Intimate Oddities
February 7-13, 2009
Selected artworks from Santa Monica City College Fine Art Mentor Program Curated by Ronald Lopez
Artists Include: Susanne Melanie, Sarah Boyce, Jay Grant Buckerfield, Joseph Cochrane, Helen Geisler, Lucas Kazansky, Ka Man Lee, Cedar Miller, Gustavo Muñoz, Elyse Reardon-Jung, Jeanne Roderick, Zoma Crum Tesfa, Sarah Theden, Nathan Warner, Elizabeth Weber, Kristen Winslow, and Elena Wolek
Intimate Oddities – Curator’s Statement
Intimate Oddities is a title that came to be as a result of photographs bearing witness to intimate sexual escapades with partners of both sexes, mixed media drawings containing silhouettes of women filled with the phone numbers of the artist’s ex-boyfriends, small ink drawings on paper depicting various people picking their noses that seemed odd yet true of us all, and photographs of bikinis left in various places around the city, creating a trace of the artist ’ s playfulness and wittiness that further embrace the voyeurism that both reality TV and the tabloid media so eagerly embrace. And what would a show be without work that reflects our society’s newfound sense of responsibility toward the environment? In this case it is brought forth by a massive shopping bag created from a plethora of smaller plastic shopping bags and juxtaposed next to an acrylic painting of a canvas bag on an un-stretched, raw, and dirty piece of canvas. Both are familiar objects that, upon closer study, reveal oddities that are meant to elicit a thoughtful response.
The various works included in this show bring to light the many mixed emotions that one goes through in college looking for acceptance, creating work with great ambition and a certain sense of naive sensibility that makes art fun, pure, and experimental. Perhaps traces of these emotions have yet to fully escape any of us as we attempt to become better technicians, and help us continue to reflect the intimate oddities within our daily affairs.
When asked by Ichiro Irie, the Fine Art Mentor Program’s instructor, to curate this show, I did not know what to expect from the students of Santa Monica City College. I quickly drifted back to my days at a city college and remembered a makeshift studio with a majority of students who lacked fervor and a majority of instructors who lacked passion. Thus, I entered the opportunity without high hopes. I knew, however, that my colleague Irie had a great eye and was a very good artist himself, so I was eager to participate. Upon entering the studio across from the Santa Monica airport, I was quickly greeted with art that not only flushed away my past city college experiences, but beckoned me to look further and deeper into each piece. The work was vast in its mediums and styles yet focused, with driven potential, ambitious but honest, peculiar but smart, and, most of all, it carried with it a sense of professionalism one would only hope to find in young, talented, and emerging artists.
The works in the show leave me with anticipation of what is yet to come from some of these artists as they press forward with discipline and diligence. I also look forward to seeing the future artists that will come through Santa Monica College’s Fine Art Mentor Program.
About the Mentor Program
The Mentor Program serves as a unique learning experience for a select group of students in the Santa monica College Art department. Students have the opportunity to work intensively with faculty members, visiting artists and fellow students toward the development of individual bodies of work. the program consists of frequent visits to galleries, museums and artist studios, in addition to focused discussions and critiques. The program features an open studios event in the spring, an annual group show in the summer, and a web site.
The Mentor Program, helmed by Professors Ronn Davis, Kavin Buck, and Ichiro Irie, is in the process of being completely redesigned. New approaches to educational and art making processes are being implemented in order to better reflect (a) the strategies used in the nation’s leading art schools, and (b) the ideas and issues discussed by art practioners, educators, curators, and critics around the world.
Through conversation and interaction, students are challenged to explore their own work and those of others, and to solve problems in relevant and innovative ways. Students are also exposed to different aspects of becoming an artist including the preparation of individual portfolios, collaborative work in small groups, and gallery level preparation and installation practices. Students are also introduced to the art world and the dynamics of working with galleries, museums, curators and collectors.
One of the main objectives of the Mentor Program is to serve as a stepping stone; to help students become better prepared and more competitive at the University level, and to provide the intellectual tools and awareness to present themselves as professional artists in the local and international visual art communities.
