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Winter 2010
In Between: The Tension and Attraction of Difference
Exhibition evolves with Special Projects through April 15th
Check museum hours here.
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. Our inaugural year exhibitions have woven together the stories of artists and groups with local and global connections in an effort to understand the fascinating community that we are situated in: Silicon Valley. Our second major inaugural exhibition, In Between: The Tension and Attraction of Difference, continues our examination of Silicon Valley’s varied and colorful growth through visual media and shared narratives.
Artists include: Marlene Angeja, Mei-chu Chang, Sam Hernandez, Bu Hua, Ken Lo, Abraham Menor, Minette Lee Mangahas, Penny Nii, Ricardo Richey, Lucy Sargeant, Imin Yeh, Xudong Yu, and more.
In Between is a gathering of artists who do or see things in a fresh way, who investigate and rethink the status quo, upset common perceptions, embrace the unknown, and change the game. It is language-oriented, yet not
confined by language. Age-old tradition is combined with street art, technology, animation, music, etc. In Between brings together people from different generations and cultures, working with different aspects of the community, stretching across boundaries. This outreach is nourished in the constantly re-inventive Silicon Valley and in the vibrant Bay Area, where tradition and new ideas abound.
Front View
"Much of my work is about MOVEMENT and the tension and attraction of difference. It’s about the freedom that can come from embracing what is born in-between, what we do not know, and sometimes what we fear."
The recent art of Hawaiian-born Minette Lee Mangahas bridges many different cultures. After years studying Zen calligraphy, she began a project working with graffiti artists from around the country. Called Calligraffiti, it opens the door to the many connections that draw from one’s expertise/experiences and pull in the expertise/experience of others. In her Exquisite Corpse series, Mangahas worked with eight graffiti artists individually. Based on a collaborative game invented by the Surrealists, the images are collectively assembled, with each collaborator adding to the composition in sequence. The artists included Amend One, Desi W.O.M.E, and Denz (Oakland), Apex (San Francisco), Coby Kennedy (New York), Lucha (NY + SF), Zen One (Minneapolis), and Toons One (Los Angeles). Mangahas’s own work is like poetry with a brush; she calls it brush-song. Combined with the graffiti artists, a new poetry grows. In one instance, Ricardo Richey (aka Apex) began with the letter "a," created street variations, and then broke into an abstract version as Mangahas responded/interpreted with calligraphy. Ricardo Richey has created a special window painting for Front View. For more information about Mangahas, visit the Headlands Center for the Arts website, and her own website, www.brushsong.com. For more information about Ricardo Richey, visit the luggage store.
Minette Lee Mangahas with Apex, Coby Kennedy, Zen One, Toons, Amend, Desi
W.O.M.E., Denz, and Lucha, Exquisite Corpse Mural, 2008. Mixed media on wood, eight 2'x4'
panels.
Minette Lee Mangahas with Ricardo Richey and Coby Kennedy, Exquisite Corpse Mural (detail, first two panels), 2008. Mixed media on wood, eight 2'x4' panels.
West Gallery — Poetry and Grammar
Mei-chu Chang is a well-known Chinese calligrapher and seal engraver from Taiwan currently living in the Bay Area. A student of master Bei-Yue Wang, he explored and learned from classic calligraphy. He has been giving calligraphy classes in the Bay Area for ten years. He organized the Antiquarian Club of Chinese Calligraphy while traveling to various U.S. art museums. The Qing Dynasty calligrapher and painter Shi Tao said: "While it takes great efforts to deeply emulate other artists, it takes great courage then to emerge as a unique artist." Beginning in 2008, Chang started a series of breakthrough pieces that encompassed his new experiences. His unique compositions elevate the life of the bold, black brushstroke and place it in a new environment. For more information about Chang, visit the Chinese Culture Center Online Gallery website.
Mei-chu Chang, Landscape, 2008. Ink and seals on rice paper, using Chinese calligraphy brush, 26.5" x 50".
