04 • Lum Art Magazine • Summer 2021 by California Culture Press

LUM Art Magazine

No. 4 • Spring 2021

No. 4 • Summer/Fall 2021 SUMMER/FALL 2021

LUM Art Magazine

Editor-in-Chief Debra Herrick, PhD Art Director Arturo Heredia Soto Writers James Glisson Bay Hallowell Madeleine Eve Ignon Audrey Lopez Grace Miles Iriany Sánchez Copy Editors Grace Miles Iliria Hernández Unzueta On the Cover: Nell Campbell, Plymouth Havana Cuba, archival pigment print Advisory Board Laura Macker Johnston Frederick Janka Anaïs Pellegrini Michael VanStry Advertising & Development editor@lumartzine.com Printed in California Lum Art Magazine • No. 4 Summer/Fall 2021 Published by California Culture Press All content in this publication is the property of the publishers and may not be reused in any way without written permission from Lum Art Magazine. Submissions Editorial inquiries, pitches and submissions can be sent to editor@lumartzine.com. Follow Instagram: @lumartmag Facebook: Lum Art Magazine Website: lumartzine.com

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Contents 6

Color & Paper Claudia Borfiga by Grace Miles

A Secret Plot Tom Pazderka by Bay Hallowell

Visita al estudio Studio Visit Porfirio Gutiérrez by Iriany Sánchez

Staying with the Trouble Yara El-Sherbini by Debra Herrick & Audrey Lopez

Beyond the Body Elisa Ortega Montilla by Madeleine Eve Ignon

Witnessing Our History Nell Cambell by Gace Miles

Impossible Objects Ed Lister by Bay Hallowell

Gallery Guide

18 22

When the Sun Goes Down Dakota Noot by Madeleine Eve Ignon

Human After All Liu Shiyuan by James Glisson

SUMMER/FALL 2021

LUM ART MAGAZINE • No. 4

lum – word root from Latin lucidus from lucere ‘shine,’ from lux, luck, ‘light’ Lum Art Magazine is a Santa Barbara-based contemporary art magazine for California’s Central Coast. Lum is independent and founded on a collaborative and open approach to arts writing. We aim to seamlessly blend the clarity of journalism with the power of art criticism. Lum’s online space and print magazine provide a forum for critical conversations, advocacy and discovery around art.

LUM Art Magazine

Summer/Fall 2021

Arts & Culture Benefactor Norton Herrick Arts Writing Sponsor Nancy Gifford Education & Culture Sponsors Michael VanStry Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science & Technology Friends of Lum Art Magazine: Lea Boyd, Casey Caldwell, John Connelly, Lloyd Dallett, Adrienne De Guevara, Jane Gottlieb, Katrina Gordon, Lynn Holley, Holli Harmon, Matt Henriksen, Frederick Janka, Habib Kheradyar, Olga Krigman, Cynthia Martin, Teddy Nava, Anaïs Pellegrini, Marc & Laurie Recordon, Mark Ryan, Manjari Sharma, Casey & Trent Summar, Nathan Vonk, Richard Weber, Julia Weissman, Leslie Westbrook, Stephanie Williams, John Wullbrandt and Hiroko Yoshimoto Join the Friends! Visit lumartzine.com/shop. Funding support was provided by the City of Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Grant Program. Sponsors and Advertising For sponsorships, ad inquiries and rates, contact editor@lumartzine.com or visit lumartzine.com/shop. Tax-deductible Donations Lum Art Magazine is fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative. To make a tax-deductible donation, contact editor@lumartzine.com. Arts Writing Internship Program Lum Art Magazine partners with the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum and the Journalism and Writing programs to mentor emerging artists and writers. Give If you are in a position to support the vitality of your arts community, please consider giving to Lum. Donations can be made at lumartzine. com/shop or via Venmo: @lum-art-mag. Checks can be mailed to 262 E McFarlane Dr, Ventura CA 93001. To learn more about the impact of your donation, contact Debra Herrick at editor@lumartzine.com or (805) 708-6269.

10008000 colectivo de arte multidisiplinario

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Art Soto

JOIN FRIENDS

THE

LUM ART MAG OF

Arts writing and publishing is an essential component of a vibrant arts & culture community. Help sustain a contemporary art & culture magazine for our region!

Join the Friends of Lum Art Magazine

Enjoy perks, special invitations, print subcription and more!

Annual membership $50

Become a sponsor

Donations over $250 can be made tax deductible

Advertise

Promote your business while supporting local arts & culture

Your contributions make Lum Art Magazine possible Give today at lumartzine.com/shop Checks can be sent to Lum Art Magazine at 262 E McFarlane Dr Ventura CA 93001 • Venmo @lum-art-mag To learn more about the impact of your donation, contact Debra Herrick at editor@lumartzine.com • (805) 708-6269

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Claudia Borfiga, Jungle Cow, screen print on paper opposite page: Claudia Borfiga, Cactus Garden, detail, screen print on paper

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Color & Paper Claudia Borfiga by Grace Miles

ith rich color and lush patterning, the screenprint designs of California-based artist Claudia Borfiga offer instant delight. A self-described teaching artist, Borfiga was raised in the suburbs of London, where a degree in textile design led to four years teaching and working with Print Club London. Her relocation to Southern California was a change both daunting and exciting, as the colors and light of this sunbaked, coastal landscape presented a striking contrast to the dense greens of South England. Yet, the novelty of this environment was itself an invitation – one that offered Borfiga a new direction for her art. Soon, she began to feel “less afraid, and more curious.” Colors, lightness and landscape emerge as the vital elements of Borfiga’s designs, and many draw their inspiration from California’s wealth of natural wonders. Cactus Terrazzo, with its sampling of multicolored cacti laid against staircase walls of tile and adobe, is intended to resemble the landscaped cacti gardens that have increasingly come to replace grassy lawns in Southern California. Meanwhile, the sweet pinks and greens of Cactus Garden comprise a scene modeled after the sprawling cactus garden at Montecito’s Lotusland. Incorporating nature and wildlife, two western fence lizards crouch among clusters of low cacti in Lizard Play, where the speckled white ground appears to pulse and flow beneath their splayed fingers.

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Certainly, just as impressive as her print designs is Borfiga’s continued commitment towards using art and other creative mediums to engage with Santa Barbara’s local communities. In 2018, she launched Print Power, a socially-driven group of printmakers whose first project partnered with the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center and the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative to offer free printmaking workshops to individuals affected by sexual violence. These workshops sought to provide a space for finding support and community, and to inspire creative expression among attendees. Borfiga has also contributed to Girls Rock Santa Barbara, a nonprofit that aims to empower girls with self-confidence through music education and the creative arts. She helped the girls design unique logos for the bands they formed at a Girls Rock summer camp, and guided the process of transferring these designs onto T-shirts worn for their end-of-camp concerts. In 2019, Borfiga accepted an offer to become a Desert Fellow at the Blue Sky Center, a rural development nonprofit located along the northern edge of Santa Barbara County in Cuyama. There, she hosted various workshops for residents, including a series specifically for the students of Cuyama School District. Borfiga’s

workshops encouraged participants to find inspiration for designs and patterns within the landscape around them – on the puckered spines of a cactus pad, the shadows cast by the ridges of a metal shipping container, a tangle of bright wildflowers – a creative decision intended so that residents might “look at something old and familiar through a new lens,” and gain a deeper appreciation for the things immediately accessible to them. More recently, Borfiga co-designed a proposal for Paseo Nuevo’s Earth Day Mural alongside artist and designer Adriana Arriaga. Their design was selected by a panel of judges as the winning entry and was unveiled on the exterior wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara on the final day of the 2021 virtual Earth Day festival. Spanning a remarkable sixty feet, the mural is divided into twelve blocks of vivid color depicting plants, animals and other features endemic to the landscape of Santa Barbara. Across the mural, California’s natural character pops in emblematic coastal desert imagery, such as bright orange California poppies, a brown-specked ear of corn and the endangered Arroyo toad. Under the growing threat of climate change, Borfiga wanted their design to remind

Claudia Borfiga, Cactus Terrazo, screen print on paper

LUMARTMAGAZINE

people of “the privilege of living on Earth and enjoying its bounty” as well as the duties we owe the land in return for this privilege. While screenprinting is often given little recognition in the art world, dismissed as perhaps too “easy” or reproducible, its accessibility is one of the very aspects Borfiga finds most wonderful about it. Screenprinting becomes a valuable tool with which she can teach and engage, while simultaneously sustaining her own creative passions. As Santa Barbara County transitions out of quarantine, Borfiga hopes to continue the efforts of Print Power, and use the creative joys of screenprinting to inspire stronger, more mindful communities.

