Allan Hancock College arts instructor, poet, and painter Gabriel Navar will serve as a guest artist in residence for the Mid-Columbia Mastersingers in Washington State while simultaneously exhibiting his art in Germany and at the UCSB Multicultural Center.
The April 13 through 17 artist-in-residence opportunity sprang from Navar’s continued collaboration with acclaimed choral composer and University of Florida music professor Paul Basler.
Navar and Basler came together by chance more than 10 years ago when Basler discovered Navar’s poetry online. Since then, the two men have created three separate projects, titled “Cantos Alegres,” “Dias Divinos,” and “Embrace Creation,” which constitute 21 of Navar’s poems set to music.
The residency with the Mastersingers is part of a larger project titled “Cantos de la Vida” that will include a performance of “Cantos Alegres” by the Mastersingers, lectures and appearances by Navar and Basler, and a one-person art exhibit featuring 41 of Navar’s paintings.
His paintings are also showing through April 21 at Galerie B. Haasner in Wiesbaden, Germany, as part of the exhibit “Fletcher Benton 80th Birthday Exhibition with his California Colleagues,” and April 7 through June 10 at the “Bridging through the Arts: Transracial Community Building” exhibit at the UCSB Multicultural Center.
Much of Navar’s current work centers on what he describes as a continuing dialog and interest in online visual experiences, including YouTube, pop-up ads, and desktop windows.
His most recent paintings are part of what he calls his “YouTube series” and depict Navar’s take on current events, as well as larger themes of globalization, racial relations, politics, and more.
To view Navar’s art and read his poetry, go to gabrielnavar.tripod.com.
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2011.