LOST HILLS
Lost Hills is a town of 3,500 farm and oilfield workers located at the southern end of California's Central Valley; the same agricultural region where the “Okies” headed in search of work as they fled the dust bowls of the 1930s. Today a new group of migrants, this time Chicanos and Mexicans, again wrings a wage from the Valley’s parched soil. These individuals embody the bootstrapping grit and cooperative frontier spirit of the American West – and are living a new iteration of the “Okie” experience so prominent in our national psyche. But because some of Lost Hills’ residents are undocumented immigrants, all are assumed to be, and so may be cut out of their own American dream, and denied their place in the American historical record. I’m interested in documenting this knife’s edge of inclusion that these people negotiate each day. To highlight it, I transpose the motifs of my magazine portrait work – cross-sourced lighting, saturated color palette, admiring gaze – to this one-stoplight town. I believe the contrast between subject matter and visual approach mirrors the tension I see as inherent to life in Lost Hills.
Exhibition — Golden Hour: California Photography from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
INSTITUTION: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
CURATOR: Eve Schillo
TOUR DATES:
Lancaster Museum of Art & History: February 7 - May 9, 2021
Riverside Art Museum: June 5 - September 26, 2021
Vincent Price Art Museum: October 16, 2021 - February 5, 2022
Cal State University Northridge Art Galleries: February 19, 2021 - April 30, 2022
Vincent Price Art Museum, Feb 2022
Vincent Price Art Museum, Feb 2022
Acquisition — The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
INSTITUTION: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
CURATOR: Eve Schillo, Britt Salvesen, Rebecca Morse
DATES: 2021
DETAILS: Portfolio of 25 photographs from 2009-2014
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Image size: 16.5x22” and 14.5x22” on 20x24” paper
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Edition of 2 + 1AP.
Acquisition — The Library of Congress
INSTITUTION: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
CURATOR: Beverly Brannan
DATES: 2019
DETAILS: Portfolio of 25 photographs from 2009-2014
.
Image size: 16.5x22” and 14.5x22” on 20x24” paper
.
Edition of 2 + 1AP.
Exhibition — The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers
INSTITUTION: Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
CURATOR: Dorothy Moss
DATES: November 2017–September 2018
Exhibition — The Valley / El Valle
INSTITUTION: San Francisco City Hall
PRESENTED BY: The San Francisco Arts Commission
CURATOR: Ann Jastrab
DATES: June – August 2014
Exhibition — Kern County At A Distance
INSTITUTION: The Bakersfield Museum of Art
CURATOR: Vikki Cruz
DATES: May - August 2014
—LOST HILLS—
