GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER
A Unit of California State University, Fullerton
College of the Arts
THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION
FOR THE VISUAL ARTS
Final Report
June 2017 – June 2019
Artist-in-Residence
program support
PREPARED BY
GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER
125 N. BROADWAY, SANTA ANA, CA 92701
714.567.7233
http://grandcentralartcenter.com/
Funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in support of the Artist-in-Residence program has helped to make it possible for Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) to continue its growth as an institution. Focused on artists working in community-engaged practices, as the following report outlines, the funding support has provided the opportunity for us to further develop our engagement, as well to expand scale and quality of outcomes.
With the prestige of the Warhol funding and what it has allowed us to achieve, GCAC has been able to leverage additional matching support from individuals, corporations and foundations, which has assisted in providing our communities, artists, students, faculty, and staff, direct engagement with forty-four artists-in-residence and some of their twenty-two visiting collaborators housed at GCAC over the two-year funding cycle.
Grand Central Art Center artist-in-residencies set out on explorations driven by questions, instead of concrete expectations. The pressures of predetermined proposals and timelines are alleviated in favor of ongoing site visits and substantial stays, which allow for greater focus to be placed on research, exploration, openness, and discoveries. They are driven by the belief that true creative process should be fluid and porous, not confined or restricted by limitations and preconceived notions placed upon them from the onset. Process should be allowed to roam freely, allowing for exchange, discovery, and influence to occur organically. To quote recent artist-in-residence, Paul Ramírez Jonas, engaging “to get to know a place rather than escape.” With this institutional philosophy centering and connecting in place, GCAC will continue to experiment with and refine the residency approach, inviting artists like those listed in this report to build relationships, understanding, and respect toward undertaking new forms of cultural production in community.
In the past year, GCAC’s artists-in-residence projects have received recognition for their success in the press through the following publications and outlets: The NY Times, ArtForum, LA Times, KCRW, OC Register, KCET, NPR Morning Edition, KQED, LA Weekly, Artillery Magazine, Opera Magazine, KPCC, Art & Cake, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Titan, Orange Coast Magazine, OC Weekly, Hyperallergic, and additional blogs and outlets. In addition, Lisa Bielawa’s artist-in-residence project Vireo received two Emmy nominations and is currently being work shopped at The New School’s new Philip Glass Institute for a live staged version.
As Grand Central Art Center concludes this funding cycle, we are excited to continue with artist-in-residence projects that began their development with the support made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. We thank The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their generous support and look forward to a continued relationship with the Foundation moving forward.
On the following pages you will find an overview of the artists-in-residence projects at Grand Central Art Center over the past two years.
Sincerely,
John D. Spiak
Director/Chief Curator
GCAC ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROJECTS
JUNE 2017 – JUNE 2019
MAYA GURANTZ
Deipnophoroi
Through a GCAC artist-in-residence, artist Maya Gurantz pulled together hundreds of pages of source texts from —among other sources— how youth suicide bombers are prepared, conversations parents of color have with their children about interactions with police, and tips on talking to children about coming environmental disasters. Gurantz used this collected text to craft a script for the new body of work Deipnophoroi that she filmed with women from the region. The work was presented as a solo exhibition at GCAC from October 7, 2017 – February 11, 2018.
Ancient Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (c. AD 46-120) writes of an ancient Greek festival in which the community, as an initiation for young men coming of age, would reenact sending their youth to King Minos of Crete to be fed as sacrifice to the Minotaur. The only women allowed to participate in this ceremony were given the role of the mothers of the sacrificial tribute — labeled Deipnophoroi, or “food bringers”— performing the task of comforting their children with stories and food in the face of a sure and terrible death.
Deipnophoroi, a video diptych, translates this ceremony into contemporary language and contemporary fears, exploring the strange job a mother faces when preparing one’s child for the unutterable. Each video represents a specific preparation — mothers prepare their children for death, enslavement, monsters, and rape — created as mini-collaborations between the artist and different performers (artists, dancers, actors) who are also mothers. A second work, Non-fiction, a single-channel video, shares interviews with mothers from different backgrounds, discussing their own approaches to raising their children in this difficult and frightening world. Together, the project — which is ongoing — begins to create taxonomy of maternal language and strategies. It brings this language, which so often remains secret, into the art space — a space that as well does not often offer room for the mother.
In the artists own words “Mothers are left to clean up disasters, bring food, comfort and most of all prepare our children when they are faced with the terrors of the world. And yet, more often than not, when mothers speak the truth too explicitly we are turned into monsters ourselves.”
Project Documentation
https://mayagurantz.com/portfolio/deipnophoroi/
LUCAS MURGIDA
None of This is Real
Through performance, installation, photographic documentation, and social practice, artist Lucas Murgida creates situations that allow audience members to experience very private moments in very public situations. Thematically, his projects address ideas of service, perception, liberation, privacy, power, and labor by utilizing his employment as research to inform his art practice. Having dissected his careers as a professional cabinetmaker, busboy, locksmith, yoga-teacher, and production-assistant for adult-fetish films, the artist utilizes the mundane aspects of human existence – such as furniture, locks, teachers, and service professionals – as raw material to craft artistic experiences.
As a Grand Central Art Center artist-in-residence, Murgida took over the storefront gallery as a location of research, community interaction, and development of new ideas, generating five engagement activities.
