Trans–
mission

May 3 – June 28, 2025

The Mountain Fire tore through the City of Camarillo on November 6, 2024.  The fire destroyed over 243 structures and forever changed the lives of hundreds of families. The level of loss was catastrophic with many people losing all that they owned.

In April of 2025, Studio Channel Islands opened an exhibition titled Transformed. This exhibition presents objects salvaged from some of the homes destroyed by the fire. These objects were transformed by the blistering heat, twisted and charred by the fire, their surfaces blackened and disintegrated.

These transformed objects, removed from the context of destruction, became inspiring found artworks. Curators Elana Kundell and Peter Tyas selected artists to help make meaning of the objects and the impact of these fires. Each participant was invited to extend an invitation to two other artists. The exhibit expanded through a network of personal connections in reflective conversations, a natural sprouting of ideas shared amongst collaborators, mirroring the natural processes of growth and renewal which emerge after a fire.

This project is rooted in an exploration of creation and transmission of memories, whether that be the personal history imbued in objects destroyed by the fire or patterns of life utterly altered on that day. The title for the project, Transmission, was selected to draw attention to these processes of passing an idea, an object or inspiration from one person to the next, and sharing the messages that lie within these objects. Reflecting on how community becomes the net for resilience and creativity.

The audience is invited to witness the Transformed objects in the gallery during April and May, to empathize with their loss, and to cherish what has been sustained. In May and June, the new works created through the Transmission project will be introduced into the gallery and the audience is invited to follow the creative process of the artists responding to these events.

Emma Akmakdjian

Invited by Matt Furmanski

Statement

Containment is an outdoor installation with cloth blankets dyed with non-endemic flowers from my mother’s garden. Under each cloth is a layer of soil collected from four sites across the Pepperdine campus after the Franklin fire. These soils are low in nutrients and high in Alkalinity making them the optimal canvas for Arroyo Lupin, which is often the first flower to bloom after the blank slate of a wildfire. Native flowers like Lupin make me think of the layers of re-growth as a metaphor for change in human cultures. What seeds and roots hide beneath the charred surface waiting for rain? What is the threshold between potential for change and enacted change?

Inside the gallery a short series of writings reflect on my long commutes to the Pepperdine campus and my evolving understanding of home both intergenerationally and individually in an evolving world with more frequent climate devastation. I try to grapple with a feeling of home, mirrored in the changing seasons and regrowth in respect to the wildfires and my contention between acceptance and resistance in the aftermath of the fires.

Biography

Emma Akmakdjian (Ek-Mek-Chen) is an interdisciplinary artist who translates climate data and system processes into interactive installations to dissolve barriers between nature and culture and contextualize the oceanic climate crisis as a sociological dilemma. Akmakdjian collaborates with scientists on projects that include workshops, interviews, and experiments, that demonstrate how subjective experience inspires people to interpret the material world differently. Her work focuses on marine ecology, taking inspiration from her experience as an AAUS scientific scuba diver. Akmakdjian received her MFA in the Design | Media Arts program at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) with a certificate in Leaders of Sustainability. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) and studied at L’Accademia di Belle Arti, Firenze, Italy.

Linda Ekstrom

Invited by Janet Neuwalder

Statement

Being married to a retired firefighter I know firsthand how dangerous fire can be to everyone directly and indirectly involved. I wanted to create a solemn, poetic work that references the body, its words, and the land. The embroidered text lifts a fragment from the poem “I Am Still” by Jorie Graham, in her book of poems: “To 2040”. The poems tell of an apocalyptic world in her letter to the future. The image on the “shirt” presents a blurry landscape much like the natural terrain of our area before it was burned. “Witnessing the fires,” as Katie Peterson writes, “we see our creative and destructive potential as a human race, capable of greatness in both directions.” 

Biography

In my work, word is central, as related to the body, and to space and memory. While my art is a direct extension and materialization of my religious practice and interest in Jewish and Christian traditions, I continue to explore beneath the communal social structures to render those larger religious mysteries within the sacred realm that go beyond the boundaries of tradition. It is my ever present desire to construct meaning out of the common and domestic forms that abound in my world, and to insert my practice into larger currents of religious thought, history and ritual expressions which define life, lived-out within the cosmos.

