CSUDH News

The primary source of news and information about California State University, Dominguez Hills, its students, faculty, and staff.

art

Daily Breeze: Upcoming CSUDH Exhibition Takes on Mass Incarceration

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Installation view of “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family”
Installation view of “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family”

Source: Daily Breeze

A free art exhibition that sheds light on the impact of prison on incarcerated individuals and their families will be available for public viewing at Cal State Dominguez Hills starting Saturday, Sept. 30.

“Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family,” an installation by Mario Ybarra Jr., will run through Dec. 8 at the University Art Gallery. A public opening reception is scheduled for 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday.

“Mario Ybarra’s work uses the everyday to make his audience reconsider big concepts such as mass incarceration,” said Aandrea Stang, director of CSUDH’s University Art Gallery. “His work makes it personal, and makes those that experience the installation stop and think.”

Ybarra Jr. was born in Los Angeles in 1973 and currently lives in Wilmington. He graduated from the Otis College of Art and Design with a bachelor’s degree in 1999. He went on to receive a master’s degree in fine arts from UC Irvine in 2001.

Through sculptures, installations and community-based projects, Ybarra Jr. examines the experiences of Mexican Americans living in Southern California. His work also looks at excluded social norms often by combining narratives, histories and complete environments.

His works have been showcased at venues such as Pasadena City College’s Boone Family Art Gallery, The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum.

He has also been featured at local, national and international exhibitions/fairs, including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the Tate Museum in London, the Orange County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The CSUDH exhibition will explore mass incarceration by drawing on Ybarra Jr’s own experiences of watching a childhood friend who went to prison as a teenager.

It includes interview footage from the friend, who spent 32 years in prison, and scale images in the installation of Red West Pizzeria, a pizza restaurant in Wilmington where Ybarra Jr. and his friend dined as children in the 1970s and 1980s.

If you go

What: “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family,” a free art exhibition by Mario Ybarra, Jr.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays from Sept. 30 to Dec. 8.

Where: The University Art Gallery at CSUDH, 1000 E. Victoria St.

Information: gallery.csudh.edu.

CSUDH University Art Gallery Presents “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family” by Mario Ybarra, Jr.

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Installation view of “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family”
Installation view, “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family”

The University Art Gallery at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) proudly presents “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family,” an installation by Mario Ybarra, Jr. exploring mass incarceration. The exhibition will be on view September 30 through December 8, 2023; Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m.

The public is invited to an opening reception for “Personal, Small, Medium, Large, Family” on Saturday, September 30, from 3 to 6 p.m.

Using sculptural installation, Ybarra, Jr. explores the impact of mass incarceration on families and communities and the artist’s personal experience of watching a friend enter the prison system as a teenager. Using the metaphor of the family pizza establishment and its available pie sizes, the artist asks questions about the impact of incarceration on the individual and the circles of their communities. He does so using interview footage with a childhood friend who was incarcerated for thirty-two years. Ybarra uses scale images in the installation of Red West Pizzeria, the local Wilmington pizza restaurant that he and his friend ate at as children in the 1970s and 80s.

The University Art Gallery on the CSUDH campus, 1000 E. Victoria Street in Carson, is free and open to the public Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. Visit csudh.edu/visit-us for directions and a printable campus map. Daily permits in campus lots are $10 and sold at yellow kiosks in the lots.

About the Artist:

Mario Ybarra, Jr. has developed a prolific artistic practice that emanates from his upbringing, producing contemporary art that is filtered through his Mexican-American experience. Ybarra grew up in the greater Los Angeles-area and is one of a new generation of artists of Mexican descent that does not reject their American identity but embraces both trajectories in their background equally. Ybarra’s work operates as examinations of excluded social norms, often including complete environments, histories, and narratives.

Mario Ybarra Jr. was born in Los Angeles in 1973 and lives in Wilmington, California. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1999 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine in 2001. One-person exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Boone Family Art Gallery at the Center for Arts, Pasadena City College, Pasadena, CA (2015); Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA (2013); Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA (2012). His work has been included in thematic exhibitions such as L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943-2016, Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College, Monterey Park, CA (2016). Made in L.A. 2012, organized by the Hammer Museum in collaboration with LAXART, Los Angeles, CA (2012); Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2008); The World as a Stage, Tate Modern, London, UK (2007); and the California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2006).

About the University Art Gallery

The CSUDH University Art Gallery serves the campus and broader community as a laboratory for contemporary art and design practices, presenting exhibitions and programming. The University Art Gallery is deeply committed to building a creative and innovative art and design culture that celebrates artists and engages audiences. For more information, visit gallery.csudh.edu.

Daily Breeze: CSUDH’s Child Development Center Unveils New Mural

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Muralist in front of new CDC mural depicting baby Teddy, an open book, CSUDH, and a sunrise
Image courtesy of CSUDH Child Development Center

Source: Daily Breeze

The Child Development Center at Cal State Dominguez Hills has a new mural – and it boasts a message:

Education starts early.

The mural, which went up earlier this year and is permanent, features a blue sky, lush grass, chirping birds and a field of wildflowers. In the middle of the painting is the baby version of CSUDH’s mascot, Teddy Toro, with an opened book in front of him.

The mural’s message is that higher education starts at the early stages of childhood, said Child Development Center Director Candace Manansala. It was part of an attempt to revamp the center, which Manansala took over in January 2022.

“The center was mostly known for a play-based kind of mentality and not higher education,” Manansala said. “We wanted to inspire children for higher education.”

With this goal in mind, Manansala started seeking student volunteers who could understand her vision of higher education and create an appropriate mural. After reviewing 15 applications, a sketch by freshman Eric Marquez caught her attention.

“Eric’s values are very similar and aligned with my values,” Manansala said, which are “education starts with our family, ourselves and the institution that you set yourself at.

“You have to set a strong foundation (for education),” she added, “and that starts at our center.”

For more than two months, Marquez came to the center every day in between school and his tutoring job to turn an empty wall into a captivating mural, titled “Dream to Wonder,” Manansala said. His art was unveiled at the center’s preschool graduation ceremony on May 24.

The original idea for the painting, Marquez said, came to him while he was in a sociology class.

“My idea was I’m picturing a higher elevation, like the Dominguez Hills mountains, with children and baby Toros and books in mind,” he said. “It kind of just came to me in class. I felt the force. I said that would be a good idea.”

Marquez and his siblings, as children, loved re-creating scenes from Disney shows and the classic animations from the 1990s, he said.

But he credited his eldest sister, Amber, with instilling in him a passion for arts. He also loves painting portraits.

“When she was in high school, I really looked up to her because she was taking me to dance classes and doing this amazing work,” Marquez said.

Drawing from these experiences, Marquez said, he jotted down his concept in a sketchbook in February and started painting in March.

While painting, Marquez said, he kept in mind how the mural would be seen both from afar and up close.

“I just try to make it fit both of those perspectives,” Marquez said. “So when the kids are on the playground, they could kinda view it and when they’re up close, they can touch it and like, be a part of the painting, touch the flowers and the blocks.”

Marquez said he hopes the kids who come to the center, most of whom are infants and preschoolers, enjoy his artwork.

“We’re getting new, incoming students every year, all the time,” he said, “and it’s gonna be like, if anything, one of their first memories of the Child Development Center.”

Getty Foundation Awards CSUDH $180,000 for Brackish Water Los Angeles

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Map showing geography of Southern California
1901 map (reprinted 1912), showing geography of southland from San Bernardino area to western edge of Los Angeles County, 1918.

(Carson, CA) The California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) University Art Gallery has been awarded $180,000 by the Getty Foundation for support of Brackish Water Los Angeles, co-directed by gallery director and co-curator Aandrea Stang and co-curator Debra Scacco.This art and research project is part of the Getty Foundation’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative and will culminate in a public-facing exhibition at the gallery next year, alongside a robust slate of programming, off-site activations, and a catalog. 

“We are very excited that CSUDH is participating in the PST ART initiative for the first time,” Stang said. “It is meaningful to be involved in such a wide-ranging multidisciplinary program.”

