Shana Nys DambrotCross Sections III is an open invitation to visit the Bel Air campus of American Jewish University, where a Sunday afternoon is planned to celebrate and activate not only AJU’s exhibition spaces, but also its quasi-hidden gem of a hillside sculpture garden. A pair of gallery shows, a hands-on book-binding workshop, and a four-hour itinerant cycle of outdoor performance pieces culminating at magic hour, are all free (except for workshop materials fees), and free-range wandering is encouraged.
Book-binding at AJU (Courtesy of AJU)
For those in the mood to learn an arcane, analog literary skill, a Non-Gluing Book Techniques Workshop will be held from 2-3:30pm with instructor B. Neimeth. Stab and Stitch, Poster Fold, and Saddle Stitch are easier than you think once someone shows you how to do it right, so if you’ve dreamed of starting your own zine or there’s a poetry chapbook burning an ideating hole in your pocket, this is for you.
Orr Herz at AJU, installation view (Courtesy of AJU)
For the fine-art gallery minded, The Platt and Borstein Gallery and the Project Room will both be open 2-6 p.m., with two exhibitions curated by Rotem Rozental. Compressor Cycle by Orr Herz, is a quirky and quite profound site-specific sculptural installation in which the L.A.-based Israeli artist intimately considers the power and provenance of certain works in the AJU collection.
The Distance Between the Grooves in My Fingerprint by Christy Roberts Berkowitz is a solo exhibition of new video, installation array, mixed-media, and text-based works which uses found and personal objects as well as original invented images and artifacts to unpack her own complicated family history through a variety of perspectives from the private to the geopolitical to the fictional. As an artist engaged with threads of heritage and identity, whose family tree includes both Mayflower colonizers and Russian Jewish refugees, Berkowitz gives many visual and narrative forms to the paradoxes and power struggles represented both in her own DNA and in the society she inhabits.
Christy Roberts Berkowitz at AJU, installation view (Courtesy of AJU)
The day’s commissioned centerpiece is a four-hour meandering performance series which unfolds from 3-7 p.m. across the grounds and individual works of art installed in the gorgeous Sondra and Marvin Smalley Sculpture Garden. Curated by director and choreographer Diana Wyenn, Knowing Not Knowing is a site-specific project of actors, dancers and musicians which roams freely among the sculptures. There is no correct order, as viewers are “encouraged to wander and repeat” throughout the afternoon, joining these poetic physical meditations on presence, transcendence, and the imagination at any time they wish.
The Smalley Sculpture Garden at AJU (Courtesy of AJU)
American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel Air; Sunday, June 30, 2-7 p.m.; performances are free, workshop $45 (includes materials). arts.aju.edu; Facebook Event Page
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