Los Angeles Vally College

ART GALLERY

Student Show 2011 

 

Reception

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

6-8 pm

 

Exhibition is open May 25 through June 2, 2011
and August 29 – September 8, 2011

Monday through Thursday,

11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm

 

The current exhibition, Student Show 2011, highlights the tremendous breadth of artworks created by Los Angeles Valley College students during the 2010 – 2011 academic year. The selected works are among exemplary pieces produced in courses taught within the art department that span a wide range of disciplines in the visual arts such as drawing, painting, design, illustration, photography, printmaking, three-dimensional design, sculpture and ceramics. Students of diverse backgrounds, both art majors and non-art majors, remarkably demonstrate a variety of approaches to material, methodology and subject matter that reveal the successful outcome of a comprehensive art program. At the same time, each artwork reflects the very unique and nuanced style of the individual student. Whether at the beginning, intermediate or advanced level, the works on display collectively exhibit a thorough exploration of artistic expression from naturalism, to collage, abstraction, graphic sensibilities, painterly techniques, and refined constructions. It is with great pleasure that the LAVC Art Gallery annually hosts an exhibition that honors the outstanding achievements of our talented students and faculty.

 

Enter the campus at Oxnard Street and Campus Drive (between Fulton and Ethel). Please park in one of the lots (B or C) north of the Art Gallery – no parking permit is required during Gallery hours. The Art Gallery is located in the Art Building.

 

All events are free to the public.

 

For general Art Gallery information: 818-778-5536

A Fine Day’s Work: Photographs from the Michael R. Whalen Collection 

 

Reception

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

7 pm

 

Discussion with the collector, Michael R. Whalen, regarding his collection, and with dealer, collector & author Stephen White on the commoditization of photographs as a collectable

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

8 pm

 

Exhibition is open April 5 through May 12, 2011

Monday through Thursday,

11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm

(Closed from April 18 through April 25, 2011 for Spring Break)

 

This exhibition consists of over 100 vintage photographs created between 1895 and 1988 by eighteen renowned photographers. All of the prints are drawn from a single private collection. Included are works by Richard Avedon, Ruth Bernhard, Ilse Bing, Margaret Bourke-White, Josef Breitenbach, Ralston Crawford, Imogen Cunningham, Harold Edgerton, Helen Levitt, Ralph Meatyard, Hansel Mieth, Lisette Model, Alexander Rodchenko, Aaron Siskind, Karl Struss, Jerry Uelsmann, Adam Clark Vroman and Weegee.

 

This collection is unusual in that the collector, Michael R. Whalen, does not collect a single work by each artist, but rather, if possible, all of the photographs taken during a single photographic session. Not only does this approach offer unique challenges, such as determining how many photographs were made during a session and locating them, but it has unique rewards as well. Once the works are reassembled, the group of photographs offers the possibility to view the photographer’s progress during the session, and even to speculate why he or she may have taken a particular shot in a particular order.

 

A Fine Day’s Work is the third exhibition in an ongoing series that the Art Gallery has presented over the last several years on the subject of collectors and their collections.

 

Enter the campus at Oxnard Street and Campus Drive (between Fulton and Ethel). Please park in one of the lots (B or C) north of the Art Gallery – no parking permit is required during Gallery hours. The Art Gallery is located in the Art Building.

 

All events are free to the public.

 

The exhibition has been curated by Dennis Reed.

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

Faculty Makes: Recent Works by LAVC Faculty 

 

Artists Reception and Talk

Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, with a special musical performance by LAVC Music Faculty

 

Exhibit is open February 15 through March 10, 2011

Monday through Thursday

11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm

(Closed on President’s Day and Cesar Chavez Day) 

 

Los Angeles Valley College is a two-year public college founded in 1949. The picturesque campus is located in the suburb of Valley Glen, nearby Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles, and major motion picture and television studios. A student-focused, multicultural campus, the college’s Art Department provides a very diverse and rigorous program in the visual arts. Professors integrate their own professional practices into their pedagogy, offering courses of the highest caliber in drawing, painting, design, illustration, printmaking, sculpture, three-dimensional design, and ceramics.

 

The current exhibition, Faculty Makes: Recent Works by LAVC Faculty features the rich variety of artworks by ten visual arts professors who give a personal insight on how an artist’s unique approach and process can significantly inform the way that one teaches. Making art is critically tied with teaching art. A fascinating look at such an eclectic group with wide-ranging styles and methods, the exhibition reveals artistic growth, formation of ideas, and creative expression and inquiry from the artist-teacher.

 

Participating professors include Carol Bishop, Joe Bavaro, Annie Buckley, Jamison Carter, Dale Fulkerson, Sam Goffredo, Phung Huynh, Tom Mossman, Dennis Reed, and Vance Studley.

 

Enter the campus at Oxnard Street and Campus Drive (between Fulton and Ethel). Please park in one of the lots (B or C) north of the Art Gallery- no parking permit is required during Gallery hours. The Art Gallery is located in the Art Building.

 

All events are free to the public.

 

Contact

Phung Huynh, Gallery Manager,
or Dennis Reed, Dean of Arts
Los Angeles Valley College
5800 Fulton Ave
Valley Glen, CA 91401
818-947-2625

 

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

Cultural Windows: The Art of Ruth Asawa, Ynez Johnston and Betye Saar 

 

Reception

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

7 pm

 

Lecture by Karin Higa, Adjunct Senior Curator of Art at
the Japanese American National Museum

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

8 pm

 

Exhibition is open November 3 through December 16, 2010

Monday through Thursday,

11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm

(Closed for Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving)

 

Women of the same generation, Ruth Asawa, Ynez Johnston, and Betye Saar are notable California artists who have produced significant bodies of work. As if looking through a window, which can provide views in both directions, these artists have been inspired by peering outwardly at various cultures, foreign or domestic, while looking inwardly to reinterpret their personal feelings, heritage or ancestry. Through their provocative experimentation with cultural representation, Asawa, Johnston and Saar have developed their own personal visions, often lyrical and poignant.

 

The exhibition of approximately fifty works includes sculpture, paintings, drawings, prints and ceramics.

 

Ruth Asawa (born 1926) graduated from high school at the Rohwer Internment Camp in Arkansas and later worked as a domestic servant while attending college in Wisconsin to train as an art teacher. After being told by college administrators that she would not be hired as a teacher because of anti-Japanese sentiment, she decided to attend Black Mountain College, where she studied color theory and painting. Asawa is best known for her large, biomorphic sculptures made of looped wire, as well as her drawings and prints. Her carefully crafted sculptures, which can appear both solid and transparent, cast ethereal shadows. She developed this technique after a visit to Mexico in 1947, where she saw local artisans creating woven wire baskets. Her work references the long tradition of handcraft in Japanese culture, where crafts are highly celebrated.

 

Ynez Johnston (born 1920) graduated from UC Berkeley in 1946. While studying there, she became enthralled with Asian and Persian art that she saw in area museums. An interest in the art of distant lands encouraged her to travel to Japan, Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and Europe, where she absorbed the distinctive drawing styles and symbols of indigenous cultures. She artfully combines these cultural influences to produce her whimsical combinations of mythical creatures in fanciful environments that feel both exotic and highly personal. Over her long career, she has produced prints, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and ceramics.

 

Betye Saar (born 1926) graduated from UCLA (BA) and studied further at three area universities before seeing an exhibition of Joseph Cornell in 1968 that encouraged her to explore assemblage. Her work often incorporates found objects, many of which she finds at area swap meets. Saar’s art addresses cultural issues related to mysticism, ancestry, and history as well as social issues related to racism, stereotypes, and oppression. In one well-known work, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” she incorporates images of the “mammy” to challenge degrading tropes regarding African American women. Saar’s work can sometimes confront the viewer directly, but it can also gently beguile the viewer with an evocative sense of memory, often stimulated by her use of old photographs, dried flowers, and personal articles. Among her many recognitions are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.

 

Enter the campus at Oxnard Street and Campus Drive (between Fulton and Ethel). Please park in one of the lots (B, C or D) north or east of the Art Gallery – no parking permit is required during Gallery hours. The Art Gallery is located in the Art Building.

 

All events are free to the public.

 

A modest catalogue will be published.

 

The exhibition has been co-curated by Dennis Reed and Phung Huyng.

 

For general Art Gallery information: 818-778-5536

 

Contact

Phung Huynh, Gallery Manager,
or Dennis Reed, Dean of Arts
Los Angeles Valley College
5800 Fulton Ave
Valley Glen, CA 91401
818-947-2625

 

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

888

No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a modest sampling) 

 

Artist’s Reception & Program

Wednesday, 7 pm

February 24, 2010

 

Open February 25 through April 15, 2010

Monday through Thursday,

 

11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm

Saturday, 10 am to 1 pm

(Closed for Spring Break, March 29 – April 5, 2010)

 

An artistic pun can be very amusing, as can art based upon clever wit, farcical satire, or fanciful whimsy. This show is a sampling of works that use such potentially droll approaches, from artists who make humor the central theme of their work, to those who only occasionally decide to tickle our funny bone.

