Poison Oak Commune is
an intimate-chaotic-relating-research
platform dedicated to figuring out
what Environmental Art + Social Practice is*
* supported EA+SP MFA program at University of California Santa Cruz, and UCSC OpenLab Collaborative Research Center
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A landscape is a network of provocations, with Dima Mabsout and Alberto Miguel Vazquez
Landscape is the space where these struggles and stories unfold—where social, political, and environmental forces meet in the flesh.
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These images are proof that this world existed, with Robert D Johnson III
These archives weren’t made with the art world in mind; they were made out of love, necessity, pride, and sometimes just casual documentation.
🧚🏽♂️ Robert Johnson III -
Wherever the rivers lead, with Jonas Banta
Field trip is about patience, waiting for the metaphorical salmon to return, for the berries to ripen, for the images to form naturally rather than being forced.
🧚🏽♂️ Jonas Banta
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Rob’s dream garden
🧚🏽♂️ Robert Johnson III -
Don’t you just love it? Isn’t this place so magical?
Here in Santa Cruz, as in many other places, there seems to be a great divide between the story that is told of this place, and what I’ve encountered in a year of life amongst it. This narrative, which I had encountered both as literal advertisements and as the words of friends and strangers, is […]
🧚🏽♂️ Jonas Banta
* cultivated by EA+SP MFA program at University of California Santa Cruz, Supported by UCSC OpenLab Collaborative Research
Environmental Art + Social PracticeMFA Thesis Show
April 2-May 4 ~ Sesnon Art Gallery ~ University of California Santa Cruz
Fernanda Rappa –Jorge Antonio Palacios – ilia dolgov – Robert Johnson III – Alberto Miguel – Kate – Jonas Banta – Amy Blondell
What does it mean to inhabit the landscape as a body? Is it a vessel or animated commons—porous, shifting, and shaped by external and internal currents alike? The Mexican idiom Cobija de Tripas, or Gut Blanket, conjures an image both visceral and comforting—another body that enfolds and surrounds us. When landscape is a gut blanket, we are perpetually in relation: bound not only to one another, but also to the environments we traverse and to the invisible threads that tie us to everything else. If comfort, vulnerability, and troubling interdependence are braided together, where do our bodies end and the world begin?
In this group exhibition, a cohort of MFA artists invites us to peer into darkness, search for restoration, nurture intimate border-crossing ecologies, weave archival memory, imbibe community care, speculate on Martian foraging, and metabolize control. Research-based, mixed media, and performative art projects function as a collective Gut Blanket—raising questions about how human, nonhuman, and environmental bodies exist in a state of perpetual negotiation with cultural and ecological forces.
Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery
Hours: Tue–Sat 12:00-17:00
Porter College, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA,
sesnongalleries.ucsc.edu
Cabija de Tripas EVENTS CALENDAR
APRIL 2, 5pm
Reception
APRIL 9, 11am
“Erosion Control Circle” workshop
with Fernanda Rappa, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 9, 5pm
Artist talk with Kate, Fernanda Rappa,
Alberto Miguel, and Jorge Palacios, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 12, 12pm
“Semi-cut, sub-alive” workshop with Ilia Dolgov, 12pm, Sesnon Faculty Gallery
APRIL 12, 2pm
“Erosion Control Circle” workshop with Fernanda Rappa, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 16, 2pm
“Erosion Control Circle” workshop with Fernanda Rappa, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 19, 12pm
“Deepdreams” workshop with Ilia Dolgov, Sesnon Faculty Gallery
APRIL 23, 3pm
“Danza de Paleterx” performance with Alberto Miguel, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 23, 5pm
Artist talk with Robert Johnson III,
Jonas Banta, and Ilia Dolgov, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 24, 11am
“Erosion Control Circle” workshop with Fernanda Rappa, Sesnon Gallery
APRIL 24, 7:30pm
“welcome to the fire”
“but it isn’t a fire”
“what do you mean it isn’t?”
“it isn’t burning”
“but it is!”
gathering with Jorge Antonio Palacios, Porter Dining Hall Square
APRIL 26, 12pm
“What there will be for us across the border”
workshop with Ilia Dolgov, Sesnon Faculty Gallery
APRIL 26, 5-8pm
“Danza de Paleterx” performance
with Alberto Miguel, Barrios Unidos Santa Cruz
APRIL 30, 5-7pm
“The coolest thing ever” with Robert Johnson III. “Take a road trip down memory lane me. Don’t be late.” The Elena Baskin Art Department
D-101 (The Seminar Room)
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MUCH MUCH MORE UNBELIEVABLE EVENTS ARE COMING
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