Scott Froschauer

Invited by Elana Kundell

Statement

In 2017 the La Tuna Fire burned the canyon I lived in. It was the largest fire in the history of the City of Los Angeles. The flames came within 100’ of my house. I stood in my front yard as the planes dropped Phos-Chek on my head along with the fire… as I stood watching the flames after a day and night of evacuating animals from the kennels that populate my neighborhood. My body learned that fire meant not sleeping. My body learned fire meant vigilance.

This forever changed my art practice. Three days before I would be standing in my yard with red dust falling around me from the fire fighting planes, just three days earlier, I had been working in the middle of the Nevada desert at Burning Man putting the final touches on a fire I was about to ignite on a giant wooden owl that would be the largest sculpture I had ever designed and implemented. That night my body connected the flames with joy, with community, with completion.

That would be the last time I felt those emotions unadulterated with fire.

Now I associate those large flames with “HOME.” Not only my home, but “home” in terms of the habitat for humans and non-humans alike.

Biography

Scott Froschauer’s artwork spans many genres, materials and sizes. His iconic reimagined street signs can be found across North America in public spaces and galleries, and with prominent collectors and museums, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

His large scale sculptures are permanent landmarks in cities such as Palm Springs and West Hollywood and his temporary installations have been seen around the world from Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to La Monnaie de Paris, France.

The primary intention of Scott’s work is empathy, and he pursues that connection through any medium suited to the goal.

Scott lives and works in Los Angeles. He has a degree in textual studies/linguistic theory from Syracuse University and his background includes studies in engineering and cultural deconstruction with extensive experience in fabrication, design, government bureaucracy and mycelium.

Matthew Furmanski

Invited by Hiroko Yoshimoto

Time, Trauma, Entropy

Preamble to My Artist Statement

As an artist, I honor the silence—the choice to let the work stand alone, unnamed, unaccompanied. I believe in the quiet power of shapes and images to speak in their own language, to leave behind traces and clues for the viewer to follow, like breadcrumbs in a forest of form and feeling.

But I am also an academic, a mentor, a guide. In that role, I believe in making contact—lifting thought, opening dialogue, and offering tools to those I teach and learn beside. I believe in leaving a light on in the room.

As both artist and scholar, I feel the pull of both silence and speech. And so, this statement becomes a bridge—a thread of text stretched between image and idea. A doorway into the currents that moved beneath the making. A gesture of welcome to those who seek insight, or simply a place to begin.

Artist Statement: Time, Trauma, Entropy

This sculpture presents a pairing: two seating arrangements—one salvaged, one pristine. The work features a steel folding chair and a step stool, both recovered from the wreckage of the recent California wildfires. These objects, once functional and mundane, now exist as warped, blackened relics—metal blistered and bent by extreme heat, surfaces scarred by smoke and ash. Positioned beside them are their untouched counterparts: the same models, but brand new, unmarked, and intact.

The juxtaposition invites reflection on time, trauma, and entropy. On one side, there is decay—physical evidence of destruction, of history made visible in form. On the other, there is untouched potential, the ghost of what once was, or what could have been. Together, they create a silent dialogue about the impermanence of objects and the fragility of the everyday.

In using fire-damaged materials, the work becomes not only a meditation on aging and memory, but also a response to environmental crisis. The wildfires that ravaged these objects also displaced lives, reshaped landscapes, and etched trauma into communities. These burnt remnants act as witnesses—mute survivors—holding the weight of a specific moment in California’s unfolding ecological narrative.

At the same time, the sculpture is not about loss alone. By placing the destroyed and the preserved in direct proximity, I am also asking: what does it mean to endure? How does memory live in material? What remains when function is gone, when only the form—wounded or whole—remains?

The installation is stark and minimal, but emotionally dense. It speaks to cycles: destruction and renewal, memory and forgetting, use and obsolescence. It is about the quiet violence of time, and the dignity of things that carry history in their scars.

Juan M. Gomez

Invited by Alicia Piller

Statement

Keeping connected and staying locked in are phrases I think about while experiencing the loss of a friend, family member, pet, state of being, object of value, or opportunity. The only way I am able deal with periods of adjustment is by creating visual cues to stabilize my emotions. I cannot thoroughly grasp the pain and the effects of the mountain fire, but I sympathize with the victims of this horrendous event. I cannot offer a remedy for this pain, nor do I claim to offer answers for why this happened, the only thing I can humbly offer is this three-dimensional soft structure that commemorates the injuries and loss which occurred on that day. Although the anguish I am referring to no longer exists in real time it still exists, it is ongoing, and it is captured in a specific time frame. One of the major characteristics of my work is these floating renderings of injuries that symbolize a collective pain that has been felt by this community. Every knot, line, or formed fabric mass is meant a humble offering of solace to all affected by the mountain fire.

