Art on Campus
Campus Map: Art in Public Spaces (PDF)
COMING SOON: Student Center Back Wall Mural and the Performing Arts Center Facade Project
Please Help Us Choose the Next Public Art Project on Campus: Performing Art Center Feedback Survey
STUDENT CENTER MURALS
Commissioned in 2021, Amir H. Fallah's epic three-part mural series, Universe, represents the diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds of the Cerritos College community through the depiction of bouquets of flowering plants from around the world. Nestled amongst the floral displays are lockets and similar jewelry, the kind frequently carried by immigrants and refugees across borders as portable keepsakes and/or currency, emblazoned with icons representing the various scholastic disciplines taught on campus. A more in-depth analysis of the artist's practice and this innovative work can found in the video below.
The Sound Pavilion
The Sound Pavilion was permanently installed in the gallery courtyard of the old Fine Arts building in 2011 by artists John David O'Brien and Steve Roden, in conjunction with their two-person exhibition at the Cerritos College Art Gallery, drawn into a dialogue. The project was generously funded by a grant from the Cerritos Foundation, with assistance from the President's Office. As was always the intention, the Sound Pavilion has since been relocated to the east foyer of the new Fine Arts building.
Excerpt from the curatorial essay by director James MacDevitt, describing the project: The artists constructed a permanently-installed and site-specific sound sculpture in the exterior gallery courtyard. With a sound composition based on the architectural rhythms of the building's colored panels, this outdoor installation visually and musically deconstructs the aesthetic logic of the building itself, reinterpreting the facade motifs as both framing device and an autonomous decorative element. As a permanent installation, the sound sculpture will serve multiple functions and participate in multiple dialogical relationships; initially in an on-going and interactive exchange with the current architectural features of the Fine Arts Building that surrounds it and secondly as an interpretative archival document, a memory fragment, of that current structure once it is eventually replaced with a newer building in the not-so-distant future, ensuring that physical demolition will not result in complete and total erasure.
VACANT MARKER
LA-based artist Gustavo Godoy generously donated one of his large cast concrete sculptures to Cerritos College, to be placed on permanent public display at the entrance to Kincaid Field, home base for the college's highly-successful baseball team. Godoy's Vacant Marker sculpture originated as one of a number of abstract pieces he produced for an exhibition entitled Vacant Mounds and Markers at notable Los Angeles art gallery, Honor Fraser. For this 2012 exhibition, Godoy created a new body of cast concrete sculptures he called "mounds and markers,” each piece meant to be ambiguously reminiscent of ancient altars, minimalist sculptures, futuristic architecture, and urban demolition sites. This series of sculptures not only alluded to ancient histories, but also referenced the artist’s own contemporary idols. The Vacant Mounds that originally encircled Vacant Marker (the piece that Godoy ultimately donated to Cerritos College) referenced the pitching mound from Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium, a sacred space for Godoy. In 1981, Fernando Valenzuela, a Mexican pitcher for the Dodgers, quickly became an international phenomenon as he took his team to the World Series Championship and received baseball's most prestigious award for pitching, the Cy Young. Idolizing the pitcher as a child (and furthermore, the stadium), Godoy witnessed first hand as "Fernandomania" swept the country. For the Mexican population of L.A., the success of Valenzuela was especially meaningful considering the controversial history of Dodger Stadium. The stadium was built in Chavez Ravine, an area previously home to a vibrant Mexican American community. In the 1940s, the area was particularly appealing to real estate developers, who saw the potential in the neighborhood's proximity to Downtown L.A. The residents were forcibly relocated to make room for new housing. Although the development never materialized, the land was sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers, creating a home for the newly christened Los Angeles Dodgers in Chavez Ravine. This recounting of fraught histories is prevalent in the Vacant Mounds and Markers series, as Godoy pays tribute to disenfranchised communities, the rise and fall of heroes, and the urban L.A. landscape. Los Angeles is an urban jungle comprised of a stream of traffic and construction set against a landscape of ocean, palm trees and mountains. This juxtaposition of nature vs. industry can be seen in the commonplace materials that Godoy uses to build his sculptures. Maintaining a relationship with the day laborers that build our environments, Godoy's work pays tribute to the true makers of our city. His embrace of quotidian construction supplies, readily found at any home improvement store, renders the objects familiar, yet the weight and stillness of the heavy material provides a solemn, cerebral experience. These concrete forms suggest permanence; a gesture of hope that the art object can capture and maintain the essence of time and social circumstance.
CAPS SMALL ART COLLECTION
Cerritos College has established a unique new publicly-displayed art collection. The collection, to be spread through publicly accessible areas of the campus, features paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs ranging in size from multiple small works on paper to two massive fourteen-foot shaped-canvas paintings. Themes presented in the works reflect the areas of study covered in nearby classrooms. The collection also prominently features works by traditionally underrepresented groups, including notable female artists and artists of color.
