Helen Pashgian will be in conversation with David Chickey, Publisher & Creative Director of Radius Books. Signed books will be available for sale in curated: The Store at SITE Santa Fe following the conversation. Music will begin at 6pm with delicious food from Jesushi and custom cocktails from Rolling Still Distillery!

What was it about Southern California in the sixties and seventies that helped to spawn the distinctive Light and Space movement in which Helen Pashgian was to play such an important part? Renowned author Lawrence Weschler will consider not only influences like surf culture, Hollywood, and proximity to Asian and Pacific aesthetics, but also certain seminal qualities in the Light of LA itself.

Helen Pashgian will be in conversation with Michael Govan, the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Art historian and Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Merry Scully will discuss key concepts relating to Helen Pashgian’s work including the sense of newness and innovation on the West Coast, as well as the ideas of perception, physical sensation, and phenomena.

Light and Space-based artists are noted for their use of the new materials and the emerging technologies available in post war California. Their artworks are often discussed as a merging of the innovations made and used by aerospace and other advanced industries with the culture of region – most notably surfing and car culture. The American West is a location often associated with opportunity, a place during the mid-20th century perceived to be of the future, not as tied to history, a site open to alternatives in medicine, lifestyles, and artist materials. This attitude, environment, and materials allowed the artists to create works that were physically different and entirely new. Like many artists from the West, or who made their way to the West and Southwest in the 20th century, these artists were striving to create works beyond the representational, to move beyond the strictly visual, to exploit perception, and to create artworks that are experienced as much as they were seen.

In celebration of artist Helen Pashgian, writers from Kundiman Southwest respond to and engage the sensory ‘presences’; that the installations evoke in this reading of their works in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid forms. Seating limited to 50 attendees.

Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American creative writing. In this intersection of the literary and the visual, we are given ‘permission to travel.’ Poets include Dara Elerath, Anushah Jiwani, Elizabeth Lee, Jane Lin, and Edie Tsong.

Miss the event? Catch the #LunchTalk!