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Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil. Reception, Thursday, November 21, 4 – 7 pm at San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery
San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery presents
Dreamscape: Beyond the VeilNovember 18 – December 12, 2024
Reception: Thursday, November 21, 4 – 7 PM,
Art Gallery, FA 103FREE and OPEN to the public.
Free Parking during receptions in Lot # 1.
Park in STAFF spaces ONLY.
Image Credit: Designed by Makena Jackson, Museum Studies student,Fall 2024
Can’t join for the events?
Visit us during our regular gallery hours:
Monday through Thursday, 12-5 pm.
Closed Thanksgiving Week: November 25 – 29, 2024San Diego Mesa College,
Fine Arts Building, Art Gallery, FA103
7250 Mesa College Dr. SD 92111
Closest entrance is through Marlesta/GeneseeParticipating Artists: Adan Abaquin-Brown, Luis Alderete, Gabrielle Berens, Beate Bermann-Enn, Abigail Brown, Elizabeth Brown, Sophia Ciuffa , Annie Claflin, Krista Cuellar, Gabriela Ponce Curlango, Eva D’Amico, Alexis Deming, Meghan DeRoma, Matthew Devoys, Sheena Rae Dowling, Dana Edwards, Christopher Ferreria, Patricia Frischer, Gal Crew (Jennifer Armer, Gaby Espina, Caiti Myth), Arie Galles, Junko Glawe, Jeff Kahn, John Carlos Keasler, Natalia Kozlova, Braulio Lam, Sami Leon, Evan Lopez, Rick Macaw, Evie Maher, Kamaal Martin, Isa Guadalupe Medina ,Teresa Mill, Chris Reilly, Michelle Montjoy, Alejandro Morales, Caiti Myth, James Nelson, Dakota Noot, christian olid-ramirez, Philip Petrie, Lulu Yueming Qu, Josie Rodriguez, Kayah Rybar, Alyanah Santos, Sandra Segovia ,Cheryl Tall, Alyssa Marielle Villagracia, Bryan Tipton, Ell Treese, Christopher Tucker , Patricia Valero, Kelsey Worth, Jessica Yambao
“A Dream of Earth’s Hope” by Lulu Yueming QuThe San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery cordially invites you to experience Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil, a student-curated exhibition. Human beings have always been fascinated with the mysteries of the subconscious and the visions that lurk beneath the surface of logic and reason. The Museum Studies class has curated an exhibition featuring 54 talented local artists whose work is inspired by dreams in all their forms.
Join us for the reception on Thursday, November 21, 4 – 7 pm to participate in a thought-provoking interactive piece by artist group Gal Crew. As guests enter the space they will encounter What Drifts Through Your Dreamscape?, a mesmerizing, multifaceted installation that explores whimsical and unsettling realms. This imaginative work creates a dynamic dialogue between light and dark, engaging the viewer from the moment they approach the gallery window.
Sheena Rae Dowling’s A Guide to Becoming Water was inspired by the painter’s own dreams, which she has cataloged over the course of 25 years. Invoking her recurring nightmares of the ocean, Dowling scrapes the edges of her psyche for the surreal imagery she delivers to the canvas. The artist highlights the cyclical nature and mystical properties of the sea, contrasting the terror and the beauty of the deep. Meanwhile, Patricia Frischer visualizes her dreams in a series of painted vinyl records – full of color and contrast that give a glimpse into the jubilant yet mysterious world of her subconscious. Hot-air balloons carry a silhouetted stranger who presides over a landscape of rushing seas and plateaus, a shadowy yet constant presence. Both artists pose questions that we often ask ourselves after dreaming: Who is that faceless figure? What is that bizarre place? And, perhaps most mysterious of all, why does this dream keep coming back?
Philip Petrie and christian olid-ramirez confront unsettling nightmares with their work. Petrie’s somber canvases, Approaching and Departure Mountain, mirror intriguing and disturbing dreams. christian olid-ramirez’s large oil paintings from his series The Gloaming depict a fictional “desert of the mind” –a mental sandbox exploring the darkest thoughts and impulses of the human soul. Bounty renders a pile of blocky severed limbs placed before a pyre. Haunted and surreal, these works dip into the shadowy recesses of the mind, challenging viewers to explore paths rarely walked in daylight.
Dreamscape: Beyond the Veil invites viewers to contemplate how dreams shape our understanding and experience of the world. Highlighting symbolic explorations of the natural and mythical, this exhibition promises a captivating encounter with the world of the unconscious. This intriguing and engaging exhibition was developed under the guidance of Professor Alessandra Moctezuma and Gallery Coordinator Jenny Armer.
Gallery Hours: M, T, W, TH 12 – 5 p.m. (Or by appointment.) Closed Fridays, Weekends & Holidays. For additional information, please visit: https://www.sdmesa.edu/art-gallery or call (619) 388-2829.
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Celebrating Black women with an exhibition featuring artwork by Elizabeth Salaam and Jean Cornwell Wheat, Reception: Thursday, March 21, 4 – 7 pm
We are Women: Jean Cornell Wheat
and Elizabeth Salaam paired with
“Beautiful, Brilliant & Brave:
A Celebration of Black Women”March 18 – April 18, 2024
FREE and OPEN to the public
Reception: Thursday, March 21, 4 – 7 pm
Musical performance by Mariea Antoinette
FREE parking in Lot # 1, in STAFF parking ONLY.Artists Websites: https://www.elizabethsalaam.
com/
https://www.artpowerequity.com/about-3 Can’t join for the events?
Visit us during our regular gallery hours:
Monday through Thursday, 12-5 pm.For appointment outside of regular hours email request to: amoctezu@sdccd.edu
For additional information, visit: https://www.sdmesa.edu/art-gallery
or call (619) 388-2829 during business hours.San Diego Mesa College,
Fine Arts Building, Art Gallery, FA103
7250 Mesa College Dr. SD 92111
Closest entrance is through Marlesta/GeneseeImage credit: Jean Cornwell Wheat, Snail, 2023, 48″ x 36″, acrylic on canvas;
Elizabeth Salaam, detail from Bitch I’m from Here, 2024, mixed media.With panels celebrating local women and artwork delving into personal narratives of displacement and connection, this dual-themed exhibit shines a light on Black women’s experiences in America. Artwork by Jean Cornwell Wheat and Elizabeth Salaam is paired with 2014’s “Beautiful, Brilliant and Brave: a Celebration of Black Women” curated by Starla Lewis and Aisha Hollins for the Women’s Museum of California. Presented by the Mesa College Art Gallery in honor of Women’s History Month this exhibition will be on display from March 18 – April 18, 2024, with a reception on Thursday, March 21 from 4 – 7 p.m. featuring a special musical performance by Mariea Antoinette.
There will also be additional programming including story telling, music and workshops. An artist talk is scheduled for Wednesday, April 17, 5 – 7 pm. The gallery is closed for Spring Break: March 25 – 29.
The exhibit “Beautiful, Brilliant and Brave” consists of biographical panels recognizing the contributions of twenty female Black leaders with connections to the San Diego region. San Diego Mesa College president Ashanti Hands and retired San Diego Community College chancellor Dr. Constance Carroll are honored in this iteration and included with several notable artists, educators and community activists.
Gallery director Alessandra Moctezuma took this as an opportunity to highlight two local Black women artists belonging to different generations: Jean Cornwell Wheat and Elizabeth Salaam.
As a mixed race child adopted into a white home and raised in a white town, Elizabeth Salaam grew up with a deep sense of disconnection. As an adult, in hair salons and living rooms and around kitchen tables, she finally found herself in deep conversations with other Black women. For this new body of work, Salaam plaited synthetic hair into braids, and used seed pods, branches and plaster-cast body parts to weave together narratives of displacement and to explore the multifaceted experience of being Black in America. The braids also symbolize the bonds between women in all cultures and the fundamental element of community in the health and wholeness of a human being.
Many of the braids in the exhibition were crafted in communal settings, and their abundance embodies the spirit of togetherness and resilience. Through “Re-Mother,” a large womb-like chair woven with braids and adorned with breasts, and its companion “Re-home,” a film that captures the intimacy of Black women braiding together, the work highlights the significance of community as a source of nourishment and a place of comfort.
Painter, sculptor, multi-media artist, and a professor of art history, Jean Cornwell Wheat invites the viewer into her personal realm in artworks that cover a variety of topics. Cornwell Wheat moved to San Diego from Harlem in 1966, and the cultural life of this historical Black epicenter shaped her unique and timeless perspective. Her canvases are vigorous and engaging. In the exhibit there is a large portrait of author Toni Morrison, who stares at us with an intense gaze and a luminous landscape that breaks up in a cubist prismatic composition. An abstracted nude and a lush enlargement of a snail’s shell, both rendered in warm flesh tones, speak to earthiness and our connection to Nature. A female head, regal as an Egyptian goddess, is actually a depiction of the only artwork that survived the 2007 fire that destroyed the artist’s studio: a bronze bust burned to reveal amazing flecks of brilliant colors.
Ms. Jean, as she’s affectionately called, is a mentor to under-privileged youth in San Pasqual Valley. In 2023, the San Diego Museum of Art acquired one of her paintings for their collection.
Gallery Hours: M, T, W, TH 12 – 5 p.m. (Or by appointment.) Closed Fridays, Weekends & Holidays. For additional information, please visit: https://www.sdmesa.edu/art-
gallery or call (619) 388-2829.
