Projected upon it are moving images of atmosphere and landscape, traversing its surface as fluidly as water flows through the aqueduct itself. The installation reflects our inherent curiosity, of being fascinated by the things humans decide to make. To quote Moore, “the audacity of the human endeavor is never more apparent than when societies come together to construct such industrial feats as the aqueduct, achieving a perceived common good.” At the same time, such achievements acknowledge our limits of control as makers, as much as we desire to do so.”

From Moore’s direct experience of water in agriculture, “to believe in it as a certainty is inherently flawed. We can build all the infrastructure and systems to transport this precious resource, but if it doesn’t rain, they are all for naught.” He continues, “there may be no more hopeful image than that of a cloud… the promise of sustenance and a future that cannot be controlled by the will of man.”

Aili Schmeltz: Cross Cut
Curated by Yevgeniya Mikhailik, GCAC Curatorial Associate
Continues through February 9, 2014

Cross Cut, from Aili Schmeltz’s Tomorrowland series, explores the idea that utopia can be considered not only a place or a goal, but also as the very act of striving for such a target. Schmeltz’s hybridized structures are materializations, remnants of an ideal that never was and may never be. As fallen monuments to a utopic philosophy, they function as relics of both a “good place” and “no place.” Part architectural, part fossil, part potential: these works utilize discarded building materials that appear to have crystallized within a ‘natural’ process – strata that have undergone philosophical transformation yet to be fulfilled.

Rage Bear: Juggling Awesome

Organized by Marvin Chow, CSUF MFA in illustration
Continues through February 9, 2014

An exhibition representing both in-game artwork, concept artwork and fan artwork as it relates to Rage Bear – a concept involving a Bibi bear whose specialty juggling skills allow him to juggle ridiculous amount of objects when he gets angry. Through the invitation of Marvin Chow, 30 Los Angeles-based entertainment artists will develop work for the exhibition, creating part of the Rage Bear storyline in their own personal style.

Participating artists include: Craig Mackay, Kelly Delanty, Alex Leon, Kevin Bentz, Candice Lee, Jack Sy, Paul Grab, Isaak Lien, Nathan Drobnack, Diana Drobnack, Jerry Ortega, Kingsley Harden, K Godfrey, Ray Mendoza, Corey Peters, Jia Tan, Casey Matsumoto, Eugene Negri, Tiffany Ma, Aaron Jones, Alex Santa Clara

Ceramics and Glass
Curated by Yevgeniya Mikhailik, GCAC Curatorial Associate
Continues through February 9, 2014

A small selection of works from CSUF alumni, students and members of our community.

Participating artists include: Aimee Sones (alumna/faculty), Brandon Lipe (student), Chelsea Wonenberg, Diana Donaldson, Elijah Wooldridge, Hiromi Takizawa (alumna), Jose M. Flores (student), Karen Thayer, Kimberly McKinnis (student), Klai Brown, Philip Kupferschmidt (student), Sarah Alonzo, Xin Xin Chen (student)

Julianne Swartz and Ken Landauer: Miracle Report
Coordinated by John D. Spiak, GCAC Director/Chief Curator
January 18 – May 11, 2014

Julianne Swartz and Ken Landauer spent their Social Studies residency at the ASU Art Museum looking for miracles. The artists explored the miraculous through people’s perceptions of it in their lives, interviewing students, school children and community members of all ages and backgrounds. They combined their findings in an installation of fleeting vignettes playing on all of the available sound and video equipment in the museum’s possession. In the words of the artists, “Our installation strives to embody some beauty, some hocus-pocus and some unexplainable magic.”

Using all the available sound and video equipment at Grand Central Art Center, the artists will create a new site-specific installation of this work.

Miracle Report was first realized at the Arizona State University Art Museum and supported by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as part of the Social Studies series. John D. Spiak initiated this project. Upon Spiak’s departure to accept his new position at Grand Central Art Center, Heather Sealy Lineberry with Nicole Herden curated the exhibition at ASU Art Museum.

