An opening reception will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 1, including a tour with the artist at 6 p.m.

The exhibit is in the MSJC art gallery, which is in Building 1400 on the San Jacinto Campus, 1499 N. State St.

The MSJC gallery is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. For more information, please visit msjc.edu/artgallery or contact Art Professor John Knuth at Jknuth@msjc.edu.

Escovedo is the Professor of American Indian Studies at Fresno City College. He holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree from Fresno State College of Art and Humanities. In fact, he became the first student to earn his bachelor’s in American Indian studies with a special major combining Ethnic Studies and Art.

Escovedo was born and raised in Fresno, California (Yokuts & Mono Traditional Land). His path to academic achievement was a meandering one. At the age of 30, he decided to give college another try and learn more about his ethnic background and enrolled in his first American Indian studies course. With that course, the pieces of his life, family history, profession and education came together to present a new focus within his educational goals.

Through this one American Indian studies course, Escovedo found purpose on campus and became inspired to join the college’s Native American Inter-Tribal Student Association (NAISA). Escovedo soon became vice president of NAISA and helped with planning and hosting student-led educational events and activists’ demonstrations.

Escovedo decided to pursue a double major, combining American Indian studies with art. Continuing this exploration, Escovedo found he could use his education to better his community, both inside and outside educational institutions.

An example of this community activism came to fruition with a commission from the ethnic studies department to design the Yokuts Plaza monument. Escovedo reached out to local traditional Native basket weavers to help design the image that would eventually sit on top of a large piece of granite sourced from the mountains of the Central Valley.

Escovedo helped plan and host several Native American events that tackled subjects like settler-colonialism, intergenerational trauma, cultural competency, neurodecolonization, indigenizing spaces, and intersectionality.

An opening reception will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 1, including a tour with the artist at 6 p.m.

The exhibit is in the art gallery, which is in Building 1400 on the San Jacinto Campus, 1499 N. State St.

The gallery is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. For more information, please visit msjc.edu/artgallery or contact Art Professor John Knuth at Jknuth@msjc.edu.

—

Mt. San Jacinto College serves nearly 24,000 students annually in a district covering 1,700 square miles from the San Gorgonio Pass to Temecula, with campuses in San Jacinto, Menifee, Banning and Temecula.

MSJC awarded 3,157 degrees and certificates to a record-breaking 2,185 graduates in May 2022.

Have a wonderful day and please follow MSJC on social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post MSJC Art Gallery Presents ‘Decolonizing Place and Time’ appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The MSJC Art Talk series is open to the public and will be held online. 

Ibarra, also an MSJC associate faculty member, will discuss her artwork and career as an artist.  This special Art Talk is presented in conjunction with Undocumented Student Week of Action.   

Ibarra discusses issues of generational guilt, identity, class, labor, displacement, and injustice in sculptures, videos, installations, performances, and participatory work. Looking through queer Xicanx perspective, the work is fueled by emotional labor, personal and cultural research and analysis.

Currently, the work is centered around the aesthetics and resilience of the Piñata/Party Supply District of Downtown Los Angeles, engaging in the means of sustaining as a community of businesses and as a place of cultural familiarities and commodities. 

Ibarra has exhibited, screened, performed, and programmed at venues across California, including Angels Gate Cultural Center, Charlie James Gallery, Consulado General de México en Los Ángeles, Craft Contemporary, Human Resources Los Angeles, and Pieter Performance Space, among others. Ibarra holds a master’s in fine art from the University of Southern California (USC) and earned a bachelor’s in fine art in sculpture from California State University, Long Beach.  

The next Art Talk, also from 1 to 2 p.m., will be on Thursday, Nov. 10, featuring Erik Escovedo. This is a special joint presentation during Native American Heritage month and is part of Escovedo’s exhibition at The MSJC Art Gallery.

Information and Zoom links can be found at www.msjc.edu/artgallery. For more information, please contact Art Professor John Knuth at Jknuth@msjc.edu.

It’s not too late to sign up for Fall 2022 classes. The college offers 8-week classes designed to fit your life that begin Monday, Oct. 17. Check out the schedule today.

Mt. San Jacinto College serves nearly 24,000 students annually in a district covering 1,700 square miles from the San Gorgonio Pass to Temecula, with campuses in San Jacinto, Menifee, Banning and Temecula.

