Public Gets Once Yearly Invite To Artist Studios, 5/19

The Sally & Don Lucas Artists Program at Montalvo Arts Center continues its Open Access series with Open Studios at the Lucas Artists Program, where artists invite the public to visit their studios and to explore their current work and creative process. Showcasing the unique range of art produced by Lucas Artist Fellows, this year's Open Studios event will include culinary artist Andrea Blum, composer/musician Juan Felipe Waller, poet Monica Sok, playwright Preston Lane, filmmaker T. Kim-Trang Tran, and visual artist Cassils. Delicious Mexican food and beverages-including beer and wine-will be available for purchase by guests. Open Studios at the Lucas Artists Program will be presented 12pm-4pm, May 19 at Montalvo Arts Center, 15400 Montalvo Road, Saratoga. Admission is free. To RSVP and for more information, the public may visit montalvoarts.org or call 408-961-5858.

For 364 days a year, the studios at the Sally & Don Lucas Artists Residency are closed to the public-allowing Artist Fellows the time and space to concentrate on their creative output. But this special once-a-year event is a chance for the local community to peak behind the scenes and visit these world-class artists. Artist Fellows will be delighted to engage in conversation with visitors about the creative process and give them a glimpse of projects in process.

Culinary artist Andrea Blum's passion for food ignited when she moved to Italy to study fresco painting and restoration. There she learned about the stories, art, and cultural significance of cooking. Blum has recently started an online marketplace and aerial photographic project called My American Pantry (MAP), creating an atlas of American artisan food and drink landscape. MAP is an extension of her geographic quest to trace food back to where it's made. Blum's first cookbook, Ciderhouse Cooking, will be released in May 2018.

Using the body as a form of social sculpture, visual artist Cassils has been listed by the Huffington Post as "one of ten transgender artists who are changing the landscape of contemporary art." Featuring a series of bodies transformed by strict physical training regimes, Cassils' artwork offers shared experiences for contemplating histories of violence, representation, struggle, and survival. Recent solo exhibitions include Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Bemis Center, Omaha; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands; Trinity Square Video, Toronto; and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. Cassils is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016) and a Creative Capital Award (2015).

Playwright Preston Lane is the Founding Director of Triad Stage where he has directed more than 60 productions with a particular emphasis on plays by William and Ibsen. Lane has taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was a 2016 Artist in Residence, and also at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, University of North Carolina School of Arts, Greensboro College, and Southern Methodist University.

Poet Monica Sok has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, and the Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. Driven primarily by myth-making, Sok's work narrates her family's survival during the Khmer Rouge regime and explores intergenerational trauma.

Filmmaker T. Kim-Trang Tran received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has been producing experimental videos since the early 1990s. Tran has been nominated for a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts and was named a 2001 Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellow. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College.

The settings of composer/performer Juan Felipe Waller vary from symphonic orchestra to chamber music and electronics, and he often works with multimedia such as film, photography, and live electronics. His works explore new materials such as ceramics, plastics, and recyclable materials and involve special playing techniques that bring out associative timbres. His pieces have been widely performed in Europe, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, and the United States.

Montalvo's Open Access offers the public a unique opportunity to connect with the world-class artists of the international Lucas Artists Program (LAP) and explore the creative process. Open Access offerings are conceived of as a "bite-size artistic sampler," featuring an array of activities that reflect the multidisciplinary approach of the LAP and the work of its diverse Fellows. These can include music and dance performances, readings, conversations, culinary projects and presentations, and feature hands-on art-making activities.

Montalvo Arts Center is a donor-supported nonprofit institution whose mission is to engage the public in the creative process, acting as a catalyst for exploring the arts, unleashing creativity, and advancing different cultural and cross-cultural perspectives. Located in Silicon Valley's Saratoga Hills, Montalvo occupies a Mediterranean-style Villa, built in 1912 by Senator James Duval Phelan and surrounded by 175 stunning acres. Senator Phelan bequeathed the Villa and grounds to the people of California for the encouragement of art, music, literature, and architecture, a mandate Montalvo has carried forward ever since its founding. The grounds include the campus of the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program (LAP), the Claire Loftus Carriage House Theatre, and the Lilian Fontaine Garden Theatre. For more information about Montalvo Arts Center and its programs, the public can call 408-961-5858 or visit montalvoarts.org.

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