Biography

The practice of Juan Gomez involves a fascination with oral history and embracing the role of an artist as a storyteller. Embracing this role, he creates works that are ceremonial objects commemorating the influences of family history, experiences, and mentors that have formed his identity. By giving these influences a physical presence shown through his artistic output, Gomez employs intentionally selected materials such as rope, wire, and textiles which are imbued with personal meaning, weaving individual stories into works of art.

Gomez’s last solo exhibition, Beautiful Blood/Sangre Hermosa was held at the Kleefeld Contemporary Museum of Art located at California State University, Long Beach. The exhibition showcased the beginnings of his foray into mixed media work, and he continues expanding on these methods. Gomez has also exhibited work in galleries such as The Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion, Cerritos Art College Gallery, Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, The Painter’s Room, Brand Library Art Center, Stay Gallery, Flux Art Space and Greenly Art Space. The artist continues working on projects in his studio, refining his craft, participating in exhibitions, grants, and residency opportunities. Gomez received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Fullerton. The artist lives and works in Santa Ana, California.

Margaret Griffith

Invited by Andi Campognone

Purchase
 

Statement

The work in the show consists of reconstituted sculptures found in the rubble of my studio that was destroyed in the Eaton Canyon fire. Buried under layers of fallen stucco and wire mesh, sledge hammers and a team of volunteers were able to unearth what was left of my work. These pieces were all once part of something much bigger- in scale and girth but not in presence. The metal has been altered from the fire as well as their original forms. The patterns in the work are derived from residential gates that I have documented over the last decade.

Ongoing themes in my work include power and privilege through the exploration of boundaries and barriers found mainly in the built environment. Gates act as a boundary or barrier while also representing security, peace, fear and isolation. Now- when you drive through the burned down community of Altadena, the gates and chimneys are all that remain and private properties are being looted, adding an additional layer of meaning to the perception of security and ownership.

Biography

Margaret Griffith (b. 1972 Winston-Salem, NC) is a visual artist and educator based in Los Angeles. Griffith’s largely abstract installations, sculptures, public art, and works on paper explore both the physical presence and psychological manifestations of boundaries and barriers found in the built environment. Griffith frequently uses paper and sheet metal as sculptural material. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI in Sculpture and her BFA from The Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland in Painting.

Griffith has shown at the Craft Contemporary Museum, Western Project, Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Jancar Gallery, Carl Berg Gallery, Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, NY, Long Beach Museum, Long Beach, Occidental College, Diverse Works, Houston, TX, Vertigo Art Space, Denver, Colorado, The Los Angeles International Airport, the Museo Archeologico di Amelia, Amelia (TERNI), Italy, and many other institutions and galleries both nationally and internationally. She is the 2023-24 recipient of the Los Angeles DCA Trailblazer Award and the 2017 recipient of the Davyd Whaley Mid-Artist Career Grant. Griffith is currently represented by CMAY Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and BCMT Art Gallery, Kingston, NY.

Pamela Price Klebaum

Invited by Peter Tyas

Statement

The Thomas Fire made us all neighbors. Since I had responded to that catastrophe with glass, I was eager to join in SCIART’s collective response to the Mountain Fire. I chose to honor a small burned out metal container that had housed the family’s dominoes. Containers protect, collect, shelter. My reflex to that was to create a reborn house arising from the container itself. It would begin as fire, producing smoke, all extinguished by water — the colors would rise up from orange to smoky clear to blue. The movement in the glass would reflect the chaos and upheaval of the experience. The new house would be surrounded by new dominoes, an embrace for the family’s future life together.

Biography

Glass is captivating. I discovered the art form after serial careers as an attorney and college professor, and was immediately taken in. Neolithic landscapes and nature have inspired my work; icebergs were the objects I explored in a previous solo show at Studio Channel Islands Art Center. After Ventura’s 2017 Thomas Fire, I undertook a two year glass project that responded to that neighborhood tragedy.

