Laura Larson, Diane McLeod, Alison Petty Ragguette, Jamie Sweetman On View: March 5 - April 15, 2011 Reception: Saturday, March 5, 6 - 9 p.m. Postcard Glendale News Press Review Exhibition Photos Return to Brand Library Art Galleries Schedule page

Laura Larson earned a BA in fine arts with a concentration in printmaking and drawing. She has also taken numerous studio arts classes through the UCLA Extension program. Larson’s work can be seen throughout the Los Angeles area in her many public art commissions, including Fire Stations #34 in Pasadena and #65 in Watts, and on public buildings in South Los Angeles and Lincoln Heights. Recent solo exhibitions include Main Street Gallery, Pomona, Kristi Engle Gallery, LAAA Gallery 825, and the Riverside Art Museum. In 2004 Larson was a recipient of the Durfee Foundation’s ARC grant. Larson has spent the past year developing a site-specific installation for this exhibition. As with all her work, the piece reflects her interest in “understanding our nature – our body, mind and spirit – as well as our relationship to the planet and the universe beyond.” Combining found objects from the natural world—sticks, seeds, rocks—and domestic materials such as fabric and embroidery, Larson creates fanciful theatrical installations that on closer inspection and reflection reveal their deeper meaning. More information about Larson’s work can be found on her website.	Laura Larson Remembering Well digital ink jet print 14" x 11"
Diane McLeod received her MA from New York University in printmaking and painting. Her work has been included in many group shows and juried exhibitions, including the Brand Annual, the Printmaking and Book Arts Competition at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, the National Drawing and Print Exhibition, and Pomona’s Ink & Clay where she received a purchase award in 2009. McLeod is currently serving as the president of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society and in 2003 she was honored with a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship, which she carried out as an artist and art educator in Tokyo, Japan. McLeod’s facility with lithography, intaglio, linocut, drypoint, monoprint and other printmaking techniques gives her great freedom to realize her artistic vision. She often uses the female form as a vehicle for her expression, telling “visual stories of humor and play” that allude to “the ineffable quality of subconscious content and the interplay of life and the life hereafter.” More information about McLeod's work can be found on her website.	Diane McLeod Cautious Warrior lithograph 22” x 18”
Alison Petty Ragguette received her BFA in ceramics from Montreal’s Concordia University and her MFA in ceramics from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She has been an adjunct faculty member teaching ceramics in a variety of institutions, including the Emily Carr Institute of Art, Vancouver, B.C. Since 2006 Petty Ragguette has been an assistant professor in ceramics at California State University, San Bernadino. She has held prestigious artist residencies at Encuentro Terracotta, Cuba, Jingdehzen Pottery Workshop, China, and at the Purosil Rubber Factory in Corona, California. Her work has been widely exhibited, most recently at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, OBJCT Gallery, Claremont, and in a solo show at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. She was also the subject of a feature article in the November 2009 issue of Ceramics Monthly. Petty Ragguette’s expansive approach to making sculptural objects in porcelain, glass, and rubber gives her the opportunity to explore forms and textures that relate to the organic systems of the body and the natural world. Her work encourages us to “consider the seductive perplexity of human physicality” and the material she uses suggests the intersection between the body and technology, the organic and the synthetic. More information about Petty Ragguette’s work can be found on her website.	Alison Petty Ragguette Cross Section 5 27” x 17” x 3” thrown porcelain, medical silicone rubber, silk
Jamie Sweetman received her BFA from UCLA and her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She teaches drawing, life drawing, and anatomy for artists at the University of Southern California, CSULB, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her work has been shown in recent Southern California exhibitions including Branching Out at the El Camino College Gallery, Sweet Subversives at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and Insight/Inside LA at Mount St. Mary’s José Drudis-Biada Gallery. Sweetman says that “the search for form in the complexity of nature has been a goal in [her] artwork.” Informed by the study of human anatomy, her layered drawings depict the similarities between the forms of the body and the patterns found in nature: employing her expert technique, Wisteria vines become one with the human circulatory system, evoking both the beauty and the mystery of nature. More information about Sweetman’s work can be found on her website.	Jamie Sweetman Layered Stolen Vine 2 (detail) colored pencil on Duralar

Visitor Info | Brand Library Events | Recital Hall | Art Galleries | Contact Us