OCCCA's 45th Anniversary Exhibition
April 5 - May 17, 2025
Art Walk Reception: April 5, 6-10pm
The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art is proud to present their 45th Anniversary Exhibition, showcasing over 70 former and current OCCCA artists. During its four and a half decades, OCCCA has provided the public with a panoply of more than 500 creative, thought-provoking and high-quality contemporary art exhibitions cumulatively featuring more than 2,000 artists. Every exhibition is provided free of charge to the public. OCCCA annually presents two high profile, topically themed juried exhibitions strategicallycalendared among a note-worthy range of solo and group showings of OCCCA artists and guest-curated exhibitions. OCCCA exhibition opening receptions are free to the public, occurring from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month, concurrently participating in the Santa Ana Artists Village Art Walk.
OCCCA community outreach provides free art classes for local elementary schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District. By-appointment tours for educational institutions, organizations and the public are available and encouraged. Additionally presented are a varied spectrum of cultural events including panel discussions, performing and musical presentations.
In 1994 OCCCA was the pioneering first organization to commit to moving into the then only conceptualized, yet to be realized Santa Ana Artists Village. Having moved from its original gallery space in west Santa Ana, OCCCA has occupied its own 6,300 square foot gallery space since 2000 and is in the heart of the Santa Ana Artists Village.
Inspired by world-renown assemblage and performance artist George Herms, then an art professor at California State University Fullerton, as an outgrowth of his reply to a plaintive observation by five of his graduate art students saying are no venues in Orange County to exhibit their contemporary art, Herms said, “Start your own Gallery” which they did in 1980 as OCCCA. In late summer of 1980, Herms subsequently agreed to and became the
inaugural artist exhibited at OCCCA. His work is included in this exhibition.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
360 Tour of Exhibition
How is the Weather?
Juried by Shana Nys Dambrot
July 5 - August 23, 2025
Art Walk Reception: July 5, 6-10pm
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, Bob Dylan
Dramatic weather is everywhere, affecting our lives, more than ever before. We just experienced the hottest average temperature ever recorded on Earth. Heavy, blinding fog, smoke from forest fires and incessant smog fill the air. We have had record sleet and snowfall this year, giving us dangerous swollen rivers late into summer.
Topicality is OCCCA’s forte, and the extreme weather caused by climate change has become an existential threat to our planet now.
From Rembrandt and Turner to Gerhart Richter’s Secrets of Clouds, for centuries, artists have been interpreting the weather in their art. But now is the time for artists to make a statement.
Not just beautiful sunsets and devastatingly frightening floods, but show us your high tides, big waves, atmospheric rivers, and storm cells. We have melting icebergs and glaciers falling into the ocean. Heat waves and dust blanketing large portions of the country. Tornadoes, hail, and lightning delivered by Cumulonimbus clouds. Show us all the extremes and kick up a storm.
“We are the stewards of our planet, and we haven’t done enough”, Jane Goodall
Send us your visions of hope, promising ideas, new solutions, and innovative creations that can mitigate the impending doom of climate change, if only we can implement them soon. How will we respond to the existential threat of climate change with our art?
Robin Repp 2024
360 Tour of Exhibition