Joyce Kohl

Invited by Janet Neuwalder

Statement

In December of 2024 I retired from teaching ceramics, expecting to work in my studio in the mountains above Altadena. Less than a month later, I lost my house, studio and truck in the Eaton Fire. To go from having too much of many things, to having basically the clothes on my back was a hugely cathartic experience. I’ve made this assemblage out of things found in the rubble, with the clay tile symbolizing the creative spirit that survives!

Biography

Joyce Kohl has worked in ceramics, fused glass, bronze and found steel. She taught ceramics and sculpture at California State University, Bakersfield for 36 years, and retired last December. A month after she retired, her house, studio and truck were destroyed by the Altadena, (Eaton) Fire. She is presently relocating to San Pedro.

Joyce twice worked in Southern Africa. In 2000, with a Fulbright Fellowship, she collaborated with ceramic factory workers in Zimbabwe to depict the affects of AIDS on their communities, creating a public art piece in Harare. Other public art projects include assemblage sculptures made from farming and oil parts for Kern County and Washington State She is presently working on the artwork for the Claremont “A” Line Metro Station. Her ceramic wall works have been exhibited in Japan and Thailand.

Victoria May

Invited by Nurit Avesar

Statement

I had been doing a lot of Tonglen meditation around the time of the fires. It’s a meditation where one visualizes breathing in another’s suffering and then upon breathing out, one visualizes some soothing quality (love, compassion, nurturing, safety, etc.). The instructions offer some imagery, but I play with it a little each time I do it. There is always a rhythmic, radiating quality with varying shapes and textures, but always blue and white. This airy rendering comes close to representing the soothing quality that I try to transmit with my exhale.

When I lived in Santa Cruz my own studio was in the evacuation zone during the CZU Fire in 2020. The notion of possibly losing all my artwork was mind-boggling and posed a massive task of letting go, which I ultimately didn’t have to go through. It is painful to sense the incredibly real loss that some fellow artists have experienced.

Leslie Ann McQuaide

Invited by Carlos Ortega

My relationship to fire is a sacred one. As a firekeeper for my Lakota sweat lodge community, it was my job to build the sacred fire that would heat the stones of the ancestors that would be used in the sweat ceremony.

Thus, it was with some concern that I entered through the doors of the Transformed exhibit because I expected to meet grief and heartache and a profound sense of mayhem and loss.

What I found, instead, was a sanctuary. The scorched items carried within them a sense of peace and beauty that was wondrous and healing. I had entered into sacred space.

My shrine is a tribute to the sacredness of fire and its awesome power of transformation.

Statement

The Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso looks forward with great anticipation to the birth of every new child.

Each soul they await has promised to bring a special gift from the spirits of the ancestors that the community needs for its health and healing.

The well-being of the larger community depends upon its members taking responsibility for their individual promises as they grow through life as a tribal member.

As an artist in contemporary western society, I often reflect on the Dagara sense of living one’s life for the benefit of the larger community.

My work, shrines and altars, speaks to maintaining the connection to the unseen world of spirits and to the cultivation of a sacred state of openness to divine messaging.

Kimberly Meyer

Invited by Scott Froschauer

Statement

I have been exploring ceramics as an art form for many years, the ongoing pursuit of creating beauty, in whatever form that may be.  I was touched by the pieces in “transformed”.  They are visually compelling, full of sadness, and yet more beautiful and have more character than I would have found them in their original utilitarian state.  Fire destroys and also creates beauty.  Clay would have no permanence without fire.  Trees that have been burned by fire fascinate me, what remains and what doesn’t.  Their newly created shape and form have a new movement and a new life, there is beauty in that!

Biography

Kimberly grew up in the corn fields of a small town in Nebraska, always the creative little one. Eventually moved to a little larger town and received a degree in Art. The big transformation occurred when she became a makeup artist in Los Angeles, enjoying a long and creative career in the television and film industry. But, exploring other types of creative expression were always present, especially Ceramics as an art form. Still that corn feed girl, always an artist at heart.

Janet Neuwalder

Invited by Carlos Ortega

Janet Neuwalder, Through the Fire . Stoneware clay, 76″ x 37″ x 1.25″. $65 each

Purchase
 

Statement

These tiles were inspired by the human shadows “etched” in the stone steps of the Hiro Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima, Japan. When the H bomb was dropped, the human being standing on the steps momentarily blocked the energy of the blast, as the stone was molecularly changed, and lightened the area around the figure. What is left, the human silhouette, is how we come to imagine the horror, power and poignancy of the destruction.

These tiles were formed directly through rolling, pounding, and pushing the clay. Each tile was cut individually and encoded with my fingerprints and gestures of movements. They were loaded into the kiln and my sculptures were fired on top of the tiles. In the atmospheric gas firing, salt was thrown into the kiln. The salt vaporized, and the flames wildly whipped through the stack and meandered in and around the tiles and sculptures. The color and textural surface variations are determined by the amount of salt, carbon and intensity of the flame’s path. What results is a fire drawing, visually depicting the path of the fire, the journey of flames; a map of transformation.

Much like the surviving objects and the charred landscape of the Mountain Fire, we come to know the story and take in the poignancy by what is left.

Absence is presence.

Biography

Janet Neuwalder, a sculptor and installation artist specializing in clay and ceramic processes, has focused recently on large-scale sculptural wall installations. Works are assembled from hundreds of fragments floating off the wall’s surface, creating a provocative and visually active topography. The assemblages express movement, playfulness and a sense of history and time. Neuwalder received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri and a Master of Fine Art from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Neuwalder has been exhibiting her work nationally since 1984. She has taught at numerous universities and colleges throughout the United States. She currently teaches Ceramics at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.

Michael F. Rhode

Invited by Pamela Klebaum

Statement

The sadness of destruction by fire is unimaginable to many people. Yet, in some of the residual objects that remain, there can be a haunting beauty, if that can be imagined. The one object that most appealed to me was the metal shell of what appeared to be a sound board; it’s knobs and sliders had been consumed by fire, yet the metal framework remains. Exposure to rain and the elements after the fire weathered it further, adding a patina of rust in spots; I saw gray with spots of brown and rust.

For my weaving, I minimized the shapes to a grid of squares and line, that tries to capture some of what remained. The once useful tool for music, has been rendered in softer materials and colors, that hopefully brings some comfort.

Biography

Michael F. Rohde has been weaving since 1973. His formal training in drawing, color and design was at the Alfred Glassel School of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. His activities included lectures, workshop teaching, juror, exhibition organizer and exhibitor in many local, national and international juried and invited shows.

Recently his work has been included in the United States Department of State Art in Embassies Program, exhibits at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, the American Craft Museum in New York, the invitational Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz, Poland, from Lausanne to Beijing (twice), Houses for Nomads (a solo exhibit at the Janina Monkute-Marks Museum in Lithuania), an exhibition at the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park in San Diego. My work is in the permanent collections of the Textile Museum (Washington, DC), the Mingei, the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, the Ventura County Museum of Art, the Racine Art Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago.

Amy Smith

Invited by Scott Froschauer

Biography

Amy Smith is a mixed media artist based in Los Angeles continually pushing the boundaries of her craft. Through her diverse body of work, which encompasses large-scale murals, physical paintings, and digital art, she invites viewers into a world of captivating storytelling.

While some of her creations stem from a profound response to political, social, and environmental injustices, the majority emanate from her deeply ingrained optimism and unwavering belief in the transformative power of feminism, unity, and love.

Camilla Taylor

Invited by Carol Shaw-Sutton

Statement

This is the remaining limb from a life size figurative sculpture made from ceramic and olive branches, Metamorphosis. The piece visualized change through the aftermath of catastrophe, which feels fitting that the piece itself was transformed through catastrophe when my home and studio burned down in the Eaton fire.

Biography

Camilla Taylor is recognized for their monochromatic and intensely introspective works on paper and sculpture, which utilize figurative and architectural forms. Taylor’s artworks reflect the viewer’s internal lives as well as collective issues we experience as a society.

An accomplished artist exhibiting in traditional gallery spaces, they also create installations in intimate and unusual locations, such as site-specific works in a swimming pool, desert garden, and other locations.

