Waves Weekend featured an Alumni Art Showcase ceremony in Payson Library on Oct. 7. The exhibit will stay on the second floor until Oct. 28.
The artwork of 14 different alumni was displayed on the second floor, including co-founder Shannon Celia, Jill Daniels, Marian Fortunati, Lindsay Carron and Liberty Worth. This was the third exhibit showcasing alumni art, Celia said.
“The first [showcase] was in 2014,” Celia said. “I had a chat with my friend Heidi Bernard who talked to the Alumni office, and the first show was born.”
Celia is a watercolor painter who enjoys creating landscapes. She said she gets her inspiration from traveling to Northern California, Idaho, Wyoming and Texas.
“I love wide open spaces,” Celia said. “I like to be where I can hear the wind and wild creatures sing in places away from human noise.”
The two pieces Celia submitted for the exhibit were the two of the first she created for her lyrical landscape series. The water colors in both of her works consist of a mix of blue, green, orange, white and purple.
“I paint intuitively,” Celia said. “The colors [in the paintings] are opposites, so they really compliment each other.”
Fortunati uses oil paints to create outdoor images of different places in California, according to her biography on the Seaver College website. The two paintings on display are of Leo Carrillo State Beach and Point Lobos State Natural Reserve.
“I go [to Leo Carrillo State Beach] a lot to paint,” Fortunati said. “The waves mesmerize me so I like painting them many times.”
Fortunati visits Point Lobos every couple of years with a group of friends to paint all over the area, she said.
“I was captured by the way sun creates shadows all over the rocks,” Fortunati said. “That’s why I call [this painting] ‘Shadow Dancing.'”
Carron used color pencils and ink to create her three connection-to-land inspired artworks, she said. Two of them are portraits of Indigenous women she met during her travels in Alaska, while the other one is an imagery of a hodgepodge of animals, plants, fruit and human feet.
“I really wanted to bring those features of a place to life, but highlight the human connection to those places,” Carron said.
It’s very important to bring awareness to Indigenous voices like the women in her artworks, Carron said. This is something she said she’s been working on for about 10 years.
“Hopefully young people at Pepperdine can be inspired by seeing these women and their connection to land,” Carron said.
One of the pieces is called “Heart of Caribou,” which is about Gwich’in woman Bernadette Demientieff‘s work at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Carron said Demientieff protects the land from oil drilling because it’s where caribou give birth to their babies.
“The Gwich’in have a super intimate and spiritual relationship with the caribou,” Carron said. “[In the artwork], you have the caribou who are running on the land, and you also have one coming from Bernadette’s heart.”
The caribou coming out of Bernadette’s chest represents the Gwich’in’s close relationship with the animals, Carron said. The concept is that the Gwich’in and the caribou each share a piece of their heart with each other.
Daniels submitted two furniture paintings with watery backgrounds for the showcase which are apart of her series, “Stories from the Unseen.” She said she has been exhibiting the series for about 16 years.
“One of the real hallmarks for all of us is that hunger for human connection,” Daniels said. “While these paintings represent one of my own personal stories, people can put themselves into the work.”
Daniels said she based the two paintings on her wedding in the Stauffer Chapel and a trip she took with her husband to Paris. One of her paintings, “A Shared Expectation,” is about having patience.
“Sometimes during a trip or travels, you have to wait on [a moment to happen]” Daniels said. “Both [paintings] are a part of what being a couple and going through life is while having moments of commitment together.”
Daniels added two white butterflies in one of the paintings to represent the kind that fly around campus. She said she took inspiration from the outgrowth of white butterflies that came after the Woolsey Fire.
“It had kind of a miraculous beauty to it,” Daniels said. “So, that was something I wanted to add to give it a sense of transcendence.”
To find out more about the Alumni Artists and their work, go to the Pepperdine Alumni Artists page on the Seaver College website.
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Email Timothy Gay: timothy.gay@pepperdine.edu
