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Following
a very polarizing Presidential election in the month of November, El
Camino College Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of
artwork titled The Other Early Americans. This exhibition concentrates
on work which is influenced by American traditions and/or Early American
design, but which has a contemporary slant. The 8 artists in this show
hale from varying ethnic backgrounds and personal persuasions.
During the course of the show performance, mixed media artist, Edith
Abeyta, will be baking pies in the gallery in a piece titled,
Apple Pie Saturdays. Abeyta has been visiting the homes
of friends and strangers over the past year and baking a pie and sharing
it with the homeowners. This installation includes her own handmade
plates and the plates of 41 homes in which she has baked pies, along
side a quilt made of photographs documenting each pie event.
In the tradition of early African American doll making, Angela
Briggs presents dolls constructed of gourds, cloth, feathers
and beads. Each figure serves also as a vessel, with tiny compartments
containing magical objects, herbs and minerals.
Photographer and performance artist, Ken Gonzales-Day,
utilizes fictional images from Latin American mythology. In these photographs,
the artist enacts scenes from a story, which is set in New Mexico in
the late 19th Century. Additionally, Gonzales-Day shows small, digitally
altered etchings that document the shocking numbers of lynching of early
Latin Americans in the United States.
Photographer and video artist, Betty Lee,
presents large format black and white photographs which dramatically
portray life as seen through the eyes of a child raised in the Midwest
of the 1950s. Because Lee's family owned and lived in a laundry and
because they were the only Asian people in the community, the photos
have a powerful sense of place and perhaps, an air of isolation.
Sculptor, installation and video artist, Michael
Lewis Miller, presents a video installation, Night Watch,
in which dream-like images of performance of work-a-day tasks like chopping
wood and fire building are projected on a 19th Century bed form. Beside
the bed is a smoke-stained candle stand with curlicues of wax, formed
by a candle, which is burning at both ends. The installation includes
other Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, influenced furniture pieces and costumes
that have magical and psychological overtones.
Laughing Horse Robinson shows a series
of Kawaiisu winter houses made of rabbit brush, and a rock shelter,
in the patio adjoining the Art Gallery. These structures focus upon
a predictive, Native American calendar form that is completed by a dagger
of natural sunlight that enters the roof of the rock house.
Kat Skraba's installation of 7 women's'
dresses mounted on 7' high cruciform structures, draws upon American
historical costume and events, both specific and spiritual, which have
occurred in the history of this nation. In addition to performing
in relationship to her piece, during the opening reception, Skraba will
give a lecture and performance in the Art Gallery on Tuesday, February
22 at 1 p.m.
Printmaker and poet, Laura Stickney,
exhibits etchings of American women poets paired with leaves from North
American trees. Additionally Stickney shows large scale prints which
include such personalities as the first woman in U.S. to win the Nobel
Peace Prize, Jane Adams, surrounded by traditional quilt patterning
and forms from nature.
Please join us in celebrating these highly personal impressions of what
it is to be an American.
SUSANNA
MEIERS
Curator El Camino College Art Gallery
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Poet
and Leaf XIV