Painter Lucy Sargeant uses brushstrokes differently, with an abundance of color. Brushstrokes and drips freely form the large portrait faces of artist friends, who are often notable San Jose State University professors who have helped shape the Bay Area artistic landscape. Her painting David M. is of sculptor and professor David Middlebrook, who created a major bronze public sculpture on the De Anza campus. Sargeant catches his inner reflection, depicting his unique character traits. Likewise with her portrait of poet and professor Virginia de Araujo. Sargeant’s second career is teaching representational drawing at San Jose State, often to future animators. She finds appeal in de Araujo’s philosophy: "To write a good poem, one has to know grammar." Sargeant builds up form through brushstrokes; then like de Araujo, the artwork takes on a life and poetry of its own. For more information about Sargeant, visit her website, www.lucysargeant.com.
Lucy Sargeant, David M., 1999. Oil on canvas, 48"x36".
Sam Hernandez, longtime professor of sculpture at Santa Clara University, adds an unusual dimension to his customary free-standing sculptures, illuminated by his study of many different cultural traditions. For his large wall piece Dichos y Bichos, he combines a long list of folk wisdom in Spanish. Sprinkled throughout the heavily gessoed lines of text are little bronze critters. This magical piece speaks to all those experiences where we find wisdom on a day-to-day basis. The work is flanked by Homage, a free-standing totemic Chinese scholar-stone work ("awkward stone," Northern style) of redwood, with inlaid pool balls in the base for nodules. Hernandez’s totemic sculptures often have jutting wood elements, like solidified brushstrokes, forming figures or characters for meditative contemplation. For more information about Hernandex, visit his website, www.samhernandezart.com
Sam Hernandez, Dichos y Bichos, 2007. Walnut, patinated bronze, gesso, 173"x121"x1.625".
Sam Hernandez, Homage, 2002. Redwood, japan color, pool balls, 63.5"x22.5"x20".
The unusual books of Penny Nii are investigations in form, ideas, and the passage of time. Nii’s expertise has encompassed fabric art, book art, and curating (after a career as research scientist at Stanford University). Her book, Pic to Words, is comprised of pictographs, Chinese/Japanese ideograms, and drawings. It utilizes Gocco prints and a type of accordion/concertina structure. "I have been collecting ancient pictographs and hieroglyphs from Chinese and Japanese sources for many years. The ideograms in use today and the images of the meanings of the ideograms are printed on the left-hand pages. The pages form a wall when opened fully." Yen for Death is in the form of a Japanese funerary urn that opens to create an altar. "The wrapped box … opens into panels that show artifacts related to a short story about the death of my sister-in-law and the aspects of Japanese funerary business. The accordion-folded book, which contains the story, is stored in the lid of the box. The photographs are from my father’s funeral in 1969." For more information about Nii, visit her website, www.penny-nii.com
Penny Nii, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, 2008. Artist book.
Entrada
Imin Yeh’s traditional woodcut prints are a platform to take off to new realms. "Utilizing history, subtle humor, exchange and generosity, social intervention and technical craft," her work opens lively dialog on cultural understanding, playing with subjects such as "good imports" and "student loans." The images range from comforting patterns to Benjamin Franklin to power animals of the zodiac, but with a twist: Year of the Pill Bug, Year of the Three-Toed Sloth, and Urban Street Pigeon, etc. "I am interested in American and Chinese history and in the many ways both cultures and economies are entangled today." While this interest encompasses the function of souvenirs in cultural tourism, cultural fetishism, divisions of labor that result from global industry, and more, Yeh’s playfulness and spirit enliven the unusual projects. Come and participate. Make your own folk festival. For more information about Yeh, visit her website, www.iminyeh.com
Imin Yeh, Poweranimal Placemats, 2009. Paper placemats, 10"x14".
