Author: Montalvo

Resilience of the 20%

Cast bronze61 x 45 x 48 in.Courtesy of the artistPhoto: Cassils with Megan Paetzhold. Courtesy of the artist Resilience of the 20% is a sculpture cast from the bashed clay remnant of Cassils’ Becoming An Image performance, and acts as a monument to the resilience of queer communities. The title underscores a sickening statistic: in 2012, murders of trans people increased by 20 percent worldwide. Cast in bronze and weighing nearly two tons, this massive sculpture forms the centerpiece of Monument Push. Monument Push is a four-hour performance of collectively pushing the 1,900 pound bronze Resilience of the 20% sculpture…
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From our Inbox…

In this ongoing series, we answer visitors' questions about Montalvo's history and grounds! Dear Montalvo, I’m hoping you can answer this question for me. A friend and I drove up to the Montalvo Arts Center last weekend from San Diego. As we drove up to and past the Villa, we noticed signs along the road that were all abbreviated. We could interpret most of them, except the last two. It had something to do with a journey in the forest… Could you please tell me what all the signs meant? It drove my friend and me crazy! Thank you, AW Dear AW, Thank you…
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Winter

Cast bronze22 x 31 x 23 in.Courtesy of the artist and L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice, CAPhoto: Margaret Kemp 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…
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From our Inbox…

In this ongoing series, we answer visitors' questions about Montalvo's history and grounds! Dear Montalvo, During my visit last week, I was struck by the Italian-style satyr sculpture in the Love Temple of the Italianate garden. What does the sculpture signify, and why is it placed in the Love Temple? It’s so macabre. Sincerely, EK Dear EK, Thank you very much for your e-mail. You ask a good question! The decorative motif of the fountain in the Love Temple once revolved around the Roman goddess Venus (hence its name): in the center of the fountain was a large marble statue of…
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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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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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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…
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Studio Visit with James Gouldthorpe

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 Coronavirus 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. What previous innocuous…
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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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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."
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