Nathan Huff - Home and Other Foreign Places

NATHAN HUFF

Home, and other foreign places

Nathan Huff - Home, and other foreign places

Nathan Huff – Home, and other foreign places, represents a chance to view Huff’s amazing work. After more than forty years of working with artists, it is still refreshing to me to work with a new artist that really inspires me. Huff’s work brings together many different ideas and with his incredible skills creates work that expands into unimaginable depths. Observing Huffs’ work in the gallery makes you think of many different scenarios and associations, your mind almost racing to get to the next work in an attempt to get to the meaning. We are very fortunate to have this exhibition in our gallery.

Painting and Sculpture in all forms are fundamental areas of educating artists in the Art Department. Having exceptional exhibitions of painting and sculpture in our galleries helps to generate meaningful discussions and lifelong learning about these mediums. The University Art Gallery’s programing helps to support our faculty’s teaching. It is usually through faculty recommendations that many exhibitions come to our galleries. This exhibition was recommended by my colleague, Assistant Professor of Painting, Mirabel Wigon. Professor Wigon and Nathan Huff are both graduates of California State University, Long Beach. Wigon had the following to say about Huff’s work:

“Nathan’s work is visually dense and complex, pulling from a lexicon of personal imagery associated with emotion and memory. In deciphering his work, one moves across pictorial modes and materials tied together in a place suspended between the real and imagined. I was particularly drawn to his use of bridges, boats, and other modes of transportation as pathways to figuratively and literally move the viewer through spaces both real and represented.”

I would like to thank the many colleagues that have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. Nathan Huff for the chance of exhibiting his amazing work, Noely Ortiz, our Administrative Support Coordinator for her tireless work in organizing and arranging the show details, Jasmine Ramos, our Student Gallery Assistant for her help installing the exhibition. I would also like to thank, Brad Peatross of the School of the Arts and California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design and Stan State Print Shop for the printing this catalog. I would also like to thank the Instructionally Related Activates Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. The support is greatly appreciated.

Dean De Cocker, Director University Art Gallery

California State University, Stanislaus

Nathan Huff - Home, and other foreign places

NATHAN HUFF produces paintings, drawings, and sculpture that often exhibit as multifaceted installations. He earned an MFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach in 2010, a BA in art education from Azusa Pacific University, and has also endeavored in self-study of art in Italy, France, the UK, and Spain.

Actively exhibiting on the west coast, Huff’s installations have been featured in solo exhibitions at UCR Culver and Sweeney Galleries (Riverside), Los Angeles at D.E.N. Contemporary, Minthorne Gallery (Oregon), Gallerie View (Salambo, Tunisia), group exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, JK Gallery, Lotus Land, The Wildling Museum, Westmont Ridley Tree Museum of Art, and the Angels Gate Cultural Center. He is represented by Sullivan Goss Gallery, in Santa Barbara. His works are in the Permanent Collections of the Culver Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Hilbert Museum of California Art, The Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, and Cal State University Long Beach. In 2011 he was invited by the State Department as a guest curator with Art in Embassies for the US Ambassador in New Zealand to curate an exhibition Encountering Place. Nathan has taught classes with art students at CSU Long Beach, LA Southwest College, Biola University, and Azusa Pacific University as an adjunct lecturer. Currently he teaches as a professor of art at Westmont College in Santa Barbara.

www.nathanhuff.com

Instagram: @huff_nathan

SPECIAL THANKS

The CSU Stanislaus Gallery team, especially to Dean DeCocker and Jaz Ramos for their installation skill and help. Jonathan Marrs for years of conversation and creative joy. Erica, Grace, and Mari for always being home to me.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I like long pauses in casual conversation. They make me uncomfortable and also delight me. When I make art, I often imagine extending those types of disjointed pauses where silence lingers and possibilities unfold. A half-formed idea will meet a passing image and uncover a latent story or draw out a new narrative. As a multidisciplinary artist I move images through painting, sculpture, and installation forms, each iteration revealing an underlying poetry or expanding the emotional tenor in a situation.

Central to my work is an exploration of delicate balance and precarious control. I often depict domestic spaces, rupturing them with elements from the unfettered natural landscape to evoke a sense of tension and sublime contrast. I use several recurring images. Wooden row boats and airplanes feature prominently offering a seat for an imagined journey. Schisms in the night sky, are animated by ladders suggesting unfolding narratives, or twisted California oaks contrast a restrained mid-century furniture piece. Utilizing themes of migration, elemental materials of wood and paper, perceived obstacles, and opening vistas, Home, and other foreign places invites an imagined and multilayered representations of the journey towards one another and our relationship to the landscape.