Phase 1 video documentation:
https://vimeo.com/285212129
Phase 2 video documentation:
https://vimeo.com/295511173
Phase 3 video documentation:
https://vimeo.com/312340290
Phase 4 video documentation:
https://vimeo.com/331385496
Phase 5 video documentation:
https://vimeo.com/339270957
SARAH RAFAEL GARĆIA
Crear Studio and LibroMobile
Artist/writer Sarah Rafael Garćia has continued as artist-in-residence at GCAC as she has continued in the development of new projects. Following her SanTana’s Fairy Tales book and installation project that has toured to locations nationally, she more recently cofounded Crear Studio and is Founder/Project Director of LibroMobile. Through her vision, Crear Studio is a free interdisciplinary art studio program that aims to support local youth and adults who aspire to obtain education in social justice and social engagement through the arts. LibroMobile is a literary project by Sarah Rafael García, which includes a brick and mortar bookstore established by the artist in Downtown Santa Ana, California.
In addition to being in residence at GCAC, the artist is currently the national 2019 Fellow of the Center for Art and Social Engagement at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts and Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas.
In the fall, Garćia was named 2018 Emerging Artist/Arts Leader by Arts Orange County.
SanTana’s Fairy Tales
https://sarahrafaelgarcia.com/santansfairytales/
Crear Studio
https://www.facebook.com/crearstudioSA/
LibroMobile
https://sarahrafaelgarcia.com/libromobile/
Project Row Houses
https://projectrowhouses.org/cota-prh-fellowship
Arts Orange County Awards
https://artsoc.org/awards.htm
TERESITA DE LA TORRE
antes muerta que sencilla
In December of 2017, artist Teresita de la Torre overheard a conversation between her mother and niece. Her niece was interviewing the artist’s mother in regards to her migration story and how she ended up living in the United States. It is a story the artist knows well. She describes her mother as a storyteller, one who always shares stories of when she was a young girl, about her struggles raising seven kids, and bringing them to live in the United States for a better life and future. There was one detail that stood out during this telling. The artist’s mother, during the interview, mentioned that when she crossed the border in Tijuana using a “coyote,” she did so in red heels. The artist was in disbelief and inquired if her mother had known what she was getting herself into in terms of the crossing. Her mother responded “pues si,” but the heels were not that high and that she wanted to look “guapa” for the artist’s dad who had crossed prior and was waiting for her “en el otro lado.”
Upon hearing the story, the artist asked her mother to describe the shoes, and to her surprise, her mother remembered them, almost 40 years later, in vivid detail. As her mother shared details, the artist sketched a drawing of the shoes with a red colored pencil– wedges, not heels, not super high, how they wrapped and straddled the heel, the latch, and how the eight straps interlaced the front of the shoe. The artist decided to create a replica of the shoes using cardboard, paper mache, and chicken wire, which she would wear to cross the border in a performance action to “recreate” her mother’s story and honor her sacrifice.
Through a residency, GCAC assisted the artist in further exploring the breadth of the border and her family history, sending her on research visits to expand her crossing locations beyond Tijuana, generating a performance action at every point of entry that is significant to her mother and family migration story. She crossed in El Paso, where in 1991 her family had an immigration appointment in Ciudad Juarez to become residents after a twelve year of wait in Mexico. It was that location where, as a family, they crossed the border for the first time with their green cards. Her third and final performance action took place in Laredo, Texas, where the family crossed in 1994 to settle in that community and pursue the “American Dream.” The project culminated with the exhibition antes muerta que sencilla at GCAC from May 4 – July 14, 2019.
Project Website
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/teresita-de-la-torre-antes-muerta-que-sencilla/
DAVID GREENBERGER
It Happened to Me
David Greenberger has consistently drawn on fractured narratives where emotional memory derives from the mood of the moment. Encompassing drawing, recordings, performance, and books, his work holds up a mirror to reveal that aging is not a broken version at the end of a life lived; it’s a continuum, a vital and up-to-date version of the self.
Through multiple visits, David spent time in dialogue and developed text based on his dozens of recorded conversations with Senior Citizens at the Santa Ana Senior Center, Tustin Senior Center, Heninger Village, Flower Terrace Apartments, and Bowers Museum, toward the development of the new project It Happened to Me. Individuals who participated in conversations include Andra Aguirre, Chinda Ayanaputra, Ron Bianco, Charles, Rose Hendley, Winnie Hsie, Susan Johnson, Chong Kim, Paul Kohn, Dorothy Korte, Tish Leon, Jose Magana, Mary Mitchell, Tomoko Mizusawa, John A. Spiak, Vera Toner, Chanida Trueblood, and Brenda White. Working with Prime Lens, the Chattanooga-based ensemble he assembled four years earlier, they went into the studio in the spring of 2018, collaborating to create It Happened to Me.
Live performances of the work took place at multiple locations in Santa Ana. In addition, a 60-track two CD box set was created and a limited addition 12” LP, both featuring original cover design work by renowned artist Ed Ruscha.
Project Documentation
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/david-greenberger-and-prime-lens-it-happened-to-me/
Feature film documentary by Beth Harrington is in development
https://www.beyondduplexplanet.com/
COG•NATE COLLECTIVE (AMY SANCHEZ and MISAEL DIAZ)
Regionalia
Since 2010, Cog•nate Collective’s work has sought to tease out some of these concerns in the context of the Alta/Baja California border region, a terrain where the political boundary between the United States and Mexico is contested and negotiated not just on a rhetorical level, but at the scale of the everyday. Since 2014, Santa Ana has served as a central node within this work, establishing a site from which to theorize the US/Mexico border not as a line or a wall, but as a region anchored by the comings and goings of citizens making Southern California and Northern Baja California their personal and collective home.
