PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Shelby Graham
EMAIL: sgraham@ucsc.edu
Sister Cities Program c/o Lisa McGinnis |City of Santa Cruz| 323 Church St |95060| 831.420-5277|
http://art.ucsc.edu/galleries/cielosky
Cielo/Sky part II
curated by Shelby Graham
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Opening: 11 February – 11 March, 2010
at the Sala de exposiciones del Parque García Sanabria
This is a cultural exchange project sponsored by the Canary Islands Government, Septenio, Sister Cities of Santa Cruz, CA, Porter College and the UCSC Arts Division Arts Research Institute.
Cielo/Sky Part I: November 6 – December 6, 2009 Santa Cruz, California
The cultural exchange between sister cities Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands and Santa Cruz, California was launched in November with Part I of the exhibition series Cielo/Sky at three Santa Cruz venues. Curated by digital media artist Miriam Durango from Tenerife, and organized by local curator and photographer Shelby Graham the exhibition was a stunning and successful exchange between the two sister cities. Miriam Durango enjoyed meeting city and business leaders and local artists and professors during her week-long stay in Santa Cruz and was impressed with the enthusiastic turn-out for First Friday art openings.
Cielo/Sky Part II : February 11 – March 11, 2010 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands
The second part of the exchange, curated by Shelby Graham of the UCSC Sesnon Gallery, will feature the work of Santa Cruz artists and UCSC faculty members working with the same theme of sky exhibiting their work in Tenerife. With this group of artists, the theme is applied environmentally, conceptually and metaphorically. The exhibition will take place at the Sala de exposiciones del Parque García Sanabria. Shelby Graham will travel to Tenerife to install the work and meet with cultural leaders February 8–14, 2010.
Santa Cruz artists included are Elliot Anderson, Barbara Benish (visiting artist from the Czech Republic at UCSC), Andrea Borsuk, Jim Denevan, Janet Fine, Susan Friedman, Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, Diana Hobson, Isabelle Jenniches, Victoria May, Charlie Sloan and Collaboration by Jennifer Parker & Barney Haynes and UCSC DANM Mechatronics Project Group: Lyes Belhocine, Andre Marquetti, Elizabeth Travelslight, Levi Goldman, Kyle Mckinley.
University of California Santa Cruz professor Elliot Anderson will exhibit a digital compilation of hundreds of cloud photographs and Jennifer Parker and Barney Haynes also known as sonicSENSE will create a site-specific interactive sound installation that explores the sonification and visualization of solar wind data developed collaboratively with their students in the UCSC DANM Mechatronics Project Group. Local environmental artists Newton and Helen Harrison will present a video on greenhouse gases, and video artist and photographer Susan Friedman will show her documentary “What’s Up in the Universe?” Cabrillo faculty and staff members Victoria May, Andrea Borsuk and Janet Fine will contribute works depicting the sky metaphorically in the form of an installation, balancing snow globes and photo allegories. Artist Jim Denevan will project a view of his large-scale sand drawings “from the sky”, while Diana Hobson questions the origin of the sky itself. Charlie Sloan, Barbara Benish and Isabelle Jenniches will exhibit mixed media paintings, altered photos and web cam images that capture the light, texture and vastness of stormy and political skies.
Shelby Graham has an MFA in photography and is a practicing artist exhibiting her work in the US and Japan. She has been director of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at the University of California Santa Cruz since 1999 and her curatorial works include Some Assembly Required: race, gender and globalization, 2009; Interruptions of Hierarchies, 2008; Image as Object, 2006; Hank Willis Thomas: Signifying Blackness, 2006; and The Rhetoric of the Pose: Rethinking Hannah Wilke, 2005. Graham is on the executive planning committee for a new Center for Art and Visual Studies at UCSC. She has taught courses in photography, contemporary art, and museum practices at UCSC; Cabrillo College; and Seinan Gakuin University in Kyushu, Japan.
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