Bakersfield Museum of Art's Podcast Rachel Magnus

Lita Albuquerque is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist and writer. Emerging from California’s Light and Space movement, Albuquerque has developed a visual language that investigates identity and the cosmos through painting, sculpture, as well as monumental environmental installations.
Her array of accolades includes three NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) Art in Public Places awards, an NEA Individual Fellowship grant, the 2019 Laguna Art Museum Wendt Artist of the Year Award, and MOCA’s (Museum of Contemporary Art) Distinguished Women in the Arts award. In 2020, Albuquerque major outdoor projects including NAJMA (She Placed One Thousand Suns Over the Transparent Overlays of Space) for Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia, and Red Earth at the Huntington Botanical Gardens and Library Centennial Celebration. Her work is in the collections of the institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Trust, the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA and MOCA, among others.
For Further Information:
On the Edge Exhibition: www.bmoa.org/exhibition/on-the-edge
Lita Albuquerque: www.litaalbuquerque.com/
Instagram: @litaalbuquerque
 
 

Raised in Houston, TX, Gregory Wiley Edwards was a student at California Institute of the Arts and the Art Institute of San Francisco. He was mentored by second-wave Gutai artist, Matsumi Kanemitsu, and New York abstract expressionist Emerson Weolffer at CalArts, leading him to distinguish his art through performance, activism, and his investigations into African art and philosophy. The gestures made onto his all-over paintings are abstract and fluid like as if the brushstrokes were caught in motion on the verge of creating its final form. In his “Stroke Ism” work, Edwards point to the long tradition of iconography from cultures around the world, that is both unique and shared, coupled with his personal relationships and narratives. 
After living in Los Angeles for three decades, Edwards moved to Oakland, CA, where he continues to make work.
website: www.bmoa.org
 

This episode of the BMoA podcast is a recording of the second of two panel discussions held on November 18, 2021 at BMoA’s On the Edge Artist Symposium. The panel, Los Angeles 1970 – 1990: Exploring the Myth of California Through Materials and Subject., was moderated by Rani Singh, former director at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills and former co-curator at Getty Research Institute.  
Here, On the Edge exhibiting artists Lita Albuquerque, Charles Arnoldi, Laddie John Dill, Ned Evans, and Andy Moses discuss the blurred distinctions between different art styles, the freedom that encouraged artists to use new materials in artmaking, the support network and friendliness that distinguished the Los Angeles art scene from its New York counterpart, and the influence that the California landscape had over their work.  
website: www.bmoa.org
 

Welcome the Bakersfield Museum of Art podcast. This audio series offers entertaining and informative discussion about arts and events at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. The Bakersfield Museum of Art’s mission is to inspire and engage diverse audiences by providing a broad spectrum of creative visual arts experiences through exhibitions, educational programs, and community outreach. In a similar fashion, we hope this podcast expounds upon themes in contemporary art and art history.
On the evening of November 18, 2021 BMoA hosted a group of artists whose work is included in our current exhibition “On the Edge: Los Angeles Art 1970s – 1990s from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection” for an unforgettable symposium.
During two separate panel discussions that evening exhibiting artists discussed their experience of working in Los Angeles during the decades that both established Los Angeles as an art counter market to the European art scene, and saw a diversification in the art styles, materials, artists being covered.
This episode of the BMoA podcast is a recording of the first panel discussion that evening: California Ethos: Conceptualism and Literalism. Moderated by BMoA Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Rachel McCullah Wainwright, On the Edge artists Don Bachardy, Gregory Wiley Edwards, Astrid Preston, Allen Ruppersberg talk about how social upheaval reverberated through the art world of Los Angeles, the network that developed between artists and the collectors who championed their work, and how the California Cool ethos informed those artists’ work.
 

Lynda Benglis is most celebrated for her engagement with the physicality of material within her artistic practice. Studying in New York City, Benglis propelled Abstract Expressionism’s gestural temperament away from the confines of the canvas. In the 1960s, she created fluid sculptures by pouring pigmented wax and latex within the gallery space, allowing the work to dictate its final form, while subverting the bravado of the male art stars from that period. The following decades saw production of provocative video and photographic work that explored the artist’s concern of gender stereotypes, critique of the art market and the artist as celebrity. Benglis continues to create today, compelling an ongoing conversation between abstraction and femininity and is featured in BMoA’s current exhibition On the Edge: Los Angeles Art 1970s - 1990s from the Joan and Jack Quinn Family Collection.
For Further Information:
On the Edge Exhibition: www.bmoa.org/exhibition/on-the-edge
Lynda Benglis: www.pacegallery.com/artists/lynda-benglis/
 
 

Joan Agajanian Quinn and her late husband Jack represent a key moment in the history of contemporary art, as Los Angeles came to symbolize an innovative and prolific brand of creative freedom. Few individuals have left such an indelible mark on the artistic landscape of Southern California more than Joan and Jack Quinn. Joan found herself both muse and promoter of several Southern California artists, while Jack used his skills as a prominent and influential attorney to help an array of emerging artists and their dealers navigate the worlds of law and business.
Known for her charisma, intelligence and incomparable flamboyance, Joan Agajanian Quinn has served as inspiration for artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Zandra Rhodes, Larry Bell, Frank Gehry, Ed Moses, Helmut Newton, Billy Al Bengston, Antonio Lopez and many others. As artists sought to record her image across a variety of media, Joan Quinn found herself with one of the world’s largest and significant collections of contemporary portraiture — a poignant representation of friendship, appreciation, and respect.