Sarrita Hunn

www.debradisman.com
IG @artifactorystudio

Artist Statement
I currently work in the form of the book, in forms inspired by the book, and in new sculptural media of my own devising. Although the work remains tethered to lose definitions of the book as structure, it is moving progressively into other sculptural and conceptual realms where labor, repetition and a passion for the haptic become powerful motivators and themes.  Achieving and remaining in a sense of flow where potential is infinite is mission critical to my working process.  It is also this state that I try to bring those that I work with into, for it is in this state of purity, openness and unlimited possibility where new levels of connection and meaning emerge, and purpose, knowledge, wisdom and direction are clarified.  Having worked in the realm of the built environment for many years I am fascinated by the parallels between books and buildings in terms of structure, meaning, utility, architecture and effect. Each creates public and private spaces where stories are “read” on many levels, often revealing more than their authors and makers ever intended. I try to create such places and spaces of inspiration, contemplation, realization and bafflement in my work and to instigate investigation, exploration and discovery in myself and others.

Biography
Debra Disman is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in the form of the book, both as a solo practitioner and in the public sphere of community engagement. As a maker and teaching artist she creates work and projects which push the boundaries of the book into new forms and materials. Disman was the featured artist for the Big Read in LA in 2016, showing at the Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA; is the recipient of a WORD: Artist Grant / Bruce Geller Memorial Prize in 2016 to create “The Sheltering Book“, a life-sized book structure designed as a catalyst for community creativity; and was commissioned by LA’s Craft Contemporary Museum to create an interactive book for their 2017 exhibition, “Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California“. She was a Studio Resident at the Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean in Santa Monica in 2018, and has been awarded four Artist-in-Residence grants from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs since 2017 to work with the communities of Sunland-Tujunga and Granada Hills in LA.  She is a local Artist-In-Residence at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA

www.18thstreet.org/artists/jeff-beall/
IG @jeffbeallstudio

Artist Statement
The best way to make positive change in these uncertain times is to look deeply, with compassion and curiosity, and to embrace the reality before us.

Small gestures matter.

Biography
Jeff Beall is an artist whose work has taken a variety of forms over the years, exhibiting in an irregularly regular fashion since 1987. While formally varied, Beall’s conceptually driven work consistently uses techniques of veiling/revealing to heighten the experience of looking.

Beall’s most recent solo exhibition was entitled Unsolved: LA Uprising @ 25 Years. Its presentation, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the LA riots in April 2017 at Gallery 169 in Santa Monica, CA, served as a memorial honoring the 23 unsolved homicide victims who lost their lives during the uprising. Carolina Miranda wrote about this work for the LA Times.

Public collections include the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Berkeley Art Museum, Carnegie Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Oakland Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art and Portland Museum of Art. 

Beall is co-publisher of X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal and has served on the board of Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism since 2002. He also currently serves on the Advisory Council of social justice organization, Liberty Hill Foundation. He earned an MFA at CalArts, and a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley.

www.lucianaabait.com
IG @Luciana Abait

The space for Luciana Abait’s work was provided by The Sallas Foundation

About the work:
I am specifically presenting this idyllic mountain landscape as a way to provide spectators a moment of wonder and peace in the face of the worldwide catastrophic pandemic we are all living in. I chose this location because the contrast between the romantic Mountain View and the deserted industrial/ warehouse typical Los Angeles location creates an extremely unexpected and interesting dialogue about urban civilization and its relationship with nature.

Artist Statement
My work invites viewers to reimagine nature through manipulated photographic landscapes, installations and photo-sculptures. Natural landscapes and human-made utilitarian objects or structures are twisted, scaled out of proportion, or impossibly adapted to new roles where they coexist in a magical reality. These eerie, hyper-real psychological landscapes range from sci-fi to storybook, encompassing parables that critically reflect upon human beings and their fraught relationship with the natural environment. These intricate interrelations portray the aggressive intrusion of humans into nature, but also imagine alternate (or perhaps future) realities marked by adaptation and assimilation, isolation and displacement.

Images are sourced from personal photographs, shots of snowfields and mountain sides, textbooks, encyclopedias, and stock imagery, connecting personal experience to a collective geographic history. I work over the surface with pencils and pastels erasing the photographic quality beneath, and lending urgency to these emotionally charged images.

Biography
Luciana Abait was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a resident artist of 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica. Abait’s work has been shown in galleries, museums, and international art fairs throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America. Some of these are: A Letter to the Future at Los Angeles International Airport, Flow, Blue at Rockford College Art Museum, Illinois and Sur Biennial in California. She has also completed numerous public art commissions. Abait’s works are held by private, public and corporate collectors from the United States, Europe, Latin America and East Asia.

www.ninarsalerno.com
IG @perfectreject

Biography
Humor and irony, even tragic irony, constitute the binding elements of my work, as they provide the opportunity to connect with my participants/audience while addressing complex problems; alienation, prejudice mechanism of social disaggregation are the central themes coursing through my work, and which
I disassemble, examine, and reassemble into structures that reveal the monstrosity or beauty hidden in plain sight.

https://Kimberlybrooks.com
@kimberlybrooksartist
facebook.com/kimberly.brooks

Artist statement
Painting is believing.

Biography
Kimberly Brooks is an artist whose work integrates landscape and abstraction to explore a variety of subjects dealing with history, memory and identity.  Brooks paintings have been showcased in numerous juried exhibitions with artist curators including Chris Burden and curators from the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Brooks received her B.A. in Literature at UC Berkeley and studied painting at Otis and UCLA.  

www.voyagela.com

Artist Statement
Leonardo Bravo’s paintings draw upon the language of modernist geometric abstraction through complex structures and systems in saturated colors that suggest a constant state of becoming and unfolding. These works take their cues from a variety of sources including Bauhaus master weavers Gunta Stolzl and Ani Albers, the wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, the works of Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica, and traditional South American woven tapestries. Inherent in these structures is the visual tension suggested by the relationship of each color form to the other, and the way in which negative space becomes a counterpoint to each fixed form. The complexity of these structures suggest an architecture of time and space in which forms continue to build and collapse upon each other, emanating new relationships, and suggesting pathways that open up to limitless possibilities, questions, and complexities. 

Biography
Born in Santiago, Chile, Leonardo Bravo earned his BFA from OTIS Institute of Art & Design and MFA from the University of Southern California. Over the last few years his works have been exhibited at Elephant Gallery, Los Angeles, Charlie James Gallery, The Architects Collective, BKB Art & Design, Palm Springs, Mount San Jacinto College, Cerritos College Art Gallery, and Luis De Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles.