Come On In, We're Open!
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.
Read More >> |
Curatorial essays. Video interviews with participating artists. Photos and write-ups about related programming.
Read More >> |
Former and current Lucas Artists Fellows routinely make headlines around the world. Read the latest they've been up to.
Read More >> |
Recent Articles
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 >> |
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 >> |
This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist Catie Newell (November 18, 2019)
The top of the hill has been the perfect little volume of silence and changing light. My time here has been one of observation and rest, and creativity and patience. I have been using my time here to reflect on my practice and the spaces that it needs. I am designing my own studio, the Hideout, in an unusual site back at home. The choices and the processes involved are themselves the creative act as I turn an over-century-old abandoned roof-less sawdust building into a secret forest of a studio. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Guest Artist Margaret Kemp (November 14, 2019)
This week in my studio, I completed editing my current project, CITE. Composed of 600 images that capture movement and spirit and an experimental film that evokes the artist’s own uneasy relationship to the natural world, CITE examines the relationship of the Black Body to place and time and explores the complicated concepts of freedom, joy, and the claiming of one’s own space. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Guest Artist Paolo Salvagione (November 10, 2019)
Just outside my studio are a buckeye and a persimmon. The buckeye has lost its leaves. The large, low hanging fruits will never be picked by Ohlone and roasted until safe to eat. The persimmon tree, on the other hand, is heavy with ripe fruit, just out of my reach. It is a cultivar first developed by the Chinese and cherished by the Japanese. Both trees remind me of the complicated relationship this residency has with its origin story, and how this might someday become a site of healing. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Musician Taylor HoBynum (November 4, 2019)
This week I'm finishing up the first draft of what I'm calling a "secular oratorio", a piece for classical orchestra, jazz big band, vocal soloists and choir. It's called The Temp and Mr. Prosper, with a great libretto by the poet Matthea Harvey, who used erasure processes to deconstruct Shakespeare's Tempest into a contemporary narrative. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Artist & Educator Sita Bhaumik (October 31, 2019)
I'm working on my first book project with Kaya Press about art and creativity in conversation with the people who have shaped it. Thanks to the awesome wall-on-wheels in my studio, for the first time ever, I was able to pin up all of the pages of my manuscript. What a difference that made. I can finally see how the pages speak to each other. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Playwright Alva Rogers (September 16, 2019)
This is my third month (and third year) writing in the William Donner Foundation Studio. Thank you, William Donner Foundation. My first year (and month), I wrote primarily at the desk in the office area of the studio, which provided an orchestra view of the cacophonous quails in the forest theater on the other side of the studio’s sliding glass doors. Year two: I alternated writing outside on a round glass table on the front porch, playing possum with bunnies, then retreated to the office theater desk. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Composer Gina Leishman (September 12, 2019)
I’m currently working on a chamber opera about Pacific Northwest painter Morris Graves (1910-2001). He was a recluse and spiritual seeker, needing much solitude, but also a prankster with many friends; he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during WWII, just as he hit big-time fame in the art world. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist Amanda Beech (August 21, 2019)
The daylight in the studio has been great for concentrating on the development of a new painting series that uses quite rough brushwork to depict abstracted and broken-up LED style text/image displays. The evenings have been dedicated to reviewing the edits for my large-scale video installation piece, Map of the Bomb, which I've been editing with experimental sound since I arrived here. Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Visual Artist SoHyun Bae (August 17, 2019)
Day 11. . . So after getting lost, I found a better road. The line, the gesture, the cloak. Went into six canvases with a big broad brush, marking the movements of Lamentation. A few are decent. The rest, start over. . . Seeing Martha Graham, herself, perform the Lamentation, I see that the movements are slower than what the still images imply. I will have to keep that in mind as I move the brush across my canvases. . . Read More >> |
This Week in My Studio: Composer & Musician Fernando Vigueras
& Visual Artist Daniel Godínez Nivón (July 25, 2019) A couple of years ago, during my first stay at Montalvo’s LAP, Daniel Godínez Nivón (my current collaborator) and I organized a series of meetings and talks that we called dream meetings or oneiric assemblies--an exercise that consisted of meeting with the community of LAP artists every Wednesday at 3 am--inside the dream. Read More >> |
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 >> |
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 >> |
Open Access: Surprise!
On February 25, Joie Lee, Simon Pettet and Zeinab Alhashemi engaged in a public conversation at our Open Access program about the element of surprise in the creative process. Take a listen to their conversations here. Read More >> |
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 >> |
Fellows in the News
Since we missed our January Fellows in the News, we've compiled all of our great news stories into this month's post! So for this edition of Fellows in the news, we feature: a PBS opera premiere, a large-scale sequin sculpture, narrative-rich paintings in Oakland, a Chinese-Jewish musical performance, a San Francisco Public Library commission, an Art Basel write-up, and a composer of the year award! Read More >> |
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 >> |
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 >> |
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 >> |