Behind the Scenes

The countdown to current artist-in-residence Nina Waisman’s presentation is on! In 8 days (on Thursday, November 8 at 7pm ), she will activate her work Body Envelope (think of it as a six foot square interactive sound chandelier) with a special dance performance she has developed during her Montalvo residency in collaboration with New York-based choreographer Mariah Maloney, and Los Angeles-based choreographers, dancers and artists Natalie Metzger and Flora Wiegmann. Audience members will also be able to interact with and explore the piece.The performance will be followed by a Q & A with the artist and her collaborators. In the photo above,…

On Thursday, November 8 at 7pm , current Montalvo artist-in-residence Nina Waisman will present an evening of dance, movement, and interactive sound work as part of a series of performances entitled “ 9 evenings ,” arranged as part of the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial . Conceived of as part of Waisman’s Body Envelope series, the evening will examine the role physical movement plays in structuring human thought. In this video, taken by ZERO1 Art Ambassador Leyla Carleo , Waisman discusses her work. And if you’d like to see more pictures of the installation at Montalvo, take a moment to look at Waisman’s webpage .

Something that former Montalvo Artist-in-Residence Daniel Canogar said when we spoke to him a few weeks ago about his work resonated with us: the idea of the countless people who have passed through the Villa Montalvo during the hundred years of its existence. This inspired us to make a trip to the Montalvo archive to peruse its photographic holdings. And that is where we stumbled upon the photos above, showing legendary actress Ethel Barrymore visiting Montalvo more than 80 years ago. In these candid shots, she joins Montalvo founder Senator James Duval Phelan (the man with the distinguished beard), the…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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.…

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…