Programs of the Lucas Artists Residency
Empowering artists to take their work in bold new directions.
Overview
As a creative incubator and presenter, the LAP both supports artists to create new work and offers presentation opportunities. LAP artists enjoy unique access to the resources of Montalvo Arts Center, enabling them to present their work and engage with Silicon Valley and Bay Area audiences.
Our Programs
Exhibitions, festivals, commissions, and more.
2024 Programs
P L A C E: Reckonings by Asian American Artists
The ICA San José and Montalvo Arts Center jointly present an exhibition that opens on March 23 and runs through August 11, 2024, entitled P L A C E: Reckonings by Asian American Artists.
2023 Programs
Marcus Exhibition:
Take Time
Take Time features works by four artists who provide participatory experiences in which Montalvo visitors may lose track of time and discover the joy of engagement and creative contemplation. On view July–October, 2023.
AI.Assembly
Stephanie Dinkins and a group of interdisciplinary artists, technologists, and humanists gather to discuss shaping the future and working toward more fair, ethical, equitable, and inclusive technological protocols from a diversity of approaches. In residency summer of 2023.
Abundant Intelligences
A sustained period of individual and collective engagement with creative responses to the challenge of designing AI systems that support Indigenous flourishing. Produced in collaboration with the Indigenous Futures Research Centre, in residency spring of 2023.
A Celebration of Earth Day 2023
While It Lasts: An Earth Day Sound Garden by JG Everest
Minneapolis-based composer JG Everest composes and and designs a new site-specific temporary sound + performance installation for the grounds at Montalvo, to be experienced along the paths and bridges that line the creek in the Redwood forest between the Villa and the LAP studios.
2022 Programs
Marcus Festival:
Claiming Space
This exhibition presented a series of works by local and national artists that reimagine how the body is represented in landscape and upend the exclusionary figurative traditions that dominate historic American gardens and other civic and public spaces. Works were on view in the summer of 2022.
Thick Solidarity:
from the Who Else But Americans series
Thick Solidarity is a project in Related Tactics’s ongoing Who Else But Americans series that explores the liberatory potential of relationships between communities of color as we navigate the extractive and violent systems of nation-building, power, and American exceptionalism. In residence at the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) from August 1 – September 11, 2022.
Underworlding:
Speculative + Counter-Extractive Earth Practices
The Underworlding residency, convened by UCSB Art Professor Kim Yasuda, assembles a diverse group of California-based practitioners and community knowledge holders for the first time as an exploratory cohort in residence at our Lucas Artists Program (LAP) from May 16 – June 24, 2022.
2021 Programs
Art on the Grounds:
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.
Conversation Series:
Scratch Space
In this series of virtual conversations, we bring together visual artists, scholars, composers, activists writers, and others to explore what kinds of radical imaginaries can unfold in this moment of pandemic, racial reckoning, economic uncertainty, civil unrest, and environmental crisis.
2020 Programs
Virtual Artventure:
Studio Visit with James Gouldthorpe
Join us for 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 Corona-Virus 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 objects have suddenly become heavy with Corona baggage…”
Collaboration:
OneBeat Marathon Live Online!
This fall marks the 10th anniversary of OneBeat, the series of revolutionary international collaborations led by the Found Sound Nation team. This is some of the most noble work—using music to build bridges across geographies and nationalities and cultures, redefining and expanding our artistic family, giving deep and meaningful opportunities to musicians coming from a wide spectrum of disciplines and traditions, underlining the recognition that our communities need to be central to how we all make music together. In honor of these 10 years, OneBeat showcased some groundbreaking work from past OneBeat alumni in a 4-hour long live streaming marathon concert, co-hosted by Montalvo!
Conversation Series:
Scratch Space
In this series of virtual conversations, we bring together visual artists, scholars, composers, activists writers, and others to explore what kinds of radical imaginaries can unfold in this moment of pandemic, racial reckoning, economic uncertainty, civil unrest, and environmental crisis.
Open Access:
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.”
