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GUEST SPEAKERS
Each month at the Riverside Art Alliance meetings, we have a different speaker on an interesting topic.
Our featured artists and their area of art:
September 21, 2023
Riverside Art Museum
Camilla Taylor, Artist/Educator
Born in 1981 in Hayward, California, and raised in raised in Provo, Utah, Camilla Taylor attended the University of Utah and received a BFA in 2006, and an MFA from California State University at Long Beach in 2011, both with an emphasis in printmaking.
Taylor is recognized for their monochromatic and intensely introspective works on paper and sculpture which utilize figurative and architectural forms. Taylor’s artworks reflect the viewer’s internal lives as well as collective issues we experience as a society. Taylor uses a variety of materials, working in ceramic, printmaking, glass, and fiber, allowing the work to dictate the medium it should be realized in.
An accomplished artist exhibiting in traditional gallery spaces, they also create installations in intimate and unusual locations, such as site-specific works in a swimming pool, desert garden, and other locations.
Taylor lives in Los Angeles, CA, with their partner and 3 cats, and teaches printmaking and sculpture at UCLA and Occidental College.
October 19, 2023
Riverside Art Museum
Charles Bibbs, Contemporary Visual Artist
Internationally acclaimed artist Charles Bibbs, whose work is featured in museums, galleries, organizations, and homes of many collectors, displays a deep sense of Spirituality, Majesty, Dignity, Strength and Grace in his images, that is done in a combination of realistic and larger-than-life interpretations of contemporary subjects that are ethnically rooted.
An exhibition of Bibbs work will be on display at the Riverside Art Museum from November 3, 2023 through March 10, 2024. Filling three galleries, the exhibition presents a range of works from Charles Bibbs’ personal art collection as well as the artist’s own original paintings and drawings. Through Sacred Spaces Bibbs shares his life-long love of contemporary art and the creative values that guide his own work.
“For me, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to create pieces that eloquently speak to the soul and convey powerful messages," said Bibbs. "I have always said that my most important goal as an artist is to make profound aesthetic art statements that are ethnically rooted and at the same time, arouse spiritual emotions in the viewers. I want to tell stories in my art that mirror the Black Experience while maintaining a unique and personal artistic style; therefore, I am constantly developing my own art language, the 'Bibbs' language, which promises to take the viewer on an extraordinary journey and leave them with a distinctive and unforgettable experience.”
Born in San Pedro, California, and raised in Harbor City, California, Bibbs managed to work an eight-hour job and use his God-given talent in his spare time. But In 1991, Bibbs decided to leave his management position of 25 years, to form his publishing and distribution company, B Graphics and Fine Arts, Inc. Today, Bibbs is one of the top-selling artists in the country, and his business has grown to be one of the leaders in the African American art print market.
(Photo by Elaine Bibbs)
November 16, 2023
The Cheech
Katherine Gray, Glass Artist and Professor
Katheine Gray received her undergraduate degree from Ontario College of Art in Toronto, and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. Her work has been exhibited at Heller Gallery in New York City, Urban Glass in New York, and most recently in solo shows at the Craft Contemporary (formerly the Craft and Folk Art Museum) in Los Angeles and the Toledo Museum of Art. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Observer.com, Artforum.com and in the LA Times. Images of her glasswork have also appeared in the New York Times Design magazine. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Libenský/ Brychtová Award from the Pilchuck Glass School for her artistic and educational contributions to the field; she has also been inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Craft Council and is a Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass. Gray can be seen in the ongoing Netflix series Blown Away as the Resident Evaluator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Asheville Museum of Art and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, among others. Gray has written about glass, curated and juried multiple exhibitions, and has taught workshops around the world. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles, CA, and is a Professor of Art at California State University, San Bernardino.
January 18, 2024
The Cheech
Lisa Henry, Curator at Riverside Art Museum, Julia Morgan Building
An independent curator based in Southern California; Henry was formerly Assistant Curator for
American Art at the Newark Museum. She has been a guest curator and art consultant for institutions on both the east and west coasts including The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, The California African American Museum, The UCLA Hammer Museum and The Japanese American National Museum, among others. Since 2016, she has guest curated several exhibitions at Riverside Art Museum including Visual Voice and June Edmonds: Rhythmic Inquisitions.
Her presentation to the Riverside Art Museum's Art Alliance will include an overview of her curatorial journey and an overview of the upcoming exhibitions at RAM.
February 15, 2024, at 6pm
Riverside Art Museum
Dan Bernstein, Author
Dan Bernstein got his first blat out of a trombone when he was in fourth grade. Now in his seventies, the retired newspaper columnist is still playing his sax — still for little or no money at all. He Kept His Day Job is what one reviewer called a “love letter” disguised as a memoir. It takes readers on a musical joy ride through bumpy, challenging and exhilarating terrain: the hate-to-practice years, “frightfully flat” solo contests, high school bands and orchestras, Stanford’s purported ‘marching’ band, a community college jazz band, a perfect-chemistry brass quintet, an assisted-living center and a hospital’s ICU and oncology units. This Fanfare for the Common Musician is meant to be contagious, inspiring young musicians to keep playing and adults, particularly those with day jobs, to take their instruments, tap shoes and paint brushes out of the attic and fall in love all over again.
March 21, 2024, at 6pm
The Cheech
John Divola, Photographer
John Divola (b. 1949, Los Angeles) BA, 1971 California State University, Northridge; MA 1973: MFA 1974, University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1975 he has taught photography and art at numerous institutions including California Institute of the Arts (1978-1988), and since 1988 he has been a Professor of Art at the University of California, Riverside.
Since 1975, Divola's work has been featured in more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Australia, including Galerie Marquardt, Paris, 1990; Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, 1987; the University of New Mexico Art Museum, 1982; The Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, 2000; and Janet Borden Gallery, New York, 2001. Since 1973 his work has been included in more than two hundred group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Japan, including: "Mirrors and Windows," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, 1978; "1981 Biennial Exhibition," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York. 1981; "California Photography: Remaking Make-Believe," Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York. 1989. "The Photographic Condition," The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California. 1995; "Photo Binennale, Enschede (Obsessions. From Wunderkammer to Cyberspace)," Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enchede, Netherlands. 1995 "Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity 1900-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000; "Architecture Hot and Cold," The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000, and "Los Angeles 1955-85," Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2006, “The Conspiracy”, Kunsthalle Bern. Bern, Switzerland, 2009, "Surface Conditions: The Photographs of John Divola, "Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany. "Whitney Biennial 2017," Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, NY 2017.
Among Divola's Awards are Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1973, 1976, 1979, 1990), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1986), a Flintridge Foundation Fellowship (1998), a City of Los Angeles Artist Grant (1999) and a California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (1998) Recent books by John Divola are, "Continuity" art work and preface by John Divola. Ram Publications/Smart Art Press, Los Angeles, California. October, 1997. 72 pages,
"Isolated Houses," with Essay by Jan Tumlir, 48 pages with 24 color plates, Nazraeli Press, 2000, "Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert," preface by John Divola, 48 pages with 20 duotone plates, Nazraeli Press, 2004, and the Aperture book "Three Acts," essay by David Campany, interview by Jan Tumlir, 109 duotone and 54 color plates, 144 pages, May, 2006, "The Green of This Notebook," Nazraeli Press, 41 four color plates, 2009. "As Far As I Could Get," 244 pages, 200 Color Illustrations, Prestel, 2013, Vandalism, Mack Books, 2018, "Chroma," Skinnerboox, 2020, "Terminus," Mack Books, 2021, "Scapes," Skinnerboox, 2022.
John Divola works primarily with photography and digital imaging. While he has approached a broad range of subjects he is currently moving through the landscape looking for the oscillating edge between the abstract and the specific.