Sunday, May 3rd, 4- 5 pm, Hall of Science 100  (HSCI)  : A conversation between curator and program director John Spiak and Isabelle Lutterodt

Sunday, May 10th, 4- 5 pm, Hall of Science 103  (HSCI):  A conversation between curator Dan Cameron and artist Mario Ybarra Jr.

Comprised of a combination of natural and industrial materials, the sculptures and installations of Oscar Tuazon reference minimalist sensibilities, extreme do-it-yourself aesthetics and vernacular architecture. His works maintain an improvised, precarious quality that draws upon his long-standing interest in how the built environment is redefined and redesigned by the act of inhabitation.  Tuazon says, “I hope that the effect of my work is mostly physical. That’s what I like — walking through something, having an experience of the weight of things, or an experience of balance… That kind of really basic physical thing makes the work interesting; it makes it disarming and strange.”

CSULB Art Lecturer Eve Wood will behaving an exhibition at Sloan Projects in Bergamont Station entitled “Through the Trees, A Willingness.” The show will run from April 18th through May 16 featuring a wall-to-wall installation of works on paper. An array of avian portraits expressively rendered in gouache, graphite and oil stick on handmade rag paper highlight the artist’s life-long connection to orphaned and injured birds and her commitment to their rescue and rehabilitation. For over a decade Wood has cared privately for birds and as a volunteer at an animal way station where she provides education about animal welfare to inner city children. This up close and personal contact with a long line of birds has developed into a near obsessive creative documentation of their personalities and struggles in the artist’s unmistakable style.

Michael Osborn has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences and design schools, and was the recipient of the prestigious AIGA Fellow Award in the summer of 2006. His work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco MOMA, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

Michael has also designed the 2002 and 2004 Love stamps, the 2006 and 2013 Wedding stamp set, the 2006 Madonna & Child stamp, the 2007 Patriotic Banner stamp, and the 2012 presorted Spectrum Eagle stamps for the USPS. Michael received his undergraduate degree at Art Center College of Design, and his MFA at the Academy of Art University, where he has taught Package Design since 1991.

Since 1981, Michael Osborne Design has been creating some of the most memorable packaging, corporate identity, and retail design solutions for clients that include Kettle, Target, Sam’s Club, Williams-Sonoma, Brown-Forman, numerous wineries, and the U.S. Postal Service. Our work speaks for itself and so do the robust sales figures our clients experience. We have garnered awards from all major design competitions, including recognition by many industry publications such as a feature article in Communication Arts, 2011.

The CSULB Animation department has launched their own channel on YouTube! Their first posting is a reel of student work from 2014, highlighting the extensive and creative output from many of our student’s films. Assistant Professor Beomsik Shim says that a selection of full length student films will be posted in the future.  Congratulations to the Animation Department and their students for showcasing their efforts and sharing it with the world!

Why the Getty is giving Cal State Long Beach’s 1960s sculpture park a fresh look

by Carolina A. Miranda

In 1965, a university professor at Cal State Long Beach teamed up with an Israeli artist to organize a symposium that paired artists with industry (such as the local Bethlehem Steel works) to create a series of monumental pieces that would reside on the university’s campus. Nine artists participated, producing massive abstract pieces made from concrete, earth and steel — works that dot the campus to this day.

But half a century is a long time, and some of the pieces are starting to show their age with peeling paint, structural issues and problems with moisture (from the sea air and lawn watering). To mark the 50th anniversary of the sculpture symposium, the University Art Museum has teamed up with the Getty Conservation Institute to survey and help conserve the collection.

“For us, it provides an opportunity to have practical case studies that exemplify the challenges of working with outdoor sculptures,” said Rachel Rivenc, a scientist at the institute. “These are quite different to objects than you find in a museum: There’s the scale and the fact that they’re outdoors and prone to damage from sun and rain and the ocean, which is very close.”

The partnership also resurrects an interesting slice of Southern California art history — one that sits at the intersection of art, technology and global politics.

The California International Sculpture Symposium was co-organized by Cal State Long Beach sculpture professor Kenneth Glenn and Israeli artist Kosso Eloul (best known for producing the eternal-flame sculpture at the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel). It was part of an international series of symposiums launched in Europe in 1959, and was the first held in the U.S.

“It was this response to the war and to the politics of the era,” said Brian Trimble, the University Art Museum’s interim director. “It was artists wanting to show that we as human beings could work together and be civil and not engage in destructive wars.”

“I work primarily on large figure paintings that are somewhat autobiographical and metaphoric in content and still life paintings that are done from observation. I see the figure paintings and the still lifes as interrelated- the same objects will make appearances in different paintings and contribute to the conversation between the paintings. I am interested in arrangement, context and paint itself as a conveyor of sensate experience. I feel that, as a painter, these are the things I to manipulate,” says artist Eve Mansdorf.

“The large figure paintings are conceived from imagination but are based in real life experience and location. The paintings are primarily domestic interiors, usually of couples or single figures. I am interested the nude figure as subject matter and strive to find a pretext for using it other than in the strictly perceptual mode of the model in a studio. Usually the paintings focus on male/female relationships as I see this as a way of exploring identity and sexuality.” Ms. Mansdorf got her MFA from Brooklyn College and shows at Galerie Henoch in New York.