Lydia Nakashima Degarrod talk: Plants of Fog and Memories: Eucalyptus, Poppies and Yerba Buena
Lydia Nakashima Degarrod talk: Plants of Fog and Memories: Eucalyptus, Poppies and Yerba Buena
Heidi McGurrin, poetry introduction
December 6 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Friday, December 6, 5:30 – 7 pm
Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, born in Chile to a Peruvian Japanese father and a Chilean Japanese mother, is both a visual artist and a cultural anthropologist who creates installations that blur the line between ethnography and art to address issues of social justice. The many similarities between the landscape vistas and flora of Chile and Pacific Grove have brought her to the peninsula many times to explore natural materials indigenous to both places to create the paper she uses in her three-dimensional creations such as “Displacements”, her installation in Texture, Proof of Presence. Degarrod’s work has been shown at the MMA in the recent exhibition, Shadows of the Past, Sansei Artists and the Japanese American Concentration Camps. She resides in Oakland, CA and teaches art and anthropology at the California College of the Arts.
Heidi McGurrin is a poet, painter, photographer and writer. Although poetry has always been a part of her artistic vocabulary, it was only in 2017 that she began to share her poems with the public through such groups as the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, and the Illia Thompson memoir writers and other poetry groups. She has published two books titled, Havana Dream, and Poetic Landscapes, Memories of My life, which can be found on the website www.blurb.com in the bookstore section. She is the granddaughter of the founder an artists’ colony which is today Carmel-by-the-Sea, and lives on the Monterey peninsula where she creates artwork and teaches poetry and painting to children from nearby coastal towns.
Sponsored by the Pacific Grove Library Friends and Foundation, the Whitney Latham-Lechich Trust, the Jean Laws Fund, and Celadon Arts, Texture: Proof of Presence, plans to bring a diverse group of visitors including students from the elementary as well as high school, adults and seniors—locals and visitors from all over. During its three-month run, there will be weekly events open to the public including a guest reception, poetry readings, talks, workshops, and demonstrations.