South Gallery — Double Nature Multi-Faced
Marlene Angeja exhibits several abstract paintings, bold in color and brushstroke. Titles such as The Wheelbarrow only begin to allude to the process and range of ideas around the paintings. Nearby, videos provide another window. Island is a video project using archival footage (1953-58) of the Azores Islands, which lie in the unstable junction between the North American, Eurasian and African tectonic plates. When Angeja was a child, she lived on the island of Pico. Her mother and her brother took a boat to record the eruption of Capelinhos volcano on an 8mm home movie camera. Today, the video composite is about the idea of island from an emigrant’s point of view, which involves a profound sense of nostalgia (saudade) for the lost landscape. For more information, visit her website, www.marleneangeja.com
"For us, geography is history.
Like mermaids, we have a double nature: we are flesh and stone.
Our bones dive into the ocean."
Marlene Angeja, The Wheelbarrow, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 24"x24".
Bu Hua (Beijing, China) recently exhibited a short animation in San Francisco. Entitled Anxiety, it is about the anxiety that comes from desire and greed, societal status, and about a lone little girl with a wand who with "pure noble thoughts and feelings" goes about saving animals. While Hua’s Shanghai solo show was Man-Made Fairyland, the core of her work is about "the heart." An earlier animation, Oneness, features four figures on a "Journey to the West." Each figure is different, yet sometimes we find their characteristics in the same person. "Everybody is multi-faced." Wordless, the animations speak across continents.
Yu Xudong (Guangzhou, China) exhibits simple signs, all with the letter "a." In One Person’s Parade (his take on China’s parade law), he has photographed himself all alone with a megaphone, determinedly holding his sign high in various safe parts of China — in the middle of an empty warehouse, in the middle of an empty street, standing atop some nondescript low building. In China he can’t protest. For him the rhetorical structure is important and "how the physical and political space in society is being used and consumed." His simple signs, leaning against the museum wall, reference a much larger relationship between the individual and public, whether one is part of the critical dialogue or not even noticed.
Abraham Menor lives in the pulse of San José: Silicon Valley. He is an edgy photographer, an "at-risk" youth case manager, and a community organizer/worker affiliated with Silicon Valley DeBug. With a background in sociology, he began documenting graffiti as a way to examine social behavior. His blog is Brainsoiled. Keepitsoiled — stay grounded. He has documented various social and political movements such as the anti-war movement, the Filipino World War II Veterans Equity Movement, the Silence the Violence Day, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Train March. The energy he saw on the street greatly influenced his approach to his documentation of Hip Hop culture and street culture. As a participant and observer, Menor captures lived moments, raw and real. He combines his photos with music or alters them with artist Shorty Fatz. He has documented the Shorty Fatz phenomenon from a garage operation to a hot company in the bike world.
Abraham Menor, The Art Of War, 2009. Digital Print.
Bboys presenting their skills at San José's largest bboy/bgirl event.
Ken Lo, an Asian b-ball legend at 5’7" who ran with Kobe, creates a special installation. K. Lo is a straight shooter: "I’d like to think the quality of your game was all that mattered." So he lays it out: "You are not anyone unless you have a name, and you’re not a name that means anything unless you have a shoe." Through video (The Rice Balla Chronicles), poster, SLAM interview, and an elaborate storefront display (balla cards, radical Chinese paper cutouts and grillwork, Lucky Feet Happy Shoes T shirt, and more), you can check out the man and the all-important shoes. "They used to call me Yellow Fever, because my game was sick. What will they call you?" So if you have a big ego and want to be one of the guys, K. Lo gives good advice: Work versatility into your game. "Don’t just be a shooter….You need to develop a complete game to play." And, "May you always dribble forward and shoot without regret." For reviews of his shoe store, visit Yelp.
Ken Lo, Leroy Nieman, 2008.
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 campus/community space will feature frequently changing artwork. Presentations include:
- Student Activity: Santa Clara County high school students in the Summer Bridge Program for foster youth (developed by Donna Fung) at De Anza created (Super)heroes. Working with Euphrat staff, they examined qualities of heroism in their own lives and in the lives of those around them. They built powerful mixed-media art pieces, using words, poetry, images, paint, and sections of recycled doors.
Santa Clara County high school student, (Super)hero project, 2009. Part of the Euphrat Museum Art Project in conjunction with the Summer Bridge Program for foster youth.
