The Irene Carlson Gallery of Photography is proud to announce Depth of Field, the 2nd Biannual Photography Adjunct Faculty Exhibition, highlighting the faculty’s diverse approaches to a lens-based artistic practice. This group exhibition reveals the wide range of artistic experiences and techniques within the campus community and includes the recent scholarship from Photography Adjunct Professors christy roberts berkowitz, Fred Brashear Jr., Rory Hamovit, Elizabeth Hibbard, and Joaquín Palting.
About the Artists
christy roberts berkowitz
Artist, musician, writer, educator, agitator, and emotional laborer, christy roberts berkowitz, composes experiences, images, and objects that interrogate personal and collective constructions of power. A third generation Southern Californian and University of La Verne Faculty member since 2015, roberts berkowitz holds Bachelor degrees in philosophy and religion, a BFA in studio art, both from ULV, and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University.
One of LA Weekly’s 2012 “Best of LA People”, roberts berkowitz is the current C.E.O. of KCHUNG Radio (a 2016 Creative Capital Award recipient and current artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) and a founding member of The California Poppy Collective, Problematic Radio, Jung Money, Human Resources for Art Workers, and the Los Angeles Art Union. Her exhibitions and happenings have been hosted and/or commissioned by the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs (including CURRENT LA Public Art Triennial), MOCA Los Angeles (performances), The Getty Museum (VR News Panel Curator), The Telfair Museum (residency and permanent collection project) , The Chrysler Museum (residency and solo performance), REDCAT (performance), The Hammer Museum (including Made in LA), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, American Jewish University (commissioned solo exhibition), among many others.
roberts berkowitz’s various residencies include the IMMENSIVA AI/XR Residency for Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture (21’), Feminist Field School at the Centre Pompadour Neofeminist Institute in France (19’) and a Glass Residency at the Chrysler Museum (18’) and she has received generous funding from Asylum Arts, The Institute for Jewish Creativity, and The Righteous Persons Fund. Her essays, reviews, and poetry have been commissioned and published by Lambda LitFest, Art21 Magazine, Citizens of Culture, Undo Magazine, and the Hebrew Union College Skirball Center. Her experimental electronic music project, Glitzer, has one critically recognized full-length project (“Score”) and she released her debut album ”WOLVES,” co-produced by four-time Grammy Winner, Jahi Sundance, under the name “christy” in August 2022 on Alpha Pup Records.
Fred Brashear Jr.
As a multiracial, multicultural artist, Fred Brashear Jr. explores the parallels between the climate crisis and racial injustices. Focusing on the issues of climate change as his muse, Fred connects the treatment of the natural environment to the systems of social inequality and inequity. Since graduating from California State University, San Bernardino with a Master of Fine Arts degree, Fred has contributed to the mentorship and instruction of diverse student populations in the field of photography at various colleges and universities throughout Southern California. In addition to his teaching success, Fred has also maintained a consistent and successful professional art practice, participating in several exhibitions including the world renowned PhotoLA in 2020. Balancing a professional teaching and artistic career, Fred continues to research the vital relationship between humans and their environment, informing society of the necessary changes that need to happen for a harmonious existence.
Rory Hamovit
Rory Hamovit is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, though recently located in Albuquerque, New Mexico where much of his recent work was made and conceived. Rory received his MFA in photography from Yale School of Art in May 2020 and his BA in photography from Bard College in 2013, with time spent living in San Francisco and Brooklyn in between. For the past few years his work has examined masculinity’s forms and signifiers perpetuated through visual culture. The work has expanded to investigate queer corporeality in the shadow of a self-fawning patriarchy while utilizing humor for its humanizing power of disarmament and ability to bridge joy and tragedy. Building scenes with handmade objects, he intends to mimic absurdity and uncanniness left unexamined in the world. In all his work, Rory is drawn to parallel realities and the symbiotic relationship of creator and viewer, including the duality of irony and earnestness.
Elizabeth Hibbard
Elizabeth Hibbard (b.1989) is an artist and educator from San Jose, CA. She received her B.A. in Fine Art and Film and Digital Media from U.C. Santa Cruz in 2012. She received her MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art in 2020. Her work deals with themes related to family, gender performance, psychoanalysis, the body, spiritualism, and how the act and mechanisms of photography can conceptually mirror the structures of these relationships and systems.
Joaquín Palting
Joaquín Palting is the son of two academics. His mother was an artist who taught photography at institutions of higher learning and workshops in his childhood home. Joaquín’s earliest memories are assisting his mother, a landscape photographer, out in the field as she worked. Whether that meant carrying equipment or taking light meter readings, the creation of art was impressed on him from an early age. Joaquín’s mother, was a student of two quintessential photographers in the history of photography, Brett Weston and Jerry Ulesmann. Hints of that photographic lineage, and tradition, can be found in Joaquín’s work.
Early in his 20 plus year career, Joaquín moved to Los Angeles, where he quickly established himself as an editorial and advertising photographer. Working bi-coastally, between Los Angeles and New York, Joaquín counted: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Nike, Nordstrom, Footlocker, Virgin, Warner Brothers Records, and Sony among his numerous clients.
In 2015 Joaquín decided to shift his focus from commercial photography to building an art practice and becoming an art educator and academic. As a visual artist, he is known for his conceptual storytelling, creating works using traditional large format photography, video, and performance. His art has been exhibited internationally and featured on the websites of countless contemporary photography tastemakers, including Aperture, Float Magazine, Landscape Stories, Lens Culture, LenScratch, and Urbanautica.
In addition to his art practice, Joaquín is a much sought-after instructor who teaches art and photography at many venues, including San Diego State University, The University of California, Irvine, Medium Photo, the Los Angeles Center of Photography, and the Laguna Art Museum.
Joaquín holds an MFA in studio art from the University of California, Irvine.
Image Credit: Legion (Cyborg), 2021 © Elizabeth Hibbard, Courtesy of the Artist