X X Alana Perlin
emanations emanations Emanations
University Art Gallery | Department of Art
School of the Arts | California State University, Stanislaus
Director’s Foreword
Alana Perlin - Emanations, represents a chance to view her brilliant work. Alana has successfully created wonderful bodies of artwork. Working with a wide range of ideas, her artistic expertise explores projects that engage many different digital processes but still in a wonderful way she retains a traditional amount of painterly approaches.
A few years ago, the University Art Gallery’s exhibition titled “Close to Home” featured the work of the faculty of Merced College and Modesto Junior College. Through this joint exhibition a new program of solo exhibitions of teaching colleagues was created. Perlin is one of the colleagues from Merced College.
Many of our students have started their education at Merced College and had the good fortune to have had the opportunity to work with Alana as a Professor, many of these students have her commented on how much they enjoyed and learned from her.
I am very happy to be able to exhibit Alana’s work for others to enjoy.
I would like to thank the many colleagues that have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. Alana Perlin for the chance of exhibiting her wonderful work, the College of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design and Parks Printing for the printing this catalog.
Much gratitude is extended to the Instructionally Related Activates Program of California State University, Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. Their support is greatly appreciated.
Dean De Cocker, Gallery Director
California State University, Stanislaus
flits
“The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”
— Walter Benjamin
University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus
Alana Perlin — Emanations
Alana Perlin
Artist’s Statement
“All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance.” – Walter Benjamin.
Emanations of the Divine—While reflecting upon the Stanislaus State exhibition proposed by Gallery Director DeCocker, I created a brand new body of work for 2018-19 with an improvisational theme. During the process of animating a self-portrait, I created a series of replicas to enliven the artwork. We’re living in an era in-which one Leonardo DaVinci painting sells for four-times the amount of Picasso’s costliest work. Alongside the heightened focus on particularly unique works of art in our new gilded age, we’re increasingly presented with a pastiche of these pieces through their distribution on-screen. Our culture’s iconography proliferates in-tandem with the internet age. Artwork used to get displayed in-private domains. Now, we’re all subject to public consumption with the web’s instantaneous distribution of our digital selves as exemplified in my animated montage and pigmented sandstone sculpture.
Based on my desire to explore innovative forms of digital imagery, I’ve designed custom artistic software that generates wild patterns from my hand-drawn animal concepts. During the interminable process of scanning an entire sketchbook of critters onto my Mac, I found myself craving something sweet on-which to nosh. Therefore, I inadvertently happened upon my latest donut-inspired series in late summer 2018. When conceptualizing a delectable dessert, I begin by blocking out the basic shapes with Maya polygons or nurbs in a digital format. Afterward, my initial virtual mockup goes through several Arnold render passes (yes, the renderer pays tribute to California’s former governor and action star extraordinaire) prior to being softened with a celestial glow. Since we find ourselves mired in a technological age typified by consistently wading through digital experiences, my disparate animal and dessert imagery draws inspiration from the abrupt nature in-which we view artwork on digital devices. Each symmetrical food-themed pieces exists as a meditation on the compressed nature of the small “bites” that we’re continually served-up on-screen as encapsulated by digital media. Although the canvases appear as ephemeral bursts of mandala-like shapes within a glowing electroluminescent backdrop, they suggest an ultimately connected universe. Technologically, my spiraling animal pieces utilize custom software that I created to evoke Benjamin’s notion of “melancholy immersion,” whereby individual snippets express an underlying unity. Each radially symmetrical piece incorporates a series of intentional glitches and textures that interrupt the formal balance. The somewhat degraded quality suggests the increasingly compressed nature of human existence (our virtual selves) embodied in digital media. Classical modes of representation become nullified by a shift away from art as a means to depict lived experience. Instead, cosmic forces and intangible elements come to the fore in bursts of pixelated light and energy.
America Americana Americcca Amer
by Yehuda Sharim, Ph.D.
Talking talk about ß
Surrounded by calamities of different kinds, from fires to hurricanes, and with a deep moral and ethical crises that appear to (return to) dominate this America, this time asks where we shall turn to prompt hope, to cultivate harmony and listening. Moreover, as we enter any exhibition space, we need to question the role of art and the artist in offering us the tools and visions to see through the darkness, our current adversity, a barrage of empty images and hyper-sensational nothingness.
For how long America… for how long…
America, who remained (in) America?
Who disappeared without a trace?
Who got separated? Who did you, YOU, separate?
Who remained silent in this America?
In your CNN reports and FOX alerts?
And who has been locked in your gyms America?
Working on what muscle?
All muscles… all muscles… who told you that muscles are all that you need?
Can we return to America?
It is this craving for freedom from what this culture violates, separates, and consumes so meticulously, that asks us to find color and beauty (away from our screens) in what appears crumbling, falling, losing ground.
But this search, this journey forces us to face a number of doubts: where shall we find color? Is too late? Have we become accustomed to pain and injustice? Can we identify beauty when we will encounter it? Are we afraid of feeling the weight of the pain of this America and its history?
