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Hello and welcome to our online magazine and archive project dedicated to providing readers with a window inside the creative incubator of the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center. Learn More >>
Hello and welcome to our online magazine and archive project dedicated to providing readers with a window inside the creative incubator of the Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center. Learn More >>
Montalvo's Lucas Artists Residency Program is proud to announce its latest jury selections for incoming Fellows.
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Curatorial essays. Video interviews with participating artists. Photos and write-ups about related programming.
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Former and current Lucas Artists Fellows routinely make headlines around the world. Read the latest they've been up to.
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Recent Posts
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Upcoming Events
Arts events at Montalvo are often led by fellows in the LAP. The Lucas Artists Program is also proud to present its signature event series, Open Access, designed to showcase artists’ work, offer a behind-the-scenes view into how they generate ideas, and provide a forum for dialogue. Find out what is happening now and what is coming soon! Read More >> |
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PRESS RELEASE
Montalvo Announces New Lucas Artists Fellows in Visual Arts for 2018-2022 SARATOGA, Calif. — Montalvo Arts Center’s Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program is proud to announce its most recent Lucas Artists Fellowship awards to 33 artists of exceptional talent from across the US and the world. This distinguished group includes individuals from 16 countries working in the fields of visual arts, architecture, urbanism, and design. Read More >> |
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South Asian Literature and Art Festival
The South Asian Literature & Art Festival, presented at Montalvo by Art Forum SF in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Institute of South Asian Studies, was the Bay Area’s first festival dedicated to showcasing contemporary reflections of literature and the arts from the subcontinent. Read More >> |
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EXHIBITION
The Mending Project The Mending Project is an interactive installation featuring several simple elements—thread, color, and sewing—as a point of departure to create meaningful connections between strangers. Originally conceived as an installation that would bring people together in conversation, The Mending Project was produced by internationally acclaimed visual artist Lee Mingwei and premiered in 2009 at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York. Read More >> |
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FESTIVAL
Threads: Weaving Humanity On July 19, in a celebration throughout the Montalvo grounds, Montalvo premiered Threads: Weaving Humanity, featuring four newly commissioned works of textile by five artists whose work redefines fiber arts. These works were created to provide opportunities for contemplation, consideration and conversation on the meaning of our shared humanity, and what is necessary for humanity to thrive...This includes kindness, compassion, integrity, respect, empathy, forgiveness, and self-reflection. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Interactive Performer Heather Gold (March 16, 2020)
Being an artist can be lonely. And you spend a chunk of your energy and mind holding your point of view and the conviction that what you do is worthwhile. Being at the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) freed up all that energy for me to make work. It let me exhale and feel supported.In my interactive performance pieces, I’ve spent a lot of years exploring how to create conditions for an emotional connection or shift in an audience and how to creative conditions for narrative beats and comedic moments to happen. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Multidisciplinary Artist Ranu Mukherjee (March 10, 2020)
I’m using my studio at Montalvo as a speculative fiction machine. I’m working on my upcoming solo exhibition and a longer term video/performance project called Ensemble for Non-Linear Time. I'm circulating between drawing, writing and constructing a space to film in. The Marley floor is conducive to rolling around and finding movement. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Guest Artist Brad Kik (March 5, 2020)
My apologies to every composer who has labored here in Studio 21, pulling such beautiful music out of this Bechstein grand piano. “Is it ok if we put you in the composer’s studio?” meant I had to make room in my luggage for (1) adult learner level 2 songbook, alongside (1) barely-dry painting from my nine-year-old and (1) Elsa and Anna Frozen 2 decoration (“It’s not a toy!” declared my six-year-old as she ceremoniously handed it over). Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist Kija Lucas (March 1, 2020)
I have been spending my time editing photographs and entering object stories for The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy. We had 26 people bring objects to be photographed over the weekend, and I am excited to get them up on the project website. One of the most important parts of this work, is the part that is unseen by anyone but the participant. The conversations and sharing that coincide with making the photograph. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Curator Britt Salvesen (February 29, 2020)
As a museum curator, a typical day is 80% meetings, 10% phone calls and emails, and 10% wrangling my calendar to fit in the meetings, phone calls, and emails. At Montalvo, I have time and space to think. Similar to an artist, a curator needs to tap into curiosity and creativity in order to develop an exhibition. The idea has to emerge and evolve in its own time, before the deadlines become real. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Multidisciplinary Artist Rafa Esparza (February 5, 2020)
