Works In Progress

The Fowler Museum exhibition Aboriginal Screen-Printed Textiles from Australia’s Top End invites us to explore more than 70 distinctive, screen-printed textiles made by contemporary artists at five Aboriginal-owned art centers across northern Australia. These textiles combine traditional cultural knowledge with contemporary production techniques to produce dazzling, unique fabrics. Their bold colors and striking patterns have inspired interior design, furnishings, and fashion apparel.  

Joanna Barrkman, Senior Curator of Southeast Asian and Pacific Arts at the Fowler Museum, joins the UCLA Arts podcast Works In Progress to share stories about the artists and inspirations behind these textiles, on view at the Fowler through July 10.  

This winter quarter, design media arts students researched Los Angeles and its ecologies through the lens of climate change. Department of Design Media Arts professor and vice chair Peter Lunenfeld emphasized the importance of design research in the hybrid seminar/studio course “Introduction to Ecological Art and Justice,” part of a three-quarter sequence. Students conducted original research in order to think through historical and on-going issues of environmental racism in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

Dance Camera West, the world-renowned dance film festival, marks its 20th anniversary this year. From March 24-April 2, the festival will screen the top films selected from a record of over 400 submissions from around the world, in a live in-person event at two Los Angeles venues.

UCLA professors of choreography Lionel Popkin and David Roussève, who are board members of Dance Camera West, and the festival's executive and artistic director Kelly Hargraves join the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress" for a conversation about the festival and the evolution of dance on film.

Classes rooted in AEDI – anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion – are being taught across the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. This winter quarter, two undergraduate Art studio classes – painting and new genres – are being taught as AEDI-themed courses. On this episode of the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress," we spoke to faculty members Patty Wickman and Vishal Jugdeo as well as students about this shift and how students are responding in the classroom.

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance will present award-winning choreographer Ronald K. Brown and his company EVIDENCE’s newest dance work, The Equality of Night and Day: First Glimpse, at Royce Hall on Saturday, March 5. The work features recordings from UCLA distinguished professor emerita Angela Davis’s speeches. CAP UCLA is highlighting the activist and educator's legacy with a special exhibition drawn from UCLA Library Special Collections.

Edgar Arceneaux is an artist-in-residence at UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, where he is developing his work-in-progress "Boney Manilli," a live performance, exhibition, and single-channel film. On the latest episode of "Works In Progress," Arceneaux discusses his inspirations for the work, from 70’s disco group Boney M. and 90’s pop duo Milli Vanilli, to losing his mother to dementia. He also discusses his extensive research process, working on themes across an array of media, and seeking out artistic subjects that have “a level of unsettledness.” 

At just 16 years old, Jimmy Wu committed a crime that led to 13 ½ years of incarceration. In a Los Angeles juvenile detention facility, IOW introduced him to creative writing. He now runs the organization and is an advocate for juvenile justice reform. This quarter, Wu is teaching a class at UCLA through the Visual and Performing Arts Education program (VAPAE) called “Arts Programs in Correctional Institutions.”

A cultural and economic corridor that's central to Southern California’s Black community is getting a new look. Destination Crenshaw is a $100 million revitalization project that will bring public art, pocket parks and small business investment to 1.3 miles of Crenshaw Boulevard in South Los Angeles.

Helping bring this project to life? UCLA faculty and alumni.

On this episode of "Works In Progress," hear from two UCLA scholars who are advising the project, Darnell Hunt and Marcus Hunter, and two UCLA Department of Art alumnae who are creating public artworks for it, Maren Hassinger and Brenna Youngblood.

Art and science students at UCLA want you to reconsider the human relationship with nature, even if it means shrinking you down to the size of an insect – or at least creating an immersive environment that helps shift your perspective to the scale of tiny creatures. 

This past fall, students from the Department of Design Media Arts (DMA) collaborated with environmental science, biology, and public policy students in the course “Introduction to Ecological Art and Justice.” The students staged an installation at Broad Art Center called “Ritual of Return,” which combined immersive video, audio, sculpture, and performance to make visitors feel fully embedded in a natural environment. Students also produced an illustrated booklet about the research and iteration that led to the final exhibition. 

"Works In Progress" host Avishay Artsy met with class instructor Erin Cooney, a lecturer and alumna of DMA; Leslie Foster, the TA for the class and a second-year graduate student at DMA; and Jen Hotes, an undergraduate student in the class. 

As we approach the end of 2021 and the second holiday season of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us are tired, frustrated, and impatient to see transmission rates drop and restrictions further loosened.

Meanwhile, our front-line medical workers are bracing themselves for a repeat of last winter’s surge in hospitalizations, driven this year by the non-vaccinated.

Dr. Thanh Neville is an ICU physician, researcher, and the current medical director of UCLA’s 3 Wishes Program – which fulfills end-of-life wishes for hospitalized patients and their families – and a graduate of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Her research centers on improving palliative care for patients in the critical care setting. 

On Monday, Nov. 29, Dr. Neville will participate in the final session of this year’s UCLA Arts public discussion series "10 Questions" to discuss the question, “How do we love?”

On this episode of the UCLA Arts podcast "Works In Progress," Dr. Neville shares her thoughts on medical worker burnout, mandatory vaccinations, and politicizing the pandemic, and describes her perspective as a first-generation college student and the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants.