Collections: WCCW five at The Huntington

Olivia Chumacero

Olivia Chumacero studied film at UC Santa Cruz and is the founder of Everything Is Medicine, a project that involves workshops, hikes, and other initiatives to raise awareness about California native flora, sustainable water use, and the respectful use of lands belonging to indigenous groups. In her art, she is open to dialogue and actions that make humyn beings accountable for the current state of Mother Earth.

Sarita Dougherty

Sarita Dougherty generates and paints habitats from the plants, systems, and cultural ephemera she finds. She received an MFA from UCLA in 2012 and teaches at the University of Redlands and Cypress College. She is pursuing a Ph.D, researching Pachamama consciousness as a pathway toward decolonization in aesthetics, ecology, and education. Dougherty lives and works on a mountain with her partner and baby in Yangna (the Tongva name for Los Angeles). She is working with Chumacero on a collaborative project.

Jheanelle Garriques

Jheanelle Garriques is a social entrepreneur, Black feminist, and model. She holds many titles but is most proud of her work as the founder and executive director of Naked Narratives, a narrative therapy project. The project—which operates as a writing program, encouraging its participants to confidently express themselves while resolving past traumas—spans three continents and seven cities. When she is not traveling, Garriques can be found in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, writing poetry, studying hip-hop at Alvin Ailey, or chatting in patois with her family.

Zya Levy

Levy is a botanist, artist, and environmental educator. Her work draws on her background in ethno-botany and seeks to create tangible relationships between people and the natural world through the use of audio/visual art, traditional craft, natural materials, tall tales, and sensory experiences. Levy received her bachelor’s degree in botany and has over 12 years of experience working with North American flora as a field botanist for the United States Department of Agriculture. She is the co-founder of WE THE WEEDS, an ongoing collaborative botanical arts project based in Philadelphia that highlights the presence of the natural world within the man-made landscape. During her residency at The Huntington, she will be aided by fellow WE THE WEEDS co-founder Kaitlin Pomerantz.

Kiki Loveday (née kerrie welsh)

Kiki Loveday is fascinated by archival accidents, hidden histories, and the shifting limits of the speakable in contemporary culture. Her mixed-media work pushes the boundaries between personal and cultural memory—and between social and artistic conventions. It has been exhibited in venues from UnionDocs in Brooklyn to The Situation Room in Los Angeles. She has taught in the undergraduate film program at The New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she co-founded the Women in the Director’s Chair Oral History Project. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz, writing a dissertation on silent cinema, titled “Sapphic Cinemania! Female Authorship, Queer Desires, and the Birth of Cinema.”

Soyoung Shin

Soyoung Shin is a multidisciplinary Korean-American artist currently working in textiles, performance, zines, and new media. Born to Korean immigrants living in Seattle, Shin grew up in the neighboring suburb of Federal Way. From a young age, she spent time with her mother making cross-stitched textiles and other crafts. She has a strong interest in labor that is traditionally enacted by women, especially at a time when trends in automated technology are devaluing handiwork. Shin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Washington, where she pursued studies in art-making to balance her passion for varying forms of critical thinking. She maintains a steady artistic practice from within her home as an homage to the generations of women who have done the same.

Juliana Wisdom

Juliana Wisdom combines traditional ceramic and textile techniques with contemporary repurposed and industrial materials to create objects that explore issues of interpersonal relationships and social progress. Referencing historical aesthetics as a way to link past and present, her sculptural work celebrates how traditions of handmade craft and mass-produced, discardable, everyday objects provide tangible proof of the human experience. After receiving her BFA in ceramics and sculpture from the University of Washington in 2010, Wisdom continued to explore contemporary craft and sculpture with the support of the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle, Artist Trust Seattle, Pilchuck Glass School, and A-Z West. She has shown her work on the West Coast and in Rome, Italy. She currently works as a porcelain production assistant and independent artist in Los Angeles.

Founded in 2013, The Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW) is a Los Angeles–based nonprofit organization that cultivates feminist creative communities and practices through its facilities, residency programs, and rapidly growing network of over 15,000 followers.