MSJC awarded 3,157 degrees and certificates to a record-breaking 2,185 graduates in May 2022.

Have a wonderful day and please follow MSJC on social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post Mt. San Jacinto College’s Art Talk Series Continues Thursday with Dulce Soledad Ibarra appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Those looking to attend Thursday’s Artist’s Talk with Seed can log in with this Zoom information.
“Disrupted Realism” is the first book to survey the works of contemporary painters who are challenging and reshaping the tradition of Realism.

Helping art lovers, collectors, and artists approach and understand this compelling new phenomenon, it includes the works of 38 artists whose paintings respond to the subjectivity and disruptions of modern experience.

Seed, who believes we are “the most distracted society in the history of the world,” has selected artists he sees as visionaries in this developing movement. The artists’ impulses toward disruption are as individual as the artists themselves, but all share the need to include perception and emotion in their artistic process.

Six sections lay out and analyze common themes: “Toward Abstraction,” “Disrupted Bodies,” “Emotions and Identities,” “Myths and Visions,” “Patterns, Planes, and Formations,” and “Between Painting and Photography.” Interviews with each artist offer additional insight into some of the most incisive and relevant painting being created today.

Seed has written about art and artists for Arts of Asia, Art Ltd., Harvard Magazine, International Artist, Hyperallergic and the Huffington Post.

For more information, please visit www.msjc.edu/artgallery or contact Art Professor John Knuth at Jknuth@msjc.edu.

Mt. San Jacinto College serves about 27,000 students in a district covering 1,700 square miles from the San Gorgonio Pass to Temecula, with campuses in San Jacinto, Menifee, Banning and Temecula.

Late start classes for MSJC’s Fall 2020 semester begin Oct. 19. Registration for the 8-week courses begins online on Oct. 5.

In May 2020, Mt. San Jacinto College awarded a record-breaking 3,554 degrees and certificates to 1,958 graduates.

The post MSJC Art Gallery Presents Artist’s Talk with Author John Seed appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Soboba Foundation, West Valley High School in Hemet has been able to provide fine arts classes for its special education students. Art is offered every other week and music has become a weekly class. Overseen by the Exceeding Everyone’s Expectations campus club, the program of Count on Art began about five years ago.

The Soboba Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians, continues to fund the program each year and those involved couldn’t be happier. Artist Laura Ryan and musician Billy Tsounis love what they teach and love learning from the students.

“I adore the kids; to see them succeed in a project is so rewarding,” said Ryan, who has been a member of the Hemet Valley Art Association for about 15 years. “They are very creative and often their ideas are brilliant. I give careful thought to what I bring to them. I want them to be a little challenged by the work but to also have a good opportunity to be successful in the project.”

Tsounis has been teaching music at the school for about five years. He studied guitar, piano, music theory and counterpoint throughout high school in South Africa, then attended and graduated from the Berklee College of Music in Boston where he lived and played music for about 11 years in the northeast before moving to Southern California.

“What I like best about teaching these classes is the enthusiasm of the students and their random and uninhibited approach to creativity and performing, which is actually the root of it all in most forms of music/art,” he said. “I find it personally rewarding in the way that I have the opportunity to witness everybody’s unique personality and the possibility to uplift their mood through music.”

Lead teacher Vanessa Hagaman said the Count on Art program provides specialized arts instruction to students in her functional skills classroom that is not funded by the school district. Along with the voluntary art and music classes, students can also take cooking classes.

“Music helps the students connect with one another and motivates them to learn new skills,” she said. “Art challenges them to stretch their creativity and think innovatively. Cooking teaches them math, science and great life skills.”

Prior to the Soboba Foundation’s sponsorship, Hagaman said the special education department relied on recycling, donations from local service clubs and small-scale campus fundraising. Being able to offer the students a full-fledged consistent program has made a huge difference.

“We wouldn’t be able to do all this without Soboba’s help,” said Hagaman, who is teaching for her fifth year at West Valley. “I enjoy the fact the students can give and take during these lessons and I love watching them accomplish something new.”

Instructional aides Jody Cusworth and Louise Wood have noticed an increase in the confidence level of the students as a result of the art, music and cooking classes being added.

“The teacher is excellent, and the aides are treasures; I couldn’t be successful without their help,” said Ryan, of Hemet.