Exhibition:
lone some
Featured on 25 independent public sites around the Bay Area, including Montalvo’s public park and the entry foyer of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, lone some includes works by Lucas Artists Fellow Chloë Bass, Modesto Covarrubias, Jane Chang Mi, Leena Joshi, Susan O’Malley (1976-2015), and Alyson Provax. Each artist created work considering the theme of isolation and loneliness in the ever-changing landscape of our urban areas.
Open Access:
What’s Next for Earth?
Join Montalvo Arts Center and Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) as we honor the work of artists in celebrating the earth on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day. This conversation is co-organized with eco artist and arts educator Michele Guieu, and will feature a presentation on the complex human predicament by one of the world’s leading environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. Artists Ivan Sigg, Shannon Amidon, and Kija Lucas will share works that honor our interconnectedness with each other and the environment. Guieu will also introduce participants to the Open Global Community Art Project, a new platform for creators as we consider: What’s Next for Earth?
2019 Programs
Festival:
South Asian Literature and Art Festival
The South Asian Literature & Art Festival, presented at Montalvo by Art Forum SF in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Institute of South Asian Studies, was the Bay Area’s first festival dedicated to showcasing contemporary reflections of literature and the arts from the subcontinent.
Exhibition:
The Mending Project
The Mending Project is an interactive installation featuring several simple elements—thread, color, and sewing—as a point of departure to create meaningful connections between strangers. Originally conceived as an installation that would bring people together in conversation, The Mending Project was produced by internationally acclaimed visual artist Lee Mingwei and premiered in 2009 at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York.
Festival:
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.
Commission:
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.”
Commission:
Caravan
Within Montalvo’s Italianate Garden and along the Great Lawn, you will find Caravan by Hellen Ascoli, an artist, weaver, and mediator living and working in Guatemala City, Guatemala and Madison, Wisconsin. Since her migration from Guatemala to Madison, Ascoli continues to ask herself, How do you rebuild and remember at the same time? How do you make sense of where you are, when you are so deeply invested elsewhere? Caravan is a reference to movement both internal and external, both physical and emotional.
Commission:
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 that she uses to express individual and collective memories across time and space.
Commission:
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 imagined the addition not of a fourth season, but of a fourth Grace–Forgiveness, The Misplaced Grace.
2018 Programs
Commission:
RADIOEE.net AUTOPILOTO
Mobile, multilingual, online radio channel broadcasting conversations about mobility and movement while on the move, RADIO Espacio Estacion (RADIOEE.NET), a mobile, multilingual, online radio channel broadcasting conversations about mobility and movement while on the move, presented their latest broadcast AUTOPILOTO on November 15 and 16. This 24-hr broadcast hosted from a semi-autonomous car as it looped the Bay Area explored all things self driving.
Exhibition:
Bruce Munro at Montalvo: Stories in Light
Featuring 10 light-based works ranging in scale from immersive to intimate, Bruce Munro at Montalvo: Stories in Light is an ambitious outdoor exhibition that has transformed Montalvo’s historic Villa and its extensive public areas into a spectacle of light. The exhibition includes existing and new works conceived and developed by Munro while in residence at the Lucas Artists Program.
Festival:
We the People
On July 20, Montalvo hosted “We the People,” a communal gathering featuring poetry, performance, soundworks, installation art, and participatory engagement activities. Audiences joined poets, musicians, and visual and sound artists from across the globe as we collectively considered: How can we expand our understanding of “we” and imagine new, more inclusive ways of being together?
Commission:
Marilá Dardot: Saudade (Our Flags)
In her first exhibition in the United States, Brazilian artist Marilá Dardot premiered a large-scale installation of flags created by immigrant and refugee community participants during a series of public workshops. The flags, which represent in text or visual form something their maker misses about the country where they were born, were raised on Montalvo’s grounds on Sunday, July 15 at a communal flag-raising ceremony. With this work, Dardot seeks to amplify the voices of our varied diaspora communities and honor the complexities and challenges of their experience in the midst of a divisive national conversation about immigrants and the nature of American identity.