At times these images are drawn from my personal history, but often they strike a chord with mythology and with broader practices of psychology, place making, and spirituality. I am fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life. What one does with such incongruous or incomprehensible moments in one’s life is the task of meaning making and it is often in the studio that I can best hold these complicated experiences. I hope that the unexpected pauses in my art might invite deeper understanding of self and generate wonder for the world around us.

Prayer for Rain (detail), watercolor on paper, found hose bib, 120” x 108”, 2023

SKIES AND SCHISMS

I love spaces where the axis points between the horizontal and vertical meet. Boats and ladders, trees and night skies. These spaces offer intersections for deeper knowledge of the world around us and a deeper awareness of our own interior landscapes as well.

The ever so slight molecule difference between water and air, liquid and vapor form a liminal platform. The everfluctuating surface of a body of water is permeable, and yet it also is powerful enough in pressure distribution of weight to hold a boat aloft. Even as boats move horizontally, in this body of work, there is also a vertical movement…trees offer a passage between the sublime sky and deep roots of the earth. Twisted California oaks are rich with knowledge of years of rich seasons, droughts, mudslides, and more.

I often make art as an act of hope. I make it as an invitation for something wondrous to occur. I make it as an explorer who is reaching for something just beyond my experience. Nature has much to reveal to us. As I’ve spent time in the landscape, discovering the surprise delight of light and texture, the natural world offers a web of interconnected knowledge, responsibility, and wonder.

What to do with all this longing, cement, metal, paint, 96” x 119” x 74”, 2025

Skies and Schisms 11, watercolor and gouache on paper, 22”

and

ALL THE WAYS HOME

In an increasingly fragmented society, it is no surprise that we often miss one another. All too often our attempts at knowing and being known are halted or even derailed. In an age of soundbites, of ideological echo chambers, I hope to explore the complicated and imperfect ways that we might reach across divides that separate us. Where are the ruptures, the moments of curious enthusiasm, and human empathy that move us through the tangled and layered parts of our stories? How might our shadows, histories, and institutions erect bridges rather than barriers towards the vulnerable parts of being known? Utilizing themes of migration, elemental materials of wood and paper, perceived obstacles, and opening vistas, this installation invites an imagined and important call to journey towards another. In the process we might find our way towards a home that lessens the distances between us.

All the ways home

Installation images watercolor & gouache on paper, wood, found chair, string, dimensions variable, 2025

All the ways home, Installation images watercolor & gouache on paper, wood, found chair, string dimensions variable, 2025

Opposite: All the light we almost see 96” x 54”, watercolor on paper, 2019

NATHAN HUFF CV

EDUCATION

2010 MFA, Drawing and Painting, California State Long Beach, Long Beach, CA

2003 BA Art, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026 Heavy Hope, Museum of Art and Art History, Lancaster, CA

2025 Home, and other foreign places, Stanislaus State Art Space, Turlock, CA

Within Wilds, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2023 Forest for the Trees, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2021 Almost Here, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2020 Meandering the Edges, Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara, CA

2019 The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2017 Sadness, Sleep, and Sanctity, New Media Gallery, Ventura College, Ventura, CA

2016 Memories Moving Walls, Minthorne Gallery, George Fox University, OR Playing Idioms again, SBCAST G Space, Santa Barbara, CA

2015 Playing Idioms, Ridley Tree Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

2014 Domesticating Disturbances, Culver and Sweeney Galleries, UCR, Riverside, CA

2013 Tension/Intention, L Gallery, Azusa Pacific University, CA

2011 Downward Digging the Wrong Side Up, Green Gallery, Biola University, La Mirada, CA

Excavations and Constructions, Six Pack Projects, Phantom Galleries, Long Beach

2010 Nathan Huff, Sculptures and Drawings, D.E.N. Contemporary, West Hollywood, CA

Liminal States, Oceanside Art Gallery, Carlsbad, CA

LIMBO, and other Conversations, DDR Projects, Santa Anna, CA

The Launch. Absurd Excavations; B, Werby Gallery CSULB, Long Beach, CA

2009 Gravity and More. Absurd Excavations; A, Gatov Gallery, CSULB, Long Beach CA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025 What we carry (and other sad poems), Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Storytellers, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2024 Chiostro (Cloister) , Gallerie Gio, Orvieto, Italy

Sublime, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2023 Inventing an Absence, Brandstater Gallery, Riverside, CA

