By Charlize Althea Garcia, Oct. 8, 2024
Amid a crowded gallery filled with artists and art lovers alike, sits a clay “vessel,” “Mehr 1” by Shahin Massoudi. Unbalanced in shape, plain in color, only to be adorned with Persian calligraphic script.
“In this earth,
In this pure field,
Let us not plant anything but love and kindness.”
A poem by Rumi.
Massoudi is one of the four artists who won an award at this year’s Ink and Clay competition, a juried show of works by professional artists from throughout the country held at the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery of Cal Poly Pomona. Each artist adhered to the competition’s theme, “Art and Science Collide,” displaying a storied message in each corner of the gallery.
Shahin Massoudi is an Iranian painter and ceramicist and has been making art since she was a child. She recalled fond memories of her childhood in Iran, taking influence from her artist brother. Those memories took place before the revolution.
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was an uprising that took place in the majority of Iran and resulted in the toppling of the authoritarian government led by the Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Massoudi lived in Iran when she was young and studied administration in university. She moved to Germany then to the U.S. in the beginning of the revolution. She studied art at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, then found her way to California where she teaches children art, finding inspiration from their natural child-like bravery.
Before finding her current style of art, her art displayed conscientiousness to detail. She referenced a time where she would replicate the details of the roots of a tree in one of her pieces. Now, her pieces follow simplicity in form, displaying authenticity and avoiding embellishments; quiet in display but loud in message.
“Mehr” means kindness and love. The clay piece was a message to the everlasting series of chaos in each corner of the world. It was painted in one color, white, with dimensions disproportionate to each other.
Moussadi was inspired by Iranian artists and poets, as well as other artists from around the world for the ceramic.
“I just want to say something about what’s going on in the world,” said Massoudi. “Give a message to the world. A life inspired by purpose is a life defined by vision and meaning rather than personal gain or losses. It roots us in a profound sense of meaning.”
One of the other pieces she submitted was an ink painting inspired by Narges Mohammadi, a 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner who is currently imprisoned in Iran.
“I’m not that kind of person to make something so loud,” said Massoudi. “Mostly, my pieces are very quiet. But at that moment I just wanted to make something, paint something, draw something for people here to hear her voice. If you look at it, it’s so loud, so loud.”
Massoudi made it her mission to use art to spread awareness about the many ongoing struggles of her home country.
“I try to,” said Massoudi. “I’m not that satisfied, of course, but you just have to try to do your best. I try to do my best as much as I can, as much as I am able.”
The clay “vessel,” as referred to Massoudi in most of her pieces, sits in the East Gallery. Michelle Filmore, the curator of the Kellogg Gallery, noticed that within the collection of art she received, there were sub genres that naturally came about.
What can be found in the East Gallery is the concept of place, with pieces ranging from ideas referencing the concept of home to pieces referencing space.
Down the corridor gallery and into the back gallery, lies a painting, “La Frontera Site III,” adhering to the theme of the human experience.
Kyle Chaput classifies art as an “intrinsic aspect of being human.” Creating his pieces was an act of finding solace in his struggles with Chron’s disease.
Chaput lived in McAllen, Texas, a city on the Mexico-US border that extends to the Rio Grande Valley. Originally from Kansas, he moved there in 2016 at the beginning of the construction of the border wall. His personal experimentations in art naturally collided with his first-hand experience with the border’s creation, as well as the rise in political tension.
La Frontera Site III explores his internal struggles with a chronic illness while alluding to conflicting aspects of ‘border life.’ In his abstract painting, one object can instantly be recognized — the ladders. The ladders were a representation of ones Chaput found on the side of the border cut into pieces by border patrol.
“I would oftentimes go and take those and rescue them as artifacts even though they (border patrol) didn’t actually like it,” said Chaput. “I would try to rescue them and think about the significance of those, where a pile of discarded wood with a few nails can easily scale a 16-foot multibillion-dollar border wall.”
Chaput also used articles of clothing, socks and shoelaces found along the border to create the sparse and erratic marks within the painting. The biomorphic gray encapsulating the ladders was a representation of his abstract feelings toward the border.
La Frontera Site III translates to “the border site III,” a continuation of Chaput’s research on the exploration of the many facets of communal identity along the Rio Grande Valley.
“I feel that it’s an increasingly misrepresented international border which remains an entity unto itself where both nations disavow it,” said Chaput.
As an artist, Chaput felt he was bound to create based on these lived experiences.
“I couldn’t just not talk about it, not say it when I’m right there living literally in that place,” said Chaput.
Across the painting and in the left corner, lies a display of crates and ceramic sculptures of heads varying in size. The heads each display expressions of anguish with a few inhabiting skyscrapers and poles sticking out of their eyes and face. The piece is situated in the Back Gallery, with the theme being climate change.
Pascual “Paco”Arriaga is a Cal Poly Pomona alumnus who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and currently lives in central California. Between his commute to Reedley College and Porterville College, where he teaches art, he has witnessed the many fields and dairy farms affected by the weather conditions caused by climate change such as excessive rainfall and droughts.