The objects in the exhibition Regionalia showcased work created over the span of nearly 4 years the artists have served as artists-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center, establishing numerous collaborations with residents, students and community groups in the region.
What does it mean to be a citizen? How can we enact citizenship in a region that is marked by transnational flows of bodies and cultures? How is political solidarity + social resilience established and/or expressed within transnational communities? What role can culture play in this process?
Throughout the exhibition, Cog•nate and Grand Central Art Center hosted a series of conversations around citizenship and belonging, central topics explored through the projects on view – How do marketplaces help us make home? What does home sound like? Whose streets? Who do you root for? For each conversation, the artists proposed a guiding question as a point of departure and invite local scholars, community members, musicians and activists to open the conversation with their responses and thoughts. Afterwards, they opened the conversation, inviting all those in attendance to share their own responses
Bilingual Catalogue
A 128-page bilingual catalogue is being produce that will document projects/exhibition and feature text/interviews by Cog-nate Collective, Karen Stocker, Christian Zúñiga.
Project Documentation
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/cog%E2%80%A2nate-collective-regionalia-reception-public-programs/
VALERIE TEVERE and ANGEL NEVAREZ
Layers of the City
During the summer of 2017, while artists-in-residence at GCAC, Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere began research toward a new project that built upon their interests combining time-based media with songwriting, the voice, and civic participation.
In July of 2018, the artists held an open call for local singers and musicians to participate in the production, which culminates in the video and sound installation at GCAC.
They began their process with the question: How might we sing our way through the transformation of place?
Nevarez and Tevere’s created their new work Layers of the City. The new video and sound installation reflects on spaces in Santa Ana, both inhabited and boarded up, of immigrant owned entities that passed through generations only to be pushed out by rising rents and revitalization plans. The installation included a “For Lease” sign covering the entire storefront window of the gallery that included a phone number that, when called, provided a sound piece through answering machine. The stories of Santa Ana are the stories of Sunset Park in Brooklyn, of Pilsen in Chicago, and of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles – neighborhoods where real estate speculation supersedes communities.
With these processes in mind, Nevarez and Tevere wrote a song, in collaboration with local musician Eduardo Silva, that follows the composition and form of a cumulative song. As the song progresses, so do the amount of voices singing the chorus. In the end, a larger assembly of bodies and voices come together, perhaps forming a community, a resistant cumulative process.
Project Documentation and Sound Piece
http://www.nevareztevere.info/projects/layers.html
KIM ZUMPFE
outside the length of a room | OR | diving into the blue sun
Through an artist-in-residence, Kim Zumpfe created the site-specific installation outside the length of a room | OR | diving into the blue sun, that engaged with notions of safe spaces. These spaces, however, are contingent – they depend on the individual, the conditions of the moment, and the realities, or perceived realities, of specific life circumstances.
Zumpfe’s installation and performative actions generated a distinctive re-alignment of space, working to confront complex relationships and norms of society. Zumpfe created a transitional structure for control over one’s visibility: hiding, avoidance, evasion, escape and other strategies used to counteract coercive social and political relations.
Five collaborative performances took place over the course of the residency, including:
Kim Zumpfe: were is this place, I pinch myself
https://kimzumpfe.com/portfolio/outside-the-length-of-a-room-or-diving-into-the-blue-sun/
laub: Voice(full) – a participation within the liminality of becoming
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/laub-voicefull-a-participation-within-the-liminality-of-becoming/
Dylan Mira: Black Hole Notes on the Oriented Strandboard
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/dylan-mira-black-hole-notes-on-the-oriented-strand-board/
Cay Castegnetto with Alan Poma and David Cavazos: RELAX BLUE
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/relax-blue-by-cay-castagnetto-with-alan-poma-and-david-cavazos/
DAVID POLITZER
Text Neck
Text Neck, a project by David Politer created through an artist-in-residence at Grand Central Art Center, examines how Smartphones are changing our bodies and minds. The project gets its name from a repetitive strain injury caused by dropping your head forward while looking down at a mobile device. The episodic video follows nine individuals as they navigate new ways of interacting, communicating, and living in the age of the Smartphone.
Through humor, physical empathy, and emotion, Text Neck offers opportunity, through multiple installation components, for the audience to engage directly in the behaviors developing in tandem with Smartphone technology.
Text Neck grew organically out of collaboration and improvisation. By interviewing forty people about their Smartphone habits, collecting ideas, and anecdotes, David Politzer and his community collaborators (CSUF current students, alumni and community members) created scene outlines; some with a developed narrative, others open-ended questions. The result is both a cautionary tale and a love letter to the Smartphone.
Project Documentation
http://davideology.com/project/text-neck-the-installation/
KELLY LINDNER
Now More Than Ever
Over the course of multiple visits, curator-in-residence Kelly Lindner, Director and Curator of the Jacki Headley University Art Gallery at California State University, Chico, did studio visits with thirty-four current MFA and BFA students of the California State University, Fullerton’s Department of Art. The residency process for Lindner led to Now More Than Ever, a curated exhibition at Grand Central Art Center.
