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Exhibition: INSIGHTS 2018: The Annual School of Art Student Exhibition (May 10 - May 25, 2018) Event: UAM@NOON - May 15, 2018

This focused tour of INSIGHTS 2018 provided an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate art students to speak on their artworks. INSIGHTS is the Annual School of Art Student Exhibition, showcasing the talent of selected students in many areas of study including: Printmaking, Ceramic Arts, Graphic Design, Art Education, Metals, Sculpture, Illustration / Animation, Drawing and Painting, Photography, Wood, and Fiber Art. Here are some highlights of the event.

Doris Rivera’s artwork, Piet’s Playground (2018), deconstructs Piet Mondrian’s De Stijl compositions and comments on the relative decline of figuration in modern and contemporary art. The ceramic babies represent well-known figures in art history as infants, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, Mona Lisa, and The Scream. In dwarfing these characters and placing them within an referential abstract framework, the artist puts figuration and abstraction on the same playing field and raises questions about the figure’s place in contemporary art today.

Instagram: @lunchladydoris314

Justin Lee Rightsell’s abstract photography piece, untitled (2018), captures the results of a single gesture by myriad methods, merging photographic and abstract expressionist processes. It was created by exposing silver gelatin photo paper to different lights, including UV light, treating it with painted solutions, and burning it with a blowtorch. Rightsell opens the photographic medium to physical and painterly practices, and in his focus on a temporal, ritualistic process, the piece questions what a can be considered photography in contemporary art. The artist was awarded the CSULB School of Art's Baldessari Scholarship.

Kiara Machado's painting, Quarenta (2018), pays tribute to her Guatemalan heritage with eight traditional worry dolls hidden in the jungle of foliage. As the custom goes, worry dolls are given to fretful children, who tell them their worries, and hide them under their pillows at night; come morning, the worries will be taken away by the dolls. The veiled self portrait is in homage to mistreated Guatemalan textile laborers that lost their lives in a recent protest fire that turned deadly. A female worker lit a mattress on fire in hopes of getting the attention and sympathy needed for the abused workforce to be freed; instead they were ignored and locked in their quarters to burn. In serving as a placeholder for these women, the artist stands with them and against abuse of power prevalent in slave labor in the textile industry.

Instagram: @kiara_aileen_arts

Katarina Stiller's artwork, Cup of Tea (2018), represents getting lost in the story of a good book while enjoying a leisurely caffeine break. The abstracted ceramic sculpture hung on the wall appear to be faces, unwoven into lyrical curves, like a character in novel taking shape or changing in our mind’s eye while reading. The books selected and stacked under Stiller’s deconstructed teapot were influential to her artistic practice. How did she shape the ceramics into their current curly shapes? They were cut and formed during the leather phase, before being fired.

Instagram: @katstiller  

Lia Gogue's sculptural installation, Presence (2018), is inspired by a trip to her ancestral home of Guam, where she collected volcanic sand used in her sparkling cast sculptural pieces. Gogue also used resin and a CNC machine to incorporate dried flowers and other small items of significant memorabilia from her life into 3D prints. A real volcanic pumice stone accompanies these artist rendered pieces. The arrangement appears to the viewer as natural stone materials and ancient building tools and brings to mind archaeological artifacts and anthropological studies. Gogue was awarded the Jen Grey “Joy of Life” Endowed Scholarship from the School of Art.