In an attempt to encourage artists to share their creativity, the latest exhibit, “Telling Stories,” displayed at the El Camino College Art Gallery, will be shown through March 9, along with campus receptions.
Artists showed creativity through painting, puppetry, recipe sharing, quilt making and photography. Michael L. Miller, director of gallery and museum programming, said that El Camino students and community members could showcase their artwork.
“I was interested in the different ways artists tell stories,” Miller said. “So a lot of what artists do, especially in painting, for example, has a narrative, right?”
Miller conveyed the idea of a message or story that created the narrative for the exhibit.
Joyce Dallal, a retired digital art department professor at El Camino College, said Miller asked her to add one of her artworks to the Art Gallery for the “Telling Stories” exhibit. According to Dallal, the piece’s name inside the gallery is “Homesite City,” from the ’90s.
“When Michael told me about this telling stories show and asked me about putting another piece together, I was thinking about the process of writing and how it’s not easy. It’s not easy writing the story,” Dallal said.
Dallal said she thought of a piece being built in front of the North Art Building next to the Art Gallery, “Shout it to the wind.” Dallal said her sculpture is named after a phrase people use when someone has something to say but no one listens.
Dallal has worked on woven structures and has been collecting rough drafts from people to cover the “Shout it to the Wind” sculpture. Dallal said she would continue to take rough drafts that students don’t need and plan to finish the sculpture by the exhibit’s final date of March 9.
“I wanted to celebrate that impulse to shout it to the wind and just put it out there,” Dallal said.
Miller said his inspiration for “Telling stories” was remembering that February is Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month, both having stories to tell.
“Women’s History Month on campus is women who tell our stories, so I think that [it] all kind of pulled together,” Miller said. “It gave me the idea that I should do an exhibit about how artists tell stories.”
On Feb. 18, the Art Gallary held a reception called “Homesite: A Culinary Performance” reception and the “Wednesday Gang” Outline Group.
“I’m gonna be sharing some ideas around the spice concoction in the Arab world called Zaatar,” Doris Bittar, an adjunct professor at California State University San Marcos and former gallerist at El Camino’s Art Gallery, said.
Bittar discovered El Camino College through faculty like Joyce Dallal, who invited her to El Camino and connected with her because they are both Arabic-American artists. Bittar struggled with her family because she wanted to be an artist.
“I feel very lucky that I’m able to do that and connect with other people [to] share,” Bittar said. “So, in a way, that is what today is about. It is an opportunity just to be genuinely proud of this, my culture.”
Miller said he wanted people to understand a little bit of how artists’ minds work and tell stories and how people begin to understand the meaning of artwork as a visitor.
“One of the most important things is to have the campus community and El Camino’s community off campus to understand that this is a place where they can come and be creative,” Miller said.
