Then & Now
Jillian Foster, Angel Ponce, Andrew Wharton, Madeleine Galas, and Julia Saige Bielenberg
April - 2022
Exhibition Description
The Honors Art students at UCSB Dept of Art cordially invite you to the following two receptions showcasing their culmination of artistic works from 2022. TH3N & NOW will hold an opening reception on April 11th from 4-7 PM while L0$T & F0uND will close out the show on April 22nd from 5-8 PM. This two-week show explores themes of autonomy, anonymity, and process. Many artists are examining the self and the apparatus of cultural production at large. This select group of artists will be working across a multiplicity of mediums: including mark making, portraiture, book arts, video, sculpture, installation, collage & photography.
About the Artists
Jillian Foster
Jillian Foster is a southern california based multidisciplinary artist. As a paraplegic woman Foster is interested in themes of access, disability vs ability, and ableism and is beginning to explore them more in her work. Recent works focus on access and the physical boundaries of our built world incorporate mark making using the wheelchair as an artist's tool as well as other augmented household tools. Her painting and sculpture works are often surreal, playing with contrasting color palettes and textures.
Angel Ponce (she/they)
Through the use of visual metaphors Angel connects the body as a site of development. Our relationships with our bodies and everybody as a cycle within nature. Motifs of organic forms honor this connection. Much of her work draws from sociological and psychological explorations of the self and community. They play in critiquing broader systems of capitalism and colonialism through collage, sculpture, video, and oil painting. Angel also sees art as a mechanism for healing and relationship building interacting with expressions of tenderness, intimacy and vulnerability. They will attend graduate school for Art Therapy at Loyola Marymount University in the fall.
Andrew Wharton
Andrew Wharton is a Southern California based artist. His work deals with the interface between industrial systems and the organic systems of the natural world. Through use of both advanced and early technologies, he constructs objects where the synthetic and organic harmonize into a whole. This allows for envisioning a near-future world marked by disruption of both the technological and the biological. Working between physical and digital construction, his production spans sculpture, painting, 3D rendering, and computation.
Madeleine Galas
Madeleine Galas is driven to capture transience in her work – especially in relation to visual perception and the imperfect record of time and experience held within memories. Works using chance operations and intuition reflect the chaotic architecture of consciousness, while impression and periphery serve to underscore the fluidity of perception and memory in the attempt to capture these unique yet universal experiences.
Julia Saige Bielenberg
Julia Saige Bielenberg (b. 1999 New York) is a multimedia artist working out of southern California. Her studio practice explores fluidity of the self and focuses on representations of the intangible through the use of texture and color. In an exploration of the human psyche she represents personal experiences with depression, anxiety, and trauma while investigating their internal and external manifestations in the body. Heavily influenced by her studies in feminism and psychology, her work is concerned with womanhood, the subconscious, and queerness of the self.