 

There was the time, in the 1970s, when artist Jeffrey Vallance buried a frozen chicken in a pet cemetery. In the 1960s, Richard Pettibone pulled off one of the great art stunts by making miniature copies of famous works in prominent LA collections, then selling the works to the same collectors. Today Stephen Berkman produces new photographs using antiquated processes to tease our sense of history, such as his image of a 19th century woman knitting a condom. And who does not know about William Wegman’s dog, Man Ray? These are a few of the artists and artworks in No Laughing Matter. Please don’t dismiss this art as lightweight fluff unworthy of sober consideration. This art is seriously funny.

 

Sixteen artists, some emerging, some veterans, are represented in the exhibition: Michael Arata, Walter Askin, Merwin Belin, Stephen Berkman, Jim Eller, Walter Gabrielson, Doug Harvey, Richard Pettibone, Pierre Picot, Erika Rothenberg, Ilene Segalove, Mahara Sinclaire, Dave Smith, Masami Teraoka, Jeffrey Vallance, and William Wegman.

 

Enter the campus at Oxnard Street and Campus Drive. Please park in one of the lots (C, D or E) north or east of the Art Gallery – no permit is required during Gallery hours. The Art Gallery is located in the Art Building.

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

 

Click on a thumbnail to see the full picture.

Seeing in Color: Photographs from the
Stephen White Collection II

Reception & Discussion with the Collector
7 pm, Wednesday, November 4, 2009

 

Special Guest Speakers Added: noted photographers John Upton and Grant Mudford will discuss color photography

November 4 - December 17, 2009

Stephen White’s Collection numbers thousands of images covering the history of photography.  For this exhibition works have been selected that survey photographic color processes used from the middle of the 19^th century to the present day, including such techniques as hand-tinting, autochrome, tricolor carbro, and dye transfer.  The subjects represented in the photographs include portraits of the famous, landscapes, and large abstractions.

 

Stephen White is a longtime collector who began as one of the first photographic art dealers in the United States when he opened his Los Angeles gallery in 1975.  He mounted two major traveling museum exhibitions from his collection, organized significant gallery exhibitions, and published numerous catalogues and a book.  In 1990 he sold his collection to a Japanese museum and soon began to collect again.  The works on exhibit are from his second collection.  Today he lives in the San Fernando Valley where he continues to collect, write and deal privately in photographic art.

 

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

 

 

Reviews

LA TIMES - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/11/color-photos-from-early-tokyo-to-the-beatles-and-beyond-.html

 

 

AP photographer Eddie Adams "Viet Cong Executed" 1968 Pulitzer Prize Winner	UPI photographer Im Van "Refugees Hang on for Dear Life" 1975

 

Mini Exhibit (hall cases)

 
In Plain View: Photographs from the Vietnam War
 
These press photos, on loan from a private collection, demonstrate the free access given to war correspondents at the time of the Vietnam War.  Included are many of the most famous, Pulitzer Prize winning images of the war that polarized opinions in the US and led to civil unrest.
 
November 4 – December 17, 2009

Margarete Hahner "After the Picnic" 2009 Oil on vinyl records Collection of the artist	Margarete Hahner "Wings," 2009 Oil on vinyl record Collection of the artist

Seen But Not Heard: Paintings by Margarete Hahner
 

April 14 - May 14, 2009

 
The Art Gallery at Los Angeles Valley College is presenting Seen But Not Heard: Paintings by Margarete Hahner.  The exhibition offers recent oil paintings done primarily on 33^1/3rd vinyl records. The subjects of these unusual paintings range from human figures and small animals, to depictions of color systems.  These images are painted sometimes on a single record or sometimes on as many as forty records that are overlapped to form a single image.

More often Hahner's paintings are done on a series of records, one after the other, in which the image changes from one record to the next. The result is a visual metamorphosis somewhat like perceiving an optical illusion as one thing, and then suddenly seeing it as something entirely different - though in her work the transition is gradual.  Hahner says, "I often think that I'm painting one image, when another emerges.  I like the transformation, and I somehow want to capture it."

To further explore her ideas of visual transformation, Hahner has also used her painted records as the equivalents of animation cells to produce short movies of her ever-changing images.