“Withered” is a display of the tragedy of losing one’s farm to weather. The empty crates were sourced from an actual farm to represent the bad crops unable to be consumed. The ceramic sculptures were from Arriaga’s previous solo show, “Cessation.”
Arriaga defines cessation as the moment in between something ending and the moment before the new thing is happening. He takes this interpretation and applies it to the moment when farmers experience extreme weather conditions detrimental to their farm: will they adapt and flourish or will they lose their life’s work? He also alludes to these sculptures of the Earth abused by people and their destructive decisions with the environment.
Arriaga made it a point to use primarily found and recycled objects in his piece.
“I wouldn’t do a piece like a big, fancy oil painting,” said Arriaga. “You’re polluting. You’re using expensive oil-toxic paint and you’re talking about saving the world. I’m an artist, and I’ll use whatever I find. I’m not worried about polluting, but it doesn’t make sense to be talking about this subject matter using toxic-polluting materials.”
Arriaga’s piece also acted as an homage to his students and the people of Central California in hopes to deter the narrative of his current home.
“My intention with that particular piece (“Withered”) was to give the Central Cali people, like art students, some validity,” said Arriaga. “You have good subject matter here, too. You don’t have to be in LA to be an artist. We have things to talk about also.”
Arriaga never thought he would see one of his pieces in the Kellogg Gallery. Moreover, he never thought he would become a full-time artist when he was younger.
Arriaga spent most of his childhood years skateboarding and his high school years in wrestling matches, only taking art classes to fulfill his high school’s curriculum. He then joined the Marine Corps and continued to wrestle. After he was discharged, he attended Cal Poly Pomona as a kinesiology student and resumed his work on the side in ceramics.
“I was in the Marine Corps, and I wrestled,” said Arriaga. “And so, I always thought about fighting and killing people, and I thought there was going to be a war, and that was what I was always just doing. So, pottery was my safe space. No one would ever beat anyone up in pottery.”
Arriaga quickly realized he was not well-equipped to take on the kinesiology program. He then made a swift decision to switch to studio pottery. Shortly after, he was recalled back to the Marine Corps for Iraq.
During his time there, he was unable to partake in ceramics and so resorted to painting. After his release, he switched his major to art, recalling every skill he took on, in skateboarding and in wrestling, was a form of artistic expression.
“So, basically, I became an art major and an artist before I knew what art was,” said Arriaga.
His path to art was an unconventional one. Arriaga’s passion for art was a slow burn, finding his purpose later in life.
“This is what I try to tell my students now,” said Arriaga. “There’s a reason why you’re doing things. You just don’t know why. There’s a reason you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re just trying to figure that reason out.”
In the West Gallery, the collection exhibits the theme of climate change and its effects, specifically erosion and the relationship between Earth and water. From the floor to the ceiling, the corner of the gallery is enveloped with delicate and light hand-pinched shells. But what it represents is something far heavier.
Janet Neuwalder, a sculptor and installation artist, grew up knowing her family’s history. Her grandfather from her mother’s side was an immigrant from Japan who worked as a prominent architect in New York. Both her grandmother and grandfather were incarcerated in the Japanese internment camps during World War II. On her father’s side, his family was persecuted by the Nazis as Jews living in Vienna at the time.
“There was a very strong sense of culture as well as persecution and a reverence for understanding ethically what was right and what was good,” said Neuwalder. “But also, life is what you make it and (its) about moving forward.”
Shikata Ga Nai translates to “it cannot be helped.” It was an expression the Japanese and Japanese Americans who were interned at the camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor coined.
“It correlates with the piece because it is a way of understanding or having a period of history revealed to the viewer, helping me understand how 120,000 people, most of them not all, made the best out of the worst when they had no control of it,” said Neuwalder. “And so, it’s a bit of a sentiment. No one deserves anything, especially that evacuation. However, it is what you make of it, and they created beauty and some extraordinary art. And they persevered.”
Neuwalder’s mother and her family were in the Topaz camp located in Delta, Utah. Currently, Delta is a desert but was previously a seabed with shells all around. And so, the art of Gaman arose from the many handicrafts the Japanese and Japanese Americans would make out of the shells and many other found materials. They made small shell pins, small trinkets, figurines and painted the shells. Gaman means to persevere. Neuwalder grew up with these handicrafts, seeing the shell pins in her mother’s jewelry box.
“You might not think much of it (the current state of Topaz), unless you knew what it was and the importance of it,” said Neuwalder. “You pick up a handful of sand and you see those little shells. And many of them are smaller than a pinkie now; they’re very delicate and dear. And the fact that they collected these and made beauty. Wonderful.”
The artist’s goal is to make 11,200 shells to represent each resident of the camp. Currently, there are 7,500. Each shell was stacked up on each other with some coalescing naturally, with some looking awkward but complementing one another.
Neuwalder alluded to this with the metaphor of form and relationships, eventually realizing what she made resembled families, the families that were in the camps. The “piles” suggested accumulation, time, community and commonality.
“As an artist, you’re trying to get at something and its meaning,” said Neuwalder. “And hopefully, by getting out there, my hope is to connect with someone out there.”
Each work is available for viewing until Nov. 14 in the W. Keith & Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery.
Feature image and photos by Darren Loo