Ellen C. Caldwell | ECLAIRE.me

The interviewees remind us of a history that is necessary, timely, and beyond relevant—of our nation’s immigration laws, policies and prejudices; of the architecture granting obstruction or entry in the U.S.; and more personally of the lives, loves, and locations people gave up to journey to an unknown place, often alone as outsiders, and of course, as dreamers.

In the wake of rumors that the Trump administration plans to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (in addition to defunding the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), it is no surprise that artists are continuing to take note and respond visually. In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, it is artists who will be physically documenting, commenting upon, and perhaps protesting, the changes around us. May we continue to support and appreciate their art and struggle.

Rebecca Farr’s show “Out of Nothing” is raw, yet welcoming. In it and through it, she challenges viewers to embrace their own loss…Not many shows could hold up to this November, but the form, function, adaptability, and beauty underlying Farr’s show do that and more.

Debra Scacco creates rich, multimedia pieces that play with light, reflections, shadows, walls, and borders in her 2015-2016 solo show The Letting Go at Klowden Mann.

In a world of binaries, Grace Ndiritu creates a slippery space where she can present the world with art that is just as thoroughly slippery as the world, museums, and history-shaping narratives that surround us.

Alexandra Wiesenfeld paints massive landscapes suggestive of the California painting tradition of the past, but she reinvigorates these on a grand scale and reimagines them with bold colors, frantic lines, and bursts of energy.

In “Sweet Broken Now,” Rebecca Farr’s third solo show at Klowden-Mann, Farr made Manifest Destiny her subject of inquiry and aimed to capture the complex history arising from the ideology and religious fervor that justified white westward expansion during the early 1900s.