Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center has been awarded a multi-year program support grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the fourth time the local art institution has received the grant since 2014, it was announced this week.
The Warhol Foundation was established in New York in 1987, in accordance with the late artist’s will, which designated a majority of his estate be used to create a charitable organization to advance the visual arts. In addition to preserving Warhol’s legacy, the foundation manages grants programs used to support artist-centered organizations, as well as the creation of new work and contemporary visual arts projects.
To date, the organization has given nearly $330 million in cash grants to more than 1,000 arts organizations around the country and abroad. Program grants are usually made over a period of two years. Grand Central Art Center will use the $80,000 grant, distributed over two years, in support of its artist-in-residence program.
“Grand Central Art Center’s residency program offers artists unique opportunities and generous resources to develop long-term community collaborations,” Rachel Bers, the Warhol Foundation’s program director, stated in a news release. “We are happy to support its commitment to artist-led and process-oriented programs that bring the voices of artists into meaningful conversation with community members around issues of local and national significance.”
Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center mission is to intersect contemporary art and community engagement by presenting exhibitions, collaborations and artist-in-residence and by creating free public programming for the Santa Ana community. The center’s residency program is unconventional in its approach, emphasizing an open creative process.
“We don’t provide a timeline, saying it is open ended, because we really want it to be the creative process of the artist,” said John D. Spiak, director and chief curator at Grand Central Art Center. “We also don’t ask for a proposal in advance, so that an artist gets to come and explore this place.”
By removing the expectations of outcomes, Spiak said Grand Central Art Center cultivates an environment that favors ongoing site visits and substantial stays and provides time for research and discoveries.
“Sometimes they are discoveries that were not even on our personal radar, that then develop into a project that helps bring forward histories or current situations of our city that sometimes we are too close to and don’t realize exist,” Spiak said.
One such residency project launching next month is Jon Rubin’s “The Stolen Dove,” which takes a closer look at the sculpture of Palestinian American poet, teacher and civil-rights leader Alex Odeh, and is located in front of the Santa Ana Public Library. Odeh’s 1985 assassination is unsolved and the case remains open over 36 years later.
The Odeh statue is recognized as the only monument of an Arab American in the United States and features Odeh holding a dove, a symbol of peace. Rubin’s project tells the story of how in 2020, that dove was stolen.
A statue dedicated to Alex Odeh, a Palestinian American activist killed in a 1985 office bombing, is outside the Santa Ana Public Library.
(File Photo)
“The Stolen Dove” will debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in collaboration with the Jan. 26 premiere of the documentary film “Who Killed Alex Odeh?”
Spiak said without the freedom to explore Orange County as a Grand Central Art Center artist-in-residence, the project may not have seen the light of day.
“If we were not open to the creative process and we were not open to having Jon come and just explore, we would not have connected to the Alex Odeh sculpture,” said Spiak.
Lexa Walsh’s “Sisters InfoShop” installation, partially supported by the The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
(James Carbone)
Funds from previous Warhol Foundation grants have supported other monumental work at Grand Central Art Center, like Lexa Walsh’s “Sisters InfoShop” exhibition; a socially engaged residency project that centered on the work and lives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange.
Additional exhibits aided by the grant include Santa Ana-based artist and activist Alicia Rojas’ exhibit, “With Honey in the Mouth — Con Miel en la Boca,” which drew parallels between the human-forced migration of honey bees and her own family fleeing Colombia for the U.S., and curator Daniel Tucker’s 2014 “Future Perfect” time capsule, which was opened 10 years later.
The Grand Central Art Center is located at 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. For details on current exhibitions visit grandcentralartcenter.com.