(Soboba Foundation Counts)

Students are currently working on an interpretation of one of Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers paintings. Ryan is using the project as a way to convey her love of colors and layers as each budding artist works on their art piece one step at a time. It gives them a chance to absorb each layer and color they are adding to build texture, and lets them put their individual signature on their work.

“The students mixed their own paint using really good brushes and quality paint,” Ryan said. “We’ve done watercolor, fabric sculpture, ink sketching, landscapes with cherry trees and domino jewelry. I try to introduce new mediums and techniques whenever I can.”

Tsounis said he loves presenting all genres of music to the students and knows they are particularly fond of the karaoke machine he brings to class. His wish list of items for the class includes a drum kit, some electronic keyboards and a bass guitar so the students can form bands and get even more creative.

“I usually start teaching the class with some basic rhythm fundamentals as that is innate in us all regardless of interpretation, like clapping out rhythms, recognizing notation. Then I mix it up with having them write randomly placed notes on the musical staff and I then play/loop it back for them on a keyboard or on my garageband app so that they can all hear their creation and the possibilities to make music and have fun with it,” said Tsounis, of Hemet. “I also use the other half of the lesson where we do karaoke and the students get to sing and dance to their favorite songs. Whatever it takes for them to be happy and have fun with music.”

Ryan always tells the students that there are no mistakes in art – only opportunities to create something different.

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Search: Soboba Foundation Counts

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THE HARVARD STREET THEATER COMPANY AT THE DIAMOND VALLEY ARTS CENTER (DVAC) PUTS ON ONE AMAZING SHOW FOR TWO NIGHTS!                                                           “EVERY CHRISTMAS STORY EVER TOLD…AND THEN SOME”

DECEMBER 20th 7pm, and DECEMBER 21 at 2pm and 7pm      For tickets contact DVAC at www.thedvac.org

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Every Christmas Story

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Members of Hemet Sunset Rotary participated in an International Project working with the Rotary Club of Rosarito La Mision and Tijuana Oeste Rotary Club. The project was to benefit an Elementary School, Escuela Primaria Xayuntamiento, which is located just south of Rosarito. The school is located so that it’s play yard, which is fenced with large bars, looks out at the blank wall of a building. The Rotary clubs decided to give the children something better to look at and a local artist, one of the members of the local Rotary, designed the mural. The three Rotary clubs came together to paint the mural over a weekend.

Hemet Sunset Rotary was represented by Laura Brock, president of Hemet Sunset, Linda Krupa, Hemet Councilwoman, Dan and Ruth Goodrich, Roberta Neff, Sophia Serrano and Brian Flannigan.

Hemet Sunset Rotary meets every Wednesday night at 5:30 at the Diamond Valley Arts Center on Harvard Street. Visitors are always welcome. They are gearing up for their big fundraiser, Festival of Frights, which will be Oct 19 at the Hemet Public Library. For more information call 951 708 1355. Monies raised through their fundraisers go back into the community to help other non-profits.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: International Project

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The MSJC Art Gallery is pleased to present “The Prototype,” a very special sculptural installation by Gustavo Godoy. He will provide a public tour of the installation from 2 to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15.

“The Prototype” was originally installed at The Bakersfield Art Museum earlier this year, and this second installation will expand on the bright red explosion of form and content in our gallery. With this work, Godoy explores themes of how Latinx people have contributed to our constructed environment and how the world we live in is ever-changing.

Los Angeles artist Gustavo Godoy’s (b. 1974, Ontario, Calif.) work is based on concepts of labor, construction, social systems, and traditions of formal abstraction. It functions in the challenging space between high and low culture, both modernist tradition and survivalist problem-solving. Whether made of lumber, metal or cement, and often of accumulated or found objects liberated from their initial intention, the objects are constructed through intuition and unified by paint.

“The Prototype” is a project about the physical barriers that humans put up to separate and control each other. The “Fast Forma-Object” is meant to be ominous yet enticing, playful, mysterious and engaging. It is an intuitive construction, where every bit of wood and metal is considered for its unique relationship to the logic of the larger accumulation. It is meant to be complex armature for ideas, asking the viewer to consider the politics of our time in relation to the production of structures that can serve to divide, protect, distinguish, and contain individuals and groups. As the son of a Mexican immigrant, Godoy has a unique perspective on how Latinx people contribute to American life and are perceived by society In many cases of constructing the built environment and grooming the daily lifestyle, the “day-laborer” is viewed as the lowest in society, yet essential to the workings of all industries and cities. Godoy’s work pays tribute to the laborers and intellectualizes their sensibilities through the formal reference point of constructivism and minimalism.

Godoy will provide a public tour of the installation from 2 to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The gallery is on MSJC’s San Jacinto Campus at 1499 N. State St., Building 1400.

Learn more about MSJC’s art gallery at www.msjc.edu/artgallery, call (951) 487-3585 or email jknuth@msjc.edu.

Mt. San Jacinto College serves about 27,000 students in a district covering 1,700 square miles from the San Gorgonio Pass to Temecula, with campuses in San Jacinto, Menifee, Banning and Temecula.

In May 2019, Mt. San Jacinto College awarded a record-breaking 3,314 degrees and certificates to 1,707 graduates.

Have a wonderful day and please follow MSJC on social media – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: MSJC’s Art Gallery

The post MSJC’s Art Gallery Presents ‘The Prototype’ appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“The first time I tried to end my life, I was driving on the freeway. I jumped lanes into on-coming traffic. A huge semi was coming right at me.  At the last second, I swerved and ended up in a ditch.”

Lopez grew up in an explosively abusive household with a brother who used him as a punching bag and father who had been irreparably scarred by war. “I had to learn to fight to be able to beat up my brother…and learn to survive. I met my wife Cheryl at age 16. I’ll be 63 this year, and through all but the last 17 years, I was constantly abusing drugs, alcohol…and my family.”

Knowing that he had loved pottery as a child, Lopez’s wife bought him a Potter’s wheel for a birthday.  For a time, it just set there.

Lopez tried everything to stay clean and tried everything he could think of to hold onto his job as a coffee salesman, but nothing worked. Feeling that he and his family had had enough, Lopez decided to end his life a second time.

“I tell people, that second time I tried to commit suicide… That wasn’t an attempt: I died that day.”

Lopez was losing the only job at which he’d ever succeeded due to the business being sold. “I was never taught how to cope with setbacks or anything negative, so one day. while no one was in the house, I drank two bottles…two full fifths of alcohol and I downed a bottle of pills. The last thing I said was, “Let’s do this.”

Enter an angel.

“Suddenly, I wasn’t upstairs sprawled out on my bed anymore. An Angel had taken me downstairs to show me what was going to happen. He said, “You’re going to be a well-known artist.” I said I’m a coffee salesman, not an artist. He quieted me and brought me downstairs and showed me the wheel that my wife had bought sometime before. He reminded me that I loved to work with pottery as a child.”

Ever the salesman, Lopez made a deal with his angel. “He showed me the wheel, he showed me the sequence of events and how it would play out, and even AMOCO, where I would have my own show, but I didn’t believe it.  I said, “If all of this is real, and I wake up…prove it to me. Let me wake up without a hangover.”  

Lopez soon awoke needing none of the alcohol, drugs, or the medications for PTSD-related stress, depression, and diabetes that he had needed to help keep his then-400 pound frame going.

“I woke up, and I felt fine.  I was amazed.”

Lopez’s wife was not so amazed.

“As soon as my wife came home that day I said honey I’m done: I’ll never touch another drug or drink. “My wife and kids had heard that so many times, she laughed in my face.

The drugs and alcohol stopped immediately. The need for psychotropic drugs ended two years ago. The worst-case that many people, including many of his doctors, had ever seen is now alcohol, drug…and medication free. He’s also down more than 200 pounds.

“It started…my comeback, the minute I sat down at the wheel.  To me, the wheel is life itself, playing out in front of me.”

That night Lopez sat at the wheel hour after hour “throwing” a total of 200 pounds of clay.  When he was finished, at nearly four in the morning, he had made figurines, bowls, pots and dishes.  I looked at my wife and said, “Honey, you bought me a wheel… Now you have to buy me a kiln.”

Lopez had somehow managed to learn his craft through every gin and drug-soaked meeting with many ceramic masters. “Somehow, I retained it all, and never forgot a thing.  Within months, I was selling my art at the “Village Fest” in Palm Springs. Still, Lopez’s wife and children were skeptical. The weight of years of broken promises, broken pottery, shattered hopes and dreams littered the floor of Lopez’s life like bits of clay thrown from his potter’s wheel.

“I learned that life is like the clay: it’s in my hands…but I can’t force it, or I’ll destroy it. I had to learn to work slowly and use my very life as the persuasive proof that I had changed. I tell people that I don’t mold the clay into shape…I persuade it.”

Lopez had gotten financial support from his rightly-skeptical wife…but little else. “I began to feel as if I was going to crumble, feeling like I would never be the artist I wanted to be…feeling that I had failed.  I began to cry, right there at a show, at my booth, surrounded by all the other vendors. I just started to cry, and I felt disgusted.”

“I don’t know why I said it, but I looked up, and I said, “God, if you told me the truth, I want to make $376 today. I still have no idea why I picked that number…it was crazy: the most I’d ever made at a show was 75 bucks. But I just sat there angry, disgusted…and crying.”

Enter angels numbers 2 and 3. 

In Rich Lopez’s world, angels look just like ordinary folks… and two of them approached his booth that day.

“They were an ordinary-looking couple, and she said to me “why are you crying? “I looked up, aggravated and said, “Don’t worry about it.” She said, “I’d like to buy that piece-it’s beautiful. And I’d like that piece.” They were 40 or 50-dollar pieces!!!”.”..and I’d like that piece as well.”

When the woman was finished, the husband spoke up.  I was in shock. The husband said, “Honey if you’re done, I’d like to get one or two pieces.” I couldn’t speak. As I was totaling everything up, she said, “Will you take a check?” “I just looked up, tears in my eyes and said, “Are you angels? “They both smiled. I said, “You’re angels! “She said no, we’re not…but you’ll be fine.” When I totaled it up, it came to $375. When she handed me the check I was shaking and crying, and I just said, “Thank you, thank you, over and over again. They waved goodbye, and as my wife came back to my booth, she said, “Who are they? “They were angels,” I said.  My wife looked at me as if I was back on the stuff, then she looked at the check and said, “They spent $376? “What? What?,” I said. I looked at the check: the woman had made a mistake and had written out the check for $376.

When I told my wife what it happened, we were both in shock.  Every time we looked at the check, we just shook our heads. Neither of us wanted even to cash the check. We finally cashed it after almost a year. My wife began to believe in me then.” Lopez says with a broad smile.

As if all this wasn’t enough to convince Lopez’s wife and even the most hardened skeptic…there’s the dream. “I was feeling frustrated because my artistry seemed to be stalled, after such a rocket of a beginning…and NAME NAME NAME OF NAME NAME NAME said, “This is California.  There are a thousand guys doing pretty bowls. Claremont is filled with people who have style. You have to find your own niche.” That’s when I had the dream. I saw myself hovering over baskets, with a unique tool. It was a tool that’s not made for the trade. I immediately woke up, took a steak knife, ran to my grinding wheel…and fashioned the tool that I use to make the striations in the clay that mimic a woven basket.  It came to me in a dream.” 

After that, things moved quickly for Lopez, a one-time student at Mount San Jacinto and Chaffee Colleges.  Lopez had his work featured at many exciting venues including the Western Science Center in Hemet and many homes and galleries around the country.  His artwork now fetches as much as $2000 for one of his signature ceramic basket that looks remarkably like a woven basket. “I am half Indian, and I spent over a year on the reservation learning the art of basket weaving. It’s those ceramic “woven” baskets that were featured in my first major show at AMOCA.”

AMOCA-The American Museum Of Ceramic Arts in Pomona is the premier ceramics gallery west of the Mississippi and home to some of the country’s most exceptional ceramics exhibits.

Lopez may have been one of the first ceramicists to have a show of his own, but it was the second time he had visited AMOCA. “When I walked in, I began to cry. Everything looked exactly as I remembered it in my visit with the angel. I knew the walls…the floors, the steps, the furniture. I had been there before.”

Looking at the peaceful, vibrant, contemplative, honest artwork rich Lopez has created in the 17 years since his epiphany, one would never realize the hurt, the pain and the tragedy and triumph behind each piece.  And for Lopez, that’s just as well.

“I sit at the wheel for hours on end, and I tell the clay my story. It answers back…and I give thanks. When people see my work, they see a bit of me in every piece.  I want them to see a part of themselves too: the best part. My world is now filled with art and with peace.”

And when you’re near Rich Lopez, in his studio, with his art, it is his world, all you can do is sit back and stare…and wonder at its beauty.

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