Please join us for a discussion on historic color and painting followed by a hands-on plant pigment workshop in our garden. Artist Sandy Rodriguez and Diana Magaloni of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will discuss the treatise on color and painting contained in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex – the first illustrated encyclopedia of the New World. They will also speak on Rodriguez’s related investigations and creation of the Codex Rodriguez-Mondragón, a contemporary bioregional map and series of paintings about the intersections of history, color, medicine, and cultura.
After the talk, Rodriguez will lead a two-hour demonstration and laboratory focused on methods for extracting organic colorants from edible and medicinal plants, insects, seeds, bark, and telluric materials (mineral and earth pigments) from Alta and Baja California. Participants will engage in a sensory experience with the artist as they test hand processed colors on a variety of materials and take-home postcards created on handmade paper produced from mulberry and wild fig bark in central Mexico.
About Sandy Rodriguez
Sandy Rodriguez is an artist and independent educator raised in San Diego, Tijuana, and Los Angeles, where she currently lives and works. Her artwork investigates the methods and materials of painting across cultures and histories. Her landscapes capture moments of transformation in the social, political and cultural landscape of Los Angeles, with a focus on themes of resistance, persistence, and cultural regeneration. Rodriguez earned her BFA from California Institute of Arts. She has designed and administered education programs and resources for numerous museums and arts organizations since 1997. Rodriguez has exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Art+Practice, Los Angeles, and Self Help Graphics, Los Angeles, among others. Recent awards and residencies include Department of Cultural Affairs Cultural Trailblazer Award (2017-18), Artist-in-Residence for Los Angeles County Arts Commission (2016-2017), and Artist-in-Residence at Art+Practice in Leimert Park (2014-15). Her artist communique and artwork are featured in the Fall 2017 issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies from UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center. Rodriguez has been featured on CBC Radio Canada Hour le Monde, KQED Statewide Report, KPCC’s Off Ramp, Los Angeles Times, and KCET. Her work is currently on view at East 26 Projects.
About Diana Magaloni
Dr. Diana Magaloni is a renowned art historian, author and conservator. She is currently the Deputy Director, Program Director, and Dr. Virginia Fields Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Yale University, a Masters in art history from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and a B.A. in Conservation from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). She was formerly the Director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City (2009-2013). Magaloni has served as researcher and professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas UNAM since 1991, where she has specialized in indigenous modes of representation and the nature and meaning of the materials used to create ancient mural paintings and painted books. She has published numerous essays and book chapters on these topics. Her book ‘Colors of the New World: Materials, Artists, and the Creation of the Florentine Codex’ (2014) was reviewed as a book that opens new ways of understanding art. Her most recent book ‘Albores de la Conquista’ (2017) won the Antonio García Cubas award for outstanding publications in anthropology and history. She has curated numerous exhibitions, her last exhibit ‘Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time’ received the 2018 Award for Excellence, recognizing groundbreaking new scholarship in the field by the American Association of Museum Curators.