Brackish Water Los Angeles looks at the ecosystems, infrastructures, and politics surrounding brackish water, which refers to the space where salt and fresh waters meet. The project also considers the larger implications of “in-betweenness” which includes issues of access, inclusion, ecological racism, and cultural/class system interchanges along Los Angeles’ waterways. In the culminating exhibition, slated to open August 2024, visitors will be introduced to scientific content through an exploration of art and objects, offering an engaging experience that raises questions about inequality and ecological justice, prompting new and important conversations. Confirmed artworks to be displayed include selections from Catherine Opie’s Freeway Series, Alfredo Jaar’s Untitled Water (E), and Nancy Baker Cahill’s groundbreaking augmented reality work Mushroom Cloud LA / Proximities, with additional objects from the collections of the Autry Museum of the American West and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 

The adjoining publication will capture several years of multi-layered research and expand the footprint of the Brackish Water Los Angeles exhibition. The book will help audiences better understand the relationship between brackish water and the city, and will weave research, writing, and art from scientists, artistic practitioners, and cultural workers, among other contributors.

Brackish Water will be on view at the University Art Gallery from August 12 to December 14, 2024 concurrent with the approximately 50 other exhibitions that will be presented around greater Southern California as part of The Getty Foundation’s PST ART. Launched in 2007, PST ART (formerly Pacific Standard Time) is Southern California’s landmark arts event. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. Art & Science Collide follows Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (September 2017-January 2018), which presented a paradigm-shifting examination of Latin American and Latinx art, and Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 (October 2011-March 2012), which rewrote the history of the birth and impact of the L.A. art scene. 

This exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. 

Logo text: PST ART

CSUDH Office Hours Presents “Seen” Art Exhibition

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Person wearing bedazzled mask with a bright yellow background

Seen, the third exhibition at the Office Hours art space, is on view until May 11 in LaCorte Hall B116.

The opening reception is Thursday, April 6, from 5-7 p.m.

Seen is an invitation to consider queerness in all its expressions. The works in the exhibition bear witness to the intricacies and wide spectrum of queer identities and way of embodying queer bodies. From quiet and introspective works, to both explicit and intimate manners of seeing one another, the works and artists in this exhibition celebrate queer community and kinship.

Seen brings together current CSUDH Art and Design students: em aguilar, Mylee Etuale, Gabe Medina and Birdie Rojo, along with recent graduates Vanessa Vilaboa-Patiño, Jynx Prado and Izzy Rimando, and established artists Xandra Ibarra and Amina Cruz. The exhibition features works on paper, sculpture, video, ceramics, painting, photography and textile installation.

Seen is co-curated by Gabe Medina, Birdie Rojo, and Jimena Sarno in collaboration with the CSUDH Queer Culture & Resource Center. Both Gabe Medina and Birdie Rojo are current CSUDH Art and Design students graduating in May 2023.

Born and based in South Central, Los Angeles, Gabe Medina is a Mexican American multi-disciplinary artist and organizer. Much of his work challenges racist and classist narratives about lower income communities. Informed by his own family history and his relationship to his home in South Central, Medina has been reconstructing symbols of local plant life and wrought iron fence motifs, prominent symbols in his familiar neighborhood. He utilizes a variety of media including ceramics, photo transfers, and paintings to uplift and deepen his evolving connection to South Central.

Birdie Rojo is a queer, Mexican American, interdisciplinary artist and organizer from Compton, California. Their work celebrates Mexican culture while addressing its inherent machismo culture, homophobia and the erasure of indigenous people. They draw inspiration from folklore and their childhood memories to recreate those environments through installation, sound ceramics and painting.

As part of the opening reception, Professor Kellan King’s 3D Design class will feature a series of illuminated sculptures in the outdoor area that will remain onsite until April 11.

Office Hours is an independent artist-run space housed within the Department of Art and Design at California State University Dominguez Hills. The space was founded by CSUDH Assistant Professor Jimena Sarno to bring together works by current and past CSUDH students with the arts community in greater Los Angeles and beyond. Office Hours’ last exhibition, Insistent, was written about by CSUDH Lecturer of Labor Studies Matthew McGarvey. Read his piece on the Office Hours website.