In 2018, Claudia Borfiga launched Print Power, a socially-driven group of printmakers whose first project partnered with the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center and the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative to offer free printmaking workshops to individuals affected by sexual violence. These workshops sought to provide a space for finding support and community, and to inspire creative expression among attendees.

above: Claudia Borfiga, Lizard Play, screen print on paper below: Claudia Borfiga, Jungle Elephants, screen print on paper

SUMMER/FALL 2021

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Visita al estudio Studio Visit Porfirio Gutiérrez by Iriany Sánchez

ince the end of last year, Porfirio Gutiérrez has kept the Tool Room Gallery at Ventura’s Bell Arts Factory as his workspace, studio and gallery. Gutiérrez is the 2021 Art Prize recipient from the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation in Ojai. A California-based Zapotec textile artist and natural dyer, Gutierrez was born and raised in the richly historic Zapotec textile community of Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. He grew up immersed in color – surrounded by the wildness of Oaxaca’s mountains and the knowledge that plants provide healing and color. Revitalizing and preserving traditional Zapotec natural dye techniques has been Gutierrez’ life’s work. However, the artist has carried this out with a keen focus on reinterpreting traditional textiles and materials, reflecting a distinct creative vision of his own. Working at the Tool Room Gallery, Gutiérrez’ art practice maintains his ancestors’ spiritual belief that nature is a living being – sacred and divine. His grounding in traditional Zapotec knowledge manifests in his textiles, where he reinterprets the conventional weaving language. Subverting and reimagining symbols and forms, his textile designs morph toward the fractal forms and spaces of architecture that evoke the movement Gutierrez sees in cities and urban environments. Gutiérrez is truly an American artist. He moves freely across the imposed border between Mexico and the United States, as his ancestors and many other Indigenous peoples have done for thousands of years. His designs draw deeply on his experiences of both cultures,

Porfirio Gutiérrez works at his loom in his Bell Arts Factory studio. opposite page: An original woven rug by Porfirio Gutiérrez photos by Debra Herrick

SUMMER/FALL 2021

In Conversation Iriany Sánchez: At what point in your life did you first learn about your field of work? What called you to do what you do today? Porfirio Gutiérrez: There was a point where I had to make the decision to quit my 8 to 5 job. I made that decision after recuperating from an illness. After that, I made art a priority and not just a hobby.

moving between the traditional and the modern, but always reliant on the deep knowledge and spiritual dimensions of his work. Gutiérrez’ practice is an offering to the land and celebrates the people who now call this land home. The story of his art has been told in The New York Times, PBS and BBC London. Gutiérrez has been featured in Vogue Australia and the Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine. In 2015, he received the Smithsonian Institution’s Artist in Leadership fellowship award and recently, his work was acquired for the permanent collections of the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Fomento Cultural Banamex and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Additionally, a selection of Gutiérrez’ dye materials was also documented and added to Harvard Art Museums’ Forbes Pigment Collection, the world-renowned archive of artist materials.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Even though I currently reside in the US, the topic of migration is of much importance to me. I know how important it is to have been brought up and shaped in our native communities and cultures. That shapes not only the person I am today but also the contribution I can make to the world. Growing up, I had no idea that I would be what I am now. I just became part of my community. As a child, I didn’t think that I would make a career out of my everyday life. What is the biggest sacrifice you have made to be able to succeed as an artist? Life is full of sacrifices. The biggest sacrifice for me is the time I can’t spend with my family because I have to travel. What does success mean to you? To be able to leave a legacy. What would you tell your younger self that you wish you had known?

To focus more – but not even that because I have always been very focused. What does the world need more of ? The world needs more sensitivity towards the environment and culture. • • • • Desde finales del año pasado, Porfirio Gutiérrez ha mantenido como su espacio de trabajo, estudio y galería a la bien conocida ‘The Tool Room Gallery’ en Bell Arts Factory en Ventura. Gutiérrez es el ganador del Premio de Arte 2021 de la Fundación Carolyn Glasoe Bailey en Ojai. Gutiérrez, artista textil zapoteca y tintorero natural con sede en California, nació y fue criado en la ricamente histórica comunidad textil zapoteca de Teotitlán del Valle en Oaxaca, México. Creció inmerso en el color, rodeado de la naturaleza salvaje de las montañas de Oaxaca y del conocimiento de las plantas para sanar y colorear. El trabajo de su vida ha sido revitalizar y preservar las técnicas tradicionales de tintes naturales zapotecas con un enfoque en la reinterpretación de textiles y materiales tradicionales para reflejar su visión creativa distintiva. En su estudio, la práctica artística de Gutiérrez mantiene la creencia espiritual de sus antepasados en la naturaleza como una criatura viviente, sagrada y divina. Su fundamento

Aunque actualmente resido en los Estados Unidos, el tema de la migración es de mucha importancia para mí. Sé lo importante que es haber sido educado y formado en nuestras comunidades y culturas nativas y cómo eso da forma no solo a la persona que soy hoy, sino a cualquier contribución que pueda hacer al mundo. Al crecer, no tenía idea de que sería lo que soy ahora. Simplemente formé parte de mi comunidad. De niño no pensé que alguna vez haría una carrera profesional de mi vida cotidiana. ¿Cuál es el mayor sacrificio que ha hecho para poder tener éxito como artista? La vida está llena de sacrificios. El mayor sacrificio para mí, es el tiempo que no puedo pasar con mi familia porque tengo que viajar. ¿Qué significa el éxito para usted? Poder dejar un legado. en el conocimiento tradicional zapoteca se manifiesta en sus textiles, reinterpretando el lenguaje tradicional del tejido, subvirtiendo y reimaginando los símbolos y formas, transformando sus diseños textiles hacia las formas y espacios fractales de la arquitectura y el movimiento que ve en las ciudades y entornos urbanos. Gutiérrez es un artista verdaderamente americano, que se mueve libremente a través de las fronteras impuestas entre sus dos países, México y los Estados Unidos, como lo han hecho sus antepasados y muchos otros pueblos indígenas durante miles de años. Sus diseños se afirman profundamente en sus experiencias de dos culturas, moviéndose entre lo tradicional y lo moderno, pero siempre confiando en el conocimiento profundo y las dimensiones espirituales de su trabajo. La práctica de Gutiérrez es una ofrenda a la tierra y celebra a las personas que ahora llaman hogar a esta tierra. La historia de su arte se ha contado en The New York Times, PBS y BBC London. Gutiérrez ha aparecido en la

revista Vogue Australia y en la revista American Indian del Smithsonian. En 2015, recibió el premio de beca de Artista en Liderazgo de la Institución Smithsonian. Su trabajo está en la colección del Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Fomento Cultural Banamex y el Museo Nacional del Indio Americano del Smithsonian. También se documentó una selección de materiales de tinción de Gutiérrez y se agregó a la colección de pigmentos Forbes de los museos de arte de Harvard, el archivo de materiales de artistas de renombre mundial.

¿Qué se diría a usted mismo de joven que le hubiese gustado saber entonces? Enfócate más, pero ni siquiera eso porque siempre he estado muy enfocado. ¿De qué necesita más el mundo? El mundo necesita más sensibilidad hacia el medio ambiente y las culturas.

