Montalvo, Author at Montalvo Arts Center • Page 9 of 13

Threads: Weaving Humanity

On July 19, in a celebration throughout the Montalvo grounds, Montalvo premiered Threads: Weaving Humanity, featuring four newly commissioned works of textile by five artists whose work redefines fiber arts. These works were created to provide opportunities for contemplation, consideration and conversation on the meaning of our shared humanity, and what is necessary for humanity to thrive...This includes kindness, compassion, integrity, respect, empathy, forgiveness, and self-reflection. Highly sensitive to the elements, fiber works are traditionally displayed inside carefully controlled environments of galleries and museums. Serving as an analogy for our human vulnerability, Threads: Weaving Humanity places these works outdoors, where we can witness and appreciate the…

Particles: A Video Portrait

Last month, emerging filmmaker Sam Gouldthorpe joined his father, Lucas Artists Program Fellow James Gouldthorpe, to document the creation of Particles: A Painting in Ten Chapters . This video portrait movingly brings father and son’s creative practices together in a shared exploration of artistic experimentation, familial ties, and the passing of time. Particles is on view in Montalvo’s Project Space Gallery through May 29. ABOVE: James Gouldthorpe, Chapter Four: Seniors (detail)

A Common Thread

"In providing skeins of multicolored yarn and needles to my talented, multifaceted refugee sisters—who otherwise spend their time counting long, torturous days in flimsy crowded tents, at the mercy of inclement weather and fellow humans in power—my hope is to help them create space in their minds where they may otherwise have none: crocheting their meditative states into beautiful flowers. My choice to use the colors from the rainbow as a macro representation of their delicate, detailed and breathtaking meditative stories comes from my displaced sisters themselves. When it was time to pick yarn, it became impossible to choose a…

I Dreamed About Walking in the Sky

In these brightly hued and hand-embroidered panels, visitors read the concerns, hopes, and dreams of the artist as she considered the questions facing humanity today. Bangladeshi artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur has worked with jamdani, a centuries-old and disappearing fine weaving technique, which she uses to express individual and collective memories across time and space. In this work, whose draping forms are inspired by the memory of freshly-dyed fabric drying in the sun, the artist took a new approach to working with the jamdani by adding hand-embroidered text, bringing a traditional art form to bear on the contemporary themes addressed in…

The Powers That Be

ABOVE: The Powers That Be , The Broad Museum, April 2016. Photo credit: Cassils with Leon Mostovoy. Photo courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. On April 2, 2016, LAP Visual Arts Fellow Cassils premiered their latest work, The Powers That Be , at The Broad in Los Angeles to a sell-out crowd. Read more about that performance here , and watch for clips posted by audience members—like this from Jonathan Velardi. Cassils arrived at Montalvo’s Lucas Artists Residency Program on one of those soft days in March after the big rains. Seven deer grazed just off the road as…

Foraging for Food and Photography at Montalvo

It’s spring again! As Montalvo Arts Center’s Culinary Artist, I have the pleasure of cooking meals for the other creative thinkers, dancers, composers, and visual artists who work and live alongside me here at the Lucas Artists Program. My inspiration comes from Montalvo’s grounds where I look for edible plants and mushrooms to use in our daily meals. Vibrant food is my muse, as are the creative folk I am surrounded by every day. ABOVE: Culinary Artist Andrea Blum. Photo by Kija Lucas. In addition to my individual practice as a culinary artist, I also often find myself collaborating with…

Forgiveness, the Misplaced Grace

At the base of the Great Lawn at Montalvo once sat four statues atop pedestals, referencing the four seasons. Today, the fourth pedestal is empty, its statue likely destroyed in a past earthquake. The remaining trinity are often likened to the Three Graces of Greek mythology—minor goddesses representing beauty, charm, and creativity. Situated on that vacant pedestal, RoCoCo imagines the addition not of a fourth season, but of a fourth Grace — Forgiveness, The Misplaced Grace. By filling the empty pedestal and reinterpreting the sculptures, “forgiveness” is elevated to the level of a Grace, dignifying our humanity in a way that the classical Graces…

We Players presents “Romeo & Juliet at Villa Montalvo”

Above: We Players' Maria Leigh as Juliet and Mohammad Shehata as Romeo. Photo by Tina Case. For the month of May 2016, the Lucas Artists Residency Program (LAP) turned the eleven artist studios on our orchard site over to the We Players, a remarkable site-specific theater company, as they developed a new production of Romeo and Juliet that will be performed throughout the Montalvo grounds in October. Founded 16 years ago by Artistic Director Ava Roy, the We Players adapts classic pieces of theater for historic places and keeps audiences on their toes as their performances wend their way through these…

In the Studio with Henry Threadgill

By Lori Wood, Lucas Artists Residency Manager Artists Monica Sok, Danez Smith, Kalisolaite 'Uhila, David Benoit, Dario Robleto, Kio Griffith, and Yasuhiro Usui in Henry Threadgill's studio. After dinner this week, the LAP artists visited jazz great Henry Threadgill’s studio, where Threadgill spoke in his musical cadences about his creative process. Holding a sheet of arcane notations of notes and intervals, Threadgill explained his exploration of five-part rhythm. Poets, visual artists, and other musicians leaned in. He demonstrated with dance steps: Two long steps, two short, one long, and invited poet Monica Sok to try it next.…

RADIOEE.net AUTOPILOTO

In February 2018 RADIO Espacio Estacion, RADIOEE.net (consisting of Sebastian Bellver, Stephanie Elyse Sherman, and Agustina Woodgate), a mobile, multilingual, online radio channel broadcasting conversations about mobility and movement while on the move, joined us at the Lucas Artists Program and began work on developing a new 24-hr broadcast exploring self-driving vehicle technology and other automated mobilities while on the move. On November 15 and 16 they presented AUTOPILOTO, a marathon 24-hour radio transmission on all things self-driving broadcast live while on-the-move from a semi-autonomous vehicle looping the Bay Area. Transmitted in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, the broadcast explored how autonomy and automatic movement are transforming…

Author: Montalvo