Lydia Tjioe-Hall

Invited by Carol Shaw-Sutton

Biography

Lydia Tjioe Hall is a metal and fiber sculptor. After earning a BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1998 with an emphasis on ceramic sculpture, she attended Cabrillo Community College where she explored both small and large scale metal work. Her mentor there, Dawn Nakanishi, helped lead her to pursue graduate school. In 2011, Lydia earned her MFA from CalState Long Beach where she concentrated in metal work under Susanna Speirs and fibers under Carol Shaw-Sutton. After graduating, she stayed on as a professor at CSULB teaching Beginning Metals and Fiber Sculpture. Lydia resides in Altadena, California with her family where her at-home studio is well suited for creatively attending to both her craft and her two young children. From there she continues to generate new ideas and exceed limitations in her sculptural work.

Regina Vorgang

Invited by Pamela Klebaum

Statement

Seeing all the objects in the Transformed exhibit, I can imagine the events and lives that were happening around them and with them. The silverware drew me in and has a very personal connection to family connections and gatherings. Did someone’s ancestor receive it as a wedding gift? Was it then handed down from generation to generation carrying with it all the memories of dinners and celebrations with family and friends? There is always love in remembering those times together. Now the silverware has a new memory it will bring of a devastating fire but also still holds the shadows of happier times.

Biography

A professional graphic designer since 1980, Regina Vorgang garnered awards for her design projects and built a successful graphic design studio in Stamford, Connecticut. After many years as a graphic designer, Regina longed to get back to creating artworks by hand. Trained in traditional arts along with graphic design, she was always intrigued by the art and craft of weaving. She participated in a variety of weaving workshops and classes until she found her love of weaving functional, artistic wool rugs, table runners and tapestries.

In 2002 Regina and her husband, Scott Miles, moved to California where she was able to turn her focus to combining her unique graphic vision and weaving skills to create handwoven rugs, table runners, and tapestries. Regina merges her vision with traditional craft and contemporary color and design for one-of-a-kind pieces. Her work has won awards at fiber and craft exhibitions and gallery exhibits. Her studio is located at Studio Channel Islands in Camarillo, CA. She shows and sells her work at her studio, gallery exhibits and her online shop.

Andrea Haffner

Invited by Peter Tyas

My work is inspired by the myriad of natural forms that exist all around us. I have been a collector of small things all my life, from my early years in New Mexico to the urban landscape of Washington, D.C., to Ojai, California where I currently live. From calla lilies to yucca capsules to Japanese maple samaras, I am always examining the diverse natural worlds around me and enjoy dissecting and reassembling these forms within small sterling silver or larger steel frames. With a background in both photography and glass, light has always been a primary consideration in my work. The medium of resin allows me to work with transparent dyes for the color element in my pieces, creating a glow from within. I have an abiding interest in small containers and the ways they can serve as both holders of precious things and deliberate points of focus. The containers I create, whether in photographic, sculptural, or jewelry form, can be their own small worlds, holding a caught moment, a meditation, or a subtle gesture. Read more about my work here. My work is exhibited in galleries and fine craft shows across the country. In recent years I have completed numerous large-scale commissions for hospitals, upscale hotels, and private residences. In addition to my long-time artistic career, I also provide psychotherapy as a licensed marriage and family therapist. I find immense mutual value in both my therapeutic and artistic exploratory work.

Niku Kashef

Invited by Elana Kundell

Biography

Niku Kashef, MFA, CMT-P, is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes teaching, studio work, photography, relational practices, site-specific installation, writing, curation, social engagement, public-speaking, crowdsourced participatory projects, mindfulness/somatic practice facilitation and advocacy. Her work investigates geography, biography and place as both a physical location and our perceived relationship to site and how the experience is shaped. She considers place/home from the lens of displacement, informed by a personal her story and continued global and environmental inquiry. In parallel research and scholarship, Niku has addressed social issues including identity, scientific inquiry, collective memory, and motherhood/care.

Kashef has taught and exhibited work at the local and international level, producing arts programming for more than twenty years. She has exhibited work at venues including the Monterey Museum of Art (Monterey, CA), The Museum of Arts & Crafts-ITAMI (Japan), Symbol Art Gallery (Budapest, Hungary). Publications include the essay The Durational Performance of the Parent Artist and Other Subversive Acts, in the anthology Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design and Maternity, Editors Rachel Epp Buller, Charles Reeve for Demeter Press. Kashef is an emeritus Board member for the College Art Association and Women’s Caucus for Art, Emeritus President of the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art and current Advisory Board member. Kashef lives and works in Los Angeles, teaching at CSUN in the department of art and design.