Cerritos College held an online art reception on Zoom on Monday in which multiple female art students showcased work specifically in honor of Women’s History Month.
Headed by professor Audra Graziano and Kimberly Rosenfield, the reception was hit off with around 15 attendants after waiting a brief moment for other panelists to join in time.
“As you move forward, you’re only going to have your art community,” said Najarian, “Unless you meet others that have the strength and you pull on those, that’s all you’re gonna have.”
Arranged alphabetically, the art reception began with the work of Jennix Bien, whose exhibition consisted of portraits of herself mid-drawing and another woman clothed in a motorcycle helmet and green jacket.
“With my art, I like to express my identity and where I come from; as a queer woman, I create to inspire with aim at elevating the voices of women and LGBTQ+ within the creative world,” said Bien.
Next was Mia Delgado, who was absent but whose Helping Hand—an armless and legless ceramic figure giving birth to an assemblage of curled metallic wires—was nonetheless appreciated by the attending students.
Then there was Rayanna Enriquez’s artwork, one of which depicted a woman pulling off a tooth while the other illustrated the distortion of another woman’s face as she pulls on the skin in what is titled Morning Rituals.
Enriquez said, “I wanted to paint my perspective as a young woman with aging and anxieties about growing up—feeling like you’re an adult now, but you still feel really adolescent.”
Julie Gallo’s Influx and Primavera were displayed next; the first being the colorful abstract art that was the cover of Monday’s virtual art exhibition and the second being a charcoal rendering of herself.
“The Influx, which was featured on the cover. I worked more in an intuitive way, I would say,” said Gallo, “I felt like it needed to have a certain Energy and there’s just this sense of movement I wanted to incorporate as well.”
This sense of movement was what Gallo attributed to a feeling similar to Enriquez’s own work of time charging past while everyone is left behind.
After Gallo was Francesca Hogi and then Michelle Learner, who were absent from the reception although both artists’ works were given some time to be inspected by the attendants.
Hogi’s Ordinary Objects displayed a random assortment of items ranging from a single eye to one leaf and Three Nesting Bowls—three blue bowls on top of one another—all built from ceramic.
Learner’s artwork was a series of monotone renderings of fallen leaves and abstract lines.
Aside from the artists’ exhibitions, Najarian suggested that attendants share what sorts of words would feel most fitting to describe the elements depicted in some of the art.
One such word was provoking by one student to pick out the feelings generated by Janneth Uriarte’s Phantom Bedroom, another art piece on display that details two women sitting on a bed pushed against a background of swirling particles of light.