Heather Bowling and Amanda Patenaude: You Are What You Concede
Curated by Kimberly McKinnis, CSUF MA in Exhibition and Design
March 1 through April 13, 2014

East Coast artist Amanda Pantenaude will team up with West Coast artist Heather Bowling, for a first time collaboration, creating a site-specific installation made from recycled materials collected within the Santa Ana community.  The artists are interested in social awareness and have created previous participatory projects in the hope to educate the public about current and pressing global issues.

The collection of materials will be organized through a series of community events, collaborating with local individuals and organizations. Hands-on workshops, panels and programs are being developed for the course of the exhibition.

Julia Haft-Candell: Fast and Slow
Curated by Yevgeniya Mikhailik, GCAC Curatorial Associate
March 1 through May 11, 2014

Julia Haft-Candell’s sculptures are physical records of their making, and a reflection of their own history. Using small components to build larger forms, the artist continually invents, reassesses and makes endless decisions about how the work takes shape. Ultimately the goal is to form a composition that most effectively speaks to the ambiguity of perception and the complexity of being.

Using forms inspired by nature and the body, as well as ideas derived from quick doodles and sketches, she focuses on the space in between two contrasting concepts as a metaphor for my experience as a human being. In Haft-Candell’s words “I express contradictions. I seek the intersection of the conscious and subconscious, construction and destruction, fast and slow, serious and funny, hard and soft.”

Jody Zellen: Above the Fold
Curated by John D. Spiak, GCAC Director/Chief Curator
June 7 through August 10, 2014

Above the Fold is an exhibition of a series of artworks that take their point of departure from world news images from the New York Times. Included in Above the Fold are gouache on paper paintings, digital images and a two-channel video installation.

Above the fold traditionally refers to the upper half of the front page of a newspaper where an important story or photograph catches the attention of passersby. In the digital age it refers to what is visible on the screen without scrolling. These images proliferate endlessly suggesting that the news is entertainment. Zellen calls attention to this bombardment by creating her own over-saturated installation. She begins with an image that appears above the fold culled from both digital and print media and proceeds to alter it in a variety of ways. In one series of works she reduces the image to its essential pixels distilling the photograph into a grid of colors. While the original image is diffused, it never disappears. Through a process of layering fragments taken from news photographs she builds an abstract composition. Images of war, man-made and natural disasters and the destruction they cause are ubiquitous in the digital age. Today one expects instantaneous documentation of events as they occur. By appropriating this imagery Zellen changes its context and therefore the way the images communicate and how what they represent is understood.

Time Jitters is a two channel video projection that juxtaposes a grid of 25 looping animations with a single channel narrative.

The various components in Zellen’s work serve as building blocks that can be reconfigured for different mediums. A line drawing is scanned and used in a digital collage, which becomes a template for a painting, a page in an artist’s book, an image in an iPad app as well as an animation in which the drawing process is made visible. Drawing and the relationship between how the computer generates a line in contrast to what is created by the hand is central to Zellen’s explorations.

Also included will be a series of gouache on paper paintings. These 22 x 30 inch works illustrate the cycle of regeneration — birth and growth, death and decay – collectively becoming a representation of the passage of time. While the specific events may not be discernible, the works poetically and metaphorically alter these cyclical images. The translucent pastel colors of the paintings contrast with the harsher opaque tones in another work; a grid of 40 small digital prints collectively entitled “If.” “If” is also a 40- page limited edition artist’s book whose sequence reads as a poetic narrative.

Flora Kao: Wind House
Curated by Yevgeniya Mikhailik, GCAC Curatorial Associate
June 7 through August 10, 2014

Flora Kao’s installations respond to the endless repetition of the urban landscape. Each installation is a drawing in space, built from a multitude of repeating marks. By multiplying ordinary elements like sound, shadow, plant, paper, or line, Kao creates elegant systems that sculpt and activate space. She plays with malleability of meaning and visual slippage, where street grids dissipate into atmospherics and constellations, consumer waste morphs into musical forests, and plants take flight.

With the GCAC installation Wind House, abode that a breath effaced, artist Flora Kao explores the poignant associations of a collapsed desert homestead. Making a life size rubbing of the shack’s debris field, Kao transforms the physical evidence of failure into a sensuous architectonic experience.

LOUDsilence
Curated by Amanda Cachia
September 6, 2014 – TBD

What happens when a composer and/or performer have no control over sound, or rather when they purposefully choose to relinquish control over sound? How does such a radical act change the soundscape? What new noises ensue from such acts, and how can the binary of loudness and silence be transformed in politicized ways? And how might the idea of “trespass” be employed to energize, expand, negate, or flip the idea of “access” within the territory of sound, in order to mobilize trespass in a way that re-imagines the agentive capacity of those not normally “permitted” equal access to sound? In particular, how does a composer/performer who is hearing and one who is deaf make loud silence or silence loud?

LOUDsilence explores the generative intersections of when the seminal work, 4’33” by John Cage collides with work by four contemporary deaf artists – Joseph Grigely, Darrin Martin, Alison O’Daniel and Christine Sun Kim. The exhibition includes work on paper, sculpture, video, film and audio works, plus archival material by John Cage.

ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE / PROJECTS

COG•NATE COLLECTIVE (MISAEL DIAZ AND AMY SANCHEZ)
Onsite Throughout 2014

Misael Diaz and Amy Sanchez were GCAC Artists in Residence for a first visit from April 15 through June 23, 2013. Based upon their extremely positive connection with our community and desire to continue the engagement, they were invited to returning as GCAC Artists in Residence throughout the coming year and are developing multiple projects to engage community.

The Social Neighborhood Art (S.N.A.) Project is in the process of invite local College and High school students to participate in the planning, designing and executing of an intervention in public space in Downtown Santa Ana.

For the first half of the program students will work with contemporary artists whose practice focuses on research and performances/interventions in public space and/or community engagement. During the second half of the program students will work together to design an intervention (or series of small interventions) elucidating an issue or condition in Downtown Santa Ana encountered during the walkthroughs and workshops.

The program will culminate with the intervention(s) and a concurrent or subsequent public exhibition and presentation. Students will collect documentation of their intervention to present during a round-table conversation and small exhibition at Grand Central Art Center (GCAC). Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz of Cog•nate Collective will facilitate bi-Monthly meetings.

Cog•nate Collective is in the development phase for a second project, which will be collaboration with Rudy Córdova of downtown Santa Ana’s Café Calacas.

CAROL A. STAKENAS
Multiple Site Visits Throughout 2014

Carol A. Stakenas was a collaborative partner with GCAC in 2013 through her role as Director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), before departing this fall for new activities in Boston. Stakenas returns to our region throughout the coming year as Artist in Residence at GCAC.

Grand Central Art Center is proud to partner with (SPAN) on a new podcast series – Social Practice AIR. Throughout 2014, Carol A. Stakenas, (SPAN) curator, will be interviewing the social practice artists of and collectives that are participating in GCAC’s artist in residency program. This project is dedicated to capturing and cultivating creative voices in our field to deepen critical understanding and share methodologies.

(SPAN) is a project of the Social Design Collective (LLC). The Social Design Collective LLC is an innovative design team comprised of artists, architects, urban planners, media professionals and educators. Collectively they have designed and implement a range of projects that have taken their shape in the form of permanent public art works, exhibition designs, marketing campaigns, educational platforms and civic engagement projects. They are interested in using creativity to generate long-term community, public and social benefits and create solutions through bridging cross-sector partnerships between community organizations, academic institutions, residents, youth and local municipalities.

INGRIED REEVE, BARBARA MILLIORN AND EVAN SENN
Onsite Throughout 2014

Ingrid Reeve, Barbara Milliorn and Evan Senn are recent graduates of programs at California State University, Fullerton. They return to their Alma Mater throughout the coming year as Artist in Residence at GCAC.

The Life of an Artist is a proposed television/webcast series that follows the lives of two Orange County artists and their manager, an art historian and art critic, as they strive for their professional dream: to collaborate with Marina Abramović, the Godmother of performance art, and to solidify their careers as professional artists.

The life of an artist is a difficult road to travel. In one of the art hubs in our contemporary society—the Metropolis of Los Angeles—it is near impossible. What sets one artist apart from the rest? What makes them more worthy for exhibitions, press and galleries than another? How is the struggle different for female artists? Now move them to Orange County. What then happens is that “near impossible” becomes heavier and more difficult to move.

Two female artists have paired together with an art critic and manager to better navigate through this difficult and tumultuous terrain. Together, they must conquer the battles to “make it” in the art world, and they’ve set their sights high. These three women tackle real life trials and tribulations and strive to make their way to blue chip collaborations in fine art. We watch as they hope that the road to success in the art world won’t destroy their relationships, their bank accounts or their practice. Follow this series to view the struggles and progress of these professional artists in The Life of An Artist.

During their Artist in Residence, the artists’ will be hosting and participating in monthly performances, including panels, discussions and workshops, as well as performances that will engage the community of Santa Ana and the larger Orange County region.

LISA BIELAWA
Multiple Site Visits Throughout 2014

Lisa Bielawa was GCAC Artists in Residence in summer of 2012 for a first site visit in the development of her Vireo project. She will be returning in the spring and fall of 2014.

Vireo is a serialized opera that will be recorded in front of a live audience and released as episodes via the Internet. The musical ensemble, as well as the roles of characters, will change per episode so as to broaden the scope of creative collaboration through Social Practice approaches.

Think Prairie Home Companion, John Cage, Bauhaus and Arrested Developed, all mashed together. Vireo takes high art form at intelligent levels and provides them to general audience, through mainstream media and contemporary delivery systems.

Vireo Timeline:
Spring-Summer 2014: partnership-building, casting, development of libretto and score for pilot episode.
July-August 2014: first press release, performers confirmed.
October 2014: rehearsals/first taping (over 1-2 weeks); post-production (1-2 weeks)
Late October/Early November: pilot episode released

HOLLY MYERS
Multiple Site Visits Throughout 2014

Holly Myers continues her GCAC Artists in Residence as she continues her research and development of the project What is Art Worth? – Conversations About Value in Contemporary Art.

What is art worth? Is a multi-dimensional research based project that aims to explore and interrogate the concept of value in relation to the visual arts. How is value determined in the art world? How do we talk about value? What are the different kinds of value and how do we understand the relationship between them? How is value generated? Who generates it? How is it utilized? How is it distributed? Whom does it benefit?

HEATHER LAYTON AND BRIAN BAILEY
Winter 2014

Heather Layton and Brian Bailey were GCAC Artists in Residence for a first visit in the winter of 2013. They will be returning for a second visit as they work toward a new major project being developed for GCAC.

Artists Heather Layton and Brian Bailey spent time in Orange County exploring the community and developing connects for a large-scale project currently being developed. Through their collaborative work, the artists have traveled to remote parts of the world, working with youth communities to teach skills in the filmmaking process, create films, developed film festivals and connect these communities to one another.

During there time at GCAC, Heather and Brian made direct connections with: Aaron Orullian, Director of the Film and Television Conservatory, Orange County School of the Arts; Veronica Arias-Aguayo, Service Coordinator, Project Access Resource Centers; Robert Santana, Chief Executive Officer, Boys & Girls Club of Santa Ana; Irv and Ryan Chase, Downtown Santa Ana Property Owners; Gabriela Lomeli, Project Manager, City of Santa Ana; Mayra Mejia Gille, Program Manager, Latino Health Access.

The connections mentioned served as initial research and developed relationships for future collaborative possibilities for the project in development. This second visit will continue the research and connection phase of their project.

DANIEL TUCKER
Spring 2014

Daniel Tucker was GCAC Artists in Residence in fall of 2013 for a first site visit in the development of his Future Perfect: The Ronald Reagan Time Capsule project. Tucker returns from April through June to realize the project.

Part speculative fiction and part real-world intervention, Future Perfect: The Ronald Reagan Time Capsule is conceived of as a series of writing workshops and public sculpture burials taking place up and down the coast of California in 2014. The event-based work will result in a publication and exhibition.

The combined focus on time capsules, Reagan, and speculative fiction comes out of a 1976 speech given by Reagan in which he references a time capsule – one for which he wrote a letter speculating what the world would be like one hundred years in the future.

Future Perfect will partner with local organizations, universities and collaborators from San Diego to Eureka. Those involved in the project can engage by writing letters in the voice of Reagan (as his Bicentennial letter has never been recovered) or in the voice of other figures (fictitious or real) that would have buried time capsules concurrently with Reagan. These letters will be buried in time capsules throughout the State of California. The capsules will be buried with the letters collected in each locale and a burial event will be organized with all of the local participants.

SUSAN ROBB
Spring through Summer 2014

Susan Robb was GCAC Artists in Residence in fall of 2013 for a first site visit in the development of her Wild Times project. She will be activating her project from April to September of 2014.

Beginning in April of 2014, GCAC will be a home base for engagement with the project Wild Times – a site of virtual connection to Susan during her upcoming 5-month journey, a 2,650-mile hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Using her experiences as inspiration and medium, she will send “trail transmissions” to Grand Central Art Center via 3D printing, text exchange and Skype communications. Community engagers of the project at GCAC will serve as collaborators, interacting with the project, the artist, and the broader public via hands on activities in the gallery and the Wild Times website.

CARMEN PAPALIA AND KRISTIN ROCHELLE LANTZ
Fall 2014

Carmen Papalia, with curatorial support by Kristin Rochelle Lantz, were GCAC Artists in Residence for a first visit in the spring of 2013. They will be returning for a second visit as they work toward a new major project being developed for GCAC.

Artist Carmen Papalia, with curatorial support by Kristin Rochelle Lantz, spent time in Orange County exploring the community and developing connects for a large-scale project currently being developed. Through their collaborative work, they have been developing ideas around the concept of tactility as a way of knowing.

During his time at GCAC, Carmen performed a walk through the city titled Mobility Device, accompanied by Santa Ana’s Century High School Marching Band.
https://grandcentralartcenter.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/short-film-documentary-on-artist-carmen-papalias-mobility-device-performance-gcac-2/

Berkley-based author Georgina Kleege tells of an experience in which she had the opportunity to touch a sculptural maquette that Matisse used in order to produce a 2-dimensional figure on canvas. The moment is of particular interest to the blind author since it describes how the tactile sense can be used in order to understand a thing visually. This image, of the blind accessing and receiving visual culture non-visually, has been represented and mythologized in paintings throughout history, and even served as the subject for Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind – a 1993 project in which the theorist used depictions of the blind from the Louvres collection as the basis for writings on vision, blindness, self-representation and drawing.

The image of a blind individual engaging in a tactile Art experience represents the possibility of an unmediated and unbiased experience of Art – an idea that has attracted the Art practitioner, the viewer and the critic for centuries. However the idea that blind experience is unmediated and unbiased is a fallacy: as any person engaged in interpretation exists within a unique cultural context, and therefore within the realm of subjectivity. What this provocative image does illustrate is the uncharted territory that is non-visual interpretation – a method that, if practiced within the context of the Art experience, has the potential to expand what is currently understood as visual culture.

Touching on an Elephant is a progression of Papalia’s recent work that invites the participant to develop their perceptual mobility — a project series that includes the Blind Field Shuttle, The Touchy Subject and For Your Ears Only. It aims to further investigate how tactual astonishment can connect the viewer / participant to the objects, spaces and culture of the museum. It will include a suite of engagements (touching tours, curated tactile experiences and opportunities for independent tactual exploration) which will provide opportunities for the participant to develop their tactile sense as a mode of interpretation, and which will set a precedence for a tactile aesthetics and tactual experience within the art center.

This second visit will continue the research and connection phase for this larger project.

SUPPORT GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER

We appreciate your support from near and far!

In person and online, you view our exhibitions, engage with programs, experience performances, provide feedback and contribute to GCAC’s continued success!

As we begin to plan for upcoming seasons, our continued goal and commitment is to extremely ambitious, creative and engaged artists and projects. Our plan is to put additional strategic initiatives and team members into place that will expand our efforts to better serve our communities – locally, nationally and internationally.

To make this happen, we rely on continued generosity of the supportive friends our institution has built. We are reaching out to you for your pledge of support of the upcoming year. With your commitment, even greater success and impact through artistic exploration will be possible, serving communities who deserve such outreach the most.

MAKE YOUR PLEDGE NOW!
https://www.fullerton.edu/SupportGCAC

All proceeds will directly benefit our activities, allowing Grand Central Art Center the opportunity to work with artists in developing more exhibitions, residencies, programs, events and lectures for our communities. As the projects develop, we will continue to keep you informed and provide you invitations to all exciting activities.

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