In this initial acquisition, the College selected works by 17 contemporary artists: Carolyn Castaño, Amir H. Fallah, Alexandra Grant, Mark Steven Greenfield, Sean Higgins, Virginia Katz, Nery Gabriel Lemus, Melissa Manfull, Álvaro Daniel Márquez, Hung Viet Nguyen, Christina Ondrus, Naida Osline, Julia Paull, Gala Porras-Kim, Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Marie Thibeault, and Jessica Wimbley. The campus will continue to expand this public art collection in the coming years.
Tropical Geometries: Quetzal, Azul y Naranja, 2017
Carolyn Castaño
Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper
51 x 40 inches
Courtesy of Walter Maciel Gallery
Location: Liberal Arts Building, Foyer, Second Floor
Seems So Long Ago, 2018
Amir H Fallah
Acrylic, Ink, and Collage on Paper
11 x 14 inches
Courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian Gallery
Location: Social Sciences Building, Second Floor
Nimbito, 2014
Alexandra Grant
Pencil on Paper
43 x 43 inches
Courtesy of Ochi Gallery
Location: Liberal Arts Building, South Stairs
Egungun: The Charlotte Observer, 2017
Mark Steven Greenfield
Archival Inkjet Print (Edition of Five)
50 x 40 inches
Location: Fine Arts Building, Second Floor
Eruption, 2016
Sean Higgins
Photo Collage
24 x 24 inches
Location: Physical Sciences Building, First Floor
Bergs, 2016
Sean Higgins
Photo Collage
24 x 24 inches
Location: Physical Sciences Building, First Floor
Offshore Flow - 8 Hours, Silver, 10/05/08, 2008
Virginia Katz
Metallic Ink on Black Paper
44.5 x 30 inches
Location: Physical Sciences Building, First Floor
Immigrant Landscape #2, 2017
Nery Gabriel Lemus
Watercolor on Paper
17.5 x 23.5 inches
Location: Social Sciences Building, Third Floor
Totem (Blue Violet), 2017
Melissa Manfull
Ink on Paper Mounted on Wood, Steel Base
19.5 x 8.25 x 5.25 inches
Location: Physical Sciences Building, Foyer, First Floor
Colonial Cartographies: Soil, Land, and Space (diptych), 2018
Alvaro Daniel Marquez
Serigraphy on Archival Inkjet Print (Edition of Two)
22 x 15 inches
Location: Administration Building, Board Room
Los Angeles: Redlining and Gentrification from 1939-2015, 2018
Alvaro Daniel Marquez
Photolithography/Serigraphy on Paper (Edition of Ten)
11 x 15 inches
Location: Business Education Building, First Floor
Tiburcio Vasquez, 2018
Alvaro Daniel Marquez
Three-Layer Reduction Linocut on Paper (Edition of Twelve)
15 x 22 inches
Location: Social Sciences Building, Third Floor
Coastal Sensation #26, 2017
Hung Viet Nguyen
Oil on Canvas
28 x 60 inches
Location: Fine Arts Building, First Floor
Parallax Painting: A Square is a Diamond to Infinity, 2009
Christina Ondrus
Silver Enamel and Day-Glo Paint on Shaped Canvas
50 x 168 inches
Location: Math / Computer Information Sciences Building, First Floor
Parallax Painting: Convergence Skew, 2009
Christina Ondrus
Silver Enamel and Day-Glo Paint on Shaped Canvas
50 x 168 inches
Location: Math / Computer Information Sciences Building, First Floor
Visionary Plants: Borachero, 2017
Naida Osline
Archival Inkjet Print
48 x 60 inches
Location: Nursing Skills Lab, First Floor
Mother Nature's Son: Glass Frog, Costa Rica, 2017-2018
Julia Paull
Archival Inkjet Print
17 x 11 inches
Location: Science Building, First Floor
One Bag of Miscellaneous Spearheads and Sticks, 2009
Gala Porras-Kim
Graphite on Cotton Paper
11.25 x 8.25 inches
Courtesy of Commonwealth and Council
Location: Social Sciences Building, Second Floor
Danza del Venado (Deer Dance), 2017
Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia
Graphite on Paper
11.5 x 10 inches
Location: Social Sciences Building, Second Floor
Heliostation, 2014
Marie Thibeault
Oil on Canvas
72 x 66 inches
Location: Fine Arts Building, East Foyer, First/Second Floor
Americana: Warrior II, 2018
Jessica Wimbley
Photo Collage, Graphite, and Pastel on Paper in Antique Wooden Frame
13 x 19 inches
Location: Social Sciences Building, Third Floor
Stay Connected