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Knock, knock—Whose Home? Jacqueline Draeger, William Franco & Miki Siefert, Catherine Hollander, Daphna Lapidot, Eve Luckring, Karl Petion, Amar Ravva, Francisco Romero, Evelyn Serrano, Rachel Siegel, and Laura Silagi & David Ewing. Curator Nancy Buchanan brings together a group of artists working in various media, whose works touch on various aspects of the multifaceted notion of what constitutes “home.” Artists dream about it, revisit family places, and examine what “rights” may be involved in finding, creating or preserving such a place. In addition to the exhibit, there will be a closing evening of screening
of experimental video by Francisco Romero and Catherine
Hollander, as well as Laura Silagi and David
Ewing’s Lincoln Place, documenting
the redevelopment of one of the last affordable apartment buildings
in Venice, as well as discussion of local hillside development issues
in our Northeast neighborhood on September 23, at 7:30 pm. Jacqueline Dreager’s small photographs transport the viewer to an ancient ruin, an archeological dig site. Taking a closer look, images of steel-jawed earthmoving machines appear. Poised on the already rubble-scarred hill ready to gobble up native walnuts, oaks, toyons and what was once a garage built into the hillside, these acid yellow monsters appear to soften in their cloak of sepia. But don’t be taken in. What was once home to native trees that nourished wild life is now a memory, a blip on the screen. The artist has walked the dirt road in front of what was once a lush hillside across from her house for 35 years. It is now at street level awaiting nine stucco boxes that someone—not a redtailed hawk—will call home. Jacqueline Dreager is a second generation Angelino. “With an interest in archeology as a child, I would often dig for fossils and “precious” stones. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley was quite wonderful, except that we moved from house to house because my mother couldn’t tolerate the neighbors. My grandparents had a small chicken and rabbit farm with huge pepper trees and exotic iris plants. Not enough sun to grow iris on my own property. . . but I did plant two pepper trees.” “My father was a special effects wizard for the movie industry
and I
learned to work with resin and manipulate materials at an early age.
Since
1990 I have completed 12 public art projects and have had numerous
shows.” William Franco, a 2006 Fulbright Scholar and graduate of the
California Institute for the Arts, is a video installation artist and
Butoh dancer. Having worked in the film and video industry for over
15
years, he brings a high level of technical expertise to his art.
Miki Seifert is a Butoh dancer and video installation artist. A
graduate of Moravian College, she uses her training in Political
Science to conduct research and in-depth analysis of the topics
explored in her art. Catherine Hollander was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and often returns
there in dreams. She is a media maker and writer and works as a film
and video editor on a wide variety of projects. Born in St.Louis,Missouri, Daphna Lapidot recieved her M.A. in film
studies from Northwestern University in 1991. In 1996, she received
her M.F.A. from the Film and Video School at California Institute for
the Arts. Following her graduation, Daphna received a Fulbright to
complete a documentary film in France. Eve Luckring is an internationally exhibited video and installation
artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in
traditional art spaces, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles, as well as projected on buildings, store-front windows, and
outside urban LCD displays in Ekaterinburg, Russia, Marseilles, France
and Sante Fe, New Mexico. During the 90’s she collaboratively
produced site-specific environmental installations in Los Angeles nightclubs
involving performance with multi-channel video and slide projections. Karl Jean-Guerly Petion was born Port-au-Prince Haiti and grew up
in a large family with cousins and uncles. Exposed to journalists,
actors, visual and performing artists, Karl identified as an artist
from an early age. After their father’s passing, US immigration
admitted the children to join their mother in Brooklyn New York in
1983. Mr. Petion received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute
and an MFA from Calarts. Amar Ravva is working on his first manuscript, a work of non-fiction
called American Canyon, that blends South Indian and Californian
history, memoir, poetry, documentary, and compassion. When he is not
writing or producing art, he teaches critical thinking, argumentation,
and writing skills to the students of Glendale Community College, works
as a video engineer for the interdisciplinary theatre company About
Productions, and freelances as a web designer. Color photographs of the artist’s parents’ first and only home in the city of South Gate, which they bought in 1985, are accompanied by text chronicling the family’s first impressions of the city and their new home, as well as text about how the city has changed over time. Francisco’s work was included in the recent CalArts retrospective
at MOMA in New York. “I became interested in art at a very early
age but did not pursue it until much later in life. I began making
films and videos at the age of 24 as an undergraduate while at Long
Beach State. I continued my education at CAL ARTS where I received
an M.F.A. in 2004. I currently reside in Los Angeles with my wife,
a teacher of seven years.” Evelyn Serrano left her home country Cuba when she was 19. Since then,
she has lived in many different cities and homes, has made work and
curated several national and international exhibitions on the subject
of displacement and home, has had a child, has forgotten to call her
father in Cuba for his birthday, has played, loved and questioned much.
Currently she “keeps staying” in Los Angeles and is in the
process of finding a two bedroom house with a backyard. Rachel J. Siegel is an artist and educator who currently lives, teaches
and makes art in Portland, Oregon. Her current work incorporates photography,
digital prints, artist’s books, video, and installation. Most
recently Rachel exhibited a solo installation, Seam-Sew Ordinary, at
the University of Washington, Tacoma Campus Gallery. She was born and
raised in Los Angeles and received her Bachelor of Arts degree at University
of California, Berkeley. In 2002, she completed a Master of Fine Arts
at University at Buffalo, State University New York. Her work has been
shown nationally and internationally, including Japan, Germany, Hungary,
Sweden, Serbia and Canada.
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