Orange County Center for Contemporary Art Presents
Painting in Real Time
Exhibition of Contemporary Artists
Painting in Real Time will take place September 7th-28th, 2024.
An opening event will take place on Saturday September 7th from 6-9 PM.
The space is located at 117 North Sycamore Street, Santa Ana, CA.
Founded in 1980, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art is an artist-run
non-profit dedicated to the pursuit of professional excellence and freedom of expression
in the arts. Each year, the historic building is home to a host of ambitious exhibitions
showcasing contemporary artists. The organization has a long tradition of inviting
outside curators to organize shows. OCCCA is located in the heart of the Downtown
Santa Ana Artist Village; home to several galleries, artist studios, and an Art Walk the
first Saturday of each month.
Painting in Real Time will feature work addressing the theme of time in painting. The
exhibition include works by artists who capture time in different ways; either through
daily practice, spontaneity, or by working from observation. The show features dynamic
contemporary artists with a variety of approaches, from materially based work to
conceptual works. The show features self-taught artists, as well as graduates of UCLA,
Art Center, Yale University, Boston University, RISD and Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture. Roderick Smith is showing works that come out of a collaborative group
drawing practice. During the opening he will be leading two groups in creating
spontaneous drawings in the front of the space.
Curator Rebecca Shippee is the founder of Triangle Projects. She has curated
numerous exhibitions as Triangle Projects, and independently. She served as co-curator
of a two person show Waterways in the Skowhegan exhibition space in Chelsea, New
York. She served as co-curator of a group show Moved/Displaced at Orange County
Center of Contemporary Art in 2024. She is a graduate of Purchase College and Yale
University.
Selected Quotes from Artists:
Lisa Sigal
"This series, Body Bags, is made from metal and vinyl screening. I was thinking about
objects that hold stories, sometimes of trauma. Each artwork cradles an intangible
perspective of our personhood. They are representations of a collective body,
suggesting traces of things and impermanence.”
Jarrett Key
“I left the lush pastures of Alabama in 2013 to move to the cement
blocks of New York City. I often dream about the migration of Black
folks from Alabama to NYC a hundred years ago to escape the horrors of
a Jim Crow south. I imagine the relief they felt (we felt), while
crossing into the city limits of NYC, Detroit, Chicago and then the
heroic loneliness and alienation faced while building our new lives.
What did we lose when we left our families and communities behind in
our various villages? I often consider Toni Morrison’s thoughts that
in “the village” or the country far from city limits our ancestors
thrive. “The advising, benevolent, protective, wise Black ancestor”
holds knowledge of the past while building a foundation for the
future. Stories sing and hymns hum in the winds of land we have
stewarded.”
Jenny Gagalka
“They're all observational paintings where I set up still lifes of an object that isn't really
important. Of course then it becomes really important. It can be any object, but it can't
be every object. Throughout the years - subconsciously I suppose - I select these blunt
objects of mass crass consumption. They're highly circulated. They're containers.
They're objects that contain shadows.”
Artist Bios:
Lisa Sigal (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her work
encompasses painting, sculpture, socially-engaged projects, curating, and public art.
Over the last three decades, she has exhibited in galleries and institutions in North
America, Europe, and Asia.
Jarrett Key (they/them) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. They also spend part of their
studio practice working in Margate, UK at the TKE studios, founded by Tracey Emin!
Key is a recent MFA graduate from RISD Painting. Key has been featured in exhibitions
and residencies at 1969 Gallery, the RISD Museum, La MaMa Galleria, and many
others.
Jenny Gagalka (she/her) received an MFA in Painting & Drawing from UCLA in 2018.
She has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Ox-
Bow in Michigan, and The Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles. She has mounted
solo exhibitions with Good Weather Gallery, Paul Soto, Triangle Projects, and Towards
Gallery.
Sterling Wells (he/him) is represented by Night Gallery in Los Angeles. Wells attended
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2018 and was a recipient of a 2019
Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. His work is included in the
collections of University Hospital, San Antonio, TX; and New York Presbyterian Hospital,
New York, NY.
Saj Issa (she/her) received a BFA from Webster University, St. Louis in 2017, and an
MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at
Felix Art Fair 2022, Los Angeles, Materials Fair 2022 in Mexico City, and the exhibition
Many at the Craft Contemporary Museum. Issa was selected to appear in New
American Paintings, No. 159 & 165 MFA Annual Issue. She participated in two long-
term residencies at Craft Alliance Center of Art + Design and Belger Crane Yard Studio.
Roderick Smith (he/him) received a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology and
has studied at the Art Students League and The National Academy of Design in New
York, and at Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico. He has taught in Los Angeles for
the past six years working with non-profit educational program artworxla.
Wesley Willis (he/him) was an American musician and visual artist. Willis began a
career as an underground singer-songwriter in the outsider music tradition. During
childhood, Willis developed an interest in art, and in 1988, he was featured in a Chicago
public access documentary feature created by Carl W. Hart titled Wesley Willis: Artist of
the Streets. After his death, Willis began to receive recognition in the art community for
his large body of visual art.
Nell Geraldine Best (she/her) was born in Sterling, Washington in 1905. She received
a BA in Fine Arts and an MFA in Painting from the University of Oregon. Best created a
WPA mural in Minnesota titled Early Voyagers at Portage, located in the White Bear
Lake post office. Best moved to Lynwood, a suburb of Los Angeles, in the late 1930s.
She then exhibited her work at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts Little Gallery,
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Cincinnati Art
Museum, among other venues.
Kennedy Harwood (they/them) is an artist, researcher, and writer from Milwaukee, WI.
They are a recent graduate of Boston University with a BFA in Painting. They recently
attended the prestigious Norfolk School of Art in 2023. They have exhibited their work
throughout the east coast and midwest region.
Sean Samoheyl (he/him) is a self-taught painter who counts Karl Wirsum and Kerry
James Marshall as early mentors. Out of high school, he was offered an internship with
Vito Acconci to assist on his Dirt Wall project at the Arvada Arts Center. Samoheyl lived
at Twin Oaks, an intentional eco-village in Virginia, starting in 2001 until moving to
Oregon in 2019. Samoheyl has exhibited several times at ADA Gallery in Richmond,
Virginia and at the American Visionary Museum in Baltimore. Samoheyl has been a
fellow at Virginia Folklife and the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.
Annette Cyr (she/her) is an award winning painter and filmmaker. She holds a Masters
of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Yale University and an MFA in Digital Filmmaking
from National University. She has been supported by grants from The National
Endowment for the Arts, Art Matters, Brooklyn Arts Council and has participated in
residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo and Mcdowell.
Checklist of Artworks for Publication
Pop Secret 8, Flashe on canvas, 21” x 19” 2023
Jenny Gagalka
Pop Secret 4, Flashe on canvas, 21” x 19” 2022
Jenny Gagalka
Body Bags (stockpilling), 2018. Metal and vinyl screen;
70 × 90 inches
Lisa Sigal
Body Bags (garden estate), 2018. Metal and vinyl
screen; 60 × 64 inches
Lisa Sigal