April 13 – May 7, 2011
Jurors' Statement
We appreciate this opportunity to serve as jurors for the LMU 2010-2011 Student Art Show. Our curatorial premise was to look for work that set itself apart with a unique expression. We gravitated towards those pieces that aroused our curiosity and made us want to know more. Further, we evaluated each piece based on the quality of its execution. The pieces that we selected as prize winners and honorable mentions exemplified both qualities: they were authentic in their point of view and demonstrated the artist's commitment to developing their technical abilities to the same extent as their vision.
Rather than grouping the works by media, we explored the route of presenting the voice of LMU art students as a collective. In this way we found that we opened up the space for dialogue both between the works included in the show and between the artists and us as the curators.
It is our hope that those artists who were selected as a part of this exhibition will take it as an encouragement to continue developing their authentic voices in a creative and dedicated way.
About the Jurors
Karen Rapp was appointed Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in March 2007. Ms. Rapp is a longtime resident of southern California. She earned her B.A. degree in history and art history from the University of California, Los Angeles and an M.A. in cultural history from the University of California, Riverside. Her professional emphasis has been in curatorial and museum studies.
She was most recently the Civic Art Coordinator for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission which administers the newly adopted percent-for-art program for the County of Los Angeles. Prior to that, she worked for seven years as the Assistant Director, Curator, and later, Director, of the Sweeney Art Gallery at UC Riverside. She is known for her interdisciplinary work within the arts as well as for building connections with communities through exhibitions and public programming.
She has also held positions at the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Prussian State Art Library in Berlin, Germany.
Elizabeta Betinski is a former owner and director of Overtones gallery. Overtones gallery was a vital contemporary art space in Los Angeles,presenting over 70 national and international artists in over 40 exhibitions, from 2003 through 2009. Elizabeta recently designed and edited a seminal encyclopedia of Los Angeles art and artists entitled "L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980," published by the California/International Arts Foundation in December 2010. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Goddard College. She is a big fan of yoga, tango and her cat Travis.
Award Winners
Metal Society of Southern California
Kyra-in Hom
Untitled
Moonstone, wire, resin, brass and copper
Honorable Mentions
Stephanie Argueta
Art World
Ink on Paper
Bettye Clark
Cheek to Cheek
Raku
Elise Fleming
Back in the Woods
Photo collage and mixed media
Ryan Shelton
Untitled
Digital photograph
James Thompson
Untitled
Digital photograph