En conversación Iriany Sánchez: ¿En qué momento de su vida aprendió por primera vez sobre su campo de trabajo? ¿Qué le llamó a hacer lo que hace hoy día? Porfirio Gutiérrez: Hubo un punto en el que tuve que tomar la decisión de dejar mi trabajo de 8 a 5. Tomé esa decisión después de recuperarme de una enfermedad y luego hacer de mi arte una prioridad y no solo un pasatiempo.

opposite page: Gutiérrez achieves vibrant colors from organic materials, photos by Debra Herrick this page: A detail of a woven rug by Porfirio Gutiérrez

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Beyond the Body Elisa Ortega Montilla

by Madeleine Eve Ignon

lisa Ortega Montilla was born in Spain in 1985, only a decade after her country began to recover from thirty-nine years under fascist leader Francisco Franco. Throughout her childhood, the trauma from that period was rooted in those around her who had experienced it. Montilla grew up hearing stories from her grandmother about the Spanish Civil War; as a child, she was imbued with a stalwart sense of frugality and the instinct to reuse things when possible. Montilla has an old-world sensitivity towards and care for materials that make her work rich, layered and full of history. At the root of Montilla’s work is the concept of trans, which offers our collective language and lived experience a way to express crossing, moving over/under/through. Montilla’s work skillfully communicates such themes and questions related to translation, transmutation, material transformation, transgenerational trauma, trans-ness as it relates to the body, her country of origin’s transition out of a dictatorship, and even her trans-Atlantic move to the United States in 2013 as a result of Spain’s dire economic crisis. Though Montilla’s hybrid sculptures are reflective of her cultural history, she deftly updates the visual vernacular, transforming reclaimed wood and undergarments into skillfully carved biomorphic shapes and manipulating fabric into textural, colorful gestures. Found materials are elemental to her practice, but she lets the materials dictate

LUMARTMAGAZINE

and inspire rather than limit the works she produces. While her sculptures are smoothed, sanded and waxed with care and precision – creating skin-line surfaces – Montilla also embraces the natural knots, contours and burls of the wood. She carves wood as if it were clay, creating familiar yet unidentifiable shapes that allude to the body and all its inherent and possible abstractions. In Objectifying, Montilla’s 2021 exhibition at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) the work is given an intimate viewing experience. The gallery space doesn’t offer the high ceilings of her previous largescale installations, but the work is strengthened by close proximity to the viewer’s body and dramatic cast shadows. Amorfa (2020) confronts the viewer with a powerful active pose, like a prehistoric form caught mid-stride, in a state of transmutation. Anatomías (2020) is an erotically-charged hanging mobile – a fiercely feminist, craft-centric response to the hard, graphic edges of Alexander Calder. The suspended pieces move in and out of abstraction, offering playful glimpses into bondage, bones and viscera that interact to form undulating, poetic relationships. Mollera (2019), a limbless, torso-like form, sits on a hand-made plinth with small drawers that emerge out of it, spilling out cheap, garish pairs of women’s underwear. Montilla references department store underwear displays, the politics and consequences of fast fashion, and our culture’s flattened, heteronormative notions of “sexiness” as it relates to the female body.

Elisa Ortega Montilla, Paquete, reclaimed redwood and undergarments

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Montilla’s pieces imagine bodies in all their illogical, and imaginary forms, but also focus on what is beyond the body. The works engage with the boundlessness of the body in our imaginaries. Seen another way, the pieces could represent the body’s earliest state – that “pupa” stage of life where anything is possible. Thigh Gap (2019) feels like a bulbous, pre-fetal organism, held by its middle in a pair of ruched black underwear with glittery trim and embossed with an embroidered blue flower as if the wood is actual flesh. Many of the works are hung and suspended in gravity-defying poses, but none feel in danger of weakening or straining; the forceful, grounded nature of the wood and hardware places them firmly in space. The sculptures assert their presence and unabashedly claim their existence. Clips (2020), installed in a grid, is made up of sixteen pieces that each reference a different kind of undergarment clasp, in the bright jewel tones of a Crayola box. The work moves far beyond the scale of the body, literally blowing up and emphasizing the discomfort of the garments that Montilla tears apart and manipulates. One of Montilla’s strongest pieces is Chocheras (2021), which operates with the same scale-busting energy and boldness of Clips. The term chochera is a take on the Spanish slang word for vagina, chocho. A friend of Montilla’s coined the term to refer to the strip of cloth that goes between one’s legs on the style of underwear usually identified with femme bodies. Montilla wrote of the piece, “Several years ago, a Spanish friend in Madrid told me how her underwear had fallen from a clothesline onto her building’s communal patio. When she went down to retrieve them, they had disappeared. The next day she found them in her mailbox, but the center fabric piece under the crotch had been cut out. She explained, upset yet laughing, ‘¡Cortaron mi chochera!’” Montilla has not previously so directly confronted this element of working with repurposed underwear, and it is exciting to see the work engage with that potent charge. Through daring color, scale and texture, Chocheras vividly makes the private public. Through subject matter, meaning and material sensibility, Montilla’s work is in direct dialogue with a long feminist art tradition that includes Post-War Euro-American visionary makers Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, as well as the Feminist Art Movement of the 60s and 70s that valued alternative materials and a broader definition of art that forefronted womens’ perspectives and experiences. Montilla’s work is similarly committed to its own craft, language, tactility and political messages, while remaining firmly and wonderfully abstract, surprising and inventive.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

clockwise from left: Elisa Ortega Montilla, Gemelos, pine on steel; Asimetría, reclaimed plywood and undergarments with embroidered flower; Plana, reclaimed redwood and undergarments opposite page: Elisa Ortega Montilla, Reflejo, reclaimed pine, mirror and textiles with steel and jewelry

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Dakota Noot, Death Laid an Egg, performative photograph, photo by Christopher Velasco

LUMARTMAGAZINE

When the Sun Goes Down Dakota Noot by Madeleine Eve Ignon

akota Noot grew up in a seemingly incongruous cultural milieu of part rural Midwestern farm life and part pop culture media. Broadcast into his North Dakota living room in the 1990s, Noot was particularly drawn to the colorful, sardonic cartoons of the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. The contrast of these influences inspired the development of his unique “poppolitical cartoon aesthetic,” distinctive pastel color palette, interest in drawing and painting animals, and wry sense of humor and subversion. The dualities of Noot’s upbringing also drew him to explore the violence within the conservative politics of the community in which he grew up. He explains that animals – especially farm animals – typically recall calm scenes of pastoral tranquility. However, Noot chooses to use his bizzarely imaginative, vividly colorful hybrid animals to comment on the darker contours of what he experienced growing up in North Dakota. Noot’s illustration-based work takes many forms, but it is always recognizable and engaging. He consistently works in colored pencil and crayon, outlining his figures in a signature blue (“I only work in that one shade of Prismacolor,” he says, “Ultramarine!”). Some works push into space like miniature theater sets through built layers of drawings mounted on foamcore. More recently, his scenes and characters have defied the bounds of a frame to become eccentric cut-outs that comprise multi-part installations. One such installation was Meat Market: Tender Flesh, which he exhibited in 2018 at Cerritos College. In 2020, Noot began mounting his cutouts on his body as “wearable drawings” and making videos and photographs, introducing an element of performance and characterbuilding. Noot started using his body as an armature and

force for crude animation. He had realized that he himself “could become a cartoon character” and “enact violence playfully on (his) own body.” He often poses wearing the “looks” in his bathtub or other corners of the living space he shares with his husband and creative collaborator, photographer and performance artist Christopher Velasco. The two artists are in an intimate dialogue: Noot performs and Velasco shoots the off-the-cuff images, which casually but lovingly include the physical details of their lives in the background. Domestic objects like shampoo bottles, art hung on the wall, light switches and bedsheets – objects the likes of which we all became more familiar with during the pandemic – become part of a homelife “set” space within which Noot casts his characters with compelling honesty. The images, which fill his Instagram timeline like a diary, engage with both surreality and the mundanities of domestic life, particularly domestic queer life, and they resonate deeply after a strange year spent at home. In this most recent work, Noot boldly embraces material ephemerality – “if it falls off it falls off,” he says – and seems to find new meaning in the hybrid creature-characters they allow him to become. The pieces are striking in their variability and wearability. Each look comes alive in the space between two and three dimensions, where paper meets flesh.

SUMMER/FALL 2021

In an Instagram post from May 7, 2021, Noot showcases a piece titled “Death Laid an Egg.” The creature he wears appears to be half-chicken, half-woman. Guts and viscera fall out from between the artist’s legs. Beyond the color and

“If you aren’t a part of history, corrupt it. . . I’ll never be a part of North Dakota history, but I will wear it, queer it, and make it ridiculous. North Dakota scarred me for life but I’ve never

graphic work as “very nerdy,” and “political” in the sense that his rural, hometown community would never accept it. Having a sense that Noot’s work exists in a complicated dialogue with his rural upbringing enriches the meanings and histories present in the images. In a post from July 18, 2020, Noot directly references his Midwestern roots, writing: “If you aren’t a part of history, corrupt it. I’ve taken the image of Medora and her failed meat packing plant (that is still celebrated with the annual Medora Musical). I’ll never be a part of North Dakota history, but I will wear it, queer it, and make it ridiculous. North Dakota scarred me for life but I’ve never looked better.” Noot’s performative character personifies the failed De Mores meat-packing plant, an infamous site in Billings County, North Dakota.

character, it is striking to notice that Noot’s head is visible in the mirror behind him. We can see behind the curtain, and he lets us.

“The Marquis de Morès built the town and a processing plant for meat/beef,” Noot told me. “His wife was heavily involved and designed their home there (her name, Medora, became the town name). They hoped the railroad would take/freeze the beef from North Dakota abroad. But it failed. Even though it failed, it’s become a legend of sorts for North Dakota. You can still tour their home, the small town of Medora, and the area around it. I love that the European settlement failed – but still became a part of North Dakota mythology. It’s very bizarre.”

In an interview with Greg Thorpe of the UK-based online magazine, The Fourdrinier, Noot describes his surreal,

Beyond growing up in North Dakota, Noot’s influences range from Australian performance artist and New York club-

looked better.”

this page: Dakota Noot, Be Careful When You Trim, performative photograph, photo by Christopher Velasco previous page: detail from Dakota Noot Meat Market: Tender Flesh!

LUMARTMAGAZINE

left: Dakota Noot, Whoa There, Cowboy, performative photograph; right: Dakota Noot, Well We Ain’t Serving Ham, performative photograph, photos by Christopher Velasco

kid Leigh Bowery to underground filmmaker Jack Smith, who has been credited as the founding father of American performance art. On the subject of his influences, Noot says, the work “is a different take on a lot of things. I’m not obsessed with the macho.” Certainly, Noot’s work is multi-layered and exploratory, and his creations avoid landing on any one side of gender, gender roles, species or configuration. In some ways, Noot’s work and trajectory follow Los Angelesbased, Chattanooga-bred artist Wayne White’s line. White is known for bringing humor into fine art. Along with outlandish sets for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in the late 1980s, he has also created a series of witty text interventions painted on kitschy thrift-store landscapes. Both artists contend with the complicated spaces of their youth, and bring their work back to their communities to spark dialogue and re-contextualize their ideas and themes.

both artists’ use of “vibrant colors, sci-fi like elements and bold textures.” It will travel across North Dakota and the surrounding area. This year it will be exhibited at the Northeast Arts Center at Minot State University, and in 2022 it will be at The Arts Center (Jamestown), James Memorial Art Center (Williston), MonDak Heritage Center (Sidney, Montana) and the Taube Museum of Art (Minot). Noot is currently an adjunct professor at Oxnard College and Orange Coast College. Along with Velasco, he co-founded the nomadic curatorial project Scream Queen. The flavors of camp, hybridity and pseudo-horror in Noot’s work are sophisticated and nuanced, yet direct in their references and bold juxtapositions. His art allows him to proudly “embrace the monster” within, and he invites his audiences to do just the same.

Currently, Noot is showing with his father in North Dakota in Father & Son – The Beast Within Us, which showcases

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Human After All by James Glisson

or the photos I didn’t take, For the stories I didn’t read by the artist Liu Shiyuan (刘诗园) reconfigures Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” for our era of computer screens and digital video editing. Without changing a word of the story, Liu feeds the text into online search engines, whose algorithms thendredge up images that she weaves with pictures and sounds to create parallel storylines every bit as vivid as the Andersen’s. Liu is from the People’s Republic of China and studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, as well as the School of Visual Arts, New York. Liu first encountered Anderson’s story in China, where it is assigned to schoolchildren as a lesson on the cruelty and indifference of capitalism. The artist splits her time between Copenhagen, Denmark and Beijing, China, so the story also bridges two cultures she knows well. To most fully appreciate the artist’s

LUMARTMAGAZINE

exquisite reworking of the story requires a summary. We encounter the match girl as she walks alone and shoeless on a frigid New Year’s Eve. Hungry and cold, she smells the celebratory dinners wafting from kitchens. She has lost her oversized slippers borrowed from her mother and wanders shoeless. She carries an apron with matches and does not want to return home until she sells some because otherwise her father will beat her. Eventually, overcome by exhaustion, she huddles down in an alley and decides to light her matches to keep warm. As each match flares, she imagines being lifted from her awful situation. First, she dreams of a warm kitchen with a fancy brass stove. With the strike of her second match, she sees a sumptuous dining table with a large roasted goose. Before her eyes, the goose walks away with a carving knife stuck in its back. Then, she sees her dead grandmother – who we learn was the only person who loved her. In an act of desperation,

the girl burns the rest of her matches to propel herself into the stars and join her grandmother in Heaven. The following morning, her body is found in the alley with rosy cheeks, having succumbed to the night’s bitter cold. Using the original text as a foundation layer, the video builds an intricate structure of images and sounds that effectively transform the experience of the story. First, the story’s words appear in rows that scroll up the screen and are paired with rows of images generated by those same words plugged into a search engine. “Penny” pulls up a pile of copper pennies, “mite” pops up with the arachnid, while “downcast” shows a sad-eyed puppy. Occasionally, the machine’s logic produces hiccups. The phrase “to go home” has a candle, a small child walking on a road, and a house perched on a wall about to fall. Behind these ascending text and image bars, there are changing video backgrounds. Two reappear frequently: a view of outer space with stars and galaxies in motion

Liu Shiyuan, For the photos I didn’t take, For the stories I didn’t read (stills), 2020, 4K video, single channel, color, stereo sound. Duration: 16 min, 39 sec (composer Kristian Mondrup Nielsen), Edition of 5, 2 AP, Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles

and a lone person in a parka viewed from above whose footsteps crunch while walking across a snowy field. A soundtrack adds another layer of sensation. There are city sounds, dripping water, and towards the end, as the girl dies, a mournful woodwind instrument. Like the odd search results mentioned above, these backgrounds sometimes function as non-sequiturs, even if they do not feel that way. In fact, it takes reflection and effort to see the absurdity. For instance, when the roasted goose waddles off the table with a knife in its back, the background image is a fancy scabbard dripping with blood freshly withdrawn from a wound. The music at that point is menacing, keyed to the knife and not the light-hearted whimsy of an escaping goose. Or, when the match girl’s grannie comes back to life looking “so tall and beautiful,” in the background emerge immaculately groomed 21st century women with sunglasses and tasteful make-up. Working class Danish grannies surely did not look like these

smiling well-to-do women who might be on vacation.

into thinking we are an executive calling the shots, aware of everything.

These are not mistakes, and the artist’s decision to include them strengthens the piece. They are the raw products of search engines, whose artificial intelligence does not follow narrative development or catch the nuances of natural language. Their untroubling presence in the video points to something deeper about how the brain takes in parallel channels of information from the screens we constantly stare at. The orderly rectangular format of the monitor belies the disorder. Multiple programs run, video channels stream, a Zoom call drones while notifications ding. Even in the era of Google’s smoothed search results, the cacophony increases as one scrolls down. In other words, Liu Shiyuan’s rendering of Andersen’s story mirrors the screen and also reveals how much we miss as we surf, procrastinate and live online. As neuroscientists keep discovering, the brain processes in parallel tracks that often fail to intersect, while everyday consciousness deludes us

Search engines or not, the video is moving. Whether it is the recurring burning candles contrasted with ice, snow or frost, or the view from above of a person walking on a snowcovered field, these images resonate with emotion and foretell the girl’s sad death from hypothermia alone on a cold street. In the finale, when the final blaze of matches sends the girl heavenward to join her beloved grannie, the background shifts from a group of fish displayed on ice as if for sale, to snow, to light colored skin, a dry desert surface, and then to outer space with stars and galaxies in motion. The film ends with the lone person in a parka walking on snow. That the artist never took the pictures or read the story, or why fish incongruously appear on ice in the last video sequence as the girl dies does not matter. The compelling narrative of this sad, brief story carries the viewer along.

SUMMER/FALL 2021

A Secret Plot In Conversation with

Tom Pazderka by Bay Hallowell

n early 2017, I visited Tom Pazderka’s studio at UCSB’s Red Barn shortly before he completed his MFA. Now, five years later, Pazderka has evolved into a noted artist, set to have his second solo exhibition, One Day I Will Disappear, at the Bender Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. I reconnected with Pazderka at his Ojai studio/gallery, A Secret Plot, to learn more about his creative, professional and philosophical projects. Bay Hallowell: A recent painting based on a photograph of your parents’ leather shop that includes you as a boy piqued my curiosity. When and how did you move from the Czech Republic to the US? Tom Pazderka: In 1994, when I was 12 years old, I moved from the Czech Republic to New York City. My home country had split with Slovakia two years before and witnessed the Velvet Revolution in 1989. In less than five years, we saw a major political and economic upheaval in the country, but I wasn’t really that aware of what the ramifications were at the time. Daily life was mostly the same, but I did notice subtle changes in school, at home and on the streets. Overnight, there were advertising billboards everywhere, people were allowed to travel, and politics were discussed openly. There was an air of freedom, but I also think a general anxiety underneath it all. The future was uncertain and not many people knew where things were headed. It turns out that the 1990s were to become a very Wild West kind of decade in the Czech Republic – very sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. But while tourists were streaming into the country, many Czechs were streaming out, the way they did in 1948 and 1968. We were a part of a large migration of citizens out of the country. As soon as I landed in NYC, my parents applied for a green card for me. Two years later, my stepfather’s employer moved and opened up a factory in North Carolina – and that’s how I ended up in the land of cotton and tobacco.

Tom Pazderka, The Outing, detail, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel

LUMARTMAGAZINE

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Some of your paintings feature majestic, billowing clouds or huge, foreboding mountains – seductive, compelling images generic enough to engender a wide range of responses in viewers. Yet many of your paintings focus on specific historical events and specific historical figures, emblematic of good and evil at play, probing the most provocative political and spiritual problems of our day.

To me, all this work is reminiscent of German artists, especially Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, and their preoccupation with German history. Do you feel an affinity with these artists?

In Katharos, which means “a soul cleansing,” you depict a roomful of elementary school students pledging allegiance to the American flag as they raise their arms in the original salute, a salute similar to one used later by German Nazis and Italian Fascists (which the US Congress changed in 1942 to the hand-over-heart salute used ever since).

I feel a connection to post-war German art in general, because it seems to be an attempt to reconcile itself with the history and tradition of ultra-nationalism. In the Czech Republic and the former Eastern Bloc in general, there is also this kind of push to really figure out what the twentieth century meant (not just to artists) and an attempt to reconcile its past with the present.

You also paint portraits of famous dictators and title them The Shoemaker, The Teacher, The Bus Driver, and The Cook, impressing upon viewers that Nicolae Ceausescu, Pol Pot, Nicolas Maduro and Idi Amin Dada were “normal,” professional people before they became dictators.

I think I share a lot of affinity with those artists – Pitin, Ghenie, Savu, Sasnal, just to name a few – because we’re within the same age range, having been born into the interregnum between existing communism and capitalist realism.

Your painting of a cathedral is titled Deus Absconditus, a

phrase used by Martin Luther to describe the absence of God in precisely the place where God is most sought.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

German artists were hoping for some sort of great

opposite page: Tom Pazderka, Angels of the New Light, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel this page: Tom Pazderka, Ghosts of My Memories VI & I, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel

reckoning with its Nazi past, which obviously never came, and this made for some very potent images. Joseph Beuys used fat and felt in his work a lot because those were materials directly connected to the horrors of Nazism – felt socks for German soldiers were made out of the human hair of concentration camp victims, for example.

men for solitude and the paradoxical fine line between sanity and insanity?

On the other hand, I sense the US is somewhat lagging in this respect behind its European counterparts. Perhaps, partly because the US is, despite its recent pretenses to the contrary, still very conservative, and it is harder for artists who have real social issues on their minds to break through. Everything has to be wrapped up in the cloak and language of business and branding, which makes for a strange paradox, because many artists’ brands rise on the premise of being anti-capitalist.

I read both Thoreau and Kaczynski’s books and surprisingly there are a lot of parallels in the outlook both men had on the world surrounding them. We shouldn’t forget that Kaczynski’s particular point of view comes partly from the abuse he suffered at Harvard as an unwitting subject in the MK Ultra psychological experiments that were designed to probe the deepest recesses of the human subconscious. Kaczynski’s turn to the dark side coincides with his time at Harvard and it’s not a surprise that he directed his anger toward academics, because in his mind, they were directly engaging in a callous and dangerous experiment, the technological advancement of humanity.

In my work, the focus isn’t so much on the politics of the day. I like using language and telling stories through images, so the titles are a very important part of that storytelling. There’s a bit of politics in the background, but I’m more interested in the social anxieties that surround us. I also want the audience to do a bit of work, because I believe that art isn’t just meant to look pretty on a wall or have a specific value attached to it. Most of the time, the titles are a clue. Like in a Beuys work, when you know what the materials stand for, it opens up a whole new world of meaning. This is also why I started working primarily with ash and burned surfaces.

We find the same strain of thought in Thoreau, except his anger was a bit more diffuse. To him, it was the ignorance of the petty bourgeoise that perpetuated the cycle of abuse and slavery which he saw dragging humanity down into its own self-destruction, something that Kaczynski was also deeply aware of. In both Thoreau and Kaczynski, we seem to have a case for the bipolar nature of the American Eden. In Walden, we have Thoreau’s idyllic pastoralism and anti-political rhetoric; while in Industrial Society and Its Future, Kaczynski takes Thoreau’s argument to its logical end – abuse of and by others is directed inward; the Modern is abusive.

You’ve set up your studio/gallery, A Secret Plot, with an unerring eye for efficient uses of space. Some of your paintings depict the architecture of cabins built by Henry David Thoreau or Ted Kaczynski, men who led solitary lives (unlike yours) – lives which led Thoreau to write meditative, inspirational books, and Kaczynski to methodically plan and execute murders. How closely do you identify with the desire of these

It isn’t necessary to be a recluse to arrive at such conclusions, but it does help. The recluse has always been a figure to revere and fear. I’d argue though that mobs and group-think are much more volatile and dangerous than any recluse has ever been. The archetype of a Kaczynski is actually quite rare but it’s overrepresented in the media. There was a disproportionate amount of attention given SUMMER/FALL 2021

Tom Pazderka, For Caspar David Friedrich, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel

to the crimes of Kaczynski. Perhaps what makes him more “dangerous” is that his acts of violence were ideologically driven and they struck a chord in some spaces of the general public. Wars over resources, land and political power kill and displace countless more people than a single individual with an AR-15 or pipe-bomb, but psychologically, we’re more traumatized by seemingly random stochastic violence occurring in a place that looks a lot like the one we occupy. That is how terrorism is able to project itself into our psyche. I built my studio/gallery not so much with attention to how it might be related to the Thoreau/Kaczynski cabin project, but rather to function as a space for the exploration of the strange, weird and eerie. A Secret Plot is another one of those double meanings that I think fits well with the Thoreau/Kaczynski narrative and with my personal interest and fascination with the darker side of existence. Your mostly black and white paintings incorporate ashes brushed onto bare wood salvaged from used packing crates that you burn – a practice originally inspired by California’s wildfires. The warm tones and textures of the wood sometimes show through. Occasionally, you add a bit of color. The paintings are simultaneously primal yet sophisticated, austere yet sumptuous, conceptual yet painterly. More paradoxes. Is your embrace of paradox a series of conscious decisions, a deliberate aesthetic strategy, or does it develop organically and intuitively?