The Search for the American West, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2021 Paper Trails, Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

Sight and Insight, Faculty Exhibition, Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Selections from the Permanent, Collection of Contemporary Art, Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

2020 In the Meanwhile: Recent Acquisitions, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Stary Nights: Visions of the Night Sky, Wildling Museum, Solvang CA

Hobson’s Choice, Torrance Art Museum, Digital Exhibition

2019 The Drawing Room, Vita Art Center, Ventura, CA

2018 Mostra, Barrington Center for the Arts, Wenham, MA

2017 Lauridsen Project: Les Chansiones des Roses, George Fox University, Medford, OR

2016 Still Life, from the permanent collection, Sweeny Gallery, Riverside, CA

2015 Flock, curated Nancy Gifford, Lotus Land, Santa Barbara, CA

Sculpture Show, ArtsFund Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2014 ArtWatch 2014: Young Careers SB to LA, Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Storytellers, curated Jeff Rau, Green Gallery, Biola University, La Mirada, CA

2013 Connect and Collect, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA

Familiar/Unfamiliar, Manual History Machine, Casa Agave, Joshua Tree, CA

Peaceable Kingdom, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA

Human Presence, JK Gallery, Culver City, CA

2011 Liminal Examinations, PS Zask Gallery, Palos Verdes, CA

Encountering Place , Art in Embassies, Wellington, NZ

2010 Open Show 2010, Curated Franklin Sirmans Los Angeles Art Association, LA, CA

Mass Emergencies, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA

Tubular! Curated Doug Harvey, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA (catalogue)

2007 American Painters, Galerie View, Salammbo, Tunisia

SELECTED AWARDS

2025 Outstanding Faculty of the year award, Westmont College

2020 Santa Barbara Arts Commission 2020 Responsive Works Award

Artist Grant and Residency Vermont Studio Center, Vermont

2019 Resident Fellow, Aix en Provence, IAU

2010 Outstanding Leadership in the Academic Community, Commencement CSULB

2009 Marylin Werby Scholarship Recipient, CSULB, Long Beach, CA

2008 Dean’s Purchase Award, College of the Arts California Sate University Long Beach, CA

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Hilbert Museum of California Art

Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art

California State University Long Beach Lotus Land, Santa Barbara, CA

SELECTED PRESS TEXTS/CONVERSATIONS

Video Interview – David Starkey, Creative Community TVSB, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGuQbusM4To Review - Artillery Magazine, Christopher Michno, November 4, 2014, http://artillerymag.com/nathan-huff/ Exhibition Essay - Sweeney Art Gallery, Jennifer Frias, Domesticating Disturbances, June - November, 2014

Exhibition Catalogue - Green Gallery, Jeff Rau, Storytellers, March 2014

Exhibition Catalogue (Author) - Art in Embassies, New Zealand, Nathan Huff and James Brown, Encountering Place, 2011

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

2013- Professor of Art, Westmont College Chair, Department of Art, Westmont College. 2019-2021

Adjunct Lecturer, MFA Mentor, Azusa Pacific University

2012-13 Adjunct Lecturer, Los Angeles Southwest College.

2010-13 Adjunct Lecturer, Foundation 2-D Design, Foundation Drawing, CSU Long Beach Adjunct Lecturer, Drawing 1 &2, Figure Drawing, Charette Sacred Spaces, Biola University

Art Instructor, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro

2005-07 Art Instructor, The Oceanside Museum School of ART. Oceanside, CA

Art Instructor, Escondido Adult School/ROP. Escondido, CA

2003-05 EFL Instructor, Czech Republic, Italy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

California State University, Stanislaus

Dr. Britt Rios-Ellis, President

Dr. Richard Ogle, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Art

Martin Azevedo, Associate Professor, Chair

Artur Da Silva, Assistant Professor

Dean De Cocker, Professor

Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor

Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor

Chad Hunter, Lecturer

Dr. Carmen Robbin, Professor

Ellen Roehne, Lecturer

Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor

Susan Stephenson, Associate Professor

Jake Weigel, Associate Professor

Mirabel Wigon, Assistant Professor

Noely Ortiz, Administrative Support Coordinator

Alex Quinones, Instructional Tech II

Matt Hayes, Equipment Technician II

University Art Galleries

Dean De Cocker, Director

Noely Ortiz, Administrative Support Coordinator

School of the Arts

Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II

Nathan Huff - Home, and other foreign places

August 25–October 10, 2025 | University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus

200 copies printed. Copyright © 2025 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN 978-1-940753-93-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. This exhibition and catalog have been funded by Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus.