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Summer 2009
(Super)heroes
Project in July. Private reception. Open by appointment in August.
Select portions of the exhibition will be included in the Euphrat’s fall schedule.
Santa Clara County youth participating in the Summer Bridge Program
The (Super)heroes presented individual art along with poetry and writings by high school students, part of a Euphrat art project in conjunction with the Summer Bridge Program for foster youth. Youth considered what it meant to be a (Super)hero and what heroic qualities they saw in themselves or those around them. The mixed media art with images and text were powerful and insightful, directly related to their life experiences. The youth had the opportunity to speak in front of their art and writings at a community reception in the Euphrat and then later at a luncheon in the Campus Center.
Winter 2009
In February 2009, the Euphrat Museum of Art opened
its doors to a
brand new exhibition space.
INAUGURAL ART EXHIBITION:
Looking
Back, Looking Ahead
February 17 - April 24, 2009
Closed Spring Break, March 30 - April 4
Reception with the Artists: Wednesday, March 11, 5:30-7:30pm.
 Read a review of this inaugural art exhibition.
The Euphrat Museum of Art at De Anza College serves a culturally
diverse, technologically sophisticated, urban community undergoing
rapid economic and social changes. Looking
Back, Looking Ahead is an eclectic look at Silicon
Valley’s varied and colorful growth through visual media and
shared narratives. This inaugural exhibition honors our past
and looks to the future as we weave together the stories of
artists and the stories of Silicon Valley residents and groups
in an effort to understand the fascinating community that we
are situated in. This is Silicon Valley. This is our story,
your story.
Artists include: Paul Pei-Jen
Hau, Agnes Pelton, Thai Bui, Rene Yung, Angela Buenning Filo,
Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, Charisse Domingo, Mike Arcega, Shorty
Fatz, Samuel Rodriguez, Matthew Rodriguez, and more.
West Gallery
— Mountain Light Stone
Featuring Paul Pei-Jen Hau, Agnes Pelton, Thai Bui
Our honored artist for Looking
Back, Looking Ahead is world-renowned painter Paul
Pei-Jen Hau, who has a museum named after him in eastern
China. Opened in 2002, the Hau Pei-Jen Art Museum contains many
of his artworks and art from his personal collection. Hau’s
bold watercolor and ink paintings bridge cultures of East and
West, with references that range from the Ming dynasty to the
vanguard of Western abstraction. His work has been exhibited
at the San Jose Museum of Art and at the De Young Museum in
San Francisco. Born in 1917 in Liaoning Province, Hau studied
in both China and Japan. In 1956 he moved to California to teach
at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. He lives in Los Altos
and has taught locally for over 50 years. He has published three
novels, a history of sociology, and a book on Chinese art. At
age 92, he still visits China. In addition to the exhibit, a
conversation/celebration with the artist is planned to help
students and the community learn more about Hau and his impact
locally and internationally. We hope the presentation will inspire
further local research on Chinese masters in the area.
View a video interview of Paul Pei-Jen Hau by Diana Ding here.
Paul Pei-Jen Hau, The
Mountains After Raining, 2008. Ink and color on paper,
20"x24".
Paul Pei-Jen Hau Seal: The Humble
Old Man
Agnes Pelton (1881-1961)
was born in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied at the Pratt Institute
in New York. In the 1920s she focused on abstraction and joined
with the Transcendental Painting Group. Known as a “Poet of
Nature,” her mystical landscapes, many created after her move
in 1931 to Cathedral City, California, suggest a meditative
world where East meets West and spirit, vision, and nature harmonize.
Not much was known about Agnes Pelton when we researched her
in the early 1980s. Our publication, Staying
Visible (1981), includes a section on her life and work.
In the course of our research, a small collection of Pelton’s
work was acquired. Since then, Pelton has been the subject of
growing scholarship. Today Pelton's art stands alongside American
legend Georgia O'Keeffe's. Pelton's Light Center, owned by the Euphrat,
will be part of the exhibition Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia
O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Pierce, organized
by the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). Light Center was shown at
the Euphrat in February and March, after which it is on exhibition
at OCMA. Related publications are available, along with study guides for children.
Agnes Pelton, Light
Center, 1960-61. Oil on canvas, 36"x26". Collection of
Euphrat Museum of Art, De Anza College, Cupertino, California.
Gift of Cornelia Sussman and Irving Sussman.
Visually simple and intellectually complex, Thai
Bui’s sculpture connects Eastern philosophies and several
Western art movements: Minimalism, Funk, and Conceptual. Originally
from Vietnam, Bui came to the U.S. in 1981 and received his
MFA from Stanford University in 1992. His series, Needed, a
poetic grouping of stones, not only relates to close personal
relationships but also to our relationship with others and to
nature. The concepts cross multiple boundaries. In Needed,
stones are linked as male/female pairs. For a ceiling installation,
half of each stone pair is suspended in a Haiku form. The other
half is supported by its link. Bui has been profiled on KQED’s
SPARK.
South Gallery
— Story Lines
Everyday stories are tangible in Rene
Yung’s major installation ….anges
and disappearances. A low wall made of 400 bars of soap imprinted
with the word “Remember” sits on a weathered wooden platform. Towels imprinted
with words of personal memories and official identity hang on a nearby clothesline.
A stool and wash basin beckon you to sit down, wash a towel, and hang it up on the
clothesline. With use, the words on the soap and towels fade away, symbolizing the
erasure of the cultural memory of 19th century immigrants, such as the 15,000
Chinese who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad, the Chinese who worked
the mines, and ran laundries when prohibited by law to own land. Their overlooked
stories continue on in today’s immigration debate. We will work with Yung and
others on campus and in the community to capture the histories and stories of
today, and to connect them with our visual life.
Rene Yung, ...nges
and Disappearances, 2004. Interactive mixed media installation.
Interactive installation with multiple components, dimensions
variable.
Change is rapid in Silicon Valley. Angela
Buenning Filo’s photographs give the sense of news today,
history tomorrow. The images include an electromagnetic emissions
testing site in Mountain View and a dismantled server room in
Sunnyvale. Juxtaposed are her images from Bangalore, India’s
Silicon Valley. Among these are the lobby of a 24-7 customer
service and the entrance to Electronic City. Many of the Silicon
Valley scenes are devoid of people. Her scenes capture the uncertainty
of investment and return as jobs and buildings appear and disappear.
Some of the Bangalore images reflect the stark contrast with
between current technology and everyday life. The high-school
journalism program that Filo teaches in East Palo Alto has won
a national award for its student newspaper, a copy of which
will be on display. Filo will share stories of our Silicon Valley
tech community and youth.
Angela Buenning Filo, Biotechnology
Company Headquarters, Mountain View, 2001. Photograph,
30"x40".
Consuelo Jimenez
Underwood lives in Cupertino. She has been a professor
in textiles at San Jose State for many years. On exhibit will
be a Mexican American flag with the Sunnyvale Libby Fruit Cocktail
can trademark in the center. “My dad was a bracero in WWII.
They never fully paid my dad. They paid Mexico.” Underwood has
many stories to share, including her international travels.
These stories will lay the groundwork for a project that will
be exhibited in the fall. Underwood has been chosen as a video
subject for the American Craft Council.
Silicon Valley De-Bug
uses a variety of media, from magazines to radio to web to sculpture,
to tell stories of Silicon Valley. De-Bug is a collective of
writers, artists, organizers, and workers based in San José.
They are a project of Pacific News Service, a national news
service. On exhibit will be Charisse
Domingo’s portraits of mothers who face family problems
with the criminal justice system, juvenile hall, and deportation.
Domingo is part of the Euphrat's inaugural exhibition Looking Back, Looking Ahead.
She also works with the Open Darkroom sponsored by De-Bug.
De-Bug will give a presentation, and one of the groups affiliated
with De-Bug, Shorty Fatz,
will create a display in the Front View window.
Entrada
Military garment and ceremony get a contemporary makeover with
two works by Mike Arcega.
They have special resonance with De Anza College, which is named
after Juan Bautista de Anza, and with our central location in
Silicon Valley. El Conquistadourke
assumes a pose like a security guardian or a welcoming figure.
This humorous 6’ suit of armor constructed of manila file folders
comments on “the frailty of military might and the strength
of trade.” Arcega mocks a romanticized view of the conquistadores
of old and comments on trade practices today. Close by is Loping
Honoring. Here, technology complicates our communication
and identity and pokes at our pride. For this multi-media work
of video, audio, lyrics, text was generated by spell checking
the national anthem of the Philippines, Lupang Hinirang, in
Microsoft Word V.11.3. This text was then reapplied to the harmony
of Lupang Hinirang and sung in an operatic voice.
Front View
Custom bike specialists Shorty
Fatz will create a special Front View window installation
with their signature bikes. Samuel Rodriguez and Matthew Rodriguez
create bikes unique in style and function. “Our goals are to
create a stylish cruise with comfort and durability.” The ubiquitous
Shorty Fatz cartoon character has a story of its own. Ensconced
in a vinyl showcase window, the custom bike speaks to individual
dreams as well as to stylish transportation. This is one of
Silicon Valley’s new stories – building an art company and reaching
out to youth with graphics and bike workshops. A mini-residency
with the artists is being planned.
Come On Down!
Come On Down! is a multi-purpose project space that includes
a collaborative communal area for connecting visual and oral
history, and an experimental exhibition area for the results
of interactive projects. Part of this space for campus and community
will feature frequently changing artwork. Presentations in this
area for early 2009 will include:
- Mapping
Project: The California
History Center (CHC) uses the space for an interactive
project in which viewers describe a special place in Silicon
Valley where something very significant happened and connect
it to a map. The California History Center will be an ongoing
partner with the Euphrat Museum in connecting stories and
images.
- Student
Activity: Marc Coronado and Karen Chow's ¡LEAD! Winter 2009
EWRT 1A classes present Picturing
Our Communities, a photo and narrative slideshow
on computer created by students who identified their communities,
took photos and wrote essays about them, and addressed how
immigration impacts these communities.
- Adjunct
Exhibits: We will show artwork that is shown at concurrent
exhibit venues. In February we will showcase a piece from
The X-Ray Project,
a two-week exhibition co-sponsored by the Euphrat Museum
of Art and taking place concurrently in the De Anza Library
in late February.
- Flat
Files: an exhibition opportunity for prints, photographs,
and other flat artwork for scholarship and discussion. Some
flat file exhibitions will be available by appointment.
- Publications:
This area is also used for study and research. Several publications
are on display, including Magnificent
and Marvelous Scene, Hou Bei Ren’s Landscape Painting,
2008, and Agnes Pelton,
Poet of Nature, 1995.
The inaugural exhibition was curated by Jan Rindfleisch, working
with the artists and with Nancy Hom, Tom Izu, Jianhua Shu, Adrian
Avila and Raj Jayadev and others. Collaborators include Silicon
Valley De-Bug, California History Center, De Anza ¡LEAD! Program,
Creative Arts Division, Intercultural and International Studies
Division, Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, and
more. Program development with Euphrat Advisory Council, Euphrat
Program Committee, and Euphrat staff.
Fall 2008
De Anza and Foothill Art Faculty/Staff Exhibition
September 30 - October 30, 2008
The De Anza and Foothill College Art Faculty/Staff Exhibition presents a variety of artwork created by full-time and part-time art faculty and staff from De Anza College in Cupertino and Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. Sculpture, painting, drawing, prints, mixed media, photography, ceramics, and more will be on display.
Summer 2008
Summer Bridge Program
Pilot project in July. Private reception. Open by appointment in August.
Santa Clara County youth participating in the Summer Bridge Program
The Summer Bridge Program exhibition presented individual and collaborative art along with poetry and writings by high school students, part of a Euphrat pilot project in conjunction with the Summer Bridge Program for foster youth. The students produced art and writings directly related to their life experiences. The youth had the opportunity to speak in front of their art and writings at a community reception in the Euphrat and then later at a luncheon in the Campus Center.
Spring 2008
Graphic Storytelling as Activism
February 11 - April 17, 2008
Closed President's Day, February 18, and spring break, March 31 – April 4
Artists include:
Seyed Alavi, Oliver Chin, Charisse Domingo and De-Bug, Sharon Hing, Keith Knight, Lingshan, America Meredith, Favianna Rodriguez, Shorty Fatz
Graphic Storytelling as Activism presents a variety of art forms, including cartoons, political posters, digital art, book art, and more to explore a range of imagery with an activist bent. It began with graphic storyteller Keith Knight, who sees comics and cartooning as a powerful tool for social change. They have been “communicating information, concepts, and ideas since the days of hieroglyphics. They can transcend language, class, and race. Knowing the tools and concepts of cartooning allows anyone to be a mass communicator… You don’t need a million dollars. Just a pen and a piece of paper.” In this exhibition we took Knight’s ideas a bit farther, adding other tools to enable one to build communities through community-based arts, to address issues of the day, locally and globally, and to tell the personal story with the larger context, historically and culturally.
Graphic storyteller Keith Knight exhibits work from three series. One group of cartoons is from the book Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts, which features ten graphic stories about artists, educators, and activists across the U.S. Knight’s drawings bring alive people and stories, e.g. Lily Yeh, Founder of the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, and James “Big Man” Maxton, master mosaicist and former Operations Director at the Village. Other images on display are drawn from his nationally syndicated comic strips, “The K Chronicles” and “(th)ink.” Knight is an award-winning cartoonist, rapper, and hip-hop musician. www.kchronicles.com
Favianna Rodriguez exhibits colorful silkscreen and other prints, including political posters and personal art. Her silkscreen Designs on Democracy: Communication for Liberation shows the intersection between being a designer and an activist. The image is a self-portrait with a city landscape. “My intersecting identities as a poster artist, activist, designer, and woman of color all came together in this piece.” Rodriguez was schooled in East Oakland by Chicano political-poster artists. “My art pieces reflect national and international grassroots struggles, and tell a history of social justice through graphics.” Rodriguez is a founding member of the EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA), an Oakland-based collective of third world artists and community organizers. www.favianna.com
Oliver Chin uses comics to educate and promote discussion. Images and words from his graphic novel 9 of 1: A Window to the World deal with perspectives of many people around the time of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The format is of nine members of an eleventh grade class interviewing various members of their diverse community. Through creative use of drawings and text, he combines history, geography, personal perspectives of interviewer and interviewee, emotion and experience, and ways to learn from the past. Also on exhibit will be references to the Julie Black Belt and The Octonauts books, which he has published. Using contemporary cartooning styles, these books provide positive role models and messages for children.
Charisse Domingo’s photographic series on East Palo Alto and Gila River reveals a major untold story in Silicon Valley. We see the connections between distant locations, toxic waste, and the human determination to tell the story and activate the community. This series is one of a number Domingo has done for Silicon Valley De-Bug. De-Bug is a collective of writers, artists, organizers, and workers based in San Jose, California, and is a project of Pacific News Service. Founded by Raj Jayadev, De-Bug explores community issues in workplaces, schools, streets, relationships — telling stories from personal experiences, creating a platform for unheard stories — through De-Bug magazine and connecting projects, including a community darkroom, silkscreen workshops, and designing custom bikes. Other artists include arts director Adrian Avila, along with Shorty Fatz. The latter, Samuel Rodriguez and Matthew Rodriguez, create custom bikes, graffiti-like, with characters, a fictional world. www.siliconvalleydebug.org
Dirty Work. The original impetus for Sharon Hing’s recent gouache, mixed media, and conceptual artwork was derived from personal interviews with foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. In one interview a woman shared how her employer demanded that she number every square of toilet paper so the employer would be able to monitor her life. As Hing began this series, she synthesized these key life images of a rarely acknowledged but vital sector of Hong Kong society. Other works allude to the disparity of incomes between workers in the Philippines and Hong Kong, the demeaning working and living conditions for foreign domestic workers, such as sleeping on the floor. While studying in Hong Kong in 2006, she volunteered with the Hong Kong legal aid organization Helpers for Domestic Helpers (HDH). Learning about the widespread exploitation and severe abuse of foreign domestic helpers prompted her to create work to be sold for the benefit of HDH.
America Meredith is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, hereditary member of the Red Paint Clan, of Swedish and Celtic descent — as she says, “pink.” Her Cherokee Spokespeople is an international exhibition of spokecards for bicycle wheels. Spokecards are laminated cards often created by bike messengers as souvenirs. Hers carry Cherokee words/phrases in syllabary and Roman letters to aid in pronunciation, and are joined with illustrative images. Cherokee, like other Native American languages is in danger of extinction. Meredith enlists cyclists in to collaborate, forming a moving exhibition around the world, which they photograph. Meredith’s Think Pink paintings remind us of history, glossed over and forgotten. She adds text, combining humor and insight, for example giving a little history lesson (with plus and minus points) about U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis (Kaw, Potawatomi, and Osage) under Herbert Hoover. www.ahalenia.com/america
Seyed Alavi’s book Frames of Reference presents visual story telling that lies between a photographic novel, movie, and storybook. This collection of photos documents a journey to Iran, and probes and educates beyond the charged Iranian political situation in the news. Frames of Reference is poetic, less didactic, allowing the reader/viewer to experience a vision of a country where tradition and modernity dance together in a fragile pas de deux. It is also filmic. Each photo merges with the next creating a river of images that carries the viewer/reader along on a multifaceted journey.
Lingshan’s social realist paintings expose us to overarching stories, along with stories within stories. His painting of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin refers to the atrocity of the Nanking massacre. In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded, burned, and looted Nanking, killing 300,000 unarmed Chinese and raping 20,000. Like Otto Schindler during the Holocaust, Rabe and Vautrin saved many Chinese from execution. In conjunction, we show Lingshan’s portrait of Iris Chang, who lived nearby in Silicon Valley. For years she researched and brought to light the atrocities that occurred in Nanking, so we could learn from history. In that spirit, Lingshan also has helped organize a traveling exhibition.
Several publications will be on display, including New Creative Community, from New Village Press. www.newvillagepress.net The exhibition grew from Knight’s concept, was curated by Jan Rindfleisch, with Nancy Hom, Jianhua Shu, and Diana Argabrite.
Fall
2007
Moving
Cultures (...all over the map)
October 2 - November 21, 2007
Closed November 12, 2007
Reception with poet Norma Cantú October 1, 4-5pm,
with artists 5-6pm.
Artists include:
Michael Arcega, Vic De La Rosa, Kent Manske and
Nanette Wylde, Eugene Rodriguez, Marta Sanchez with
Norma Cantú, Christine Wong Yap
Moving Cultures
is an exhibition of art related to moving cultures,
whether from one location to another, changing/shifting
over time, or changing interpretations. Content
ranges from railroad culture in Texas to contemporary
views of artworld culture, activist culture, and
"American" culture. Artworks range from landscapes
and poetry to interventions, actions, satire, and
cultural Meaning Makers.
Railroad culture in Texas, the Mexican experience,
is the basis for the collaborative prints of artist
Marta Sanchez
and Chicana poet Norma Cantú. The Transcendental
Train Yard series, including serigraphs and
a large offset lithograph, address the history and
beauty of the train yards as a place of work, living
(cargo dwellings) and Vaudevillian troupes that
entertained the Mexican community in song, social
parodies, and circus acts. The colorful print R
cigarro R barril relates to a poem taken
from an old children's song about trains. The poem
was an offspring from the song and is still sung
by folklore singer Jose Luis Orozco. This piece
was one of the first Sanchez and Cantú worked on
and was printed at Philadelphia's Brandywine workshop.
The box set of serigraphs that they have been working
on is being printed by Coronado Studios in Austin,
Texas.
Texas railroad culture is also the basis of a mixed-media
Day of the Dead altar by Eugene
Rodriguez. Early in the 20th century Rodriguez's
grandparents traveled north to Chicago from Mexico,
worked on the railroads, then migrated west to California.
The Journey
pays homage to all who have come to this country
in search of a better life. And Rodriquez goes further.
Through text, he connects immigration and family,
corporate media and globalization, to address "transnational
citizenship, labor practices, and human rights".
Vic De La Rosa,
who innovates with technology and textiles, exhibits
provocative sarapes. His Verbal
Sarape series is jacquard woven. One sarape
reads: "is it
me? or just what I am wearing," words generally
applicable to our times of quick cultural assumptions.
While De La Rosa looks at Texas and other southwest
Mexican migrant populations, he focuses on cultural
assumptions, communication between cultures. Sometimes
cultures cross borders and other times the borders
themselves move, so De La Rosa also considers relationships
to land grabs, reparations, and turf wars.
Michael Arcega
exhibits work from his El
Conquistadork series, a humorous critique
on contemporary and historic issues of colonialism
and cultural exchange. Included are maquettes for
his 10' Manila galleon, made primarily of Manila
folders and successful sailed in Tomales Bay to
commemorate the famed intercontinental trade route
of 1565 through 1815 between Mexico City, Manila,
and California. Also on display is a huge map that
Arcega frames as a tool for conquest. "Historically,
the inhabitants of the drawn maps were unaware that
they have been subjected to one kingdom or another."
And flags, such as a Bear
Arms flag: "an essential tool in identifying
a group from other groups. It serves as a unifying
tool for the group under its banner, but it is divisive
in the same way." Arcega is one of a group of artists
participating in Galleon
Trade, a series of international arts exhibitions
(organized by Jenifer Wofford and Lucy Mae San Pablo
Burns, PhD), seeking to create new routes of cultural
exchange along old routes of commerce and trade.
Christine Wong
Yap also participated in Galleon
Trade. Regalos
is a transit-specific work involving "the shipment
of two empty, glitter-covered balikbayan boxes to
Manila. 'Balikbayan' is Tagalog for 'going home,'
and can refer to overseas Filipinos returning to
the mother country, or the large boxes of gifts
they customarily bring home." Wong Yap relates that
in transit to Manila the glitter eroded from the
boxes, suggesting a trail to home. Also during reentry
to the U.S., the boxes received new markings of
transit, including Homeland Security stickers. "Regalos"
is Tagalog (from Spanish) for "gift". Wong Yap reminds
us that art is a gift, even as she calls attention
to the heartfelt regalos
of the Filipino overseas labor force.
Kent Manske
and Nanette Wylde create a wonderful Meaning
Maker installation with pamphlets to make
sense of our changing culture(s). The American Citizenship
Edition provides a structure for "making the most
of your American experience." "Good for international
travel preparation; mental gymnastics; inspecting
bandwagons; endearing oneself to like-minded cronies;
reinforcing fear, loathing, and patriotism; and
adding spice to conversations." The Art Viewing
Edition and Academic Conference Edition give similar
insights into the art and academic worlds. And this
is just the beginning. The humorous and insightful
works are powerful tools for understanding and evaluating
our experiences.
What began with a story of migration grew to reflect
the cultural complexities of today - where many
of us are have family and connections "all over
the map" - and the resultant questioning of communication,
meaning, and values.
The exhibition was curated by Jan Rindfleisch working
with Nancy Hom, Consuelo Underwood, Christine Wong
Yap, with assistance from Diana Argabrite.
Spring
2007
Material
Culture
March 7 - April 19, 2007
Artists shown:
Reneé Billingslea,
Hector Dio Mendoza, Corinne Okada, Nazanin Shenasa,
Kerry Vander Meer
Artist community collaborators include Chike
Nwoffiah, Oriki Theater
Material
Culture connects a focus on textiles, both
traditional and contemporary practice, with a focus
on our culture of materials/materialism. In anthropology
and archaeology, material culture (physical objects
as opposed to documents) enables researchers to
better understand a culture. Playing off several
different title interpretations, we highlight six
artists with content relevant to the times and the
community.
Contemporary textile art is wide ranging. Artist
Reneé Billingslea
uses clothing to create an impact in her installation
Fabric of Race:
Lynching in America. Stained shirts, hanging,
with hand-embroidered nametags, represent cases
she researched. A hand-sewn quilt includes appropriated
images from "lynching postcards." Here clothing/textiles
stand in for the person and draws one into an important
but rarely discussed part of U.S. history and a
horrific part of human interactions that continues.
Billingslea teaches at Santa Clara University.
Artist Corinne
Okada creates wearable art and other art
objects from recycled candy wrappers from other
cultures, providing cultural links for different
generations. Her beautiful Nutcracker
Dress is constructed from Russian, Chinese,
Japanese, Brazilian, and Italian candy wrappers
along with produce bag netting, and bag ties. Her
Fear Kimono
is related to internment of Japanese Americans in
the US during World War II. It contains Japanese
paper dolls made of Executive Order 9066 documents,
Japanese candy wrappers, fishing line, and plastic
sushi grass. Okada also creates objects such as
flora and fauna from wrappers. Here the material
culture comes more into play because of the contrast
with the natural world we once knew. Okada received
a recent Artist of the Year award from Cupertino.
