April 4th: UCSB Professor Alex Lukas

Alex Lukas was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in nearby Cambridge. With a wide range of influences, Lukas’ practice is focused on the intersections of place and human activity, narrative, history, and invention. His fieldwork, research, and production reframes the monumental and the incidental through intricate publication series, sculptures, drawings, prints, videos, and audio collages. Lukas’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is included in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Kadist Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art Library, the New York Public Library, and the Library of the Museum of Modern Art. Lukas has been awarded residencies at The Bemis Center for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, The Fountainhead, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s Arts/Industry program, amongst others. He graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2018. Lukas is currently an Assistant Professor of Print and Publication in the Department of Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and organizer of CA53776V2.gallery, an experimental exhibition platform on the dashboard of a 2007 Ford Ranger.

April 11th: Katja Seltmann, Director of the UCSB Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration

Katja Seltmann, also known as Irene Moon, is an artist and entomologist with a passion for experimental music. Her career blends scientific research in the study of insects with creative expression to showcase the beauty and complexity of the insect world. Over her career, she has published over 35 scientific papers as part of a research program that combines data science, digitized natural history collections, and media arts. Simultaneously, she has aimed to elevate the study of insects into a music genre, bringing the aesthetics of the entomology laboratory in front of alternative audiences in the form of absurd, factual presentations about insects, musical recordings, radio, theater and performances connecting science and fable. Seltmann has created over 30 musical volumes and conducted live radio broadcasts on entomological topics, including on WFMU in New York and other radio stations. She has performed at basement house shows and renowned music venues such as the Knitting Factory, Cafe Oto in London, and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, touring the US, Europe, and Australia for both her science and art. Seltmann received a degree in Fine Art from the University of Georgia, a Master’s degree in Entomology from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Szeged, Hungary. Currently, she is the Director of the UC Santa Barbara Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Website: https://www.begoniasociety.org/

April 18th: Jennifer West

Jennifer West (b.1966, Topanga, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist who has explored materialism in film for over fifteen years. Her work often centers on memory, place and the archaeology of media. Significant commissions include works for LIAF Biennial; Seattle Art Museum; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; The High Line, New York, NY; MIT List Visual Arts Center; Aspen Art Museum; and Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London. West has had solo exhibitions and presentations at the Pompidou Center, Paris; Times Square Arts, New York; JOAN Los Angeles; Contemporary Art Museum St Louis; Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Museo d’Arte  Nuoro, Sardinia; Tramway, Glasgow; S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK; Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; White Columns, New York, NY . West received an MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and a BA from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She is a Professor at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA.

April 25th: Janna Ireland

Janna Ireland lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Occidental College. Her photographic work is primarily concerned with the themes of family, home, and the expression of Black identity in American culture. In 2016, she began photographing structures designed by legendary Black architect Paul R. Williams. A collection of 250 of these photographs was published in a monograph entitled Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, in 2020. In 2021, Ireland was awarded a Peter E. Pool Research Fellowship by the Nevada Museum of Art to photograph Williams’ work in Nevada. Ireland is the recipient of the 2023 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Art Prize. Her mid-career survey, Janna Ireland: True Story Index, is currently on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.

A broad selection of Ireland’s work was included in the exhibition “Family Album: Dannielle Bowman, Janna Ireland and Contemporary Works from LACMA” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Charles White Elementary School Gallery. Ireland’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of institutions including LACMA, SFMOMA, the Nevada Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been the subject of articles in publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Harvard Design Magazine, and Aperture. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU.

May 2nd: Rosha Yaghmai

Rosha Yaghmai (Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2007) and a BFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (2001). Solo exhibitions have been held at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2022); Kayne Griffin Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2019); Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn (2016); and Weiss, Berlin (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2017); Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2017); Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2018); The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2018); Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles (2018); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2016); Public Fiction, Los Angeles (2014); and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008). Yaghmai is a recipient of California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2019), Villa Aurora Fellowship, Berlin (2016), and Terra Foundation Fellowship (2009). Yaghmai’s work is in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

May 9th: Devon Tsuno

Devon Tsuno is an artist and fourth generation Angeleno. His recent spray paint and acrylic paintings, installations, and public art focus on Japanese American history. Tsuno’s interests have been central to his work with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Topaz Museum, Utah; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Candlewood Arts Festival, Borrego Springs, California; LA Metro; and Gallery Lara, Tokyo. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, NPR, KCET, Artillery Magazine, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal. Tsuno is a 2017 Santa Fe Art Institute Water Rights Artist-In-Residence, is the 2016 SPArt Community Grantee, and was awarded a 2014 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Art. He is a member of J-TOWN Action と Solidarity and is an Associate Professor of Art at California State University Dominguez Hills. You can explore more of Devon Tsuno’s work on his Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devontsunostudio/?hl=en

May 16th: Meghan Gordon

Meghan Gordon (b. 1985, New York) is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, facilitator, curator, and gallerist. Gordon’s context-responsive practices consider how labor, language, value, and pleasure intersect in the formation of personal relationships. Relevant projects include: Lights for Collaborating at Night, a residency and reading environment at BOOKSHELVES at 3307 W Washington Blvd; some times, a performative project space in the form of an itinerant bar; Studio Cooking (in collaboration with Arden Surdam), a series of meal-based programs hosted by the Feminist Center for Creative Work (formerly WCCW) at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; and Toggle (with the collective neverhitsend), a digital residency and exhibition platform at 221A, Vancouver, BC. Gordon has received support from several arts organizations, including The Artist Project Los Angeles, New York Foundation for the Arts, Sculpture Space, The Times Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dieu Donné Papermill, Wave Hill, Victorian Society of America, MacDowell, Burlington City Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Gordon holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and is Director of OCHI, a contemporary art gallery with locations in Los Angeles, CA and Sun Valley, ID.

May 23rd: Natasha Wheat

Natasha Wheat is an artist whose diverse body of work explores social experience as a sensual phenomenon that is riddled with hierarchical complexity. Her objects, installations, and interventions engender and disrupt materials, often existing as traces of violent experience. Recent works examine the collapse of human created belief systems, and the spaces between our confinements within civilization and evolutionary wildness. Wheat is the founder of Project Grow, an art studio and urban farming program based in Portland, Oregon, that collaborated with developmentally disabled adults and investigated the intersection of food, value systems, society, and physical contact with the earth as a form of de-institutionalization. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at such venues as The Detroit Art Museum, the Wattis, The Museum of Folk and Craft Art San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum, Roberts Projects and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Her studio is in Ojai, CA, on a Mountain.

May 30th: MFA 2024 Thesis Show Round Table

The 2024 Master of Fine Arts Program graduating artists present their thesis work that is on view at the UCSB Art, Design and Architecture Museum.
https://www.museum.ucsb.edu/exhibitions/upcoming

June 6th: UCSB Professor Kim Yasuda

Kim Yasuda is an Artist and Professor of Public Practice in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara. During her academic career at UCSB, Yasuda has served twice as department chair and was the systemwide Co-Director for the UC Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) from 2005 to 2014. Yasuda’s creative work and public research investigate the role of art practice in educational institutions, community development and public life. Her recent projects combine teaching and research to shape pedagogical experiments across disciplinary knowledge and creative practice. Yasuda works with faculty, students and staff across Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM to build cross-sector collaborations that mitigate social and environmental challenges by modeling academic stewardship, public participation and mutual aid.