Conversation with Artist Liz Stringer and Bread & Salt Gallery Director Thomas DeMello
Stringer's Solo Exhibition the Telling's is On View May-July 2025
Christopher Wassell & Phil Beaumont in conversation with Bread & Salt Gallery Director Thomas DeMello
Both Artists have separate solo exhibitions on view March-April 2025
this conversation took place in March 2025
Christopher Wassell (b 1969) is an abstract painter living and working in Tijuana BC.
In his upcoming exhibition AMNESIA new oil paintings explore themes of figuration, dramatic narrative and the impermanence of memory.
A smeared medley of crashed cars, horse parts and ghostly human forms populate this current body of work which reads like a storyboard of clouded half-memories and partially forgotten dreams.
Born in Fradley, England, Phil Beaumont bounced across the Atlantic living in Montreal, Canada, then Birmingham, England, and finally landing in California.
He served as the Director of the Museum School for more than two decades, until recently stepping aside to spend more time on art and music.
Always an avid traveler and photographer, Phil enjoys capturing details that can be easily missed.
Almost by accident, he began capturing these details in long form, through still frame videos that allow the viewer to pause and stay with a moment. An antidotal response to the rapid consumption of information and images on social media sites, these prolonged photographs, or ‘long photos’, often capture incidental moments that pass through the frame, such as an off screen rock thrown into a lake, snowflakes rising and falling in a vortex, or a swimmer held in frame by a river’s current.
Notar - Notice - Kizuku invites the audience to share some of these moments
this is a conversation with
Hugo Crosthwaite and Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello from 2021
Born in Tijuana in 1971, Hugo Crosthwaite grew up in the coastal town of Rosarito, Baja California, 10 miles south of the international border. A graduate of San Diego State University in 1997 with a BA in Applied Arts and Sciences, Crosthwaite is a draftsman, often using pencil or charcoal, who focuses on the figure. He works in a linear fashion, allowing drawings to develop with great detail. All the work is created with improvisation; narratives developing as works are created.
Richard Keely speaking with Bread & Salt Curator and Artist Thomas DeMello
Bread & Salt CuratorThomas DeMello in Conversation with Artist Mathieu Gregoire about his beginnings as an artist and his past exhibition in ICE gallery.
this is an unconventional episode for us but we could not pass up the chance to talk with Mathieu
you can find out more about his work at https://mathieugregoire.net or visit the ICE gallery website https://icegallerysd.com to learn more about Michael James Armstrong who is the Owner and Curator for ICE gallery visit https://www.michaeljamesarmstrong.com or check out https://www.instagram.com/starberrysweet/?hl=en
Artist Marisol Rendón in conversation with Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello
Artist Yasmine Kasem in conversation with Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello
A Conversation with Joe Yorty and Joe Cantrell with Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello about the Exhibition "I ate and I ate and nothing happened"
On View in the Bread & Salt Main Gallery through June 19, 2022
Neil Kendricks is a filmmaker, artist, photographer, writer, educator Kendricks earned a Master’s degree in Television, Film and New Media from San Diego State University in 2006. His award-winning short films like 2002’s Loop have screened at numerous international film festivals including the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival, the 2002 Havana Film Festival, and a special short-film screening at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival’s American Pavilion.
Kendricks’ photography has also been exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Art, the African-American Museum of Fine Arts, London’s Royal College of Art, and many other venues. His first solo photography exhibition, Bruised Eye Candy was shown at San Diego’s now-defunct Spacecraft gallery in February 2008. Kendricks also produced, production designed and storyboarded media theorist Jordan Crandall’s film, Heatseeking, which was shown at inSITE 2000 and exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s BitStream exhibition, the first digital-arts exhibition shown at a major American art museum.
