“Converge + Vertex” Exhibit, Black Artists of LA at SMC Barrett Gallery

SMC Barrett Gallery and The Black Lunch Table Host Free Gallery Reception
Oct.  15 for “Converge+Vertex: Traversing the minor gesture of timelines” Exhibition

Exhibit Runs Through May 11, 2025

SANTA MONICA, CA — The Santa Monica College (SMC) Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery and artist/archivist/activist group The Black Lunch Table present “Converge+Vertex: Traversing the minor gesture of timelines,” a free exhibition of works by Black artists from the Los Angeles area exploring what has influenced their art and how they have influenced each other through intergenerational conversations via their artworks.

The exhibition will be open to the public during gallery hours through May 11, 2025, with a free gallery reception on Tuesday, Oct. 15, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The SMC Pete & Susan Barrett Gallery is located at the SMC Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th Street (at Santa Monica Boulevard), Santa Monica. Entry is through the Performing Arts Center’s courtyard.

The exhibition was planned by SMC students under the leadership of interdisciplinary artist and guest curator Cole James, who stated:

Black body-minds are spaces of convergence, evolving into vertices where our multifaceted identities intersect and expand. We embody the intersections of past, present, and future, with our collective humanity forming the vertex that marks our expansive evolution. “Converge+Vertex” brings together 11 artists from the Los Angeles creative community, who explore the planes of emergence, existence, and ascension through their art-making practices.

This exhibition features works by Chelle Barbour, Lavialle Campbell, Noah Purifoy, June Edmonds, Ronn Davis, Cass Everage, Donel Williams, Kimberley Morris, Leah King, Michael Massenburg, and William Ransom.

When archiving the presence of Blackness, our ties to the South and the journeys north and west are inextricable. For instance, Kim Morris’ photographs “Creole Queen” and “Bound” epitomize the spaces between the intersections of identity we navigate. These works visually articulate how we are connected to the past, even as we breathe in the present.

Capturing moments to fill the void left by oppression is crucial to archiving the vast Black experience. Michael Massenburg’s collages and paintings in this exhibition seamlessly traverse pieces of cultural memory and the ripeness of future fruits. Continuing within the vein of collage, Chelle Barbour's photomontages invite viewers to rethink how our bodies might exist in the world of tomorrow.

In alignment with the need to recognize both past and present, Leah King’s collage “Untitled (Tuskegee Airman, Poet, Dancer)” offers more than just the name of her historically significant relative. King captures the moments that define how Blackness requires movement and poetry to be woven into our collective archive.

Our current challenges are never far from the surface. William Ransom’s sculpture, “You Can’t Love Your Country Only When You Win,” a wooden American flag, reminds us of the fragile bonds that unite us, while also calling for accountability and self-awareness as global citizens. This theme of duality is echoed in Alicia Piller’s “Memorials: From Sea to Shining Sea,” emphasizing the need to understand how we are both individuals and part of the whole, embodying Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness.

The diverse range of material processes in this exhibition is intentional. The quilts of Lavialle Campbell and Cass Everage create a dialogue between the two artists — a call and response. Campbell reaches forward to find meaning, while Everage reaches back to understand what has come before him.

Encircling all these artists are the works of Ronn Davis and Noah Purifoy. Davis' experimentation with multiple media throughout his career speaks to the need to combine and assemble — a pivotal practice within the Black community for its ability to navigate semiotics and create new meaning through the juxtaposition of symbolic objects. Assemblages, as a form, embody both the past through the presence of historical objects and their solid presence in the now.

Together, all the artists in the exhibition represent a multigenerational and diverse range of media, archiving our presence and offering a love letter to the essence of Blackness.

James teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and collaborates with numerous organizations on projects supporting restorative justice and environmental advocacy. He is a Somatic Abolition Communal Consultant and a member of the Collective Abayomi and the Development Team For Artist Infrastructure Initiative at Now Be Here.

Exhibiting Artists:

• Chelle Barbour is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator who works in assemblage, collage, digital video, painting, and photography, with artworks in permanent collections that include the California African American Museum, J. Paul Getty Museum Photo Archive, The Wende Museum, California African American Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• Lavialle Campbell is driven by a personal pleasure in meticulous work to create contemporary quilts and other pieces that incorporate textures and non-representational abstractions with an aesthetic based in modernism, Japanese minimalism, and architecture.
• Ronn Davis exhibited widely during his lifetime, curated numerous exhibitions, was an essential member of the Studio Z and Zip Zap artist collectives, chair of the SMC Art Department, leader of SMC's Art Mentor Program, Commissioner of the Santa Monica Arts Commission, and board member of the Craft & Folk Art Museum Los Angeles.
• June Edmonds is a painter, public artist, and teaching artist whose colorful works feature layered surfaces and explore how color and repetition, spiritual contemplation, and interpersonal connection are linked.
• Cass Everage is a versatile artist and community builder who is often found coaching, producing designs for streetwear brands in Downtown Los Angeles, or exploring Black American aesthetics and sociological themes through shape, color, and material.
• Leah King is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who creates art installations, audio immersions, and interactive works celebrating Black joy, queer stories, and family histories with a futurist lens.
• Michael Massenburg began his career at the Watts Towers Arts Center, was influenced by the artists out of the Watts Rebellion and the Los Angeles Uprising, and developed his social practice through art making, teaching, community organizing, and activism for various organizations and causes.
• Kim Morris taps into her rich Creole heritage and inserts herself into her work by casting her own body and using her hair and portraiture to critique self-identity, ideas of beauty, popular culture, and race in America via video, sculpture, photography, and painting.
• Alicia Piller has cultivated a distinctive sculptural voice over the years through working in the fashion industry and living in New York City and Santa Fe, NM, for several years.
• Noah Purifoy was the founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, worked on public policy for the California Arts Council, and is renowned for his sculptures, including creating 10 acres of large-scale, found-objects sculpture on the Mojave Desert floor.
• William Ransom teaches sculpture at Marlboro College and creates artworks that are informed by his early material experiences and engagement with the cycles and rhythms of the natural world life while growing up on a Vermont dairy farm.
• Donel Williams is a multidisciplinary artist who attempts to cultivate specific memories in an effort to reproduce imagery born from specific trauma, such as the lasting effects of observing his family’s battles with aging and illness and their effects in both mental and physical spaces.

More information is available by visiting smc.edu/barrett.

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