Press Release
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Media Advisory For More Information Contact: Jan Marlese LH Horton Jr. Gallery Director (209) 954-5507 jmarlese@deltacollege.edu |
Delta Center for the Arts LH Horton Jr. Gallery Presents:
Faculty Connections
Jan. 20 - Feb. 11
Reception: Jan. 20, 5-7 p.m.
Delta Center for the Arts LH Horton Jr. Gallery opens the Spring Semester with Faculty Connections, Jan. 20 - Feb. 11, an exhibition of artists selected by invitation of the Delta College Fine Arts Faculty. Artists were selected with the prerequisite that they were admired for their work as artists and educators.
Exhibiting Artists by Faculty Invitation:
David Kimball Anderson
Invited by Ruth Santee, Color & Design Professor
David Kimball Anderson is a sculptor and graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He is a Professor at San Jose State University School of Art & Design. On exhibit are two of his Buddha sculpture series made of cast aluminum. Anderson states, “The Buddha work began not via the practice of Buddhism but rather as an appreciative response to objects in the Asian Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. However, as in depth work often does, the repetitive making of the image of Buddha has improved my pursuit of mindfulness and the consideration of others.”
Jesus Barela
Invited by Mario Moreno, Painting Professor
Jesus Barela is a native California artist who has been working as a painter for twenty years and studied at the California State University of Sacramento and La Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. His large-scale canvases capture both a sense and scene of the Mexican muralist.
Bruce Duke
Invited by Joe Mariscal, Ceramics Professor
Bruce Duke received his Masters Degree in sculpture, working under Erwin Frey at Ohio State University in 1947. However, his undergraduate study with Herbert Sanders at San Jose State University ultimately influenced his creative efforts to work in ceramics. He taught at San Joaquin Delta College from 1948 to 1987. He taught many students in the ceramics classes at Delta who moved on to become distinguished ceramic artists, including Bill Albright, Viola Frey, Michael Lucero, and Joe Mariscal. He continues to live and work as an artist in Stockton.
Stephen Gyermek
Invited by Jennifer Barrows, Art History Professor
Born in 1930 Budapest, Hungary, Stephen Gyermek fled Hungary in 1948 to live in Holland due to the communist religious persecution. In 1949 Stephen was accepted to the Fine Arts Academy in Amsterdam (Rijkakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten), where he studied painting, painted glass, mosaics, and woodblock printmaking. His teacher was Heinrich Camperdonk (1889-1957), an artist who escaped from Hitler’s Germany to Holland, and who was a member of the German Expressionist groups Die Brücke (The Bridge - founded in 1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider - founded 1911-1914). Stephen immigrated to the United States in 1957 with his wife. He first lived in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he taught art history, religious art and drawing at Saint Gregory’s College. He moved to Stockton in 1965, where he worked as the Director of the Haggin Museum until 1970. In 1966, he began teaching evening courses in art history at Delta College, and by 1970 he was a tenured faculty member. He retired from Delta College in 1998, and continues to live and work as an artist in Stockton.
Nigel Poor
Invited by Kirstyn Russell, Photography Professor
Nigel Poor is an Associate Professor in Photography at California State University, Sacramento. She received her M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art, and a B.A. in Photography and Literature from Bennington College in Vermont. On exhibit for Faculty Connections are nine of the Hand Portraits series, began in 2004. To date she has photographed approximately 120 hands and the project is still growing. The images are made with a 4x5 camera and the negatives are scanned and printed digitally.
Lucy Puls
Invited by Ruth Santee, Color & Design Professor
Lucy Puls is a Professor of Art at the University of California, Davis. She received her M.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is represented in numerous collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, and the Jewish Museum in New York. Puls is represented by Electric Works in San Francisco. Throughout her career, Puls has created sculpture, drawings and photographs from the objects we buy and the objects we discard. She began making art from items found in thrift shops, then turned her attention to items found on the street. In response to societal change, she shifted her focus to the interiors of foreclosed homes when the economic crisis hit.
Joseph Raffael
Invited by Melanie Marshall, Graphic Arts Professor
Joseph Raffael was born in Brooklyn in 1933. He received his B.F.A. from Yale University and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Florence and Rome in 1958-59 and a Tiffany Fellowship in 1960. While at Yale he studied with artist/teacher and color theorist Josef Albers. He has taught numerous painting classes as a visiting professor at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, CSU Sacramento, and the School of Visual Arts in New York. Raffael's large and luminous watercolor paintings capture larger-than-life dramatic flowers, to koi filled ponds with light, shimmer and motion. His work is collected by major institutions throughout the world and has been honored with numerous awards. He resides in the south of France with his wife Lannis.
Ehren Tool
Invited by Gary Carlos, Sculpture Professor
Ehren Tool is a veteran of the Marine Corps and served in the 1991 Gulf War. After returning to civilian life he studied art, receiving his BFA from the University of Southern California and MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. He works as an Associate Professor in the Ceramics Department at UC Berkeley. Tool's hand-made clay cups are decorated with press molds made from toys, military medals or photos. Each cup is a hand-made unique piece and is signed by the artist. For the past few years he has been displaying these cups in unit formations based on the Marine Corps units. The cups displayed in the Faculty Connections exhibition are two Platoon formations of 55 cups each. If the cups do not sell as a unit, they are given away individually at the end of each exhibition. He mails them to Marines related to people he meets and has sent his cups (unsolicited) to Presidents, CEOs, and others in positions of political and corporate power. Tool has given away more than 10,000 cups since 2001. He plans to give the cups away through a lottery to the Delta College veterans community.
To view the exhibition on-line and link to the artists’ websites, visit the Gallery website at http://gallery.deltacollege.edu and link to ART, Connections.
The LH Horton Jr. Gallery is a non-profit organization and premier exhibition space in the city of Stockton. The primary mission of the Gallery is to promote the exhibition of quality and culturally diverse artwork in support of our students’ education and the community at large. The Gallery offers excellent exhibition opportunities to local, regional, and national artists, lenders and guest curators. The Gallery presents artists’ work in all media, with no thematic or geographic restrictions. The annual SJDC Student Art Exhibition & Awards Competition is held at the end of Spring Semester in April and May. Digital images available upon request.
Gallery admission is free to the public and wheelchair accessible. Recommended parking is available in the Shima lot for a nominal fee of $1. For more information regarding Gallery hours, tours, Gallery talks and special needs, contact LH Horton Jr. Gallery Director, Jan Marlese, at:
(209) 954-5507, jmarlese@deltacollege.edu.
"Spirit" (watercolor) by Joseph Raffael
"Decononized" (acrylic on canvas) by Jesus Barela
"Russian Madonna" (woodblock print) by Stephen Gyermek
Ceramic Cup (porcelain and stoneware) by Ehren Tool
Digital images available upon request
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