Hahner, who is based in Los Angeles and Berlin, has had 15 one-person shows (mainly in Berlin).  Her work also has been seen in a variety of group shows in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Potsdam, Munich, Berlin and Los Angeles, including The First Annual LA Weekly Biennial at Track 16 in 2005.

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

 

 

Intuitive Eye: The Diana Zlotnick Collection

Reception & Discussion with the Collector
7 pm, Wednesday, February 18, 2009

 

February 18 - March 26, 2009

One summer evening in the 1970s, Diana came to my home for dinner.  She wore sunglasses when she arrived, and she kept them on after she came in the house. After an hour of looking at art, her husband, Harry - a calm anchor and gentle foil to Diana's offbeat enthusiasm - said, "Diana, take off your sunglasses."  Surprised, she removed them, looked around and remarked, "I thought your house was so dark!"  Wonderful and eccentric, Diana has been my admired friend for some 30 years.

A nonlinear thinker, Diana does not progress logically in even steps from one thing to the next.  Rather she leaps, propelled by her inventive intuition and instinct.  They have served her well.  She has built a unique and enviable collection that includes early works by important artists: Andy Warhol, George Herms, Wallace Berman, and Richard Pettibone, to name but a few.

Her engagement with art is passionate and engulfing.  Although she buys art from galleries, she prefers a more direct link to artists.  She focuses on those whose careers are just emerging.  She often visits their studios and befriends them, being among the first to buy their work.  I have heard artists comment, years later, that Diana provided badly needed money and encouragement to continue working when they most needed it.

When she brings home new art, it is not placed carefully over the couch - I don't think she even owns a couch!  The rooms in her house, even the bathrooms, are small exhibition spaces with rotating shows.  New purchases join older works, so that a newly made piece, the paint barely dry, might hang next to vintage works acquired long ago by now veteran artists such as Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz, or Lynn Foukles.  She has been collecting since 1954, after all, when one of her first acquisitions was a John Altoon painting purchased from Walter Hopps at the now legendary Ferus Gallery. The work in this exhibition is but a small sampling of her extensive holdings.

 

Diana has loaned artworks to many museum exhibitions, and selections from her collection have been shown in the art galleries at California State University, Los Angeles (1969), Scripps College (1972), and USC (1985).  She was named a leading Los Angeles art collector by the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1976.  Since 1972, she has published Newsletter on the Arts. She is a longtime supporter of the Art Gallery at Los Angeles Valley College, and she is a member of the college's Arts Council.

I have known many collectors over the years, but none quite like Diana. It is a pleasure to be able to share with others Diana's passionate and intuitive eye.

Dennis Reed, Dean
Fine, Performing & Media Art

One in a series of exhibitions featuring collectors and their collections.

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

 

 

Doug Harvey "Great Expectorations: Bling," 2004 Mixed media Private Collection

Doug Harvey "Joe's Temper #31," 1994 Oil on paper Collection of the artist

 

Untidy: The Worlds Of Doug Harvey

October 15 - November 26, 2008

 

When noted contemporary art collector Diana Zlotnick was invited to select the artist for this exhibition, she chose Doug Harvey.

Harvey's imagination - an unruly, fermenting whirlpool - plays out in a surprising variety of artwork: paintings, sculptures, films, alternative radio, performances, sound art, installations, mail art, comic strip drawings and zines (cheap, self-published magazines). The diversity of his output runs contrary to the conventional notion that an artist must commit to a single artistic direction. Harvey, who is best known as the art and culture critic for the LA Weekly, has strayed from that singular path.

Attempting to characterize the breadth of his work, even when one looks only at his drawings and paintings, is challenging. For example he has drawn hundreds of small comic strip panels. He has also created large paintings on canvas done in overall patterns that cover the works from top to bottom. He has produced still other paintings, many featured in this exhibition, which consist of overlapping, artful jumbles of paint, collage and images. These are composed upon a single field of color, typically white, and seem to be arranged by caprice or by stream of consciousness. His approach to picture-making owes a debt to many, including Sigmar Polke, Kurt Schwitters, and particularly Robert Rauschenberg, as does Harvey’s use of collage and his many sources of imagery – popular culture, low and high art, technical illustration, religious iconography, and an active subconscious.

He often works in the style of underground comics, drawing characters in simple outlines with flat colors and including handwritten dialogue. He liberally peppers his work with pasted newspaper clippings, clip art, and retro mid-century magazine ads. One example demonstrates the general tenor of these sources, a 1930s ad entitled Joe’s Temper Almost Broke Up Their Home, in which a domestic conflict is played out in several comic strip panels and resolved when the characters buy softer toilet paper. Its absurd silliness, appeal to blatant consumerism, and cartoon styling were the perfect grist for Harvey’s mill. Layered fragments of this ad have found their way into numerous collages and other works by Harvey.