- Publications: This area is also used for study and research. Several publications are on display, including Present Tense and The Fourth R: Art and the Needs of Children and Youth.
- Culture Jamming Subvertisements: Sal Breiter’s winter Popular Culture class created Subvertisements. Selected artworks were installed first for critique, with suggestions in a notebook. The "subvert" has the look and feel of the targeted ad, with the same high production quality, but it promotes a classic double-take from viewers as they realize they have been duped. This creates cognitive dissonance and reveals a deeper truth within. Culture Jamming is a process of transforming mass media to produce commentary about itself. It is a form of public activism, creating a contrast between mass media images and the realities and negative sides of the corporation or media. Photographs of the subvertisements in the community will be included.
- The Mapping Project: Purba Fernandez’s Geography 1 class took the lead on this ongoing collaborative project and interactive installation, which connects stories and images of Silicon Valley. Students and viewers describe a location in Silicon Valley where something personally meaningful happened, e.g. a memorable place as a child or how a place changed with new development.
Collaborators: The California History Center, Geography Department, Euphrat Museum of Art.
- Falling and Flying artist books: This project involved Columbia Middle School students and multiple partners. Working in the Euphrat Museum during winter break, students created artist books that were inspired by Penny Nii’s artist books in the In Between exhibition. Euphrat staff, consultants, and De Anza students (Puente and Honors Program) guided their process. Enabled by our Community Arts Mentorship Initiative, this project brought together De Anza College and the community through the Euphrat exhibition program, campus outreach, and Arts & Schools Program. (Read more about Columbia Middle School's Beyond The Bell Winter Camp program, of which this project was a part.)
Collaborators/funders include: Columbia Middle School, Columbia Neighborhood Center, Euphrat Museum of Art, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, De Anza Student Body, Alicia Cortez’s Puente class, Vernon Gallegos’s Hip Hop class, De Anza Honors Club, De Anza Urban D.R.I.P. Club, and Homestead High School’s National Art Honor Society.
The exhibition was curated by Jan Rindfleisch, along with the artists and with Nancy Hom, Abby Chen, Robin Treen, Jianhua Shu, and others.
Works by Bu Hua, Ken Lo, Imin Yeh, and Yu Xudong were recently shown at the Chinese Culture Center in an exhibition entitled Present Tense: Chinese Character, which reflected a fresh perspective through the eyes of young artists. More information on these artists can be found in the accompanying book of the same name. In addition to its focus on youth, one of the exhibit’s premises was that any of us can be Chinese. In In Between, we expand that concept further by considering the multiple, inventive ways that people employ to probe other identities and to take on new traits and styles that suit their fancies or needs.
ABOUT THE EUPHRAT MUSEUM OF ART
For over 30 years, the Euphrat Museum has presented one-of-a-kind exhibitions, publications, and events reflecting the rich diverse heritage of our area. The Museum’s mission is to provide a venue and resource for
visual ideas and communication that stimulate creativity and an interest in art among audiences of all ages. The Euphrat provides for a spectrum of interactions with a large and diversified public, working on and off campus with specialists in all disciplines. The Museum has an outstanding Arts & Schools Program, primarily in Cupertino and Sunnyvale, at various school and community sites. Each year the Museum creates public art projects involving elementary and middle school students, De Anza student interns, and Euphrat artist/teachers.
The new Euphrat Museum of Art is in the front of the new De Anza College Visual and Performing Arts Center, prominently located facing Stevens Creek Blvd. The Euphrat is funded in part by De Anza College, De Anza Associated Student Body, City of Cupertino, City of Sunnyvale, and Arts Council Silicon Valley. It is also supported by an Applied Materials Excellence in the Arts grant and Adobe Systems Inc. grant (both in partnership with Arts Council Silicon Valley), by Target, and by the Euphrat Museum Advisory Council and Friends of the Euphrat Museum.
For information, call:
Jan Rindfleisch
Director of the Euphrat Museum of Art
E-mail: rindfleischjanet@fhda.edu
(408)864-8836
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