Author: Montalvo

On February 23, 2018, Montalvo’s Carriage House Theatre was the venue for an inspiring evening of poetry and performance featuring Lucas Artists Literary Fellows Danez Smith, Monica Sok, and Julian Talamantez Brolaski, and two-time Grammy winning musician and co-founding member of the genre-busting rock band Living Colour, Will Calhoun. Moving effortlessly from spoken word to song, Julian read from their 2017 book of poems, Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books, 2017) and Advice for Lovers (City Lights, 2012), among other works. In poems and songs that synthesize and meld experimental and traditional voices and forms, Julian “breaks language open from the inside.”…

This exhibition represents a proposal for an ambitious, large-scale outdoor installation and community engagement project by Lucas Artists Fellow Máximo González. Over a period of six years, González has carefully crafted a mysterious alter ego he calls “the collector.” Performed by the artist, this elusive figure has traveled the world painting portraits of dead and dying trees. Many of these works are on view here.​In July 2016, González undertook a one-month residency at the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) at Montalvo Arts Center. During his stay he traveled to some of California’s most treasured national parks to continue working on this…

NOW HEAR THIS! is an outdoor exhibition and sound festival featuring the work of thirty-one different local and national sound artists, composers, instrument-builders, performers, and visual artists for whom listening plays a vital role in their creative process. Visitors are invited to consider the following questions: How can listening disrupt or enhance our sense of place and space? Can the act of listening produce new forms of public engagement and awareness? How can we listen more deeply and differently? The exhibition includes five newly commissioned site-specific works of sound-based art by national and local artists Taraneh Hemami, Walter Kitundu, Hugh…

In March 2016, Montalvo launched an open call for proposals for our annual summer Art on the Grounds festival. We asked would-be applicants, “if you had five hours to present a work of sculpture in a public park, what would you create?” The eleven works on view at the festival opening, featuring more than 35 artists and their collaborators from the Bay Area, Greater US, and beyond―represented the final projects selected through this process. These mostly new works represented the expanded field of contemporary sculpture, ranging from temporary installations, interventions, gestures, actions, participatory engagements, spectacular intrusions, and performances. Many of…