Commission:
Howard Hersh: Four Bridges
Four Bridges is a site-specific sound work by award-winning composer Howard Hersh designed to be heard by listeners over mobile devices as they walk through Montalvo’s woodland environment. The work coordinates space, sound, and motion into a unique immersive ambulatory experience: as listeners follow a meandering woodland path on Montalvo’s grounds, they are taken on a sonic odyssey that leads them through redwood canyons into oak-lined meadows. Four Bridges’ narrative is inspired by our primal memories of the forest and the mythology that depicts it as an enchanted, mysterious place. It also explores the woods as a metaphor for our common journey and what it means to carry the burden and promises of a shared humanity.
Commission:
María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Imole Blue II (Field of Memories)
One of the most significant artists to emerge from post-Revolutionary Cuba, María Magdalena Campos-Pons created a garden for Montalvo’s grounds with participation from the community. Taking inspiration from an aerial photograph of a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile installation taken by a US Air force plane during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, this garden is part peace memorial and part living sketch. Campos-Pons is interested in the uneasy juxtaposition of the visual beauty of the photograph upon which she based her garden plan–which looks like blooming flowers set inside a hexagram shape–and the horror and destructive capability that the image belies. Imole means “earth” in the Yoruba language. The garden was planted with the help of community participants on Sunday, July 15.
Open Access:
Don’t Look Away
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.
2017 Programs
Exhibition:
The Collector: A Proposal
This exhibition features 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 travelled the world painting portraits of dead and dying trees. Many of these works are on view here.
Festival:
NOW HEAR THIS! An Exercise in Listening
NOW HEAR THIS! is an outdoor exhibition and sound festival featuring the work of thirty-one local and national sound artists, composers, instrument-builders, performers, and visual artists for whom listening plays a vital role in their creative process. Visitors to Montalvo’s park were 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?
Commission:
Rolling Counterpoint
Developed by artist Taro Hattori, Rolling Counterpoint is a space for encounter designed to foster dialogue about experiences of division and belonging in contemporary society. The project consists of two teahouses: one stationary space installed outdoors on Montalvo Arts Center’s 175-acre public park in Saratoga, California and one mobile teahouse, which travelled to various cities in the Bay Area in 2017 (Cupertino, San Jose; Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco). Please visit the Rolling Counterpoint website to find out more about the project.
2016 Programs
Commission:
Karen Finley: Far East of Eden
Far East of Eden is an experimental film short developed by internationally recognized artists Karen Finley and Bruce Yonemoto. The work, which was developed by Finley and Yonemoto during their tenure as visiting artists at the Lucas Artists Residency in 2016, was commissioned by Montalvo Arts Center.
Festival:
5 Hour Sculpture, A Pop-up Arts Festival
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 that were on view at the 2016 Arts on the Grounds program―featuring more than thirty-five artists and their collaborators from the Bay Area, Greater US, and beyond―represent the final projects selected through this process.
Performance:
Romeo & Juliet at Villa Montalvo
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. 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 striking environments.
Exhibition:
James Gouldthorpe’s Particles: A Painting in Ten Chapter
In an expansive installation of new work presented in Montalvo’s Project Space Gallery, Lucas Artists Visual Arts Fellow James Gouldthorpe explored the passage of time and the aggregation of the self over a lifetime. The artist projected forward into the future and reached back into the past, mixing humor with melancholy as he examined birth, childhood, adolescence, middle and old age, and death, and reflected on both the poignant and absurd nature of existence.
Commission:
XLIII: A Contemporary Requiem
Co-commissioned by Montalvo Arts Center and the Center for the Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University, XLIII: A Contemporary Requiem was a site-specific performance work created by Mexico City-based composer and sound artist Andres Solis with choreographer and dancer Sandra Milena Gómez in association with the Santa Clara University Chamber Singers, and conductor Scot Hanna-Weir.
2015 Programs
Collaboration:
Innovation in Music: OneBeat 2015
For the second year in a row, the Lucas Artists Residency Program was proud to host a youthful international consortium when 25 musicians (ages 19–35) from 17 countries and territories gathered for OneBeat. An act of musical diplomacy and an inimitable force of creative energy, OneBeat kicked off its 2015 whirlwind of collaboration with its Montalvo residency.
