Montalvo, Author at Montalvo Arts Center

Winter

Winter is a work out of a larger series of four that Saar conceived around each season. In her own words, the work is "about, of course, the cycles of nature, but they're also about the cycles of women—our bodies and their maturations. Additionally, the whole project also came to embody, to me, the cycle of creativity." "Summer is pregnant with fireflies…I wanted her pregnancy to signify a very fertile stage in a woman's life, but also the idea of summer, and a time of year when everything is coming to fruit. Winter looks like a stone, is petrified, and…

Underworlding

The Underworlding residency, convened by UCSB Art Professor Kim Yasuda, assembles a diverse group of California-based practitioners and community knowledge holders for the first time as an exploratory cohort in residence at our Lucas Artists Program (LAP) from May 16 – June 24, 2022. Underworlding, as a practice, counters the extractivist logics embedded in our institutions that have surfaced in the current pandemic to reveal essential realities over whose body, whose labor, and whose land has been exploited in the uneven settlements of our social order between precarity and privilege. This residency draws individuals who share a grounded ethos and anchor their practices across and beneath surfaces, generations, genders, and…

Creando Espacio

Creando Espacio is a participatory art installation by Bay Area based artist, Hector Dionicio Mendoza in collaboration with Amalia Mesa-Bains, Viviana Paredes, and Steve White. As a child, Mendoza grew up with a great appreciation for the importance of faith, ritual, and alternative healing traditions as practiced by his grandfather, a fifth-generation curandero (shaman). In Mexico as well as Central and South America, the curandera/o plays an important role to many people embarking on the long and challenging journey to El Norte/The North (the United States), providing blessings and protection before they depart in search of a better way of life. Creando Espacio draws on Mendoza’s childhood memories creating an outdoor…

Scratch Space Archive

In this series of virtual conversations, we bring together visual artists, scholars, composers, activists, writers, and others to explore what kinds of radical imaginaries can unfold in this moment of pandemic, racial reckoning, economic uncertainty, civil unrest, and environmental crisis. How do we think about what is possible? How can we use our imaginations to build a better present/future? How can we attend to the past in service of the future? And how can we retool and build better more equitable models for living and working together? In March 2020, Indian author Arundhati Roy described our current moment as “a portal, a gateway…

Studio Visit with James Gouldthorpe

Join us for an intimate virtual visit with visual artist and painter James Gouldthorpe. View and discuss the brand new body of work created by Gouldthorpe during these past eight months of shelter in place, and the new Corona-Virus reality we share. The Covid Artifacts 2020 series of paintings has been a daily practice for Gouldthorpe, beginning after he arrived home from his first visit to the grocery store, and the ensuing efforts of tirelessly wiping down each purchased item, to rid it of any potential contamination. In the words of the artist, “…I began to consider our new world.…

OneBeat Marathon Live Online!

Bang on a Can Presents OneBeat Marathon Live Online! Sunday, November 15, 2020 (12pm - 4pm EST) This Fall marks the 10th anniversary of OneBeat, the series of revolutionary international collaborations led by our Found Sound Nation team. This is some of the most noble work we know of - using music to build bridges across geographies and nationalities and cultures, redefining and expanding our artistic family, giving deep and meaningful opportunities to musicians coming from a wide spectrum of disciplines and traditions, underlining the recognition that our communities need to be central to how we all make music together. In…

Follow up on F.U.N.

On August 13, 2020, our residency director Kelly Sicat was joined by vocalist, activist, and LAP Guest Fellow Jennifer Johns to discuss self-care, joy, vision, interdependence and freedom, and the evolution of her "Free U Now Manifesto."

lone some

Featured on 25 independent public sites around the Bay Area, including Montalvo’s public park and the entry foyer of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, lone some includes works by Lucas Artists Fellow Chloë Bass, Modesto Covarrubias, Jane Chang Mi, Leena Joshi, Susan O’Malley (1976-2015), and Alyson Provax. Each artist created work considering the theme of isolation and loneliness in the ever-changing landscape of our urban areas. Explore the interactive map below to learn more about the works included in lone some. In 2019 we launched the thematic program SOCIAL: Rethinking Loneliness Together. This initiative grew out of our concern about…

What’s Next for Earth?

Join Montalvo Arts Center and Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) as we honor the work of artists in celebrating the earth on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day. This conversation is co-organized with eco artist and arts educator Michele Guieu, and will feature a presentation on the complex human predicament by one of the world’s leading environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. Artists Ivan Sigg, Shannon Amidon, and Kija Lucas will share works that honor our interconnectedness with each other and the environment. Guieu will also introduce participants to the Open…

South Asian Literature and Art Festival

The South Asian Literature & Art Festival, presented at Montalvo by Art Forum SF in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Institute of South Asian Studies, was the Bay Area’s first festival dedicated to showcasing contemporary reflections of literature and the arts from the subcontinent. The festival featured books and readings, hands-on art activities, writing programs, art exhibitors, folk artists, Bollywood pop-up dancers, bhangra rhythms, and other dance interludes—all interspersed with delicious food stations representing the flavors of South Asia. Click the button to view the festival's marketing program. Image Gallery Participants Partners and Sponsors Threads: Weaving Humanity was made possible through the support of the…

Author: Montalvo