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Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery Presents EAST/PACIFIC/WEST: CONFLUENCE

December 22, 2011

  • What: PCC Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery – EAST/PACIFIC/WEST: CONFLUENCE
  • Where: PCC Center for the Arts, Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery, West Campus, 2202 West Anklam Road, Tucson, AZ 85709
  • When: January 30-March 9, 2012
  • Gallery information: The gallery and its programs are free and open to the public. Gallery hours: Mon./Wed. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Tue./Thu. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and before most evening performances in the Center for the Arts theaters. Call David Andres at 520-206-6942 for more information. Center for the Arts.

Tucson, AZ -- Pima Community College's Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery announces the exhibit EAST/PACIFIC/WEST: CONFLUENCE featuring the works of Claire Campbell Park, Nancy Tokar Miller and Mary Babcock.

The work of the artists represents a merging of East, Pacific and West influences, in relation to their response to the natural world around the Hawaiian Islands and to their underlying creative philosophy. The exhibit runs January 30 through March 9, with a gallery talk Thursday, February 9, 1:30-2:30 p.m.; followed by a reception from 5–7 p.m. and a lecture at 7 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Recital Hall.

Hawaii is a place of confluence — lava merging into the sea birthing new earth. The islands, surrounded by shifting currents and trade winds, are the center of an astonishing convergence of East and West, yet it is grounded in its own specifically Pacific experience. As a place of confluence, evolving natural beauty and divergent philosophies and cultures that ebb and flow together, it is a potent source for creative inquiry reflected in the work of Babcock, Miller and Park

Babcock received her MFA from the University of Arizona and is now head of the fiber department at the University of Hawaii, in Manoa. She has a Ph.D. in psychology and says that her work is grounded in a very Western perspective.

She writes, “I would say my work is deeply resonant with, if not inspired by, eastern philosophy and by Buddhist thought and practice. I think in many ways my works are meditations, but I use the material and the act of weaving, of moving the fibers between the warps, as the focus of my meditations... much as typically one might focus on the breath as an object of mediation and use the act of counting beads in one's hand to keep the habitual mind active as a means to free up the greater mind to a deeper sense of knowing...”

Her tapestries, made of salvaged fishing nets that have washed onto the shores of Hawaii and Oregon, represent the sea in motion. They are a social statement to the problematic relationship with harvesting the ocean, yet they also create a seascape in which to explore the mind.

Miller, a highly respected painter from Tucson, earned a MFA from the University of Arizona in 1971. Since then she has had numerous solo and group exhibitions all across the country. She has been featured in scores of publications and has won many regional awards for her work. Miller has always considered herself an ocean person and first visited the Hawaiian Islands at age 16. She has since been to several Pacific, Asian, Southeast Asian and Caribbean islands.

Her work in this show found its inspiration from two recent helicopter rides she took over the pristine north side of the Hawaiian island Molokai. "Asian Art, particularly the Zen aesthetic, has been the major influence in my paintings almost all of my adult life. As a painter of abstracted landscapes who enjoys building deep space through sweeping expanses of color, I work toward an end point of simplification, a point of 'nothing extra' which, as a process, I don't always understand, but when I reach it, I know I am there.  I would hope that my paintings invite the viewer to experience a moment of exhilaration. These island views were perfect beginning points for me, a perfect fit!"

Park, instructor of color and fiber classes at PCC for 33 years, is an internationally recognized artist, lecturer and teacher. Her artwork has been included in Made in California 1900-2000 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the International Textile Competition in Kyoto, Japan; and is included in numerous collections. Lecture venues include the Louvre, Paris; Seian College of Art, Kyoto; Apeejay College of Fine Arts, Jalandhar, India; the Center for Middle East Studies, Tucson; the South Australian School of Art, Adelaide, and the East/West Center in Manoa, Hawaii.

The creative philosophy presented in her book “Creating with Reverence: Art, Diversity, Culture and Soul” was developed through research and teaching extremely diverse audiences, on five continents. Park did sabbatical research in Hawaii in 2010. In this series of work she explores her response to the natural elements she experienced in Hawaii, as influenced by her interest in eastern and western spiritual traditions. “As an artist of faith, my experience is imbued with my understanding of the holy, which is founded in Christian Catholicism and informed by a deep appreciation of Zen aesthetics.”

The Pima Community College Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery is located at the Center for the Arts on West Campus, 2202 West Anklam Road, Tucson (just west of downtown). For more information about this exhibition please contact the gallery at 520-206-6942 or centerforthearts@pima.edu.

CONTACT:
Carol Carder, marketing/pr, Center for the Arts
2202 W. Anklam Road, Tucson, AZ 85709-0140
520-206-3062

David Andres, Louis Carlos Bernal Gallery
520-206-6942