Marcos Ramírez ERRE in Conversation with Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello
About the Artist (from the MASS MoCA Website)
Marcos Ramírez, known as ERRE (a nod to the rolled ‘r’ of Spanish), was born in Tijuana in 1961. He studied at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, graduating with a law degree, and later worked in the construction industry for many years to support his visual art practice. He has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA (2016), Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA (2014), MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, San Jose, CA (2012), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2010), and Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico (1996); he has also participated in group exhibitions at the Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA (2017-18); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2016-17); SITE Santa Fe Biennial (2014); the California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2008); Moscow Biennale (2007); The São Paulo/Valencia Bienal Valencia, Spain ( 2007); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005); Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (2000); the Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2000); and the InSite 1997 and 2000 editions in the San Diego / Tijuana border region.
you can View his Current Exhibition through June 2021 At MASS MoCA
For Episodes in Spanish Hosted by Griselda Rosas Subscribe to the Pan y Sal Podcast
Conversation with Artist Angie Jennings and Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello
Angie is our Bread & Salt Artist in Residence February-April 2021
Angie Jennings
1984 born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States angelajennings.net
Education
2016 MFA, Visual Arts, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA
2011 Post Baccalaureate Certificate, Fine Art, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 2006 BS, Art Education, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD
Anthony Graham on Angie Jennings, HereIn Journal, 2020, https://www.hereinjournal.org/anthony-graham-on-angie-jennings-featured
Young, Gifted and Black, the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, ARTBOOK D.A.P., Spring 2020
Angie Jennings at Abode Gallery, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, 2018,https://contemporaryartreview.la/angie-jennings-at-abode-gallery/
Conversation with Artist Carlos Castro And Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello
Carlos Castro Arias was born in Bogota, Colombia and Currently Lives and Teaches in San Diego,CA.
His solo exhibitions include The Pain We Create, LA Galeria, Bogota (2019); The Language of Dead Things, Espacio el Dorado, Bogota (2017), Stagnant Heritage, MUZAC, Monteria (2015), Old News of the Present, 21st Projects, New York (2014); and Accidental Beauty, Museo Santa Clara, Bogota (2013). Notable group exhibitions include Doble Filo, Coral Gables Museum, Miami (2019); Comfortably Numb, Another Space, New York (2018); Open Art Biennale, Sweden (2017); Liquid Sensibilities, Cisneros Foundation Grants and Commissions, USA (2016); Space To Dream, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand (2016); X Mercosur Biennale, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2015); and O que seria do mundo sem as coisas que não existem?, Frestas Trienal, Sorocaba, Brazil (2014), amongst others.
Castro earned a B.F.A. at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (2002) and an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute (2010).
For episodes in Spanish subscribe to the Pan y Sal Podcast Hosted by Artist Griselda Rosas
Alessandra Moctezuma is Gallery Director and Professor of Art at San Diego Mesa College, where she leads the Museum Studies program and teaches courses on Chicano Art. She earned Bachelor of Art and Master of Fine Arts (Painting/Printmaking) degrees from UCLA. She is also ABD for a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature at the State University in New York, Stony Brook.
Besides teaching and curating, Ms. Moctezuma has been actively involved in the San Diego arts community. Besides being on the board of the Women’s Museum of California she is also a board member of the Women’s Museum of California, Medium Photography and Friends of the Villa Montezuma and the San Diego Museum of Art’s Latin American Arts Council.
Ms. Moctezuma has extensive experience as a curator, as an artist and as public art administrator. Besides working as gallery director at Mesa College, Ms. Moctezuma has organized exhibits for the Oceanside Museum of Art (Borderless Dreams, 2005 and Through a Lens Sharply, 2006) and unDocumenta (2017) as part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time LA/LA and for the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach.
