Art at Los Medanos College

Six local high schools visited us for Career Focus Friday. We gave them a tour of the art and graphics areas, but thought it would be better to demonstrate what we do, and let them have a little fun. We set up a makeshift studio with beautiful portrait light at one end and "monster light" at the other. We made a few demonstration photos, then let them go to town with their camera phones. I think we were a hit.

Ken Alexander took is design drawing class outside to work on trees. He's not the only art instructor to take learning outside the traditional classroom.  From gallery and museum visits to on-site art creation we all enjoy getting out and interacting with the real world.

Even though it was the Friday before finals week, LMC photo II and Documentary photo students were willing to trek to the Oakland Museum of California for the Dorthea Lange exhibit. Most LMC art classes have "outside the classroom" learning experiences providing students with educational and memorable experiences. Being the modern students they are they made numerous cell phone photos to use as notes for our later class discussions. The museum had set up an interesting interactive cropping exercise to help explain the interesting decisions Lange made in cropping her images. The exercise provided cropping tools and some of her images for visitors to try their hand at cropping. The large display prints made by the museum from original negatives were stunning in content, sharpness and tonality.

LMC students, staff and instructors made the journey to Davis CA for the 2017 California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art. Along with many schools from California LMC set up an exhibit in an unused storefront space. Along with showing their work (click to see some) they attend demonstrations and lectures and saw a variety of work from two and four year schools

The final project for LMC Photo II students is to create a book on a unified concept. These small posters are mock-ups — hung from string with extra-cute tiny clothespins on level 3 of the college complex— of the larger posters that might appear in bookstores promoting their self-published books.

Rebecca Talley challenged her  Color Theory class to use the universal language of art to create posters for social justice.  Students used  their individual voices to speak to social change. You can see more of these works in the temporary installation just outside the Art department entrance on the first level of the college complex.