Art at SBCC

So yesterday I had the privilege of interviewing Dane Goodman, the curator for the Atkinson Gallery. 
I met with him and his student intern, Mitch, who helped to curate a student exhibition. The video of this will be available soon, but in the meantime I wanted to talk about the lecture I went to yesterday. Dane let me know about Linda Ekstrom, and I returned to the Humanities building later that day to check it out. The lecture was completely packed- in fact I ended up having to sit on the floor. I couldn't believe how many students would show up for a voluntary lecture to hear her speak. The students were so engaged, and the questions they asked after the lecture really showed how passionate the art students are.

Her lecture was well done and fascinating. She showed us images of her work on a powerpoint, and talked about her influences and how sometimes the meaning of your work is revealed to you once you have finished it. She attended SBCC, and then transferred to UCSB.
She has been a professor at SBCC, but is currently only teaching at UCSB. Because she came from the SBCC community, it was really easy to relate to her and also be so impressed that students from our art department can be so successful.

She currently is being exhibited and has been reviewed by famous art critics, but she's very down to earth. She gave everyone a pencil on it that said "Love your audience", to reflect the emotional bond between artist and audience, which ties in with  a piece that she created on silk that read "hold me". A main influence of her work is words, and she tries to create "what language might look like if we could release the text back into the world after its done its work".

One of my favorite pieces was "Work of the Bees". It was a bible that she put into a honeybee hive, in which the bees formed a honeycomb over it, melding something holy and related to manking, and nature. I also really enjoyed a piece called "Space for Memory", in which she created a space in the gallery at UCSB with 124 candles tied into Holocaust Memorial Day. Hillel came in and read Night, and because she had to watch the candles all week to make sure there wasn't a fire hazard, it created a unique opportunity to interact and observe her audience.