Year: 2015

Sep 11th, 2015

Botanica Poetica: Hector Mendoza & “White Wilderness”

On Friday, September 25, we open a new exhibition in our Project Space Gallery: Botanica Poetica , which showcases new work by Lucas Artist Fellows inspired by the varied and diverse plant life found in Montalvo Arts Center’s 175-acre public park. Among the featured artists is Mexico-born Hector Dionicio Mendoza, currently based in Monterey, California. Mendoza’s mixed media practice, which includes sculpture and two-dimensional works, often combining the organic and the man-made and exploring a wide range of themes, including the everyday potentiality of catastrophe. In this short video created by filmmakers Alexis Costanza and Pierce Leggin, Mendoza gives us…
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Sep 28th, 2015

We Players Explore the Heroic and the Monstrous

This month, a new kind of cacophony echoed over the orchard hillside of the Lucas Artists Residency Program (LAP). Throughout the day and into the night, from the dancer’s studio at the top of the hill came bellowing shouts, grunts, and cries. At artist dinner, two artists came down exhausted, sometimes stained with red food coloring, asking all kinds of questions. “What is the bravest thing you did today?” This August and September, Ava Roy , Founder and Artistic Director of We Players , has been in residence at LAP with actor/creator Nathaniel Justiniano . Their daily work: to roll…
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Nov 10th, 2015

Scott Miller Animates Richard Serra’s Glass Cube

ABOVE: Studio 50 at the Lucas Artists Residency. ​Composer Scott Miller arrived at Montalvo’s Lucas Artists Residency (LAP) on a Tuesday, and by the end of the day he had already rigged up his studio as a living sound ecosystem. Evening found him sitting thoughtfully at the piano bench, listening. I brought him a power cord, and when I walked around the grand piano, sound responded like water around me -- I could feel the resonance responding in waves. At dinner, he talked about light: he was working toward adding it to his sound ecosystems. This was new for him,…
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Nov 11th, 2015

Ecosystemic Sound and Light

ABOVE: Scott Miller contemplates his light installation in Studio 50. ​A large part of my work the past decade has been constructed around ecosystemic programming. This term (if not coined by, certainly popularized by Agostino DiScipio) refers to approaching any performance or presentation space as a sonic ecosystem. Computer programming (in my case, in the sound design program Kyma) "listens" to the behavior of sound in the space via microphones. The data gathered is used to determine how to generate sound or process the sound in the space. This sound (or sounds) is then introduced into the space/ecosystem with speakers.…
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Nov 16th, 2015

Michael Hall: A Video Profile by Tina Case

In this video created by Lucas Artists Program Photographer-in-Residence Tina Case, Oakland-based artist and educator Michael Hall describes a series of new works he created while a Fellow at the Lucas Artists Program in 2015. Hall’s creative approach is strongly influenced by his childhood experiences as the son of a marine. His paintings, participatory works, sculptures, and videos are often grounded in an exploration of military aesthetics. During his time at the Lucas Artists Program, Hall began a new body of work entitled Correspondence , which was inspired by his rediscovery of a cache of letters his father had written…
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Dec 1st, 2015

​INTELLIGENCE MOVES: An Artist Statement

Are we alone? No! A think tank of SETI and NASA scientists, together with artists, dancers and other experts, is gathering to expand our ability to communicate with non-humans here on earth and out in the cosmos, using art and science and language. After our think tank, we will open out our research to the public so people with all kinds of intelligence can understand and can in turn help us learn even more. “If you push novelty of language and metaphor far enough, you can end up with a new way of seeing. And a new way of seeing, can in…
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Dec 2nd, 2015

Monica Lundy: Portrait of an Oak Tree

​This coming Sunday, December 6, Oakland-based artist Monica Lundy will join companion Lucas Artist Fellows Kija Lucas and Fieldworks (Trena Noval and Ann Wettrich) for a conversation about their new nature themed work currently on view in Montalvo’s gallery exhibition, Botanica Poetica . This short video (click above to view), created by local filmmakers Alexis Costanza and Pierce Leggin, depicts Lundy in her studio at the Lucas Artists Program discussing her work and creative process. Image 1 . Image 2 . Lundy’s multimedia works often develop from her archival research into lesser known histories of marginalized communities. In 2009, she…
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Dec 3rd, 2015

Innovation in Music: OneBeat 2015

From October 10-27, the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo hosted a youthful international consortium as 25 musicians (ages 19 – 35) from all over the world gathered for OneBeat, an electrifying fellowship enjoined to collaboratively write, produce, record, and perform genre-shattering musical works. An act of musical diplomacy and an inimitable force of creative energy, OneBeat kicked off its 2015 whirlwind of collaboration and international engagement with its Montalvo residency. This year’s fellows came from a vast array of backgrounds, chosen because they reject constraints and challenge traditional modes of creativity and thought in their music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X83Jm-Y1ir0 ​OneBeat is an…
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Nov 3rd, 2015

Botanica Poetica: New Work by Lucas Artists Fellows

Home to formal gardens, oak and redwood forests, and various exotic plantings, Montalvo's horticultural diversity serves as inspiration for a series of new works created by Lucas Artist Fellows Kija Lucas, Monica Lundy, Hector Dionicio Mendoza, and Fieldworks Collaborative (Trena Noval and Ann Wettrich). Identifying, collecting, and documenting various specimens of plant life discovered while exploring Montalvo's 175-acre public park, these artists have adopted creative processes that resemble the activities of the backyard naturalist. Through sculpture, painting, photography, and works on paper, viewers are invited to reflect on the ill-defined boundary between the natural and unnatural, and the intimate entanglement…
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Nov 1st, 2015

Art on the Grounds 2015: Performance in the Park

On July 24th 2015, we held a large-scale performance festival on the Montalvo grounds, Performance in the Park, featuring site-specific performances by Lucas Artist Fellows. This event is documented in a short video by local filmmakers Pierce Leggin and Alexis Constanza. The festival was organized in association with a year-long celebration of the  75/10 anniversary of the Lucas Artists Residency Program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Mjev0wGjk ​Joanna Haigood and members of Zaccho Dance Theatre transformed the Italianate Garden with the haunting site-specific performance, The Visitors. Nikki Borodi, Glenn Easley, and Nehara Kalev soared high above us in the trees in new dance and sound performance, Whisper Before…
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