LUMARTMAGAZINE

The work as a whole is still an evolving process, an evolving story being told in real time. For me, the hidden or secret component to my work is the idea of incompleteness. That’s why I work in black and white, and that’s why I also reproduce photographs – but in such a way that when you get close to them you see the material and the surface – and these become very abstract. I mean, even in physics, we’re told that at the center of everything is nothing. The building blocks of space are empty if you go deep enough. Theologically, I’ve heard that God might have created the universe as incomplete on purpose because a universe that is complete is stagnant. But the most eye-opening assertion that I’ve come across is the notion that one’s head is the site of the ultimate void. Where your head is, is really a big blank in your perception. As you look around, you can see everything but your head. Even when you look into the mirror, what you see is your head in reverse. You’ll never be able to see yourself as others see you. Your head remains a complete blank and this, I believe, is what creates the fundamental incompleteness of one’s experience of the world. I’d argue further that we live in a world of paradoxes and many are created artificially. If you look at the internet, it is a world within a world, a self-replicating runaway world. It is, in many ways, trying to rebuild what already exists in the real world, just in a different way. The paradox is that this world is full of contradictions. What was meant to be the ultimate freeing experience has become one of the most sophisticated ways of spying and surveillance. What was meant to be for end-users to

experience a world without corporate and government coercion is now dominated precisely by those interests. What’s strange is that we believe we can easily occupy both worlds at the same time, but experience tells us that we can’t. Attention can only be given to one or the other. On top of that, our real existence is supplemented by our online existence, which creates multiples of “ourselves.” Basically, our online, selfcreated selves get to live entirely separate from us – independent and subject to different forces. There are now different “classes” of online ghosts – not in human form, but in data form, in images, inside social media groups, on Google Maps and so on. My work is a commentary on these and many other, more subtle subjects. I started painting the Santa Barbara fires in 2016. But since the get go, I didn’t want to fall into the trap that many artists fall into, which is just parroting what they see happening around them. I didn’t want to just make paintings about the fires. The fires were, and still are, powerful symbols of the beautiful and terrifying nature that surrounds us. But before I slip into some sort of neo-Romanticism, I have to say that ash clouds and clouds in general were something that I was already working with for several years prior to this series. They were often a reference to cloud computing or cloud information storage that was at the time becoming the norm. With the Santa Barbara fires, for the first time, I actually witnessed a natural disaster like this, but with enough distance to see the absolutely awe-inspiring ash clouds that they produce. Many of them looked like monsters and others reached so high up into the atmosphere as to become smooth and shaped like nuclear explosions. With the new materials at my disposal and a renewed interest in painting – after I spent a few years as a conceptual artist – the work just took off.

above: Tom Pazderka, Nostalgie XV, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel below: Tom Pazderka, The Card Game, ash, charcoal and oil on burned panel

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Staying with the Trouble Yara El-Sherbini by Debra Herrick & Audrey Lopez

e live in mixed-up times, overflowing with both joy and pain, Donna Haraway tells us in her introduction to Making Kin in the Chthulucene. “Our task,” she writes, “is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.” Staying with the trouble, Haraway says, is our task – to be aware of our status as “mortal critters” in an uneven and complex web of material, geographic, historical and social conditions. Artist Yara El-Sherbini has been stirring up trouble for a while. In ambitious and ludic projects, El-Sherbini often takes familiar expressions, games, devices or artifacts and alters or recontextualizes them to produce new meaning. The experience of her work is sometimes lighthearted, but the issues that ElSherbini addresses are nothing short of weighty. Born in the United Kingdom and now based in Santa Barbara, El-Sherbini works across the US and the UK. She completed her master’s degree in fine art media at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London before moving to California.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Of Egyptian and Trinidadian heritage, El-Sherbini spent her childhood living in England and Saudi Arabia – a combination of cultural influences that led the artist to develop a “fresh and sometimes perturbing approach” – as Kelly Carmichael puts it in Contemporary Practice. El-Sherbini’s practice, Carmichael notes, “touches on relational aesthetics, stand-up comedy, familiar family entertainment and socio-political concerns.” It is a “trans-disciplinary” practice, Carmichael says, that intentionally crosses art and nonart borders. El-Sherbini often stages her works outside the gallery, in places as varied as crowded pubs, empty fields or welltransited public plazas. From small- to large-scale interventions, spanning mini-golf games to water closet locks to comedy sets, El-Sherbini’s interdisciplinary practice fosters public engagement with matters of politics, social and human conditions, relational aesthetics and live art – or as Haraway calls it, “myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.” In addition to her solo practice, El-Sherbini is half of the artist duo, YARA + DAVINA. The other half is the

Scottish social practice artist Davina Drummond, who lives and works in London. Together, they make bold public art, seeking to open art up to a wider more general public. In the interactive and touring public installation, Arrivals + Departures, by YARA + DAVINA, the axis of the work is two 12-foot-tall station/airport arrivals and departures boards. The artwork – focused on birth, death and the journey in-between – invites the public to share the names of people who have arrived and departed, as a way to celebrate a birth, recall someone still living or commemorate a death. Names can be submitted online or with the help of a steward at the boards themselves. After a short while, the name appears live on the board with others, usually strangers, grouped and presented as in a train station – as arrivals (births) and departures (deaths). Arrivals + Departures was set to open in April 2020 and tour the UK, but was postponed due to Covid-19. Months later, in September 2020, the project was launched at London’s Somerset House, with new resonance and urgency. Communities the world over continue to be disrupted by the effects of

YARA + DAVINA, Arrivals and Departures, photos by Tom Merrell

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Covid-19, racial injustice and the environmental crisis. Arrivals + Departures serves as a timely platform to explore issues around loss and grief. Moreover, through its monumental size, public placement, and participatory engagement, the work questions who and what has traditionally been allowed the honor of public statues and memorials – particularly as relates to racial, ethnic and social justice. “We’re not interested in making what’s classed as high art events or objects or whatever,” El-Sherbini says in an interview with Lum, “It’s actually about down-to-earth accessibility, about home, about life.” Indeed, the artists seek to radically expand both how and who engages with art. “The main thing for Davina and I, in terms of practice, is this notion of engagement. For us, what’s always at the root is this idea of creating meaningful moments and moments of collaborative engagement. For us, the public programme is absolutely about finding ways to bring people together and collaborating with experts,” ElSherbini says in a recorded interview for the project. The Arrivals + Departures public program is integrated and integral to

LUMARTMAGAZINE

the live artwork. For instance, during the opening week of the work’s debut at Somerset House, there was a death café, a birth café, and conversations led by experts in different critical and cultural fields. At the site of each public installation, the program changes to reflect the context and relevant resources. The variety of experts and people from across communities that participate has included midwives and ministers, musicians and care workers. The artists also invite social media takeovers focused on birth, racial, social and environmental justice. These multimodal, globally accessible entry points, allow for greater and more diverse participation. The work can’t exist without the public, El-Sherbini says. The collective experience of the public piece reflects the magnitude of sharing a name. Entries range from family members to well-known victims of police violence, such as Breonna Taylor. One participant in the program submitted the names of her children and nephew to arrivals, noting that it was important to see the birth of her nephew, who has cerebral palsy, celebrated at the same time as her children. “It’s really to make sure that all our

children’s births are celebrated, not just neurotypical children, not just children without disabilities, not just children without special needs, but also those who do have difficulties in life,” the participant says at the live presentation at Somerset House. “It is important that we talk about birth as well as death. We do not know how people come and go in this world,” she later adds. In Arrivals + Departures, the names we quietly carry with us – shifting from foreground to background at all times – are made visible to the world in a collection of names, likely strangers, who share that transitional space in our collective human experience. Since Arrivals + Departures premiered in London, thousands of people have shared names and stories. The work has traveled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the IF: Milton Keynes International Festival and Theater Spektakel, Zurich. * While Arrivals + Departures continues to tour, El-Sherbini opened her first solo show in the US in November 2020, Forms of Regulation and Control, at the CUE Art Foundation, New York. The exhibition, curated by Naeem Mohaiemen, features pieces that deftly

employ humor and participatory elements of games to engage the public, such as Occupied/Freed and Border Control. “There is a sharp irreverence paired with lacerating wit, hidden under the surface of Yara’s process. It sits there so quietly that people often miss it, reading the projects only through the lens of interactive public play,” Mohaiemen writes in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, This Joke Kills Fascists. “That is there of course, deploying the formats of the pub quiz, hidden treasure, card game, racing cars, mini golf, and knock-knock jokes. In public spaces, her audiences range from children to pensioners, leading critics to think of the work as ‘family friendly.’ Underneath that pleasant, and pleasing, surface is roiling, dark humor and challenge, belied by her gentle tone.” Take for instance, Occupied/ Freed, an intervention to the locks on the gallery’s bathrooms. By changing the standard indications of “occupied” and “vacant” to “occupied” and “freed,” El-Sherbini provokes surprise and amusement while simultaneously signaling questions of ownership and geopolitics. In broad strokes, the piece identifies occupation of land as a form of control, and points to how borders are implemented to regulate the movement of people. In context – at the door of a gallery toilet – the wordplay is light and humorous. But in the context of civil unrest related to current military occupations of countries, such as the case of Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, Georgia and Ukraine, these words are as heavy as lead. In the piece Border Control – originally commissioned in 2015 by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara – El-Sherbini invites audience members to play a tactical game. Players have one minute to move a metal ring across a charged US-Mexico border without touching the wire. If they make contact, an electric circuit sets off warning sounds and lights.

Border Control replicates the politically charged US-Mexico border as a tangible power line. The US’s southern border is the entry point to the country for people who have been displaced from all over the world, including people from South and Central America, Africa, Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and Indonesia. Strategic elements of the game mimic the risk and requirements of crossing the border illegally. Crossers must move forward – sometimes slowly sometimes quickly – and they must be undetectable, or they risk dying or being captured by border patrol. In this way, the piece offers an avenue to critically activate engagement with a difficult issue without having to talk about it directly. In a game which simulates high-risk, audiences confront the implications of man-made lines on the movement of millions of people. “At the heart of my process is the question, ‘How can I engage a wider audience in an unexpected way?’” El-Sherbini writes in the gallery text for the CUE exhibition. “This is followed by, ‘How can I invite this wider public to explore varied global, social, and political issues in accessible ways?’ My answer is through play, humor, and participation, making artworks which become entry points for everyday dialogue in a myriad of ways.” * On the moving edge of trouble, El-Sherbini conducts her practice and defines her role as an artist in a global community. Instead of letting despair halt or darken her vision, she embraces working in what Haraway calls the “thick, ongoing present.” In both her solo and collaborative practice, El-Sherbini’s work reveals unsettling truths of the present, and seeks to expand our collective capacities to respond to and relate to each other.

above: Yara El-Sherbini, Operation Brexit, commissioned for Now Play This, Somerset House, London, photo by Ben Catchpole below: Yara El-Sherbini, Border Control, commissioned for Bloom Projects: Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, photo by Erica Urech opposite page: Yara El-Sherbini, Occupied/Freed, photo by Erica Urech

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Witnessing Our History Nell Campbell

by Grace Miles

orn in Mississippi and raised in southern Louisiana, Nell Campbell has since established herself as one of Santa Barbara’s most socially conscious, civic-minded documentary photographers. Campbell’s initial interest in photography was sparked by the Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 exhibition catalogue for The Family of Man, a touring exhibition curated by Edward Steichen. The exhibition brought together the work of photographers from around the world to propose the existence of a common human identity amidst post-war instability. Looking at the body of work Campbell has gone on to produce in the decades since, it is clear that The Family of Man, with its optimistic focus on the simple significance of human life, had a profound influence on what subjects she felt compelled to photograph. A bulky Instamatic was Campbell’s first camera, and it was with this that she began to capture scenes around her hometown of Lake Charles, Louisiana. While on a trip to Europe in 1967, Campbell’s interest in photography was further stimulated when she met a couple of American G.I.s, who showed her how to use their 35-millimeter camera. Upon her return to the States, she soon left Lake Charles for the city of New Orleans. There, in between shifts at a convenience store, Campbell pored over the local papers, looking for obituaries of jazz musicians. Their funerals would often entail lively processions and celebrations, which made for brilliant spectacles that Campbell delighted in photographing.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

In 1969, Campbell moved to Santa Barbara and enrolled at the Brooks Institute of Photography. However, she soon found herself more interested in the political and social demonstrations that were taking place outside the classroom. With her camera in hand, Campbell attended various local demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and photographed the protestors as they gathered with signs and flags to demand peace. Later, in the ‘70s, she accepted a job with the United Farm Workers as a staff photographer. Alongside the famous civil and labor rights activist Cesar Chavez, Campbell photographed the strikes, elections and organizational efforts of agricultural labor unions throughout California. With social issues consistently at the forefront of her work, Campbell has spent decades photographing the determined individuals who come together in crowds to protest wars and oppression and march in favor of gay rights, labor rights, and civil rights. Recently, in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, she attended over two dozen political demonstrations in Santa Barbara as well as the 2017 Women’s March in Los Angeles. Then, last summer, as the devastating effects of systematic racism roused thousands across the country to march for justice, Campbell was present at Santa Barbara’s own Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Yet in addition to her protest photography, Campbell has also often returned to the Louisiana of her childhood. There, she has done extensive work photographing duck blinds camouflaged deep within twisting bayous only accessible by boat. These still, rather lonely images present a thoughtful

Nell Campbell, Vietnam War Protest, San Francisco, 1969, archival pigment print

SUMMER/FALL 2021

contrast to the crowded, high-energy scenes she regularly captures at demonstrations. In addition to a six-year study on the unique culture and vibrant revelries of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Campbell has also photographed the harrowing devastation wrought by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Outside of the United States, she has done further photography in Cuba, giving particular attention to the island’s tobacco and sugar cane fields, and the people who tend them. Throughout her career, Campbell has most often exhibited her work in shows independently organized by either herself or other photographers. These exhibitions are typically held in California, though she has also participated in several shows in her home state of Louisiana. Most recently, her photography has been the subject of exhibitions at

above: Nell Campbell, Geishas, Mardi Gras, 1982, archival pigment print below: Nell Campbell, Climate Change Protest, Santa Barbara, 2019, archival pigment print

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Nell Campbell, UFW Rally, Hwy 99, 1977, archival pigment print

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Nell Campbell, Exotic World, 2003, archival pigment print

Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Workshop, the County Office of Arts and Culture’s Channing Peake Gallery, and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum. A self-defined documentary photographer, Campbell is above all committed to documenting life. Her work is about capturing “emotion and feeling,” whether that’s to be found amidst an impassioned crowd of demonstrators, or the peaceful stillness of an isolated bayou. Altogether, the photography of Nell Campbell archives over four decades of social history, and the forces that continue to inspire people to come together and make their voices heard.

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Fifty-three years of documenting political demonstrations has been at once an inspiring yet challenging experience. While Campbell is encouraged by the growing number of young people getting involved in activism, and is proud that her own generation continues to fight for social justice, she believes that today, “our democracy is in more danger than at any time during my lifetime.” Marches, demonstrations and demands for justice need to continue because complacency will only quicken the severity of our situation – “and we cannot relax from the struggle to save our democracy.”

reated fifty years ago by Ed Lister, these striking, post-Pop, pre-digital images range from two charming, blue tubes snuggling with one another to solitary pyramids placed in vast, mind-bending fields to cheery, twisting rainbow tunnels – all defying our understanding of 3D space.

First, our eyes are seduced by the bold colors and clean shapes. Then, our assumptions of reality are challenged and delighted as we realize that such intriguing objects cannot exist other than in two dimensions, on a flat surface.

Impossible Objects Ed Lister by Bay Hallowell

Lister’s images play with our contemporary sensibilities and logical brains in their resemblances to imaginative digital images – while being entirely drawn by hand. Lister also perfectly registered and printed the multiple, intricate layers of color by hand, using traditional silk screens. Happily, after many years and moves from London to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and then to Santa Ynez, he rediscovered the prints in pristine condition. In 2021, the works were exhibited at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery.

Known in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara as a skilled scenic artist, Lister created the series of “impossible objects” in the early 1970s while teaching printmaking at the Chelsea School

SUMMER/FALL 2021

of Art in London. After teaching art for twelve years, Lister moved to California. Starting in the mid-70s, he worked for ten years as the lead scenic artist for the Center Theatre Group at the Taper and Ahmanson Theaters in Los Angeles. Subsequently, he painted backdrops and installations as wide as 400 feet for television and movie sets, as well as destination resorts, hotels and casinos. More recently, Lister was commissioned to paint a 60-foot wide mural encircling the Bisno Schall Clock Gallery of the Santa Barbara Courthouse. This mural examines our perception of time and the various ways we attempt to record it. Although he loved working on such a large scale, Lister now paints more modest sized images concerned with iridescent and reflective seascapes and skies. Of all the printing techniques he experimented with in his career, Lister most relished executing screened images with areas of pure color put down in a clean and direct manner – such as the precise, hand pulled screen prints in the series of “impossible objects.” Intrigued by their bold colors and shapes, our eyes are lured in, then our assumptions of reality are challenged.

All images: Ed Lister, Impossible Objects, screen prints on paper, Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery

LUMARTMAGAZINE

GALLERY

517 Laguna Street, Santa Barbara, CA 805 962-5588 www.artlacuna.com

Ann Lofquist, Palisades South View I, oil, 24x28 in., detail.

