SWC Art Gallery Hosts Cross-Border Show
A bi-national photo exhibit, featuring photographs taken by four prolific artists, will be held at the Southwestern College Art Gallery in conjunction with the Tijuana Cultural Center beginning March 12.
Gustavo Mayoral will be curating the show. His photos will be on display along with series from internationally renowned photographer, designer, editor and educator Ave Pildas; photojournalist David Maung; and Southwestern College faculty Carlos Richardson.
Each series of work tells a different story – ranging from aspiring fashion models, to the changing of seasons over Mount Helix.
The opening reception will begin at Southwestern College Art Gallery on Thursday March 12, at 11:00 a.m. and end at 2:00 p.m. Parking will be free in Lot O, which is located on the east side of the school along Otay Lakes Road.
Mayoral is a contemporary Mexican photographer, born in Tijuana, Baja California. He has worked with the medium since the early 2000s in fashion and portrait photography. His latest work experiments with the contemporary in genders, like still life, and mixed media. His work has been published internationally and been popular in the social media. He has also created special tools for photo manipulation and has written and taught workshops on the subject. He currently lives and works in San Diego, CA. Mayoral’s series, Models from the Mayhem, showcases trade-for-print photographs of aspiring models he took from 2009-13. Trade-for-print photos are when a model and other artist collaborate to build each other’s portfolios, free of charge. The series focuses on the real story behind the models—stories like a new mother trying to break into the modeling world, or the man who accompanied a model to her shoot and stole the spotlight.
Pildas has 50 years of experience studying and working in Cincinnati, Chicago and Basel, Switzerland. In the 1970s he returned to the United States and began photographing the people and events of everyday Los Angeles. His photos have been published in two books: “Art Deco: Los Angeles” and “Movie Palaces.” His series, Paper Movies, consist of multiple images, usually 4-to-24, arranged together in a sequence to tell a story a single photo could not.
Maung has taken photos for scores of prevalent media outlets including The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Washington Post. Since 1996 he has worked exclusively in Tijuana, Mexico.
Southwestern College photo department faculty member Carlos Richardson has a Masters of Fine Arts from Yale University and also teaches photography at San Diego City College. His work photographing Mount Helix over the last few years, which will be featured at the event, will also be the focus of his one-man show in Osaka, Japan in June.
Free Festival to Showcase Latin American Art
Nearly 100 artists and crafts-men, and international cuisine chefs, will participate in the Latin American Art Festival on March 21 and 22 at the NTC Arts & Culture District in Liberty Station.
The public is invited and admission is free to the festival, which also seeks to attract gallery owners and collectors interested in expanding their Latin American works. A significant number of artists living inside and outside of the United States will participate in the event, whose slogan is “Let your art represent your country.”
Internationally recognized artists will exhibit and sell their work in specially erected festival tents. “The NTC Arts & Culture District has seen a growing collection of Latino artists and galleries, including Casa Valencia Galeria Baja and La Onda Arte Latino. This is the exact type of creative and artistic festival we hoped for when we envisioned this project,” said NTC Foundation Executive Director Alan Ziter. “We welcome the diversity of artists, chefs and visitors to our ever-growing cultural campus and congratulate all the organizers and volunteers on this inaugural event.”
Leading chefs will participate in the festival. Renowned Tijuana chef Javier Plasencia, ambassador of Latin American cuisine in TV shows such as “The Taste,” will be on hand to promote his new Bracero restaurant in Little Italy.
The Latin American Art Festivalis March 21 and 22, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at NTC Liberty Station.