Alumni Artist Talks

A collaboration with the Office of Alumni and Family Engagement and Pitzer College Art Galleries, and programmed in connection with Pitzer@Home


Now Be Here #1, LA, 2016, Photo by Isabel Avila and Carrie Yury, Courtesy Kim Schoenstadt and Hauser & Wirth. August 28, 2016; 893 artists RSVP’d, 733 artists were able to attend. 

Tuesday, April 6, 2021, 3 p.m., PDT
Kim Schoenstadt ’95

Kim Schoenstadt works with architectural and archival imagery in large-scale public installations, wall drawings, and other media, addressing notions of public space, intellectual histories, and aesthetics. She is the organizer of Now Be Here, a project designed to give visibility to women-identifying and non-binary artists and bring equity to the art world. Now Be Here also serves as an expanding archive of women-identifying and non-binary artists.  

Los Angeles-based artist Kim Schoenstadt graduated from Pitzer College in 1995. Her work has been presented in numerous solo museum and gallery exhibitions, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Van Abbemuseum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICALA), and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). She was the recipient of the Volta/Bahamar Art Prize (2018), Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2013), and the Catherine Doctorow Prize (2011), and her work is included in the permanent collections of MOCA, MOMA, MCA Chicago, and Van Abbemuseum.

Pre-register for Kim Schoenstadt


Danny Shain, Pier, 2017, 84 x 30 inches, acrylic, graphite, spray enamel, watercolor paper, tape and tacks on three canvases 

Thursday, December 3, 2020, 3 p.m., PST
Danny Shain ’86

Danny Shain draws from the infrastructure of Los Angeles to inform the heterogenous panel and canvas structures that comprise his medium- to large-scale paintings. Atmospheric abstraction abuts imagery referencing roadway signs, postcard motifs, and the hardened concrete and asphalt landscapes of the buildings, city streets, overpasses, and freeways constituting the city’s extensive urban sprawl.  

Pasadena-based artist Danny Shain graduated from Pitzer College in 1986. His paintings and collages have been exhibited locally and internationally, and his works are held in public and private collections, including the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He recently designed the cover art for John Fante’s Ask the Dust: A Joining of Voices and Views, published by Fordham University Press in the spring of 2020.

Pre-register for Danny Shain


Edwin Alexis Gómez ’08

Tuesday, October 27, 2020, 5 p.m., PST
Edwin Alexis Gómez ’08 in conversation with Gina Lamb

Queer Nicaraguan-American writer, director, producer and actor Edwin Alexis Gómez received a Grand Jury Award for his directorial debut, QUÉDATE CALLADO (STAY SILENT), at the 2018 Outfest Fusion Film Festival. His sophomore short film, LA SAD BOY, premiered at the 2019 Outfest Film Festival and is currently touring the festival circuit. In the 8th Stay at Home Alumni Artist Talk, Gómez is joined by media artist and Pitzer Professor Gina Lamb for a conversation about his work and using film as a vehicle for social change.

Edwin Alexis Gómez is a Queer Nicaraguan-American writer, director, producer and actor. His work investigates the resounding beauty and exquisite pain of love and life. His latest short film, JOYRIDE, was awarded best screenplay by the Latino Screenwriting Academy and was selected for a Latino Public Broadcasting new media production grant and premiered this summer at the 2020 PBS Short Film Festival.

Pre-register for Edwin Alexis Gómez


Marguerite Elliot in her studio.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 5 p.m., PST
Marguerite Elliot ’71

Marguerite Elliot was a founding member of the Woman’s Building and Feminist Studio Workshop. The experience profoundly changed her life and artistic practice. “I am grateful,” she has written, “to have been on the forefront of the second wave of feminism. We broke many rules and shook up the art world.” Her recent publications include The Woman’s Building and Feminist Art Education 1973-1991: A Pictorial Herstory, published in conjunction with the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980

A sculptor based in the Bay Area, Elliot received her B.A. from Pitzer College and taught at the Los Angeles Woman’s Building and Otis College of Art and Design. Her work has focused on feminist, anti-nuclear, social justice, and environmental issues, and her public sculpture can be seen across the United States and in Europe.

Pre-register for Marguerite Elliot


Installation view of Paroxysm of Sublime, co-curated with Anna Milone for the FLAX Foundation at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Photo credit: Christopher Wormald

Tuesday, September 15, 2020, 5 p.m., PST
Ana Iwataki ’11

Ana Iwataki is a curator, writer, translator, and organizer. Currently, she is a doctoral student in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture at USC.  She received her BA in Art History from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA and MA in Curatorial Studies from the Sorbonne, Paris, France. She is Co-Editor of the forthcoming X Topics book series published by X Artists’ Books and art consultant to the ACLU SoCal for the inaugural Artist-in-Residence program. 

Pre-register for Ana Iwataki


Julia White, Columbia Edgewater, 2019, oil on canvas, 52 x 48 inches

Thursday, August 13, 2020, 3 p.m., PST
Julia White ’90

Julia W. White ’90 is a painter living in Tacoma, Washington. She majored in Art and Psychology at Pitzer. Upon graduation, she moved back, closer to home in the Pacific Northwest, where she has lived ever since. She has shown in numerous venues in Seattle, and more recently in Tacoma.

Pre-register for Julia White


The Last Newspaper: Contemporary Art, Curating Histories, Alternative Models, New Museum, New York, October 6, 2010 – January 9, 2011, co-curated by Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill

Thursday, July 30, 2020, 3 p.m., PST
Benjamin Godsill ’00

Benjamin Godsill is a leading authority in the realm of late 20th and early 21st Century art and is a global taste-maker whose savvy curatorial and market insights have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Bloomberg, among other publications.

Pre-register for Benjamin Godsill


Steven Liang, Billy Taing, video still

Thursday, July 16, 2020, 3 p.m., PST
Steven Liang ’10

Narratives of Resistance: Scripted and Documentary Hybrids as a Model of Film Production for Social Change
Steven Liang’s narrative and documentary films center the lives of those occupying intersectional identities—Queer, Latinx, Undocumented, Asian American, Incarcerated. In this talk, Steven will showcase clips from his work and discuss his community-based model of film production for social change.

Steven Liang’s artist talk, Narratives of Resistance, is organized with the Pitzer College Art Galleries, the Office of Alumni and Parent Engagement and the Pitzer College Community Engagement Center (CEC). This is the first event in the “Stay at Home” series to focus on Alumni Artists and Social Justice Practices.

Pre-register for Steven Liang


Kathleen Ryan, Green-Eyed Monster, 2019, aventurine, amethyst, labradorite, Ching Hai jade, sesame jasper, serpentine, freshwater pearl, mother of pearl, marble, lodolite, smokey quartz, grey agate, clear quartz, magnesite, tree agate, citrine, amazonite, bone, grey feldspar, yellow quartz, forest green serpentine, jasper, pink opal, Czech glass, steel pins on coated polystyrene, 19.5 x 28.5 x 17.5 inches

Thursday, July 2, 2020, 3 p.m., PST
Kathleen Ryan ’06

Join us for a conversation with Los Angeles-born, New York-based sculptor Kathleen Ryan. Ryan, who studied archaeology and art at Pitzer, received an MFA from UCLA’s art program, where she studied under noted sculptor Charles Ray. Her recent exhibition Bad Fruit, presented at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, February 15 – March 29, 2020, recast found and handmade objects as spectacular, larger-than-life hieroglyphs of Americana.

Pre-register for Kathleen Ryan


Sean Cavanaugh, Upcountry Fractal, 2020, watercolor and gouache, 20 x 26 inches

Thursday, June 18, 2020, 3 p.m., PST

Sean Cavanaugh ’91 discusses his artistic practice and creative process to convey a sense of his daily work in the studio, starting with the initial spark of an idea to the completion of a painting. Touching on lessons learned at Pitzer and wisdom gleaned from family and years at the easel, he will speak to the challenges of working within the art world during these uncertain times.

A brief Q & A will follow the talk.

Pre-register for Sean Cavanaugh


Alumni Artist Talks are made possible through the generous support of Alumni & Family Engagement and Pitzer Advancement and is programmed in conjunction with Pitzer@Home