2025 Programs

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Timna Naim (b. 1995)Creation Playground, 2025Glazed ceramicDimension variesCourtesy of the artistPhoto by Airyka Rockefeller Creation Playground is an interactive installation of five ceramic forms that invites participants to co-create within sculptural environments designed for tactile exploration, improvisation, and collective wonder. In a world that often feels chaotic and fragmented, Naim’s work offers a space to slow down, play, and imagine new ways of relating.   Rooted in the aesthetics of Funk ceramics, Naim’s project resists rigid definitions of beauty, utility, or identity. Instead, it embraces the surreal and the humorous, honoring the overlooked, the…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Linda Sormin (b. 1972)Pass safely through redolent woods, 2020Glazed ceramic, watercolor on paper, gold leaf, epoxy21-1/2 x 22 x 18 in.Courtesy of the artist and Patricia Sweetow Gallery Linda Sormin’s ceramic and mixed-media sculptures embody fragility, upheaval, and survival, offering a raw reflection of the human experience. Born in Bangkok and tracing her family’s ancestry to Thailand, China, and Indonesia, Sormin’s practice is a meditation on the diasporic condition. In conversations about her work, the word “architecture” is used. Like a temple or a home, Sormin’s works are a part of the artistic…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Wanxin Zhang (b. 1961)Shout (I am a California artist, too), 2023High-fired clay with glaze36 x 22 x 18 in.Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark GalleryPhoto by Paul Gallo Wanxin Zhang’s Shout (I am a California artist, too) draws on his personal and artistic journey from Manchuria to California. Inspired by the Bay Area’s Funk movement, Zhang blends its rebellious energy with personal memories and social commentary. Over the past two decades, clay has become not just his medium, but a conduit for his emotions, ideas, and reflections on both personal and societal experiences. The exhibition’s title cheekily riffs on…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Annabeth Rosen (b. 1957)Bunny, 2011Fired and glazed ceramic, steel stands, casters, baling wire46 x 32 x 24 in.Courtesy of artist and P*P*O*W Gallery Annabeth Rosen’s heaped and piled ceramic sculptures are informed by a painterly sensibility. The fragility of each individual ceramic form is counterpoised by steel wire and a metal armature that holds these individual pieces together or aloft. Both Bunny and Bird incorporate small upright metal tables designed by Rosen. The resulting compositions are compelling – playful, but also strong and resilient.  Her process expresses the primacy of systems, using materials…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Nathan Lynch (b. 1974)Blacknightbowl, 2023Glazed ceramic12 x 14 x 8 in.Courtesy of the artistPhoto: © 2024, John Janca, all rights reserved Commissioned by Montalvo’s Lucas Artists Program, Nathan Lynch’s A Place for Meeting Strangers is both a functional sculpture (a ceramic drinking fountain) and a social prompt. It invites two people to look each other in the eye and drink together, spurring a charmingly awkward moment of public intimacy and connection. In an era saturated with discord, distortion, and division, it becomes a starting place for community conversations.  A throughline in Lynch’s work…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Woody De Othello (b. 1991)seeing both sides, 2024 (cast 2025)Patinated bronze84 x 41-7/8 x 45-7/8 in.Collection of Montalvo Arts Center, Gift of the Lipman Family FoundationPhoto by Airyka Rockefeller seeing both sides explores the idea of balance, what exists at the intersection of choice, and how we can be in tune with change. After conceiving a figure that embodies these concepts, Othello constructed a small clay model (or maquette) for the eventual larger-than-life bronze sculpture that was recently gifted to Montalvo by the Lipman Family Foundation. This maquette was a critical and necessary…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Linda Nguyen Lopez (b. 1981)Dust Furry, 2025Pigmented stoneware and glaze30 x 24 x 24 in.Courtesy of the artist and Mindy Solomon Gallery Lopez confronts the overlooked and dismissed through her "dust furry" sculptures—forms that exist at the intersection of the familiar and fantastical. These beings emerge from her fascination with the accumulated detritus of daily life, especially the gentle gatherings of dust that collect in corners and under furniture, typically swept away without consideration.    Her dust furries represent a re-focusing and reclamation of the ignored. They are manifestations of time made tangible—each…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Elisa D'Arrigo (b. 1953)Googler 1, 2018Glazed Ceramic8 x 8 x 7-1/2 in.Courtesy of the artist and Patricia Sweetow Gallery Delightfully adorned in textures, patterns, and luminous glazes of various hues, D’Arrigo’s diminutive ceramic works make their presence emphatically felt despite their size. Their shapes are intriguing and marvelously eccentric. D’Arrigo’s improvisational approach reflects her interest in exploring humor and fluid gesture. With playful titles such as Googler, Feeler, and From Drip to Bump, her abstract forms are purposefully ambiguous.   As shape-shifters, these works mimic various biomorphic forms in nature, yet resist precise identification.…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Cathy Lu (b. 1984)Untitled (Peach Incense Holder), 2021Glazed stoneware, joss sticks34 x 32 x 20 in.Courtesy of the artistPhoto by Paul Gallo Peaches are a favorite subject and recurring motif of the artist – usually with a twist. In Lu’s hands, a peach may be studded with seed pods and incense sticks; partial figures; heads; or fingers nails. In every instance, they are the very embodiment of the strange and unexpected, while also being delightfully subversive. What assumptions are being deconstructed by Lu in these works?  Peaches are a common symbol in Chinese…

Featured in When the World is Beautifully Strange Niki Ford (b. 1974)Child on High, 2025Stoneware, mason stain, underglaze, glaze,tung oil, epoxy, spar varnish, rebar and concrete base47 in. x 16 in. x 16 in.Courtesy of the artistPhoto by Ernest Gibson Niki Ford, a Los Angeles-based artist, befriends the otherworldly through their richly pigmented and hyper-tactile stoneware sculptures. During the building process, Ford works intuitively, as if receiving a kind of download – watching the form emerge and unfold, rather than consciously constructing it. This quiet exchange between artist and object gives rise to the final form, allowing motifs, textures, colors, and…