Bodies of Lineage

Sept. 14, 2017, Rothenberg Hall, The Huntington

A movement, a moment—a fleeting phrase to remind you of where you began and who you’ve become. Join us for an intimate evening of song, dance, and narrative in an event crafted by artist Jheanelle Garriques of Naked Narratives, in collaboration with the Sokamba Performing Arts Company. The presentation is inspired by the 18th-century feminist Elizabeth Montagu, founder of the literary salon known as the Blue Stockings Society. Montagu’s papers are part of The Huntington’s collections. In Montagu’s tradition, Naked Narratives has hosted feminist coteries around the globe using storytelling to uplift and empower marginalized voices. This presentation will feature queer and femme poets, musicians, and dancers of color sharing their stories, engaging with themes rooted in the body and the human experience.

Lesbian Pulp

Sept. 29, 2017, 7-10 p.m., Women’s Center for Creative Work

Potluck and show-and-tell. Participants should bring materials they wish to recycle into “lesbian pulp.” The group will get to know each other in a casual social environment by sharing the stories of the materials they’ve brought. A movie screening and discussion of a mystery lesbian pulp film will conclude the evening.

Oct. 7, 2017, 4-9 p.m., Women’s Center for Creative Work

Paper-making workshop. Participants will be guided through the process of paper-making, using materials they have brought to recycle into “lesbian pulp.” Over a casual potluck dinner, the group will share stories and work collaboratively.

Oct. 8, 2017, 5-9 p.m., Women’s Center for Creative Work

Storytelling and letter writing workshop. Participants will share, work collaboratively, and write their stories or letters on the paper they have made.

Artist Kiki Loveday (née kerrie welsh) leads a series of paper-making workshops in a program called Lesbian Pulp, an experiment in queer community, storytelling, and historiography.  Participants will use recycled materials (such as lesbian pulp novels and personal ephemera) to create paper on which to write love letters and stories of encounter. The program is a component of “What You Love,” a project produced by Loveday as part of The Huntington’s contemporary arts initiative /five, in partnership with Women’s Center for Creative Work. Participants may attend individual sessions or the full series.

Garden Tour Series

A Walk on the Prickly Side: The Desert Garden at the Huntington
Nov. 11, 2017, 9:30-10:30 a.m., The Huntington

Cactus Amongst Us: Neighborhood Tour in Highland Park
Nov. 11, 2017, 4 p.m., Highland Park

Downtown Desert: Landscape Tour at Grand Park
Nov. 12, 2017, 2 p.m., Grand Park

Botanist Zya Levy will lead a series of walking tours exploring the botanical histories and cultural uses of plants that can be found growing throughout Southern California—in The Huntington’s 10-acre Desert Garden, around a local community, and in a downtown Los Angeles park. Tours will highlight plants that are common horticulturally but rare in the wild, and will include discussion about the effects of botanical collections on biodiversity in both urban and wild spaces.  This program is a part of The Huntington’s contemporary arts initiative /five, in partnership with Women’s Center for Creative Work. 

Live Free or Die: Artist Talk with Soyoung Shin and Juliana Wisdom

Jan. 27, 2018, 2 p.m., Rothenberg Hall, The Huntington

Artists Soyoung Shin and Juliana Wisdom discuss the influences of French history on their new work, inspired by French decorative art at The Huntington. The conversation was moderated by Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art at The Huntington and interim director of the Art Collections. Shin’s project, “Picture Elements” (named for the words from which “pixel” is derived) focused on the 18th-century carpets and tapestries commissioned by King Louis XIV for the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, and explored the ways in which the textile craft overlaps with modern computing.  Wisdom developed new work in response to The Huntington’s 18th-century French porcelain collection. Emulating the Sèvres Manufactory’s techniques with both traditional and new materials, Wisdom created sculptures that seek to broaden the historical narrative of Sèvres production by including the often-anonymous women who served as both makers and benefactors.