Montalvo invites artists to get people talking

By Jennifer van der Kleut
for Saratoga News
04/23/2009

Ask five different people what Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga is best known for, and you
would probably get five different answers.

A music lover might say Montalvo hosts great concerts, featuring musicians from all over the
world. An art lover might answer that Montalvo is known for its international artist residency
program and art exhibitions. A theatergoer might say Montalvo presents wonderful theatrical
productions for adults, as well as family shows for all ages. Still another might say Montalvo is a
picturesque wedding location, or that it hosts world-class food and wine events.

The truth is, Montalvo is known for all of these things, and that's what inspired curator Julie
Lazar to create the art center's latest programming initiative — "AGENCY: The Work of Artists"
— to bring all of those elements together.

Interdependence

The idea behind AGENCY is to present events and exhibitions that deal with a single idea over
the period of a year. The initiative aims to explore themes of interdependence through artworks
that address a wide array of topics such as family, immigration, the environment, cultural
memory, war, the influence of faith and the shifting narratives of globalism.
Lazar was invited by Montalvo's director to create such an initiative after she spent time working
on various cultural programs with the city of San Jose. She says AGENCY was inspired in part
by the folks she saw visiting the villa.

"As I walked around the grounds, I noticed all different types of people that come here. I saw
different types of people that like to walk through the gardens, then I would go to one of the
concerts in the Garden Theater and see a whole different type of people there, and then I would
visit the residences and meet these artists that have come from all over the world to [live and
create art at] Montalvo," she recalls. "I started to think, how can I develop a program that would
allow all of these different groups to talk to each other?" As Lazar pondered the common threads
that might bring Montalvo's various artistic disciplines together, she thought about how
everyone, regardless of where they live or what they do for a living, relies on natural resources.

"The fact is, our lives are all dependent on this Earth. Even our technology is dependent on
silicon, which comes out of the earth. And, these days, the collapse of the economy is making us
all realize how interdependent all the various arms of the global economy are on each other.
That's when I came up with the principle of interdependence to focus on," Lazar explains, adding
that she began to imagine a program "that would confront issues that are at hand, and embrace
and incorporate all those issues, yet also be a humbling thing, at the feet of all these artists'
practices, that could come together at Montalvo." The work of artists With this framework in
place, Montalvo staff invited artists from different genres, disciplines and cultures to create
works about interdependence and participate in various events, performances and conversations
with the community.

The list of nearly 20 artists the staff came up with — some individuals, some groups or
partnerships — runs the gamut of artistic expression.

"We have writers, architects, potters, dancers, sculptors, chefs, performance artists,
photographers and so on," Lazar says. "This is not a totally definitive list of artists, but it's an
amazingly gorgeous list of people — young and old, from lots of different disciplines." Mierle
Laderman Ukeles is one artist on the list that is hard to categorize. A sculptor as well as a
performance artist, Ukeles is probably best known for her work with garbage.

"When I thought of the idea of interdependence, and who could point us in the direction of
thinking more about humanity as it relates to interdependence, I immediately thought of Mierle,"
Lazar says.

As Lazar explains, Ukeles has spent a significant chunk of the past few decades studying the
ecology and systems of maintenance. Through her art, she examines a wide range of issues
dealing with the idea of garbage, from who makes it, where it goes and who takes care of it to the
cultural stigma of being a sanitation worker in a status-conscious society.

Living as a struggling young mom in Manhattan, Ukeles would go out into the streets of SoHo
and clean up garbage just to see how people would react. That led her to be invited to become the
world's first-ever "artist in residence" at a sanitation department. She began creating large
sculptures out of recycled sanitation products, as well as studying the technical aspects of
sanitation, as well as the workers and their unions.

"She celebrates the sanitation workers, without whom the city of Manhattan would not exist,"
Lazar says.

For AGENCY, Ukeles is designing a project to focus the public's attention on Sudden Oak Death
Syndrome, or "S.O.D.," a virus that kills trees all over the world.

"When Mierle came to Montalvo for a site visit, while we were walking around the grounds, she
noticed these trees that were dead and covered with a black fungal material. She realized they
were dying from S.O.D. When she got back to New York, she couldn't stop thinking about the
dead trees. Long story short, she decided to commit to understanding S.O.D. more," Lazar says.

Ukeles' AGENCY project will feature art that not only explores what S.O.D. is and how we as a
society can solve the problem of the dying trees, but will also examine the more abstract ideas of
death and how people within a specific culture or religion deal with loss.

"It's something that can have universal implications. As a general idea, it's something that's
explored in every major religion," Lazar says. "[Her project] brings together science, religion,
practice, land — all these elements I felt weren't communicating with each other." Hirokazu
Kosaka was asked to participate in AGENCY on the strength of his "Ruin Map" project, through
which the Japanese-born, Los Angeles-based artist works with members of Vietnamese and
Japanese American communities. Kosaka meets with senior members of these communities and
asks them to draw maps of their hometowns from memory.

"It's so interesting, because some of the maps will be very complex, showing specific details
such as the houses and the trees, and some are just little dots, or just sketches describing the
room they grew up in," Lazar says.

For his AGENCY project, entitled "Kalpa" — which means "time" in the Buddhist philosophy
— Kosaka will transform these maps into traditional woodblock prints on handmade rice paper.
The prints will then make up a "Project Space" exhibition at Montalvo, to which Kosaka will add
thousands of handpicked poppy seeds to the woodblock prints. The seeds allude to an ancient
story told by the Buddha about the meaning of kalpa, or time. Kosaka aims to build a parallel
between kalpa and the inevitable passage of time, both literally and in our memories.

Kosaka will also take part in a collaborative performance piece for AGENCY. "On the Retina"
features his friends Oguri, a Butoh dancer and choreographer, and Tetsuya Nakamura, a master
harmonica player, and also deals with the subject of time.

"Hopefully, what [Kosaka's project] will do, is help us connect with groups of people we may
not have connected with before, and to help us look at our lives, and realize our origins and our
memories are something to be valued," Lazar says.
Lazar adds that Kosaka's project is a literal look at the idea of interdependence, because his maps
and woodblock prints could not be created without the contributions of many different people,
from the man who creates the rice paper by hand to the members of the community who draw the
maps, to the supplier of the wood for the blocks to the Montalvo staff that is hosting the project.

Coming full circle

While AGENCY is designed to promote the idea of interdependence, Montalvo staff hopes
visitors will contribute their individual perspectives to the year-long project.

"What I hope people will do is just come and experience the artists in some way, even if it's just
a small way, like drawing one of Hirokazu Kosaka's maps or coming to one of the artist
conversations, and so forth," Lazar says.

"I'd love to bring everyone together at the end — the artists, the audiences who attended the
events all year long, and just anyone who wants to come — and find out what we all learned
about the idea of interdependence," she adds. "This whole idea, it's so much like gardening, in a
way; if we don't care for these artists and share them, they won't be around anymore." Montalvo
staff also hopes the AGENCY initiative reveals the interdependent relationship the arts center
has with the public.

"I hope that AGENCY, as an important part of our programming, can really set a tone of where
Montalvo is going as an organization, and how artists can come in through the residency
program and other programs and act as a resource, one that is available to the community, for
everything from history to the technology of Silicon Valley," says Kelly Sicat, Montalvo's
director of programs. "I hope it sets a new standard of programming for Montalvo." "I hope it
illustrates the idea that the process of making art has a power," Lazar says. "This program, as
well as Montalvo as a whole, has the mission to say that artists have a role, and are a real
resource, in our community."

Montalvo Arts Center is located at 15400 Montalvo Road in Saratoga. For more information, call
408-961-5800 or visit www.mon talvoarts.org.