art talk talk talk

s01e06

Starring:

Alicia Piller

Los Angeles based artist, Alicia Piller was born and raised in Chicago and received her Bachelor's in both Fine Arts (Painting) & Anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004. While working in the fashion industry; living a decade in NYC and three and a half years in Santa Fe, NM, Piller cultivated her distinctive sculptural voice. Continuing to expand her artistic practice, Alicia completed her MFA focused on sculpture and installation from Calarts in May of 2019.

As a method to locate the root of human histories, Alicia merges the new and discarded, experimenting with of a wide range of materials to construct large scale works that mimic forms of cellular biology. Piller envisions historical traumas, both political and environmental, through the lens of a microscope. Piller’s mixed media practice is as much about materiality as it is about content. Attempting to reconcile questions about the current state of our times; she works on a macro/micro level, breathing life into materials that have been removed from their ‘natural’ environment. Manipulating things like resin and latex balloons (stemming from her background as a clown); each work becomes a biological unfolding of time, examining the energy around wounds societies have inflicted upon themselves and others.

Alicia’s work is a part of the Hammer Permanent Collection, Glendale College Collection, Forrest Kirk Collection, & the Pam Royalle Collection. Her sculptural work was featured on the cover of Full Blede Magazine, Issue 10 (Fall 2019) and drawings of sculptural work in the Lumina Journal (Sarah Lawrence College) (Jan 2020).

Lyssa Park

Lyssa Park explores narrative through illustration, comics, books and hand-crafted dolls, using a variety of approaches including pen-and-ink, collage, digital media, screen printing, risograph printing, and sculpture. She is inspired by literary fiction, daily encounters, family relationships, and animals. She’s interested in exploring alternative approaches to complex storytelling through experimentation with form, process, and materials. Lyssa graduated with a BFA in illustration from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. In 2019, she was awarded the Society of Illustrators Student Award, was shortlisted for the Nami International Picture Book Concours and was an Art and Design intern with Penguin Random House Young Readers Design Group. She lives and works in Las Vegas and is currently producing a book with Red Fox Literary for publication.

Yasmina Chavez

Yasmina Chavez is a time-based media artist and curator who lives and works in Las Vegas, Nevada. She received her BFA in photography from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2011 and MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in New York in 2016. Chavez works across disciplinary boundaries - video and sound installations, experimental documentary video, design of custom systems for cinematography, dance choreography, poetry, printmaking, and performance art. Chavez’ practice explores individual/social identities expressed through different rhythms of time and idiosyncratic relationships to everyday life. She creates openings into enigmas and society’s structural quandaries.

Chavez has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been a featured artist in media-based festivals including the 2018 Vibrant Digit in Shenyang China, 2013 Life Is Beautiful festival, 2012 and 2014 London Biennale Las Vegas satellite exhibits, and the Off the Strip new genres festival in 2010. In 2011, she co-founded and co-curated 5th Wall Gallery in downtown Las Vegas and is a recurring performer in R.A.D.A.R. L.V. – a Vegas-based bi-monthly performance art event established in 2018. Her fifth solo exhibit, The Suchness of Light–an abstract photo series–was exhibited at two Clark County libraries in 2019 & 2020