Crossroads News
Sam Francis Gallery Showcases Art by Crossroads Alumnus
Works by Shingo Francis ’88 featured in “Kaleidoscope: moments in time”
Crossroads School is pleased to present “Kaleidoscope: moments in time” in the Sam Francis Gallery, an exhibition on display through Oct. 12 that features artwork by alumnus Shingo Francis ’88. The exhibition is also the first installment of the Alumni Biennial Series, which will spotlight the work of Crossroads graduates who have established careers in the visual arts.
“Kaleidoscope: moments in time” includes a collection of Shingo’s pieces in a salon-style format. His journals from various years are placed both open and closed, disclosing select thoughts and insight into the artist’s practice. The gallery presents the art as a time capsule, jumping from Shingo’s student work to his most recent piece, “Subtle Impressions,” a large-scale interference painting. Classmate Stephen Leeds ’88 created a short film about the exhibit that can be viewed here.
The exhibition is especially meaningful for Shingo considering the gallery is named after his late father, Sam Francis, an accomplished artist and a founding trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The Sam Francis Gallery, located in the Peter Boxenbaum Arts Education Centre on Crossroads’ 21st Street Campus, is dedicated to the display of student art and to presenting cutting-edge exhibitions of work by locally and nationally prominent artists.
Shingo views his exhibition in the gallery as a way to peel back the curtain on the artistic process.
“I would like the students and the audience, but especially the students, to see the gradual and not-so-straight trajectory of an artist’s practice,” he says. “We usually see an exhibition with finished works that are intended to produce a thought-out or worked-out process of an expression, idea or concept within the object or image. That’s fine and expected when you are presenting for the public as a specific series of work or concept, but such exhibitions can have a veneer or ‘finished’ quality that may create distance.
“As a student, or someone emerging into the field, it can be intimidating and hard to understand because all the steps of the act are back in the studio or wherever the process occurred. I would like to reveal the footsteps of the process to the students so they can see and experience the meandering nature of art making and/or at least how I have done it. I think it is important for the students and viewers to see it wasn’t a straight shot, exposing the various shapes and forms we incrementally explore to find a way we can express what we want to say.”