Exhibition:
Botanica Poetica: New Work by Lucas Artists Fellows
This group show in Montalvo’s Project Space Gallery featured new work by four Lucas Artists Visual Arts Fellows, Fieldworks Collaborative, Monica Lundy and Hector Dionicio Mendoza, and guest artist Kija Lucas. Works on view drew inspiration from Montalvo’s varied natural environments and explored the ways in which natural and cultural ecologies and discourses intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide.
Festival:
Art on the Grounds 2015: Performance in the Park
In July 2015, the Lucas Artists Program organized a large-scale performance festival on Montalvo’s grounds featuring many new site-specific performances by Lucas Artists Fellows. The event, culminated with Japanese-born and LA-based artist Hirokazu Kosaka‘s breathtaking performance KALPA, featuring Butoh master dancer Oguri and acclaimed harmonica player Tetsuya Nakamura. The event was presented as part of a year-long celebration of the 75/10 anniversary of Montalvo’s artists residency program.
Theme:
75/10: Alumni Celebrations Across the Globe
2015 was a year for celebration at Montalvo! We marked two important anniversaries: 75 continuous years as an artists residency and the 10-year jubilee of our international Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency. To commemorate the occasion, alumni Artist Fellows around the world mounted happenings in their home cities honoring Montalvo’s commitment to supporting artists.
Exhibition:
Possibilities of Paper
This exhibition highlighted the diverse and innovative ways that Lucas Artists Program (LAP) Fellows and Guest Artists have used paper as a vehicle for creative expression. Whether crafted from delicate, handmade Nepalese paper or inexpensive and readily available cardboard, works on view recalled the rich and varied histories of paper and its changing societal role and value.
2014 Programs
Collaboration:
OneBeat 2014
OneBeat is an incubator for music-based social entrepreneurship, where innovative musicians from around the world launch collaborative projects designed to make a positive impact on local and global communities. An initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with the groundbreaking New York-based music organization Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, OneBeat employs collaborative original music as a potent new form of cultural diplomacy.
Project:
Justin Lowman: Untitled (Belvedere Temple)
Lowman’s installation was conceived as a contemplative space where visitors were invited to consider the passage of time as the colors and textures of the Belvedere Temple and the various views it frames transform as a day and the seasons progress. Materials like redwood and Plexiglas, and their associations with the timber industry/construction and fiber optics respectively, reference both the history, present and future of Saratoga, a lumber town of the 1850s that became a wealthy bedroom community for upper-middle class Silicon Valley tech workers.
Exhibition:
L O V E: Creativity, Connection, Community
This exhibition considered the challenges of extending ourselves to commune and connect with others, with an installation of video, drawings, sculpture, and other works. Participating artists explored the bonds of friendship; the important role of empathy in our lives; the intersection between desire and new technologies; and the complex relationships between love, belonging, identity and community.
2013 Programs
Festival:
COME HEALING
With COME HEALING, its 2013 outdoor Art on the Grounds exhibition, Montalvo invites you to be restored. On view are works by six national and international artists exploring the relationships between healing, wholeness, and place.
Commission:
Tiffany Singh: The Bells of Mindfulness
Continuing her ongoing investigation into the concept of sacred space, Lucas Artists Fellow Tiffany Singh created the participatory installation The Bells of Mindfulness at Montalvo Arts Center in 2013. Find out more about the project, peruse interviews with the artist, and view video documentation on this project page.
Commission:
Susan O’Malley: A Healing Walk
Examining the power of natural places to elevate and enrich human experience and health, Susan O’Malley’sA Healing Walk guides visitors through Montalvo’s forest trails with text-based signage reminding us to practice mindfulness and appreciate the healing effects of the countryside.
Exhibition:
Happiness Is…
From January to May 2013, the Montalvo Arts Center showcased artworks from three Lucas Artists Fellows and Guest Artists (Susan O’Malley, Leah Rosenberg, and Christine Wong Yap) in the exhibition Happiness Is… Through research-based work, participatory experiments and installation, the artists examined the complex emotions, conditions and actions involved in generating the elusive state of happiness.
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