This week I’m working on making adobe bricks that will function as pavers to line the floors of a future installation and as a painting surface. It will be the first batch of adobe I’ll be mixing for brick making here at Montalvo. Brick making is a process that entails sun baking the adobe and working outdoors; however, because of the overcast and weather in the bay, I’m working on creating an adequate environment for adobe brick making indoors. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist Alison O'Daniel (January 23, 2020)
During my three weeks here, I've been quite tethered to the computer. In the morning - I have woken up early each day and taken my dog on daily hikes through the mountains and paths behind the villa. And then we come back to the studio and settle in - her for hours of luxurious napping, and me hours of intense typing. I'm trying to finish a screenplay during these three weeks. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Multidisciplinary Artists Annie Han & Daniel Mihalyo (January 22, 2020)
Our arrival was met with some strange gastro intestinal nausea. All finished being dizzy and back-on-track with coffee and heated conversations over direction on several upcoming exhibitions. Today feels fresh and new. Sun blasts, rough sketches and mini-breakthroughs coming fast like little waves. I think that fragile matchstick sized salamander at our door last night was a reminder to pay attention to small things right around us. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist Xandra Ibarra & Sound Artist Rosana Cabán (January 13, 2020)
We had laughs, drinks, too much coffee, microphones attached to our heads with yellow tape, ate animals, scared off mountain lions, talked about the awkwardness of gifting flowers. We made compositions with tiny speakers, lamps with wine glasses, shook mirrors, turned chairs upside down and felt Puerto Rican realness. Thank you Montalvo Arts Center. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Mixed Media/Painter Monica Lundy & Visual Artist Daniele Puppi (January 11, 2020)
“I, who at dawn at Montalvo, in my underwear, encountered the song of coyotes” is a visual piece that was based on an audio recording taken by the artist collective Love Percussion (Monica Lundy and Daniele Puppi) during a recent residency at Montalvo. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Guest Artist Stephan Moore (December 19, 2019)
My first experience of Montalvo was to visit the “Now Hear This!” exhibition a couple of years ago, after sound artist Stephen Vitiello encouraged me to get in touch with the Lucas Artists Program's curator, Donna Conwell. It was a great introduction to the Montalvo grounds for me, as a sound artist and as a curator. During my visit this time, I have been invited to write about the history of sound artists making work at Montalvo through the Lucas Artists Residency Program, focusing on, but not limited to, "Now Hear This," which was the first sound-focused exhibition at Montalvo. Read More >> |
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This Week in My Studio: Guest Artist Ava Roy (December 18, 2019)
Early morning: Crack eyelids, catch streaks of luminous pink across the sky. Morning warming: Mist rising off the ridge of deep green pines. Glass table strewn with papers. Concrete floor strewn with papers. Coffee table scattered with books. Read More >> |
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Spotify Mixtape
By Emily Borchers Spring cleaning came early this year and we were on a mission—a mission to get our artist residency archive in order. Boxes were gathered, piles were stacked high, excel sheets were filled to the brim with information, and past artists were rediscovered. So for this month's playlist we celebrate some of these long-lost Composer & Musician Fellows and guest artists from the earlier years of our residency. Read More >> |
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Fellows in the News
For this month's Fellows in the News, we feature: three of our LAP Fellows are scheduled to perform in the New York Philharmonic 2019-2020 Project 19 program, Sita Bhaumik was mentioned in a Vogue article, Ry Rocklen premiered his food-themed exhibition at Honor Fraser, Leah Rosenberg opened her colorful new exhibition at LegionSF, and Chris Fraser transformed the Royal NoneSuch Gallery into a camera obscura. Read More >> |
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What Can Poets Do: An Exchange Between Poets Ariana Reines and Julian Talamantez Brolaski
Listening to poets talking amongst themselves is a rare pleasure. On their last day at the LAP, after a rainy winter, poets Julian Talamantez Brolaski and Ariana Reines sit down and consider the question: What can poets do? Read More >> |
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EXHIBITION
Bruce Munro at Montalvo: Stories in Light Featuring 10 light-based works ranging in scale from immersive to intimate, Bruce Munro at Montalvo: Stories in Light is an ambitious outdoor exhibition that has transformed Montalvo’s historic Villa and its extensive public areas into a spectacle of light. The exhibition includes existing and new works conceived and developed by Munro while in residence at the Lucas Artists Program. Read More >> |
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Bruce Munro in Conversation with LAP Director Kelly Sicat
Bruce Munro discusses his artistic practice and the development of his latest exhibition Stories in Light with Kelly Sicat, Director of the Lucas Artists Program. The conversation explores the artist's ongoing creative process as he envisions works of art and site-based installations that bring people together in a shared experience. Read More >> |
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Star Car: A Collaborative Montalvo Arts Center Project
By Zeyn Joukhadar, Lucas Artists Literary Arts Fellow On the evening of September 29, 2018, Lucas Artists Visual Arts Fellow Matteo Rubbi and I painted a projection of the night sky on Montalvo's Nissan Altima using professional grade glow-in-the-dark paint. We projected a live view of the night sky onto the car using the Stellarium program and the LAP’s video projector, and then painted each star and planet by hand. Read More >> |
