Opening of art exhibition echoes its message of community

The opening reception for the “As We Come Together” art exhibition took place on May 19 at LBCC’s Art Gallery, where artist Maria Maea unveiled a centered installation built through weeks of student participation, workshops, and collaborative contributions. 

From the gallery’s entrance, viewers’ eyes are immediately drawn to the installation. 

Woven palm pieces formed the arms and the bodies of the sculptures, while the castings of students’ hands and faces represented those parts. These figures together recreated a crowd of protesters. 

The installation blended natural textures with industrial materials, creating an environment that felt both grounded and empowering.

“As We Come Together” is currently open and will run until June 17. Students can view it in the art gallery at the LAC campus, which is located in room K-100. 

The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

The castings reflected the exhibition’s emphasis on participation rather than observation, because many of the castings and palm weavings were made directly by students during the workshops leading up to the opening. 

Instead of only viewing artwork on display, students physically contributed parts of themselves, their faces, hands, and impressions went into the installation, making their presence part of the exhibition itself. 

Rather than presenting artwork as something distant from the viewer, “As We Come Together” positioned students directly within the creative process, with the palm weaving and castings being some of the exhibition’s strongest collaborative elements. 

The exhibition opened with a performance by adjunct percussion professor Ariel Campos and his student Melanie Miranda to the poem Very Time by Brian Sonia-Wallace. 

A musical layer added to the poem, Campos and Miranda incorporated household and natural materials as percussive instruments, creating an immersive sound that heightened the performance and the audience’s engagement. 

^{The casting of a student’s face is on display as part of the “As We Come Together” exhibition at LAC’s art gallery on May 19, during the opening reception. (Alejandro Diaz Lopez)}

“There’s a composer that influenced the performance, his name is John Cage. John Cage was all about sounds of nature, everything and music. And so we did, as I got together with my student Melanie, … I just make noise, fill up the space, and I think it turned out really well,” Campos said. 

Campos also went into detail about the group of instruments that were used during the performance by Miranda and himself.

He mentioned that he used idiophone percussion instruments, which are “anything that makes a sound by itself, like a cowbell, a cymbal.”

He added, “So I have some rattles from Mexico that I was using. I have this thunder machine, which is real simple, a cardboard tube with a piece of wire that makes a booming sound, and then I used the sleigh bells.”

Miranda added that “two wood blocks and two bowls” were also used during the performance. 

After remarks from art gallery manager Karla Aguiniga, Dean of Visual and Performing Arts Janet Hund,  Kamisha Sullivan, an English professor and part of the MANA program, and the featured artist Maria Maea, the event moved into a live DJ set.

DJ and El Camino College student Anthony Baldonado played what he described as oldies, soul and ’80s funk music. 

The songs of notable artists like Teena Marie, Funkadelic and Mark Morrison were played throughout the event, along with recordings of neighborhoods throughout Long Beach, where students reflected on what they’d like to see change, what they stand for and what they can no longer stand for. 

Maea reflected on the video recorded through her sister Eve Diaz’s perspective, which featured locations closely tied to their family’s history. 

Maea’s connection to Long Beach also added another layer to the project. 

According to Maea, the video is from the perspective of her sister, Eve Diaz, as she walks between family homes by the LA River and also includes additional footage along Ocean Boulevard, noting familiar spaces in their childhood. 

“So like you know my work is about this community, but also about… my family, and like my very personal histories and so I actually really loved that the video was kind of through her perspective…,” Maea said. 

Towards one side of the exhibit, tucked in the corner by the names of the student participants that were vinyled on the wall, a reading station centered on Pacific Islander culture. 

Sullivan, who helped curate the exhibition’s reading materials, said she aimed to create a list that visitors could engage with. 

^{The “As We Come Together” exhibition created students who are protesting out of castings that were created by students who came into the art gallery, and palm-weaving that they helped make. (Alejandro Diaz Lopez)}

“I just really wanted to create a reading list that folks could read. I want Maria’s representation of sort of this bicultural Mexican Samoan heritage,” Sullivan said.  

The structure reinforced the exhibition’s focus on community participation and shared experience. 

ASB art representative JB Brown recounts working with sculptures for the first time as someone who usually works with film.

“It felt like breaking free from my normal life just to do something different, you know, something that I might have not felt like I could do yesterday,” Brown said.

Studio arts major Matt Mageno recounted how he came across the workshops hosted for the exhibition and how his interest in participating grew. 

“I would also visit the gallery often anyways,” Mageno said. 

He continued, “I decided to join in with the hand weaving, … and I kind of grew to like, love it, so I would just keep coming in and trying to work on learning how to get better at it. We kind of cultivated a small group of people who were always there, always helping out, and it felt like a sense of community. It felt like you were really just connecting,” Mageno said. 

Mageno expressed that working on the exhibition made him realize that he enjoys doing community-like work and that in the future he wants to engage in opportunities similar to it.

He even volunteered to help set up the event, and is excited to volunteer more in the future as a whole. 

Student voices, castings, woven palm leaves, and personal histories became embedded into the installation itself, transforming the art gallery into a collaborative space.