LINKS:
Museum Studies/Gallery at Mesa College
Union Tribune 2021 in the arts
Pan y Sal Podcast in Spanish Hosted by Griselda Rosas
Conversation with Curator, Teacher, Writer and Activist Adriana Martínez
link to ANTiDOGMA Magazine
2019 Exhibition of Irma Sofia Poeter Curated By Adriana for CECUT
Pan y Sal Podcast Hosted in Spanish by Artist Griselda Rosas
Conversation with 2020 Bread & Salt Artist in Residence Avia Rose Ramm
Pan y Sal Podcast with Griselda Rosas
Marianela de la Hoz b. 1956, México
2014 San Diego Art Prize Recipient
her work can be found in collections from Mexico,the USA,Canada, Japan, Dubai,Germany, among others
Fundación Cultural Bancomer, México
Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, México
Fundación Cultural Noval, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego CA
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach CA
(from the Artists Website) My painting is intimate, like those lockets in which they used to keep the portrait of the loved one, a lock of hair, a love letter.
It recreates the internal world of the small drawers of our wardrobe in which we keep grieves and happiness, love and hate, sins, dreams, secrets, guilt and profound feelings that we take out once in a while like with do with a photo album with images of our history and reality. The intention of my work is to make the observer come closer to discover the fine details and once he or she is near he or she will remain captive, getting inside and enlightening the mechanisms of their conscience, giving him or her the opportunity to fix their eyes in those details we often leave unnoticed. The artworks talk about the binds, the closures, the double moral, the atavisms, the “must be”, the separation of body and soul, of body and head. I express violence through fantasy, black humor and sarcasm. I call it “White Violence”, i.e. small format paintings depicting characters nicely groomed, with combed hair and perfect teeth, with only a small drop of blood when necessary, all representing a scene in which extreme situations are performed.
The content of my work is based on reality and the paintings confront today’s troubled times. I am inspired by the blood ligatures among human beings, the same weaknesses, addictions and worries, the eternal combination of good and bad in each and everyone, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde within ourselves. I am always searching that bond located inside us, in our blood and in our conscience. Like a researcher I put under the microscope a drop of the blood of each theme, each painting, I analyze it without moral judgments, I only observe its composition, hence the small formats, the observer approaches the lens to peer into a miniature world, to introduce a key and enter armed with a magnifying glass, expecting to come close enough to hear a whisper, to feel a pinch, to discover a hidden secret, to crack a smile before a subtlety loaded with black humor.
The contents, the formats, the technique, the texts (written thoughts), all conform a different work of art and invite the observer to approach, to get closer and closer, thinking perhaps that by being small they are harmless; and once he or she is close enough, he or she will be trapped in the spider web. Size is not what really maters in a work of art, the impact gets to the observer when he notices more often the minuscule details that are the reflex that builds little by little our own lives. Even though you will find in my work many references about my Mexican heritage the real essence of the themes I depict are inherent to the human beings nature, they become universal. My art could best be described as reality portraiture set in fantastic theatrical scenes, an intimate and sometimes terrifying mirror in which I look at myself and you look at yourself, perhaps finding some personal connection in that nearness.
Alida Cervantes (b. 1972) is a Mexican artist who lives and works in the Tijuana and San Diego border region. Traveling daily between the US / Mexico border, Cervantes’ work is characterized by an interest in power relations between race, class, gender and even species. She explores these hierarchies both at the level of sexual or intimate relationships and on the broad stages of history and politics.
Cervantes earned a BA from UC San Diego, then studied at Florence’s Scuola di Arte Lorenzo de’ Medici. She earned her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. Her work is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Charles Saatchi Collection, London, as well as the Jorge Perez permanent collection.
Pan y Sal Podcast Hosted by Griselda Rosas
Conversation with Irma Sofia Poeter and Bread & Salt Curator Thomas DeMello. She is a Mexican-American artist who has lived on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border. Born in Arcadia, California, in 1963, She currently works and lives in Tecate, Mexico.
She recently had a 25 year retrospective at the Tijuana Cultural Center (known by its Spanish acronym, (CECUT) along with a Exhibition at the Front Gallery in San Ysidro. you can read more about the show from the LA Times
for episodes in Spanish including a Conversation with Irma please subscribe to the Pan y Sal Podcast hosted by Griselda Rosas