He is equally freewheeling in his use of painting techniques and materials, which range from kitchen shelf paper to urethane foam to traditional artist supplies. And do not look for pristine surfaces. These works are messy, with rips, stains and smudges. Harvey’s home/studio is a disheveled array of art pinned to walls, stacked carelessly in piles, or left outside to rot. His nonchalant attitude is refreshing in an art world relentlessly concerned with the preservation of unsoiled and untouchable art. When Harvey is finished with a project he moves on – done. Wait, maybe not. Most recently he has begun to paint back into works that have been weathered by the elements or inadvertently damaged, fully incorporating the deterioration into the visual fabric of his art. He has even begun to intentionally “pre-rot” materials for painting.

 

Harvey’s mixture of sources and materials results in a narrative art that is lively, slyly humorous, wryly hip, and at times crude. These works exhibit the wit of an art world insider who chooses to appear at times either erudite or common, skillful or untrained, sophisticated or naïve. Like most good art, Harvey’s work is subversive and iconoclastic.
The broad range of Harvey’s artwork, from drawings to sound pieces, pack the Art Gallery from floor to ceiling with the detritus of his untidy, unabashed creative energy.

Reviews

LA TIMES - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/11/doug-harvey-the.html

 

 

 

Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After –
Photographs by Michael Kenna

April 7 through May 8, 2008

The exhibition consisted of 88 photographs produced by Michael Kenna, a renowned English photographer, who initially visited the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in 1986. The visit had a profound impact on him, and in 1988 he began a twelve-year project of documenting 30 Nazi concentration camps as an act of remembrance, conscientiously creating images of commemoration.

Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After – Photographs by Michael Kenna was organized by Patrimoine Photographique, Paris, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture, and is toured by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE), Los Angeles.

Kenna’s work has been exhibited worldwide and is housed in many museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

 

Quotes from the Guest Book

 

Impossible to Forget installation, 2008

 

Past Exhibitions (selected)

2011	A Fine Day’s Work: Photographs from the Michael R. Whalen Collection
2011	Faculty Makes: Recent Work by LAVC Faculty
2010	Cultural Windows: The Art of Ruth Asawa, Ynez Johnston and Betye Saar
2010	No Laughing Matter: Art and Humor in Southern California (a modest sampling)
2009	Seeing in Color: Photographs from the Stephen White Collection II
2009	Seen But Not Heard: Paintings by Margarete Hahner
2009	Intuitive Eye: The Diana Zlotnick Collection
2008	Untidy: The Worlds Of Doug Harvey
2008	Impossible to Forget: The Nazi Camps Fifty Years After – Photographs by Michael Kenna
2007	Sitting Pretty: Chairs of the Twentieth Century
2007	Where We Live: Student Perspectives (collaboration with the Getty Museum)
2006	Eric Johnson / Peter Lodato
2006	Dan Douke: A Sweet Ride
2006	Perceptions: Bay Area Photography, 1945-1960
2005	Private Passions – The Faculty Collects
2005	Made in LA: Posters of the Peace Press
1992	Swiss Posters
1990	Creativity in the Shadow of Political Oppression: Recent Czechoslovakian Graphic Art from the Werksman Collection
1990	June Harwood: Recent Paintings
1990	Pottery & Photography: Selections from the Fidel Danieli Collection
1989	Recent Painting, Drawing & Sculpture of Walter Askin
1988	Selections from the Ovsey Gallery: Paintings, Ceramics, Prints
1987	Handmade Poems & Books: Lena Rivkin & Edie Ellis
1986	Emerson Woelffer: Recent Collages
1986	Efram Wolff
1985	Michael Wingo: Drawings & Paintings
1984	Ornett’s Way: Judith Von Euer
1983	The Furniture of Gustav Stickley
1982	Japanese American Photography in Los Angeles, 1920 -1945
1981	Richard Pettibone; A Survey of Work from 1961 through 1981
1981	Photography! Summation of Life Experience: Photographs by Edmund Teske
1981	Films of James and John Whitney
1981	Paintings: Roy Dowell, June Harwood, Robin Mitchell, Herb Rabbin
1970s	Assemblage
1968	Art in the Mirror, from the Museum of Modern Art

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5800 Fulton Avenue
Valley Glen. CA 91401
Phone: 818-947-2600

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