Monte Vista Projects

Monte Vista Projects is an artist-run space based in Highland Park. Through exhibitions, lectures, events and performances, MVP has served as a space to share ideas and cultivate exhibitions articulated in experiments and play. We also encourage forms, which break entirely from these existent threads. MVP is a self-determining space-- a space that speaks to the ways in which we are scripted to produce as artists. We believe this position allows us to visualize patterns of making in order to break from them. Since 2007, MVP has collaborated with artists and practitioners in and around the greater Los Angeles arts community. We are especially interested in working with under-represented artists and minorities. In addition to curated shows organized by board members, exhibition proposals are accepted year round.  

Members: Rebecca Bennett Duke, Michael Lewis Dodge, Danny Escalante, Bobbi Gentry, Melissa Huddleston, Jay Lizo, Chris Miller

Website:http://www.montevistaprojects.com/

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FAR Bazaar Project

LAST WALTZ

Description: Each member of Monte Vista Projects has invite one artist to participate in the exhibition.

Location: FA75

Participating Artists: Beatriz Cortez, Rebecca Bennett Duke, Michael Lewis Dodge, Danny Escalante, Bobbi Gentry, Melissa Huddleston, Brittany Ko, Jay Lizo, Chris Miller, Brittany Mojo, Colin Roberts, Michael Smoler, Tran Truong

Beatriz Cortez is a writer and an artist. She was born in El Salvador and has lived in the United States since 1989. Her work explores simultaneity, the existence in different temporalities and different versions of modernity, particularly in relation to memory and loss in the aftermath of war and the experience of immigration, and in relation to imagining possible futures. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, and a doctorate in Latin American literature from Arizona State University. She teaches in the Department of Central American Studies at California State University, Northridge. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

M.L Dodge received his BFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 1999. He has exhibited at Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, High Desert Test Sites in Wonder Valley, CA, Arena 1 in Santa Monica, CA, and at LAX in Los Angeles, CA. He currently has a solo exhibition at Elephant. He is currently member of Monte Vista Projects.

Rebecca Bennett Duke is an Los Angeles based artist. Her sculpture combines minimalist themes and absurd narratives to explore the otherness of nature and technology and their proffered temporary moments of wonder and joy. She holds a Masters of Fine Art from California State University, Northridge and a Bachelors of Fine Art from Maine College of Art. She currently teaches at The Academy of Art University and The Armory Center for the Arts.

Melissa Huddleston is an artist based in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Elm Springs, Arkansas, she studied painting at Western Washington University with Ed Bereal. Her paintings and drawings explore notions of personal and group identity, across real and imagined communities. She is a member of the board at Monte Vista Projects, and works as an Assistant Conservator at the Getty Research Institute. Huddleston's The Beautician was featured in a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive in April 2016. Recent group exhibitions include Language of Landscape at the Annenberg Community Beach House, and ¡Dígame! at the Obracadobra Residency in Oaxaca, MX. Upcoming exhibitions include Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California at the Craft Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, The Collectivists at the Brand Gallery and an artist residency at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts in April, 2017.

Roberta Gentry is an artist whose work explores aspects of language and systems of organization. Gentry’s work questions ideas about abstraction, specifically the fantasy of literally translating form into meaning, and the destruction that can arise during that translation.Gentry received her MFA in 2014 from the State University of New York at Albany and her BFA in 2007 from the University of Arizona. She was one of five recipients of the College Art Association’s Career Development Fellowship in 2014, and also received the University at Albany’s Distinguished Master of Fine Arts Project Award. She has had solo shows at the Joyce Goldstein Gallery in Chatham, NY, and at Stanica Cultural Center in Zilina, Slovakia following a residency funded by the US Embassy in. Her work has been featured on the cover of Apogee Magazine and written about in Maake Magazine, and the 1 Op Collective blog.  She currently lives and works in Los Angeles and is a member of the artist-run space Monte Vista Projects.

Brittany Ko, an artist and educator that lives and works in Los Angeles.

Jay Lizo is a Los Angeles based artist. He received his MFA at UCSB in 2005 and his BFA at Ringling School of Art and Design in 1998. He has had solo exhibitions at Box 13 Gallery in Houston, Texas, Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri. He has participated in group shows at The Torrance Art Museum, Luckman Art Gallery, New Americans Museum,  Blum and Poe Gallery, Seeline Gallery, High Desert Test Sites, and RAID projects. He is a current member of Monte Vista Projects.

Chris Miller received a BFA from The Pennsylvania State University and a MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He teaches 3D Foundation and Ceramics at The California State University, Long Beach.  Chris is a current member of the artist-run gallery, Monte Vista Projects. 

Brittany Mojo received a BFA from The California State University, Long Beach and a MFA from The University of California, Los Angeles.  She teaches Ceramics at Orange Coast College and Sculpture at La Sierra University. Brittany is a current member of the artist-run gallery, TSA LA. 

Tran Truong was born in Janesville Wisconsin and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from Bard's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2016. Her paintings have been shown in group exhibitions throughout Los Angeles and the bay area and were featured in a solo exhibit at Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles in February 2016. Truong's paintings explore the relationship between representation and flatness. She works from a combination of observation, memory, found images, and imaginative stuff. Focusing on light and color, geometry and touch, she explores a range of subtlety that occurs by repeating and reorganizing motifs. The surface and light in her paintings refer to California's bleached out light. The underneath is increasingly becoming a subject in her recent work.

Colin Roberts is a Los Angeles based artist. His work consists of sculpture, drawings and installations that explore the human condition. He received his BFA from Otis School of Art and Design in 2001. He's had solo exhibitions at Steve Turner Gallery, Patricia Faure and Monte Vista Projects. He's also participated in group shows at The Skirball Center, Mark Moore Gallery, June Lee Contemporary, Gavin Brown's Passerby Gallery NY, Torrance Art Museum and Young Projects. He is currently represented by June Lee Contemporary and is the owner of LAVA Gallery in Los Angeles.