Now, like other historical and personal moments of deep adversity, for some of us, bombarded by mayhem and vulgarity, it’s too dark and hard sometimes to see any light, color, or beauty.
• ß seed
Disheartened, some of us, life suddenly appears part of a cynical act: all is for sale; buy and don’t feel; buy because you don’t know how to deal with what you feel; all are sold and the shelves are empty; you got it all, yet it is still not enough.
I want to talk about Yellow America
I want to talk about Black America
I want to talk about Jewish America
I want to talk about Prisons in America
I want to talk about Brown America
I want to talk about Poor America
I want to talk about Homeless America
I want to talk about War in America
I want us to talk about what we did and still do to America
Americana
Americcca
Am
Color is to be found when reaching out to the most vulnerable. Going into the shadows. Going into the darkness. Going through storms of harsh weather. Touching and knowing love, where we realize that WE are not the most important and we must develop the ability to respect and be kind to one another, if that occurs, new futures emerge and unveil, and these futures are free, and they have smell, light, and color.
Alana Perlin’s exhibition is about these seeds of color.
It is about our futures, dedicated to our “unborn,” to borrow from Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry, generations.
It is a reminder that Ms. Perlin as an artist and an educator offers us.
It is about color; or better, resurrecting color and movement that transgresses borders.
It is a symmetrical get-together in one of the most asymmetrical moments of America, a meeting point in this desert of our now, remembering that no matter the clutter, violence and fascism, we have something more significant to offer one another. We do.
The ability to stop. To pause. Then to allow the weight to land, to touch, to find gravity, and watch it all open wide, more comprehensive, with no clear sense of structure and it all makes sense, all is allowed, invited, all that movement, immaculate flow of seeds of so many suns and horizons. You are pulled in it.
We want to talk about America
Americana
Americcca
Amer
“The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves.”
— Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
poetic echo
“Magical beliefs are revelatory and fascinating not because they are ill-conceived instruments of utility but because they are poetic echoes of the cadences that guide the innermost course of the world. ”
— Michael Taussig
sustenance
Spinoza, for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.
— Max Horkheimer
“None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.”
— Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
energyspark
miracle
“A miracle entails a degree of irrationality ; not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it...”
— Emmanuel Levinas
m i r a cl e m i r a cl e
“The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.”
unified
— Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
essence
only to love only to love
“As you know — wild is the wind. So wild is all of our life. No time to hate — only to love. Please hold me tight.”
— Ofra Haza & Bezalel Aloni
heavenly heavenly
“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”
— bell hooks
sparks sparks
1 # !
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”
— Golda Meir
Alana Perlin
EDUCATION
MFA in Digital Arts | New Media, University of California, Santa Cruz
BA in Design | Media Arts, University of California, Los Angeles Academy of Art University: Concentration in Animation & Visual Effects
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2011- Professor of Digital Art and Graphic Design: Merced College, Merced, CA, tenured. Digital Art, Graphic Design, Visual Communication, Animation, Motion Graphics, Web Design, Typography.
2004-10 Teaching Assistant and Course Assistant, University of California, Santa Cruz. Drawing, Two Dimensional Foundations, Film, Digital Media, Photography.
RELATED EXPERIENCE
2004 Farfan project, Peru—graphic artist and database designer. Worked in Peru. Responsibilities included graphic design, observational drawing, photography, film documentation, and database design for the Farfan archaeological site.
2003 Easter Island Statue Project designer and graphic artist. Website: www.easterislandstatueproject.org.
Worked on Easter Island. Duties included graphic design, photography, design imaging, documentary filmwork and three dimensional rendering/photogrammetry.
HONORS AND AWARDS
2006 Porter Fellow Grant Award / Graduate Student Fellowship
2004-06 Aurelio Alves Academic Scholarship
2004 UCLA Chancellor’s Marshall/Valedictorian—School of Art and Architecture
2004 UCLA Outstanding Senior Awards finalist
SELECTED ART EXHIBITIONS
2018 Merced College Faculty Show, Merced College Art Gallery, Merced, CA
2018 Merced County Fair Exhibition at the Arts Pavilion, Merced, CA
2016 Central California Art showcase—The Mistlin Gallery, Modesto, CA
2015 Merced College Art Faculty Exhibition, Merced Multicultural Arts Center, Merced, CA
2015 All Women Art Exhibition, Light Space Time Art Gallery, Jupiter, Florida
2015 Organic Designs—Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock, CA
2014 ASCI exhibition Art & Science Intersections Exhibition at the National Hall of Science in NYC, New York
2013 Book Publication featuring Perlin’s imagery through the University of New Mexico Press: Captured Visions, The Rock Art at Little Lake Ranch, Rose Valley, CA
2012 Close to Home, group show of Merced College and Modesto Junior College Art Professors’ work, California State University, Stanislaus
2011 Buildings as Live Entities, Multi-Sensory Moving Art Gallery, Austin, Texas
2010 Thanatopolis exhibition, I- Park, East Haddam, Connecticut
2008 Artist studio exhibition, Santa Cruz Open Studios
2007 Artist studio exhibition, Santa Cruz Open Studios
2007 Bull City Rising, Bull City Arts Collaborative Gallery, Durham, North Carolina
2007 Animals and Sea Creatures, Expressions Gallery, Berkeley, California
2007 Participatory Art Exhibition Commission, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
2006 FONLAD Remake Festival for Digital Arts, the Web Art Center, Lisbon, Portugal
2006 Better than the Real Thing, Digital Art Group Show, Dublin, Ireland
2006 Freestyle 2-3-d, Digital Art, Energy Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2006 DANM.01 MFA show, The Digital Media Factory, Santa Cruz, CA
2005 Cross Pollination solo digital art show, Cowell College Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA
2004 UCLA Design Media Arts student show, Westwood, California
2004 Unexpected Token: Void, Show of interactive media works, UCLA E.D.A. center, Los Angeles, CA
2001 Diversiforms group show: electronic sculptures, Ridley-Tree Art Center, Santa Barbara, CA
2001 The Increasing Momentum of Entropy group show (TIME): paintings, Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA
1999 Collaborative mural project painting at a monumental scale, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
2016 Digital Artist in-Residence, Digital Fabrication Residency, Maryland
2008 Virtual Artist in-Residence, Second Life Ars Virtua Gallery, Cyberspace
2008 Digital Artist in-Residence, I - Park Artist studios, East Haddam, Connecticut
2007 Digital Artist in-Residence, I - Park Artist studios, East Haddam, Connecticut
IMAGE LIST
Images are ordered left to right, top to bottom where applicable.
Cover: Butterfly Madness, detail, digital media, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Back: Command Mint, digital media on canvas, 40 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 3: Butterfly Madness, digital media, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 5: Alana Spin, pigmented sandstone, 3 x 7 x 4”, 2019
Page 8: Bedazzled Pomegranate, digital media, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 10: Hamsa Healing, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 12: Mmmenorah, digital media, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 13: Sufganiyot, digital media, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 14: Star David, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 14: Tiger Mandala, detail, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 14: Tiger Talisman, detail, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 15: Tiger Talisman, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 16: Peacock Hexagon detail, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5” 2019
Page 17: Peacock Hexagon, digital media on canvas 60 x 40 x 1.5 2019
Page 17: Kippah, digital media on canvas, 40 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 17: Dreidelicious, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 17: Bird Circle, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 17: Cheetah Unity, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 18: Lion Ball, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 18: Lioness Star, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 18: Lioness Star, detail, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 18: Luria Lion, digital media, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 19: Fennex Fox 02, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 19: Fennex Fox, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 20: Bulldog, digital media on canvas, 40 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 20: Giraffe Box, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 20: Giraffe Box detail, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 20: Camel Ball detail, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 20: Camel Ball, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 21: Leopard Ball 02, digital media on canvas 40 40 1.5 2018
Page 21: Leopard Ball, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 21: Leopard Block, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 22: Owl Orb, digital media on canvas 60 x 40 x 1.5 2019
Page 23: Owl Radiance, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 23: Owl Radiance detail, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 24: Zebra Ball, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 24: Zebra Aura, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 24: Zebra Aura detail, digital media on canvas, 40 x 60 x 1.5”, 2019
Page 25: Puma Pizazz, digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 25: Wolf Dawn, digital media on canvas 40 x 60 x 1.5 2019
Page 27: Puma Pizazz detail,digital media on canvas, 60 x 40 x 1.5”, 2018
Page 28: Alana’s Replicas, digital media animation, 2017
Page 29: Alana Spin, pigmented sandstone, 3 x 7 x 4”, 2019
Acknowledgements
California State University, Stanislaus
Dr. Ellen Junn, President
Dr. Kimberly Greer, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs
Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Art
Dr. Carmen Robbin, Chair, Professor
Dean De Cocker, Professor
Martin Azevedo, Assistant Professor
Tricia Cooper, Lecturer
James Deitz, Lecturer
Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor
Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor
Daniel Hekcamp, Lecturer
Chad Hunter, Lecturer
University Art Gallery
Dean De Cocker, Director
Megan Hennes, Gallery Assistant
School of the Arts
Brad Peatross, Graphic Specialist II
Special Thanks
David Olivant, Professor
Patrica Eshagh, Lecturer
Ellen Roehne, Lecturer
Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor
Susan Stephenson, Assistant Professor
Jake Weigel, Assistant Professor
Meg Broderick, Administrative Support Assistant II
Andrew Cain, Instructional Technician I
Jon Kithcart, Equipment Technician II
Special thanks to Dean DeCocker, Bradley Peatross, Megan Hennes, and the CSU Stanislaus Art department—for their continual artistic support. Additional thanks—Linda and Darryl Perlin, for always encouraging me to become an artist.
Alana Perlin - Emanations
February 11–March 15, 2019 | University Art Gallery, California State University, Stanislaus | One University Way, Turlock, CA 95382
300 copies printed. Copyright © 2019 California State University, Stanislaus • ISBN: 978-1-940753-39-3
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.
