With live music, art exhibitions and dance recitals, there was no shortage of creative chaos at California Institute of the Arts on Friday night and Saturday.
The 45th annual World Music and Dance Festival took place on campus, featuring music from regions such as South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and West Africa; in addition, the inaugural “MAYhem Festival” was introduced, which was an all-encompassing weekend filled with various artistic showings throughout campus.
“The World Music Festival has been going on for a long time, and it stems out of the fact that we have world music degrees here, so they’ve been putting it on for a long time, but this is our first year that we’re adding into it ‘MAYhem,’ which is our weekend of activities,” said Emily Lytle-Painter, web and digital media producer for the institute. “There are plays that are happening. We have open students for the art school, and there’s also the Spring Dance Concert.”
According to Lytle-Painter, all the categories were put under the umbrella of “MAYhem.” The word “mayhem” was chosen to represent the month of May.
“So much happens at CalArts in the spring, right before graduation, so we were just looking for a way to let our community know a little bit more about all the amazing things going on,” Lytle-Painter said. “There’s a ton of stuff going on. And really, the point, it’s not necessarily anything new, but this is a way to try to get families and people from Los Angeles and Santa Clarita to come and enjoy all of the creative things going on.”
Lytle-Painter encouraged attendees to see the work cultivated by the students who are “exploding with creativity.”
Among the students who allowed walk-ins into their open studios were first year master of fine arts students Nic Cruz and Qiqi (Angela) Zhou.
“I specialize in illustration and painting. But since being here, I’ve expanded so much more into sculpture and kineticism and installation. I think today is going to be pretty exciting, just because we have so many different people with so many different practices. It’s going to be nice to introduce people to the full breadth of artists and work that we have here,” Cruz said. “It’s going to give a lot of different people time to shine, so I think that’s going to be great.”
Cruz credits his experience at CalArts, and choosing drawing, painting and performance art as his three tracks in his program, for helping him out of his comfort zone.
“I think that greatly influenced my practice today, just because it made me get out of my comfort zone. I was traditionally a landscape painter and more of a comic illustrator, a little bit. But since expanding, I’ve been encouraged, especially here, to combine different things, experiment more, and not be afraid to put myself out there. It’s been a generative experience,” Cruz said. “This is my portfolio I’ve been working on this year, so I’m showcasing what I’ve done so far at CalArts. It’s really cool to get more exposure with my art, and I’m pretty excited.”
Zhou, who is an international student from China, discussed working with her cohort and collaborating on projects.
“Our cohort is so sweet, and I’ve learned a lot from them. It’s not a competitive space and we all collaborate with each other. Our school offers different majors from other programs, so we can work on some projects with other people from music, film and video, and also from the dance program,” Zhou said. “For this open studio today, I’m looking forward to seeing more people, such as curators, other classmates, students, professors, who can potentially provide me with suggestions. I’m really excited to see them here in my studio, so I can learn a lot from them.”
Zhou experiments with the concepts of nature, such as life and death, while implementing a cool color palette. Zhou also discussed the personal nature of art, and how art allows one to express oneself in subtle ways.
“I’m more interested in life and death, skeletons, and how to build a new life. I’m also trying to do more still-life work. Right now I’m moving to a new stage, which is about mixed media, about more installation work, and to combine them with music a little more, so it’s more of a personal experience,” Zhou said. “[I think] it’s good to communicate and explore your ideas with people, while also sharing your own space. Maybe something is inside of your heart and now you get a chance to show it to the public.”
Ann Wiens, vice president of the office of marketing and communications, discussed the processes of connecting people throughout the city and county with arts and entertainment.
“We brought it all together and packaged it as ‘MAYhem,’ because it’s May, to bring the community in and to make sure that the people, especially the Santa Clarita community, knew that the public was welcome,” Wiens said “There’s so much going on at the end of the year, and we wanted to put it all together in a way that would make it really easy for people to access it and understand there’s all this great art, music and dance and theater right in their backyards.”
As a world-renowned institution, Wiens believes that the community can learn about the artists’ process of creating and curating in an intimate manner.
“Cal Arts is one of the best art schools in the country, maybe in the world. Artist studios are usually not open to the public, and you get that peek behind the scenes, because it’s usually the artist working and they’re more or less alone. It’s not an exhibition,” Wiens said. “So this gives people an opportunity to come in and see the work in progress, to meet the artists, to talk about them, to just get that peek behind the curtain.”
