Media Contact: Jan Jennings (858) 822-1684, jnjennings@ucsd.edu

OPEN STUDIOS 2002 TO SHOWCASE VARIETY OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLABORATIVE  WORK BY  UCSD  GRADUATE STUDENTS JUNE 1

Open Studios 2002, an exhibition of research and creative work by graduate students in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, will be held from 5 to 10 p.m. June 1 at the Visual Arts Facility on the UCSD campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Works in a variety of mediums in artists’ studios, a collaborative installation creating a Love Hotel, a panel discussion, an on-the-spot collaborative art installation competition, a digital lounge, and film and video screenings will be included in open house activities.

More than 40 artists will open their studios from 5 to 7 p.m. to exhibit works in painting, sculpture, installation, video, sound, photography, performance, animation, intervention documentation, interactive art, and other individual forms of expression.

“What essentially is going to happen is that we will have all the gallery spaces filled with exhibitions,” says Kim Manchester, Visual Arts graduate student and an event coordinator. “We are attempting to create an all-building art environment, so that people are exposed to the work and get to experience something around every corner.”

While the studios are open to allow exploration of the work of each individual artist, an Open Studios Exhibition will feature a work by each participating artist in an exhibition, rather than studio, environment. Also, the courtyard of the Visual Arts Facility will house, among other projects, Love Hotel, or “120 feet of love,” which will be open all evening.

For Love Hotel, artists have either teamed up or on their own designed and decorated a box which is a “room” in the Love Hotel. Rooms connect and can be moved. The viewer is invited to travel through each room to experience its particular theme.

“I think what makes it so difficult to pin down (specific mediums, styles, individual expressions in Open Studios 2002) is that no one is simply doing painting or photography,” Manchester says. “Everyone is dabbling in everything else either on their own or with a group.”

Following the Artists Open Studios from 5 to 7 p.m. will be a panel discussion, Beyond Border Art, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Visual Arts professor Louis Hock will moderate. Panel members include Betti-Sue Hertz, curator of contemporary art at the San Diego Museum of Art; Robert Pincus, art critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Mark Quint, owner of Quint Contemporary Art Gallery in La Jolla; and Ruben Ortiz-Torres, a Mexican-born artist and professor in the UCSD Department of Visual Arts.

Hock says that from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s the border art practiced in San Diego internationally distinguished the local art scene. “Since the mid-1990s, San Diego’s relationship with Mexico and Mexican art has evolved with new linkages to Mexico City and New York,” says Hock. “The panelists, representing different facets of the local art structure, will remark on their role in this change and what it may suggest for the future.”

An installation competition, Iron Installation Artist, will be held from 8:45 to 9:45 p.m. Teams of artists will be given a specific medium and will have one hour in which to create a collaborative piece. Commentary will be provided by emcee Julie Wyman, MFA 2002, and a panel of judges, as well as the audience.

Other Open Studios 2002 events include a Digital Lounge from 5 to 9 p.m. in Gallery 234 featuring projected images and accompanying sound, and Film and Video Screenings from 8 to 10 p.m. shown on an outside screen on the upper level of the Visual Arts Facility. Travelogues, documentaries, animated shorts, works in progress, and music videos will be screened in a drive-in like setting with comfortable seating areas.

The film and video artists include Matilda Aslizadeh, John Richey, Pablo Hadis, Kara Lynch, Dan Martinico, Nathaniel Clark, Sonia Paulino, Megan O’Connor, Bridget Mullen, Shane Hope, Katy Chang, Kim Manchester, Kelly Lynn Sears, and Jana Larson.

Among other Open Studios 2002 individual works will be Container, an object/sound installation by Mathew Hope in the Visual Arts Facility courtyard; an MFA Exhibition by Chris Ferreria in the Herbert Marcuse Gallery, and a first year exhibition, Burqas: A Spring Collection, by Christine de Piérola-Foerster in the Russell Gallery Space.

Open Studios is an annual event sponsored by the graduate students of the UCSD Department of Visual Arts. For further information on Open Studios 2002 visit the website at http://digitalarts.ucsd.edu/openstudios or contact Kim Manchester at kmanchester@ucsd.edu.

Bridget Mullen - painting, part of an animation
Bryan Lohr - oil
Dave Poulin - cardboard full size BMW
Joel Murphy - robot (part of large installation)
John Richey - film still
Katie Hare - encaustic
Randall Christopher - skatebaord ramp installation with original comic art