Now More Than Ever featured the work of seven artists in the MFA and BFA programs at California State University, Fullerton. Their current work encapsulates a “now more than ever” cultural moment. The work shares an urgency as well as a distillation of social and political issues as they relate to notions of self. Jose Flores Nava boldly addresses both migrant identity and border issues in his ceramic “prototypes,” while Yara Almouradi presents portraits of Syrian refugees combining large-scale drawings with printed emails and other ephemera that provide a glimpse of their lives in exile. With a more conceptual approach, Desmond Jervis has created a seemingly understated video and sculpture installation critiquing racial representation and traditional ceramic narratives, whereas Dylan Flah explores gender through the visual trappings of sports culture. Janan Abedelmuti, Hadley Mattwig, and Pamela Rush offer more personal explorations of identity. Through stitching, collaged elements, and abstract marks Abedelmuti’s intimate paintings capture emotions, thoughts, and events that document the discovery of self. Hadley Mattwig recreates a version of her family’s living room to question how sense of place reverberates in memory to undermine the formation of identity. In contrast, Pamela Rush’s projected photographs present a more prescriptive view of identity influenced by cliché and pop culture.
Project Documentation
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/now-more-than-ever/
MICHAEL NANNERY
The Fountain
Through a yearlong residency, Michael Nannery used the storefront gallery as a location of research and development of new ideas for his project The Fountain. While offering an invitation to those outside, the work provided a contemplative and refreshing space inside Grand Central Art Center. The aquatic garden filled the space with green life, fresh air, and a continual offering of herbs for which the public was welcome to harvest. This installation served as a platform for diverse art forms, education, and communication; including performances, demonstrations, workshops, and as a space for meeting and meditation.
In addition to harboring plants, fish, and other life forms, the garden served as an incubator for the ideas of artists and makers, who contributed to the growth and utility of this regenerative space. The installation continued to develop over the course of the exhibition, with unique interactions, performances, engagements over the course of the project.
During each first Saturday, Nannery activated the space through engaged community actions, including:
– Clay vessel making using individuals thumb shapes to plant seedlings that would eventual occupy The Fountain
– Printmaking that used the leaves of plants from The Fountain as material
– Collaborative sound performance using contact mics and the living creatures of the Fountain
– Ceramic workshops making worm compost environments
– Food making using the plant life from The Fountain
– Water flavoring using the herbs from The Fountain
– Community harvest events
Video Documentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=108&v=BLGNQZ8EraU
SARA GUERRERO
Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble
Sara Guerrero continues in residency at GCAC, as the home base of Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, the ensemble she founded. Breath of Fire is an organization that serves as an incubator for underrepresented voices in theater by generating programming that provides guidance in the art of storytelling, playwriting, producing, and acting. These workshops bring seasoned writers, playwrights, and actors to facilitate high quality theater making programs for local Orange County residents at no cost. Throughout this ongoing residency, public programs, readings and theater performances have been organized in collaboration with visual artists, designers and additional creatives.
Breath of Fine Latina Theater Ensemble Website
https://www.breathoffire.org/about-2/missionvisionhistory/
JENNIFER NELSON
Habeas Corpus – Research/Development Phase
Standing between a State’s power to imprison you and your right to liberty is the Writ of Habeas Corpus–meaning have the body, in court. This basic legal premise can recalibrate the dance between an individual and the massive physical and social power we have given to the government. The machinery of justice is meant to be adversarial and the outcome unbiased, yet the machinery is overburdened and peopled by humans harboring their unconscious biases. Once caught in the gears of the court, with its imperative to proclaim guilty or not guilty, a fair and holistic justice remains elusive.
As a beginning stage of a GCAC artist-in-residence project, artist Jennifer Nelson began meeting with individuals from the community including lawyers, activists, and students and staff involved with CSUF’s Project Rebound program. She had the opportunity to sit in on federal court cases at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in Downtown Santa Ana and attend other community events.
As a part of her project in development, the artist organized two Participatory Research Actions.
Investigation #1: Legal imagination…fictions and experiences
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/jennifer-nelson-habeas-corpus-participatory-research-action-phase-1/
Investigation #2: Constellation Court – a Summons
with Matthew Campbell, Shaheed Chapple, Ray Chao, Michael Mulkey, Paris Perrault
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/jennifer-nelson-habeas-corpus-investigation-2-constellation-court-a-summons/
JON HADDOCK
The Things (that do not spark joy)
Artist Jon Haddock explores lines between fiction, media, and reality. Drawing inspiration from both popular culture and high art, he often references the language of comic books and video games to question the use, influence, and role of the image in today’s society.
The Things (that do not spark joy), a mural by the artist created during his first site visit, depicts Santa Ana-born actor Robert Webber (1924 – 1989) in his role as Ikar in the television show The Outer Limits episode Keeper of the Purple Twilight from 1964. In the episode, an unearthly being approaches a driven scientist with offers to exchange his alien intelligence in return for the experience of human emotions. Their experiment, however, has unforeseen consequences for both, as soon a team of alien enforcers arrives to destroy them, along with the scientist’s girlfriend, Janet.
In what appears to be a time of societal decluttering, Haddock considers the role of intelligence and emotion in our strategies as a culture for keeping, or not keeping, parts of our abusive history. As many begin to follow advice from individuals such as Marie Kondo to “only keep items that spark joy,” the artist questions if there is any wiggle room for retaining potentially toxic objects, ones that connect to an individuals or societies history? If so, what extra care, defensive protection, and awareness of the object’s lethality must be employed? Are these steps worth it and how do we decide, with our hearts or with our minds?
The artist remains in residence through future visits in the research and development of a new project.
Project Documentation
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/jon-haddock/
YUMI JANAIRO ROTH
Spin (After Sol LeWitt) – Research/Development Phase
Yumi Janairo Roth has created a diverse body of work that explores ideas of immigration, hybridity, and displacement through discrete objects and site-responsive installations, solo project as well as collaborations. In her projects, her objects function as both natives and interlopers to their environments, simultaneously recognizable and unfamiliar to their users.
During her artist-in-residence visits to date, Yumi has been connecting with a diverse range of individual as she develops a collaborative project with street sign spinners. Working with a group of professional sign spinners, Spin is at once a collaborative experiential project, public performance, and site-based installation that activates and recontextualizes Sol LeWitt’s foundational text, Sentences on Conceptual Art. This project draws together sign spinners, audiences, and sites specifically existing outside the walls of the gallery. Through social engagement, the exchange of knowledge, and the reframing of contemporary art and sign spinning, Spin looks at the contradictory impulses (inclusive versus exclusive) found in conceptual art that work within intersecting communities in the public sphere
To date, through Grand Central Art Center introductions, Yumi has been building connects with Jenny Backhaus who founded Backhausdance, Orange County Museum of Art, Bowers Museum, Pacific Symphony, dance students and clubs of Cal State Fullerton, and the Orange County branch of AArrow Sign Spinners. Along with GCAC team members, Yumi attended the Los Angeles Q1 Competition 2018 presented by AArrow Sign Spinners. The research will continue to work toward the development of a new project with Grand Central Art Center.
Research Performance Video
Sign Spinners: Erik Argote, Zachary Blaylock, Hermie Jay Capela, Evan James
https://vimeo.com/330694692
CHRIS WORMALD
3/33/333
Chris Wormald’s work explores photography, video, and field-recordings. He creates audio/visual journals stitched together in a way to create new narratives and altered moods. During his first visit to GCAC in the development of new projects, he focused on concepts of labor and the process of sculpture, reflecting on the Proverb “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” and the idiom “labor of love”. In a storefront studio space, he created a confessional space/sound installation that engaged with publics, before tearing it down and repurposing the materials into a sculptural self-portrait.
Project Documentation
https://cargocollective.com/worenger/Artist-In-Residence-GCAC
LISA BIELAWA IN PARTNERSHIP WITH KCET
Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser
Vireo was an ongoing GCAC residency with Lisa Bialawa that focused upon the empowerment of the young female voice. A 12-episode serial broadcast opera, Vireo focuses on the way in which teenage-girl visionaries’ writings have been manipulated, incorporated, and interpreted by the communities of men surrounding them throughout history. Episodes include performances by; Kronos Quartet, 16-year old Rowen Sabala, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Orange County School of the Arts Middle School Choir, Alarm Will Sound, Cappella SF, PRISM, ACME, Lorelei Ensemble, Magik*Magik, Shadow Hills High School Marching Band, soprano Deborah Voigt, mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin, mezzo-soprano Maria Lazarova, tenor Ryan Glover, baritone Gregory Purnhagen, drummer Matthias Bossi, violin Vijay Gupta, harp Bridget Kibbey, cello Joshua Roman, piccolo Lance Suzuki, hurdy-gurdy Randy Matamoros, and violin Jennifer Koh . The project has been filmed in Santa Ana, Alcatraz Prison, Garrison Institute in New York, and locations throughout Los Angeles. Full series premiered on KCET and free online streaming in spring of 2017. Press included NY Times, LA Times, KQED, NPR, Opera News, OC Register.
Vireo is currently being work shopped in New York at The New School’s new Philip Glass Institute for a live staged version.
Nominated for Two Emmys
http://operawire.com/vireo-composer-direct-earn-emmy-award-nomination/
47th Annual ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Multimedia Award
https://www.ascap.com/press/2015/10-06-deems-taylor
Vireo Project Website
http://www.operavireo.org/
KCET Vireo Website
http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/projects/vireo/
ANA TERESA FERNANDEZ
SOMOS
Ana Teresa Fernandez’s work explores the politics of intersectionality through time-based actions and social gestures, translated into paintings, installations and videos. Within her work, performance becomes a tool for investigation as strong feminist undercurrents flow together with post-colonial rhetoric. Through her work, the artist illuminates the psychological and physical barriers that define gender, race, and class in Western society and the global south.
During the first part of the research/development for her residency, through conversations about the artists interests, GCAC sent the artist on a research visit to Chiapas to connect directly with Zapatistas, exploring further their support for Marichuy, Mexico’s first indigenous woman candidate for president. Through that visit and knowledge gained with conversations, engagement, and exchange, Fernandez developed phase one of the project through design and launch of SOMOS, a platform to create visibility and empowerment. Phase two of the project was a series of talks, followed by time creating together through printmaking workshops in communities and universities throughout the region.
Project Documentation
https://www.somos.vision/
DAVY SUMNER
TINES
Davy Sumner is a sound artist, composer, and percussionist, who favors the use of multichannel audio, feedback-based systems, algorithms, custom electronics to create site-specific installations, drawings and sculptures.
Based on an 1859 experiment by German Scientist Franz Melde, TINES was a site specific sculptural installation that developed tuning forks that were vibrated by precisely directed magnetic fields. Pulsing a strong electromagnet at the resonant frequency of a tuning fork causes it to start oscillating (and producing sound). The deer-like sculptures acted as resonators to increase the audibility of the tuning forks, amplifying their otherwise faint tones into raw materials for a digitally constructed audio composition.
During the course of the residency, Sumner activated his space/sculptures through both solo and collaborative performances. The collaborators included individuals from the region, national individuals brought in for short residencies, and individuals who would perform the work from their worldwide home locations using remote internet access, with Sumner responding directly within the space.
Project Documentation
http://davysumner.com/#/tines/
TIM DAVIS
I’m Looking Through You
Tim Davis was in residency in the continued development of his project I’m Looking Through You, a long poem celebrating the glamorous surface of Southern California and its reach. It was made while walking across the region, from its quiet, leafy highlands to its damaged traffic-choked lowlands, under the Dantean underpasses that connect its constellated villages, and across its wide, sparkling sidewalks. Every house in Southern California is its own ecosystem, a series of Mars colonies carved out of uninhabitable land. It is an endless horizon, like a set of unfolding backdrops behind someone walking in place. I’m Looking Through You is an attempt to expand the artists reach as a photographer, from one used to going vertically down the rabbit holes of cooked up, summoned, or arrived at ideas, to one spreading across the unfolding horizon, able to sample the surface anywhere along the way.
The work is an unashamed celebration of photography. The “You” Davis is “looking through” is the camera itself, and this project claims unapologetically that the transaction between the world’s surfaces and the camera’s lens are among the known universe’s most glamorous and profound. Before the big bang, all the atoms in the universe were collapsed into one point. There were no surfaces. Since then, there are more and more, and the camera is among the most powerful tools we have to make sense of them.
Aperture will publish the book I’m Looking Through You in Fall, 2020.
Project Information
https://www.foldmagazine.com/tim-davis-street-photography
CHRIS KALLMYER
Research/Development Phase
Chris Kallmyer is a sound and performance artist living in Los Angeles. His work explores a participatory approach to making art through touch, taste, and process using everyday objects that point to who we are and where we live. His work is best characterized by its relationship to site and architecture.
During his early visits he has been connecting with individuals, organizations, and facilities in the community that may provide inspiration and collaborative possibilities as he begins the development of a new project. His on site studio is providing spacing for think tanking, production, exploration, and meetings. Individuals he has connected with at GCAC so far include Postcommodity (Kade Twist and Cristóbal Martínez), Kim Zumpfe, Yumi Roth, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Lucas Murgida, Deborah Fisher, Dino Perez, Cog•nate Collective (Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz), Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz.
The artist will take over the storefront project space gallery beginning in October 2019 as his project further develops.
Artist Website
https://www.chriskallmyer.com/
BRETT KASHMERE with ASTRIA SUPARAK
GHOSTS OF EMPIRE – Research/Development Phase
Brett Kashmere is a current artists-in-residence working in the research and development of a new project. GHOSTS OF EMPIRE, a feature-length documentary essay (in-progress), investigates the current moment of crisis in American football, catalyzed by the discovery of the inherent risks of traumatic brain injury and long-term neurodegenerative disease. As participation declines and experts anticipate the end of football as we know it, new questions arise: Who still plays football today, and why? What effects do these existential threats pose to constructions of American masculinity and mythology?
Joining Brett in residence was his partner curator Astria Suparak, who used her time here conducting research and studio visits for an upcoming exhibition, worked on two writing projects, and developed a public art proposal for a wild parrot playground.
Project Website
https://www.ghostsofempire.com/
LEXA WALSH
Research/Development Phase
Lexa Walsh works as anthropologist, archivist, curator, facilitator and experience-maker. She examine and create social ties in order to craft Hospitable Democracies within cultural institutions both real and imagined. Hospitable Democracy is a platform for interaction and conversation across hierarchies, representing multiple voices.
During her first residency site visit in the research and development phase toward a future project, she mentioned an interest in nuns. GCAC helped her connect with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, and the incredible Sister Ellen O’Leary, who invited Lexa to participate in a number of activities during her visit.
A project will continue to develop through future site visits in residence at GCAC.
Artist Website
https://www.lexawalsh.com/
PABLO HELGUERA
Research/Development Phase
Pablo Helguera works with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art, and performance. His work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction.
During his first residency site visit in the research and development phase toward a future project, through interests the artist expressed, GCAC was able to begin connect the artist with resources and individuals of our local communities. He had a conversation and lunch with Louie Perez from Los Lobos and artists Cog•nate Collective (Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz) about collaborative possibilities. He also met with local historian Manny Escamilla and Dylan M. Almendral at the Santa Ana History Room. GCAC team was able to provide tours of local neighborhoods and the Downtown Santa Ana area.
A project will continue to develop through future site visits in residence at GCAC.
Artist Website
http://pablohelguera.net/
HEATHER LINEBERRY
Research/Development Phase
Curator Heather Lineberry, Senior Curator/Associate Director at Arizona State University Art Museum, was curator-in-residence working towards a new project that will involve artists developing projects with topics of environmental sustainability.
During her residency, Lineberry connected with individuals visiting GCAC, including: artist-in-residence Cog•nate Collective (Amy Sanchez and Misael Diaz), Lucas Murgida, and a number of CSUF graduate, undergraduate and alumni. In addition, the curator visited sites and institutions throughout the southern California region.
Curator Website
https://herbergerinstitute.asu.edu/profile/heather-lineberry
NILOUFAR EMAMIFAR
Research/Development Phase
Niloufar Emamifar work has focused on sculptural intervention. She began the recent series Penumbra in the streets of Los Angeles in search of what she called “seams,” spaces between two buildings, negative gaps that bring questions of property, real estate, and in between boundaries.
This was the artists first residency site visit in the research and development phase toward new projects.
Artist Project
https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/event/2019/05/24/niloufar-emamifar-the-architecture-of-the-unremarkable
MARIA DEL CARMEN MONTOYA and KEVIN PATTON
Research/Development Phase
Maria del Carmen Montoya works in participatory art, performance and new media. She is interested in the communal process of making meaning. As an artist she attempts to catalyze this natural social phenomena with situations that explore the potential of human-scale intervention in the presumed inevitability of everyday life.
