Over the Christmas / winter holiday, my older sibling J invited Chappell and I out to California to spend Christmas with them! One of the perks of working in the school system is the long winter break. It makes traveling worthwhile. We made a plan to fly into Oakland and bought our tickets before Thanksgiving to keep costs down. Plans changed last minute. We brainstormed and decided it would be really fun to explore Joshua Tree National Park and Los Angeles. We rented a car and drove 8 hours to check out both.

While I am writing this article, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the LA fires. Please consider donating to a local person or mutual aid organization on the ground level. On Instagram check out these users: resistcarebloc, frontlinemedics and waterdropia. Climate change, fueled by military industrial complex, industrial animal agriculture, and unbridled fossil fuel greed are creating disastrous situations. End the genocide in Palestine too. All our struggles are interconnected.

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While we were in LA, we focused on seeing art and eating good food, both of which we did a lot of! I want to discuss the work I saw at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in this article. Double-check the hours due to the wild fires. Below are a few of the stunning works on view in their collection:

The images of the works above scratch the surface of what is in the museum’s collection! The breadth and depth of the work wows me, so I can only talk about a few of them.

The second painting in the first row depicts a woman swimming underwater. It is titled “The Space in which we Travel.” This artwork is an acrylic on canvas, created in 2019 by Calida Rawles. She is best known for her images of Black subjects swimming in water. She paints them floating, diving, or drifting, relaxing and at ease, often under the water. For Rawles, water signifies both physical and spiritual healing as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion. She uses this duality as a way to create a new space for healing, reimagining her subjects beyond racialized stereotypes. The work comes off as sacred, joyful, and serene. As an artist, I find the beauty and challenge of painting watery scenes captivating. Seeing a successful artist excel in this genre is inspiring. Seeing her work in-person motivates me to continue exploring this motif in my work in my own way.

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In the third row is the “Flower Day” oil on canvas, 1925, by Diego Rivera (b. Dec 8, 1886 – Nov 24, 1957). This is Rivera’s earliest and most accomplished depiction of a calla lily seller. It is Rivera’s first major painting to enter a public collection in the US after winning first prize in the 1925 Pan-American Exhibition of Oil Paintings. To see this painting in person was a humbling moment. Rivera’s murals have inspired me since a teenager. I love the way his art was inspired by and uplifted the indigenous Mexican community. His populist paintings feel full, robust, proud, and tranquil. The female figures bow and kneel to each other. This painting inspired my first collaborative mural with the Spanish and Art clubs in high school. We all carry traditions within us. Here is a really cool article about the artwork.

I have been a fan of Deborah Roberts collage work for a long time (I like to think before she became well-known lol). Her work, Breaking Ranks made in 2018, depicts a young black girl with four hands and the number, 7043, across her chest. Roberts uses imagery from magazines and other printed matter. She enlarges, cuts, and crops the images into collage elements to create representations of Black girls. In Breaking Ranks, the jarring mismatched girl’s limbs reminds us of preteen awkwardness. The second set of hands come from Rosa Parks’s 1955 mugshot. I love her collages because she intentionally threads a historical connection to Black history in her work, while centering black girls as change agents in the future. Her work is reminiscent of another famous Black collagist, Romare Bearden. LA Times critic Sharon Mizota compares them points out: “Roberts’ portraits also feel musical, incorporating bold prints, bright colors and dramatic shifts in scale and perspective [like Bearden] but her eclecticism is much quieter.” The quietness and simple white background allows the viewer to focus on just the figure. I often collage before making a painting; it’s a fun and playful way of using a combination of photos or found imagery to create a unique perspective on the subject. Roberts and Rawles, who I wrote about above, also had a show together! There is a really great Cultured interview between both women, which you can read here.

So many artists and work I could write about!!

• Mark Bradford!! His work in-person!! Amazing use of collage.
• Kathe Kollowitz head bust!!
• Georgia O’Keefe Horse Skull!
• Glen Ligon video installation AND painting!!
• Huge Landscapes by David Hockey!

The great thing about studying art is that it never ends. One could spend semesters studying these artists. The inspiration is endless and it reviewing the work in this way encourages me to get back into the studio.

So the LA portion of the trip was actually second! First we went to Joshua Tree National Park and celebrated Christmas in the dessert with Beyonce!! Lol. Here are some of the photos I took while we were in Joshua Tree National Park. It was such a beautiful and surreal landscape. I hope to create a painting inspired by the experience soon.

Thanks for reading! Hope to write more soon! – Monica