Chike Nwoffiah,
Director of Oriki
Theater in Mountain View, presents traditional
wearable art from the Igbos in southeast Nigeria.
Traditional garments are unique to each region and
reflect the status of the individual. The garments
displayed are often part of Oriki performances and
installations that relate to the music, dance, and
village life in Nigeria, where bright colors and
bold designs are ever present. Nwoffiah is partaking
in a drum/dance performance assembly at Nimitz Elementary
School, part of a Euphrat collaborative interdisciplinary
public artwork involving artists, De Anza students,
and elementary school students.
Kerry Vander
Meer takes women's contemporary clothing,
particularly the stretchy kind, and builds art installations
that overflow with creative energy of shape, lines,
and textures. And fun. For example, a portion of
her large installation Give
and Take alludes to both the restrictive/liberating
elements of pantyhose, sometimes stretched to the
limit, and also alludes to variations of give and
take in all kinds of social, economic, and political
interactions. Yet joyful whimsy encompasses all.
Vander Meer has exhibited widely and teaches at
Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland.
Hector Dio Mendoza's
artwork reflects various meanings to material culture.
Having worked with elderly women in care facilities
where he was collecting their stories, he noted
they often crocheted doilies as they talked. So
he dipped some of these in liquid concrete and created
solid sculptures, all white. A colorful version,
Atomic Landscape,
connects to contemporary issues of youth, with whom
Dio Mendoza also works. His wide-ranging community
involvement leads him to unusual content. In the
social sciences, "material culture" helps to understand
a culture. But in his mixed-media Scapegoat
(profiling), clothing, headgear, or hairstyle
can be used to distance people, stereotype, exclude,
and worse.
Nazanin Shenasa
exhibits a handmade silk costume, Layla's
Shroud, created for a performance and installation,
Permanent Madness,
2006. The work addresses the unconsummated love
between the ancient Middle Eastern lovers Layla
and Majnun. Shroud
is a response to the medieval Iranian prototype
of a noble woman suffering in silence. Here her
poetic thoughts come flowing out of the sleeves.
The concern of being separated from your dreams
is a universal one that still pertains today. Young
people often struggle with educational and life
decisions, conflicted as to whether to conform to
family or community expectations, or to follow their
heart to the true self. Shenasa is a textile artist,
art historian and curator who teaches at De Anza
College.
The exhibition was curated by Jan Rindfleisch working
with Nazanin Shenasa, with assistance from Diana
Argabrite.
Winter 2007
Changing
Still Life
January 22 - February 15, 2007
Artists shown:
DeWitt Cheng
and Susan Danis
Artist, campus and community collaborators include
Janet Leong
Malan, Connie Young Yu, Tom Izu (California History
Center), Annie Presler and Jose
Marte (De Anza Biological, Health, and Environmental
Sciences Division)
Changing
Still Life is an interactive exhibition comprised
of "still lifes" from which viewers can draw. These
still lifes encompass a variety of directions, with
objects reflecting different cultures and histories,
found/recycled objects, objects related to different
academic disciplines, and some artworks themselves.
Viewers have the opportunity to use viewfinders
and sketch on the spot.
While creating their artwork, participants will
be studying form, arrangement, and content. Objects
will be added and removed over time. Some aspects
of the arrangement can be adjusted. Movable lights
and viewfinders enable participants to change lighting
conditions and determine their compositions.
This changing still life imbues a classic art form
with contemporary and local relevance. The unusual
objects with wide-ranging content came from artists
and from sources on campus and in the community.
Artists Susan
Danis and DeWitt
Cheng display artwork and/or objects from
their studios. Danis's work, referring to consumerism
and the environment, is constructed of recycled
materials, sometimes conglomerations of synthetic
fuzzies, beads, fake hair, plastic and rubberized
parts in garish hues, pinks and greens. Cheng's
art relates to science specimens. He morphs these
into unique creatures and attaches titles that draw
one into larger contemplations.
Community participation yielded historical objects
from Connie
Young Yu and Janet
Leong Malan. Historian Young Yu offers a
trunk and artifacts related to early Chinese-American
history in the area, items from her family's collection,
including a pair of slippers for bound feet belonging
to her grandmother. Some items go back to the 1880s.
For example, from the Route 87 upgrade, she recovered
a liquor jug that was from the Woolen Mills Chinatown
(1887-1902). Artist Leong Malan's objects reflect
family history in Cupertino: a drilling tool, heart-shaped
hoe, abacus used until the '70s, her grandfather's
incense burner, business ledgers, and immigration
papers. Her family was the first Chinese family
to settle in Cupertino (1952), developing a successful
flower-growing business.
Campus input included architectural elements salvaged
by the California
History Center (CHC) as time and new construction
are changing the historic face of De Anza. French-style
doors were salvaged from the West Cottage, recently
demolished in an expansion project. Designed by
architect Willis Polk for the Baldwin estate circa
1895, it served as guest and servant quarters for
the main house currently housing the CHC. Director
Tom Izu:
"De Anza College owes its 'Spanish California' architectural
theme and archway logo to elements in the two original
Mission Revival style cottages." Restoration plans
for the remaining cottage are under development.
A sheep's horn, a whale vertebra, and turtle shell
from the De
Anza Biological, Health, and Environmental Sciences
Division, courtesy of Laboratory Technician
Jose Marte,
are incorporated. Microscopic specimens, animal
bones, insect collections, and anatomical models
enable concentration on the natural world, in its
own struggle with urban development. Faculty member
Annie Presler
has provided native plants for display. These relate
to De Anza's Environmental
Studies Center (next to the Kirsch Center),
a 1.5-acre arboretum showcasing California's native
plant communities and promoting native plant usage
in landscaping.
As new items are added, e.g. plants, or books or
text-based materials, participants will have added
opportunities to consider individual objects, partial
views, and juxtapositions to develop their content
and individual statements - whether by drawing,
photography, or poetry.
The Euphrat Museum is in an interim space in the
A quad while the design of the new Euphrat building
is being finalized and construction proceeds. For
this exhibition, some basic sketch materials will
be provided. Other individual projects, class assignments
or visits need to be coordinated with the Museum.
Fall 2006
DeAnza
and Foothill Art Faculty/Staff Exhibition
Exhibition opened November 14th, and ran
through December 7th.
Reception with artists' presentations November 28th,
6-8PM.
Fall 2004
Edges
highlighted formal solutions and also explored edges
with respect to timely content, whether on a personal,
regional, or global level. In his Visual
Quotations series, Titus
Kaphar worked from selected 19th century
paintings but only painted the African Americans.
He worked in oils on dry-erase whiteboards with
all the surrounding area left white. A hard edge
separated the two. Diana Pumpelly Bates' bronze
sculptures focused on the edge between physical
and spiritual worlds. Photographer Julian
Cardona's works documented the violent entry
of Mexico to globalization and probed inside the
maquiladora world alongside the border. His series,
Dying Slowly
showed difficult edges: the border between life
and death, death in life. In another series, THE
TRUTH, Evidence of a Failure, he documented
family members searching for the bodies of their
daughters in the desert. Lucy
Arai created soft and hard edges by applying
sumi ink in washes on handmade paper and then employing
sashiko,
traditional Japanese running-stitch embroidery,
in concentric circles and fluid patterns. Consuelo
Underwood drew directly on the wall, included
wrapped shaman sticks, and created an unusual red
leather grid that looked like barbed wire. It referred
to the ten sites where the U.S. government has constructed
a 14' steel wall to secure the Mexico/U.S. border.
Spring 2004
City
Life presented art related to the urban experience.
It highlighted urban transportation, work, architecture
(buildings, landscape, and interiors), public art,
neighborhoods, and life styles. Lewis
Watts showed photographs of urban life in
Oakland, selections from his series Evidence:
The Oakland Cultural Landscape Project. Jessica
Dunne created paintings of urban night scenes,
including parking lots and freeways. Seyed
Alavi photographed numerous people on Market
Street in San Francisco and layered their facial
images, six at a time, to create composite images
displayed as large kiosk posters. Harriete
Estel Berman's nine-foot-square sculpture
of "grass" constructed from recycled tin consumer
products called attention to the rampant consumerism
in our city malls. Large photographs of Tokyo subway
scenes by Kim
Yasuda explored ideas of personal and public
space in Japanese cities. Katherine
Aoki created something new, an active urban
world populated with women who provoke us to challenge
gender-related expectations.
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