MARCIA BURT T

SUMMER/FALL 2021

Gallery Guide Santa Barbara

Susan Petty, Explorations VII, graphite

Marcia Burtt Gallery Located in downtown Santa Barbara, Marcia Burtt Gallery features contemporary landscape paintings, photographs, prints and books. 517 Laguna St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, marciaburttstudio@gmail.com, artlacuna.com, (805) 962-5588

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) seeks to enrich lives and inspire critical thinking through meaningful engagement with the art and ideas of our time. MCASB provides Santa Barbara and the Central Coast with exhibitions and programming that encourage discovery, cultivate new perspectives, and challenge the way we see and experience the world, ourselves and each other. 653 Paseo Nuevo, Upper Arts Terrace Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, mcasantabarbara.org, hello@mcasantabarbara.org, (805) 966-5373

Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art Located on the Westmont College campus, the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art offers programming for both students and the community. Founded in 1985, the Museum changed its name in 2010 after a major gift from Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree. Collections range from Rembrandt prints to Barbizon artists to Contemporary masters. 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108, museum@westmont.edu, Westmont.edu/museum, (805) 565-6162

Leonard Wilson, Arm in Arm, 2019

SlingShot Art Studio & Gallery SlingShot promotes artistic opportunities for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities, guiding each artist to develop an independent and meaningful art practice. 220 W. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara CA, 93101, slingshotart.org, (805) 770-3878

Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery The Gallery/Conference Room of the AFSB is a dynamic space within a historic setting for curated exhibitions of contemporary art, photography and design. Four solo exhibitions and one group exhibition are presented annually. Local artists, architects, photographers and designers are invited to submit work in a wide range of content, mediums and styles. 229 E. Victoria St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, info@afsb.org, (805) 965-6307

Towards a 21st Century Abstraction National traveling exhibition showcasing Contemporary masters of Abstraction at Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, July 8 to August 14, 2021. Connie Connally, Santa Barbara artist, organized the exhibition. Other artists include Katherine Chang Liu, Westlake Village, CA; David Bailin, Little Rock, AR; Brad Ellis, Dallas, TX; Jeri Ledbetter, Memphis, TN; Sammy Peters, Little Rock, AR; Doug Trump, Marlboro, VT. abstraction21c.com, connie@connieconnally.com, (214) 707-1864

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Ruth Ellen Hoag, Rock, Paper, Scissors

Ruth Ellen Hoag Fine Art at GraySpace

Sullivan Goss Gallery

Ruth Ellen Hoag is the Resident Artist at GraySpace Gallery, and a founding member of Santa Barbara Studio Artists, she invites the gallery visitor to explore her working studio where ongoing projects take form and art is created.

Sullivan Goss Gallery has represented the work of American artists since 1984. The contributions of American artists from the 19th century to the 21st century can be found in Sullivan Goss’ expansive galleries in downtown Santa Barbara, California.

219 Gray Ave (in the Funk Zone), Santa Barbara, CA 93101, grayspaceart.com, ruth@grayspaceart.com, (805) 689-0858

11 E. Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, Nathan Vonk, Owner, sales@sullivangoss. com, sullivangoss.com

Solvang

City Hall Gallery & Channing Peake Gallery City Hall Gallery, 735 Anacapa St, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, art@sbac.ca.gov, sbac.ca.gov, (805) 568-3994 Channing Peake Gallery, 105 E. Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, art@sbac.ca.gov, sbac.ca.gov, (805) 568-3994 Karin Aggeler, Meister Feier

10 West Gallery

Ojai

Los Osos

Porch Gallery Ojai Located in a historic building in downtown Ojai, Porch Gallery represents emerging and established contemporary artists and produces artistic events throughout the Ojai Valley. Porch Girls Productions, owned by Heather Stobo and Lisa Casoni, officially took over management of the gallery in May of 2013. 310 E. Matilija St, Ojai, CA 93023, porchgalleryojai.com, (805) 620-7589

Ventura Thomas Reynolds Gallery The gallery is now open in Santa Barbara’s Art District, near the historic Arlington Theater, after 25 years in San Francisco. “Reynolds is an experienced dealer specializing in California artists who inhabit the border between representational and abstract work. Equipped with a comprehensive knowledge of California realism and an impeccable pedigree of success in the Bay Area, Reynolds fills an important niche in our art ecosystem.” – Charles Donelan, The Santa Barbara Independent. 1331 State St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101, thomasreynolds.com, (415) 676-7689

The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature offers unique art exhibitions and programs that inspire visitors to become advocates for the environment. Visit the museum galleries and store Friday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to join as a member, visit wildlingmuseum.org. 1511-B Mission Drive, Solvang, CA 93463, info@wildlingmuseum.org, wildlingmuseum.org, (805) 688-1082

Located in the Art District surrounding the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 10 West Gallery features contemporary art, ceramics and sculpture. On display are the works of local and regional artists with a broad range of genres including abstracts, urban landscapes, figurative work, digital and more. 10 W. Anapamu St, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101, director@10westgallery.com, 10westgallery.com, 805-770-7711

Wildling Museum of Art and Nature

Installation view of works by Austin Eddy and Sylvia Fragoso

Left Field Left Field is a contemporary art gallery located in Los Osos, a small town on the Central Coast of California, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The gallery presents exhibitions with the primary goal of bringing to the region contemporary art not otherwise seen here. 1036 Los Osos Valley Rd, Los Osos, CA 93402, Nick Wilkinson, Gallery Director, leftfieldgallery.com, (805) 305-9292

Vita Art Center Since 2008, Vita Art Center has brought quality art education, community outreach, and outstanding monthly exhibits to Ventura. Vita is a place for the community to gather and engage in the arts. At the core of every exhibit is our commitment to bringing museum quality contemporary art to Ventura.

Join the

Gallery Guide! Contact editor@lumartzine.com

28 W. Main St., Ventura, CA 93001 VitaArtCenter.com, (805) 644-9214 SUMMER/FALL 2021

PACKING HANDLING I N S TA L L AT I O N

LUMARTMAGAZINE

Contemporary Art in a Historic House

310 E. Matilija St., Ojai, CA 805.620.7589 Visit www.porchgalleryojai.com for a schedule of shows and events

www.leftfieldgallery.com 1036 Los Osos Valley Road Los Osos, CA 93402

Santa Barbara’s newest gallery is now open in the arts district, near the historic Arlington Theater, after 25 years in San Francisco.

The Art of California

Thomas Reynolds GalleRy www . thomasreynolds . com

1331 State Street

Santa Barbara, ca

CHARLES ARNOLDI H A R R Y B E R TO I A J E S S I E A R M S B OT K E S T E P H A N I E D OT S O N NEIL GOODMAN SIDNEY GORDIN J A M E S H AG G E R T Y L I N DA H AG G E R T Y PAT R I C K H A L L N AT H A N H AY D E N N AT H A N H U F F SUSAN McDONNELL BRAD MILLER ELISA ORTEGA MONTILLA D O M I N G A O PA Z O PAV E Z R . N E L S O N PA R R I S H ALEX RASMUSSEN SOMMER ROMAN CHRIS RUPP PA U L S C H U R C H H A N N A H VA I N S T E I N LY N DA W E I N M A N YA R N B O M B E R

SUMMER/FALL 2021

YOU BELONG

TODAY

JOIN

MUSEUM OF C ONTEMPORARY ART SANTA BARBARA

MEMBER PERKS ART STUDY TOURS

Travel with MCASB! Experience curated art travel like never before. MCASB curator-led Art Study Tours take guests to private art collections, behind the scenes at major museums, art galleries, and into artist studios. These all-inclusive trips feature beautiful accommodations, the best and newest restaurants, and access to must-visit cultural hotspots. Art Study Tours are available to Supporting Circles Members.

MEMBERSHIP PROGRAMMING

Members receive discounted tickets and first priority to lectures, screenings, and panel discussions including Collectors’ Series, Third Thursday Studio, and Annual Fundraising Events.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Enjoy invitations to opening receptions where you will meet exhibition artists and curators, as well as executive invitations to benefit dinners and festive occasions. MCASB’s special events celebrate contemporary art and artists while honoring generous members who support our activities.

BE PART OF SOMETHING THAT MATTERS.

BECOME A MEMBER NOW 48

Scan code to learn more about membership perks! LUMARTMAGAZINE

Contact development@mcasantabarbara.org or call 805.966.5373 x108

04 • Lum Art Magazine • Summer 2021

Articles inside

04 • Lum Art Magazine • Summer 2021