Opening Reception and Performances
Saturday, February 2, 2-4 p.m.
Broad Center Courtyard and Nichols Gallery, Pitzer College

Join us for the opening reception of the Pitzer College Art Galleries two spring exhibitions Publishing Against the Grain and Emerging Artist Series #14: Cathy Akers.

The event includes X-TRA Forum #5: One Text Two Minutes, a program of two-minute readings by 16 artists.

Participants are Cathy Akers, Stacey Allan, Brent Armendinger, Leslie Dick, Micol Hebron, Nick Herman, Christopher James, Olga Koumoundouros, Jeff Khonsary, Thomas Lawson, Hailey Loman, Ming-Yuen S. Ma, Rachel Mayeri, Susan Silton, Aziz Sohail, and Carlin Wing.

The 16 artists will share an article chosen from the exhibition. Participants might read directly from the journal or share an anecdote. Presentations are likely to be somewhat spontaneous, unrehearsed and conversational. Publishing Against the Grain includes X-TRA’s complete archive.

Murray Pepper and Vicky Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series
Tuesday, February 5, 4:15 pm – 5:30 pm
Benson Auditorium

RECENT RUPTURE RADIO HOUR
(The East L.A. Dirigible Tapes)

Writer Sesshu Foster and artist Arturo Ernesto Romo, creators of the online ELA Guide and authors of forthcoming novel East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, discuss a decade of the practice of collaborative projects and community interventions, a life in the arts outside of institutionalization and the role of arts in community building.

Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 30 years. He’s also taught writing at the University of Iowa, CalArts, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Pomona College and UC Santa Cruz. His work has been published in numerous volumes, including the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry. His most recent books are the hybrid text World Ball Notebook, City of the Future and the forthcoming East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, created with frequent collaborator Arturo Ernesto Romo.

Arturo Ernesto Romo was born in Los Angeles, CA, in 1980. His artwork, mostly collaborative mixed media works but also drawing and muralism, has circulated internationally. Fluency, agency and folly are central themes in his practice; he sees his artwork as a companion multiplier, folding folds, netting nets. His art-making is pushed through explorations on the streets of East and Northeast Los Angeles, which feed into an ongoing series of collaborations with writer Sesshu Foster.

Panel Discussion: Countercultural Positions and Reclaiming Craft as a Feminist Practice

with Cathy Akers, Micol Hebron, Olga Koumoundouros, Claudia Parducci, and Astri Swendsrud

Wednesday, March 27 at 1:30 p.m.
Broad Performance Space, Pitzer College

This panel will consider the current resurgence of ceramics in contemporary art making with a particular emphasis on its use by women artists as a means to reclaim the traditionally gendered practice of craft. The panelists will also investigate the role of women as producers of counterculture in relation to Cathy Akers’ exhibition, Utopia for Some: Morningstar and Wheelers Ranches Reconsidered.

About the panelists:

Cathy Akers works with photography, ceramics and installation. Her work has been exhibited in solo or two-person shows at Pitzer College Art Galleries, Honor Fraser Gallery, and Emma Gray Headquarters in Los Angeles. She has had group shows in Israel, Germany, the U.K., Poland, and the Czech Republic. Akers has a MFA from CalArts.

Micol Hebron is an interdisciplinary feminist artist whose practice includes studio work, curating, writing, social media, crowd-sourcing, teaching, public-speaking, and both individual and collaborative projects. She grew up in a tent with hippie parents in the redwoods of Northern California. Hebron is an Associate Professor of Art at Chapman University.

Olga Koumoundouros’ art engages ideas about exchanges of energy and materiality while situating the economies and labor of its own making.  Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Hammer Museum, REDCAT, the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Adamski Gallery in Berlin, Project Row Houses in Houston, TX, among others.

LA-based artist Claudia Parducci’s work concerns the cycles of human conflict and strategies for survival, and spans a multi-disciplinary practice that includes drawing, painting, and sculpture. Since receiving her MFA from CalArts in 2006, Parducci’s work has been shown nationally and internationally. Her next solo exhibition will take place in March 2019 at Ochi Projects, Los Angeles.

Astri Swendsrud is a Los Angeles-based artist. Much of her recent work is part of the collaborative project Semi-Tropic Spiritualists, through which she creates interactive, multi-disciplinary works exploring the histories and influences of utopian and visionary communities in California. She is also co-founder and co-director of the artist-run space Elephant and works as Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at Biola University.

This event is free and open to the public.

Instruments of Accountability

Opening Reception and Performances:
Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin, AJ Layague, Dana Reason
Saturday, September 29, 2-4 p.m.
Broad Center Courtyard, Pitzer College

The opening reception will feature three performances that will incorporate Elana Mann’s sculpture-instruments from the exhibition. These works will explore the intersection of art, music and activism to address issues of domestic violence, audience participation and empowerment.

Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin: Unseal/Unseam
An experimental, multimedia opera that re-frames the story of Bluebeard’s Castle from the perspective of his abused wife, Judith.

AJ Layague: Signs Revisited
A three-movement work exploring the translation from the visible to the acoustic, from the object to its representation, and from the watcher to the listener.

Dana Reason: Modes of Persuasion: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Mouth
A series of studies for emergent method sound & object practitioners using instructional and graphic scores to be performed by non-art professionals.

Election Day Parade: Grand Buddha Marching Band
Tuesday, November 6, 2:30–4 p.m.
Mudd Quadrangle, Claremont Graduate University

On Election Day, Mann will stage a performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Grand Buddha Marching Band in collaboration with art students from Pitzer and Claremont Graduate University (CGU). Performers will convene on Mudd Quadrangle, adjacent to CGU’s Art Department. This event is co-produced by Pitzer College Art Galleries, CGU, and Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena.

Lecture by Tomorrow Girls Troop (TGT)
Saturday, December 8, 1:30–2:30 p.m.
Broad Performance Space, Broad Center

Self-described as a “worldwide fourth-wave feminist art collective,” Tomorrow Girls Troop (TGT) was established in 2015 and comprises 50 artists and activists from around the world. Focusing on gender equality issues, TGT strives to create a positive world for all sexualities and genders in East Asia through art, social action, education, and pop culture.

Presented in collaboration with The Claremont Colleges’ Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies.

Songbook Launch
Elana Mann: Instruments of Accountability
Saturday, December 8, 2:30–4 p.m.
Broad Performance Space, Broad Center

In conjunction with the exhibition, Pitzer College Art Galleries will publish a songbook of scores/compositions/chants/songs specifically created for Elana Mann’s sculptural instruments. The publication will include compositions by Pauline Oliveros, Dana Reason, Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin, and Douglas Kearney, among others. The songbook will include a jointly written essay by artist, activist and scholar Gregory Sholette and curator and critic Olga Kopenkina. An interview with Elana Mann by Pitzer College Art Galleries’ Director and Curator Ciara Ennis will also be included. The songbook will be designed by Colleen Corcoran, a designer who focuses on projects that examine the use of design as a tool for education and positive change. The form and design of the songbook will draw from the aesthetics of zines, street newspapers and Athanasius Kircher’s many publications.

The exhibition and programming are generously supported in part by the Pasadena Art Alliance and the Frederick J. Salathé Fund for Music and the Cultural Arts/Campus Life Committee, Pitzer College.

MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal Symposium
Friday, March 23, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College

MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal is an exhibition of the ideas, wishes, and demands of scores of citizens with something to say and a need to be heard. It is our current climate of discord that created MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal. It was conceived to give citizens a soapbox and to amplify their voices. These voices are many, and these voices belong to people from various walks of life. In our current climate of discord, it is essential that we reexamine just who we are and what we stand for. MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal has joined the conversation as have the voices in this symposium.

Full Schedule

This Symposium is free and open to the public.