Kevin Patton is an artist, scholar, and technologist whose primary mode of making is through creating interactive systems. He is active in the fields of multimedia theatre, experimental music, and interactive art. Kevin is also a frequent collaborator in installation, network art, and performance art projects.
During their first summer-long residency visit, Carmen and Kevin spent time connecting with individuals, visiting sites, thinking, and exploring. They are in the early research and development phase toward a future project that explores regional politics.
Artist Website – Maria del Carmen Montoya
http://www.lajunkielovegun.com/MariaDelCarmenMontoya/
Artist Website – Kevin Patton
http://kevinpatton.lajunkielovegun.com/
SUSY BIELAK and FRED SCHMALZ
Research/Development Phase
Working as the collaborative Balas & Wax, artists Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz work synthesizes the poetic, social, and political terrain of urban locales into installations and actions that reflect the gravity and strangeness of contemporary cities. Their practice integrates collaboration, intensive research, and material experimentation to create writing, installations, performances, and public works that respond to social questions.
During their first residency site visit in the research and development phase toward a future project, they mentioned an interest in nuclear power. GCAC took them for a visit to the site of the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear power plant, located at the Orange County/San Diego County border. They met with other GCAC artists and residence to learn about their projects. In addition, the artists were connected to Manny Escamilla and Dylan M. Almendral at the Santa Ana History Room, who provided them access to archives for research and discovery.
A project will continue to develop through future site visits in residence at GCAC.
Artists Website
http://www.balasandwax.com/
LAUREN WOODS IN COLLABORATION WITH
CAL STATE LONG BEACH UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM AND UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
American Monument
GCAC hosted lauren woods in residence as the artist was slated to actively transform the University Art Museum (UAM) at California State University Long Beach into a monument that prompts consideration of the cultural circumstances under which African-Americans have lost their lives to police brutality. The American Monument is conceived to be nomadic and continually expanding, with the UAM to serve as its launching site and steward. The artwork provides a vehicle by which to analyze the complex relationships between the construction of race, material violence, and structural power. Six days before it’s opening, UAM director Kimberli Meyer was removed from her post. The public co-creative process to complete the monument began on September 16th with an artist’s talk by lauren woods at the opening reception, at which the artist paused the work in protect of Meyer’s temination. The work was never unpaused during the UAM exhibition period.
Along with lauren’s stay in the lead up to the planned opening, the artist remained in residence at GCAC for two weeks after pausing the work, holding talks and navigating the ongoing situation taking place at the museum, university, and in the community with her project.
GCAC will once again house lauren woods in fall of 2019 and spring of 2020 in collaboration with University of California Irvine’s Beall Art Center as the show will be presented by their institution and unpaused for direct public and academic engagement. Kimberli Meyer will be acting curator on the project in collaboration with Beall Art Center Director David Familian.
American Monument
https://americanmonument.blog/
ALFADIR LUNA IN COLLABORATION WITH
OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
El Hombre Maiz
Since 2006, Alfadir Luna has worked mainly with public markets, which he conceives as a breeding ground for the development of social actions that culminate as site-specific interventions. He developed a network of collective actions that promoted the participation of merchants—in a dynamic of horizontal interaction—as a way to organize the eleven markets of La Merced. His interest in the area is due to not only its rich history, but because it is an area marked by the confluence of the flow of objects, aesthetics, and people that are facing gentrifying pressures. It is a site of migration that provides diverse perspectives on non-Western knowledge relations, ritual practices, symbolic languages, economics and commercial values.
El Hombre Maiz was a major piece for the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition at OTIS College of Art and Design, Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas. In collaboration with OTIS, Alfadir was in residence at Grand Central Art Center working with community members and merchants in the Downtown Santa Ana community to create his new El Hombre Maiz, focused on issues of gentrification and displacement occurring in the Orange County area. The artist was assisted with his process in Downtown Santa ana through the help of CSUF art student Alejandro Olivares. After the exhibition closed at OTIS, it traveled to School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arizona State University Art Museum, Queens Museum in NY, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, and is scheduled to tour venues in Latin America.
Talking to Action
https://www.otis.edu/press-release/investigating-community-based-art-practices-latin-america-los-angeles
CARMEN ARGOTE IN COLLABORATION WITH
ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART & WISEPLACE
2017 CALIFORNIA-PACIFIC TRIENNIAL
Place On-Fold
In collaborated with Orange County Museum of Art Senior Curator Cassandra Coblentz and the 2017 California-Pacific Triennial, GCAC hosted Carmen Argote as artist-in-residence. GCAC helped in the connecting to collaborative partner WISEPlace in securing use of a large space off-site studio for the artist to create the 22′ x 22′ works. During the time in residence, the artist also provided workshops and talks to the women in residence at WISEPlace.
Project Documentation
http://carmenargote.com/series/place-on-fold/
WISEPlace Website
https://www.wiseplace.org/
2017 California-Pacific Triennial
https://artillerymag.com/2017-california-pacific-triennial/
SUPER CRITICAL MASS (JULIAN DAY and LUKE JAANISTE) IN COLLABORATION WITH
ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
2017 CALIFORNIA-PACIFIC TRIENNIAL
Common Ground
In collaborated with Orange County Museum of Art Senior Curator Cassandra Coblentz and the 2017 California-Pacific Triennial, GCAC hosted Super Critical Mass (Sydney, Australia based artist Julian Day and Brisbane Australia based artist Luke Jaaniste) as artists-in-residence. While in residence, the artists created the sculpture, performance, video work in which temporary communities formed within ‘the commons’ of OCMA. Members of the local community came together to create monochromatic sound fields using identical sound sources (bowls, coins, bells, voice) in public location of the OCMA, following instructions developed within the space.
Project Documentation
https://www.supercriticalmass.com/common-ground
2017 California-Pacific Triennial
https://artillerymag.com/2017-california-pacific-triennial/
PILAR QUINTEROS IN COLLABORATION WITH
ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
2017 CALIFORNIA-PACIFIC TRIENNIAL
China House Great Journey
In collaborated with Orange County Museum of Art Senior Curator Cassandra Coblentz and the 2017 California-Pacific Triennial, GCAC hosted Santiago, Chile based artist Pilar Quinteron as artist-in-residence. While in residence, she created the sculpture, performance, video work China House Great Journey. The sculptural object was based upon the existence of the former China House in Corona de Mar. The video that appeared in the 2017 California/Pacific Triennial was documentation of the artist pulling the sculpture from a site in Downtown Santa Ana, CA – the former location of the cities Chinatown at the beginning of the 20th century that had been burned down intentionally burned as a “sanitary” measure by city officials – to the former location of China House, a 15-mile journey.
Project Documentation
https://pilarquinteros.com/2017/06/20/china-house-great-journey-2017/
2017 California-Pacific Triennial
https://artillerymag.com/2017-california-pacific-triennial/
REBECCA CHERNOW IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Sullivan Manor Community Engagement
Sullivan Manor Community Engagement was a GCAC residency project with Seattle artist Rebecca Chernow, who engaged the 162 residents of the 54-unit affordable housing complex of Sullivan Manor in Santa Ana through the development of creative activities, engagement, and outreach. Through a partnership with the non-profit organization Community Engagement, GCAC provided an apartment and studio space for the artist.
During her residency, the artist also presented the solo exhibition #Superbloom. In Spring 2017, the Antelope Valley just northeast of Los Angeles burst with vibrant orange poppies carpeting the ground in perhaps the largest display of flora in Southern California in over ten years. Thanks to the Internet, unprecedented crowds arrived to witness this natural phenomenon and made an indelible mark on the landscape. Social media also suggested a reality that wasn’t entirely true to the stunning imagery viewed online — a familiar scenario in our Digital Age. At peak season, motorists were stuck in traffic for hours, restaurants ran out of food, discarded water bottles and plastic bags littered the ground, and many of the flowers, that had waited out a decade-long drought, were destroyed by visitors trampling over them in search of the perfect image for their social media accounts. Artist Rebecca Chernow’s immersive installation simulated a California poppy field at sunset made from familiar plastic items that are often disposed of on the ground in downtown Santa Ana: the iconic green straws from Starbucks and orange shopping bags from Fallas’ department store, both located just a few blocks from Grand Central Art Center.
Project Documentation
https://www.communityengagement.org/creativesinresidence
#Superbloom Exhibition Website
http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com/rebecca-chernow-superbloom/
GALDINO “DINO” PEREZ IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Triada Village and Triada Court Community Engagement
Triada Village and Triada Court Community Engagement was a GCAC residency project with Santa Ana artist Dino Perez, who engaged the 467 residents of the 114-unit affordable housing complex of Triada Villiage and Triada Court in Santa Ana through the development of creative activities, engagement, and outreach. Through a partnership with the non-profit organization Community Engagement, GCAC provided an apartment and studio space for the artist.
Project Documentation
https://www.communityengagement.org/creativesinresidence
TRINH MAI IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Heninger Village Community Engagement
Heninger Village Community Engagement was a GCAC residency project with San Jose, CA artist Trinh Mai, who engaged the 73 residents of the gated senior 55+ 58-unit affordable housing complex of Heninger Village in Santa Ana through the development of creative activities, engagement, and outreach. Through a partnership with the non-profit organization Community Engagement, GCAC provided an apartment and studio space for the artist.
Project Documentation
https://www.communityengagement.org/creativesinresidence
CYNTHIA RIESTERNER IN COLLABORATION WITH CAL STATE FULLERTON DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND DANCE
CSUF Dance – Guest Artist Series
Cynthia Riesterner was in residence at GCAC In collaboration with Cal State University Fullerton’s Department of Theatre and Dance. CSU, Fullerton’s Dance Program’s Guest Artist Series allows dancers to receive guidance and inspiration from performers from companies such as Baryshnikov’s White Oak Project, Alvin Ailey Dance Company, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Martha Graham Company, Merce Cunningham, Lar Lubovitch, Meredith Monk, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Frankfurt Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre.
Guest Artists Series Website
https://www.fullerton.edu/arts/dance/students/guest_artist_series.php
KAREN WILLENBRINK-JOHNSEN and JASEN JOHNSEN IN COLLABORATION WITH CAL STATE FULLERTON DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL ARTS
CSUF Visual Arts – Guest Artist Series
Karen Willenbrink-Johnsen and Jasen Johnsen, Master glass sculptors, were in residence at GCAC In collaboration with Cal State University Fullerton’s Department of Visual Arts. As part of the Art Week programs organized by CSUF College of the Arts, the artists presented workshops covering a variety of hot-sculpting techniques during the multi-day sessions. The artists delved into inside sculpting, surface textures, color applications, assembly of components, and other glass-working techniques. The workshops were split between demonstrations and student work. Students were also able to practice the techniques covered in the class and work out thematic ideas while working as teams.
Artists Website
https://www.willenbrinkjohnsen.com/