University Art Gallery Presents Exhibit on Printmaking and Digital Prints

“60 x 60.” an exhibition featuring 60 small prints in a wide range of printmaking media, and “Lisa Bloomfield: Stories from Home,” an exhibit highlighting 30 brilliantly colored narrative digital ink jet prints by Los Angeles artist Lisa Bloomfield, will open on September 30 in the California State University, Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery and continue through October 29.

Originating at Purdue University Galleries, “60 x 60” is a traveling exhibition of contemporary prints acquired from the galleries’ biennial small print exhibition, “Sixty Square Inches.” The strength and variety of printmaking over the past 30 years is revealed in this small-scale exhibit through the presence of very large creative personalities. Highlights include Warrington Colescott’s wry political print, “Poker Night at Pentagon,” Walter Crump’s whimsical jewel-like etching, “Going Fishing,” and Raymond Gloeckler’s complex, satiric wood engraving, “The Critics.”

“Stories from Home” features the work of Lisa Bloomfield, a prominent Los Angeles artist and a tenured faculty member at Orange Coast College, where she is co-chair of the Digital Media Arts and Design Department. Her digital and photographic work explores the relationship of images to text, including sequential wall installations, diptychs, artist’s books, magazine double page spreads, billboards and web-based narratives. Locale and characters are often suggested by cropped fragments from found or personal images, maps without identifying details, and images with dramatically altered color. A large body of her work also includes digital manipulation of wallpaper, where she isolates and/or re-sequences design elements, thus creating new readings for these neutral backgrounds.

An opening reception will take place on September 30, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. A conversation with Bloomfield in conjunction with the opening begins at 6:30 p.m.

A series of K-12 workshops related to the exhibits is being presented by the City of Carson Fine Arts and Historical Commission to students in Carson schools and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Carson.

The commission is also a sponsor of the exhibit, along with the university’s Instructionally Related Activities Committee of the Associated Students, Inc. The “60 x 60” exhibit has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts through its Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Invitational Initiative funding program.

Open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, the University Art Gallery is located in room A-107 on the first floor of LaCorte Hall on the campus of CSU Dominguez Hill, 1000 E. Victoria St, Carson. Admission to all gallery events is free.

For more information about the University Art Gallery at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

For more information about “60 x 60,” click here. To learn more about Lisa Bloomfield, click here.

- Kathy Zimmerer