Current Exhibit
Exhibit Archive
Alex Hischier and Lela Shahrzad Welch
Alex Hischier (b. 1980, San Luis Obispo, CA) is a self-taught, lifelong artist whose path has been nonlinear and self-directed, shaped by lived experiences rather than formal training.
No matter where life has led, she always returns to making. Drawing and painting function in her practice as intuitive, psychic processes — ways of giving form to internal and unseen
experiences — working without fixed plans, allowing images to surface through gesture and repetition.
Lela Shahrzad Welch is a seeker of a culture rather than a participant and that role has left an indelible mark on their artistic practice, explored through mythopoeia, sculpture, and performance. Using the arabesque as an allegorical framework for storytelling, short stories inspired by family history and Ferdowsi's 11th-century Shahnameh (Book of Kings), Welch imbues an ongoing series of steel and metal armored tapestries with fabricated histories and futures.
Welch received their MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under the esteemed Chancellor’s Fellowship, graduating with the prestigious Ron Newby Award and as a Mind and Machine Intelligence award winner. Currently, Welch is a lecturer in the Art and Design department at California Polytechnic State University and lives and works in Los Osos, CA.