About the Exhibition
The LBCC Art Gallery proudly presents Satellites, a dynamic exhibition showcasing the creative talents of our Visual and Media Arts adjunct faculty. Like satellites, these artists travel their own arcs across the city—crossing freeways, weaving through neighborhoods, and carrying the weather of their studios with them—before converging in Long Beach to share their work.
This diverse constellation features works across a wide range of disciplines, including photography, jewelry and metalsmithing, photography, media arts, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, painting, costume design, set design, ceramics and film. Each piece is a transmission from a unique vantage point, bearing the textures of its maker’s daily landscape, the imprint of their community, and the hum of ideas gathered along the way. Satellites is both a convergence and a celebration: a moment when the rich artistic voices shaping our classrooms align in a shared orbit, inspiring the next generation of creators before returning to their own circuits in the ever-expanding field of art.
EXHIBITION DATES: November 6 – December 6, 2025
Opening reception:
Thurs, Nov 6th, 2025 from
5-7pm at LAC, K - 100
Artist talk:
Saturday, Nov 15th, 2025
1-3pm at LAC, K - 100
About the artists:
Robert Acuna: A first generation Los Angeles based artist. In 1997, he received a BFA from OTIS College of ART and Design in Drawing and Painting. In 2000, he received his MFA from University of Las Vegas Nevada in Painting. His paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe in various group exhibitions, including at MOCA, LACMA, and the Vincent Price Museum of Art. He has held solo exhibitions at Los Angeles Projects, Susanne Vielmetter Gallery, Cartell Gallery, and Schmidt Maczollek (Cologne, Germany). Acuna is represented by Gallery Anke Schmid in Cologne, Germany. He has taught art for over twenty five years at various colleges and high schools throughout Los Angeles.
Ismael de Anda III:lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. Received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Using mutant practices including digital photo-collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and interactive, site-specific projects, de Anda’s work is inspired by his pluralistic upbringing on the U.S./Mexico border and living in Los Angeles. De Anda’s personal concept of the mutant, a condition of unexpected evolution, was born from his adolescent reading of X-Men comics that featured mutant outsiders/anti-heroes whose special abilities set them apart, as well as de Anda’s own Mexican-American ethnicity. The mutant refers to mixing of artistic processes and the potential of the multi-ethnic existence of those living in the U.S. in exchange with diverse world cultures as a blend of developing culture not yet forecasted.
Yuri Okahana-Benson (岡鼻ベンソン ゆり): is a Tokyo-born scenographer specializes in stage design for live performing arts productions. Now based in Los Angeles, CA, Yuri has designed new works to classic materials, a straight play to an opera production. Her versatility and articulation in visual story-telling has earned her numerous unique opportunities with projects both nationally and internationally.
Trevor Byrne: is an artist and filmmaker who believes in collaborative and cooperative practices,rather than competitive ones. His short works, which range from lo-fi sci-fi to experimental documentary, have screened at AFI FEST, ICDOCS, and the Institute of Contemporary Art,Philadelphia, among other places. He holds an MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University and is currently part-time faculty at Long Beach City College.
Dan Hoy is a versatile actor and vocalist based in New York, has garnered widespread acclaim from critics nationwide for his exceptional talents on both stage and concert platforms. Praised by critics across the country for his “incredible voice”, “heartrending performances”, and “rousing” stage presence, Dan has established himself as a captivating force in the world of theater and music.
Deitra Charles is a visual artist from Los Angeles, California. She studied costume design and graphic art at Loyola Marymount University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and Fine Arts. Deitra also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University. Deitra is inspired by nature and her love of family. She strives to evoke a sense of peace and harmony in her work which has been exhibited in galleries, print, and online publications. In addition to creating new work, Deitra teaches Drawing, Design, and Art Appreciation at community colleges in Los Angeles County.
Elizabeth J Cheatham Wild is a multidisciplinary artist born in Richmond, Virginia and currently residing in Los Angeles, CA. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships including one from the Fundación Valparaíso Mojacar, Spain, a FIVA fellowship from The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in cooperation with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and two fellowships from The Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, WA. Wild has an undergraduate degree in Art and Art History from The University of Virginia and received her MFA from The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Ms. Wild has created a number of public artworks in Southern California including works for the Department of Cultural Affairs/LA, the Community Redevelopment Agency/LA and the Art Council of Long Beach. Wild is the founder and director of Winslow Garage, an artist-run project space in Los Angeles in operation since 2002.
Khara Cloutier is a artist and educator who teaches typography at Cal Poly Pomona and holds an MFA in Graphic Design from California State University, Long Beach. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art, A+D Museum and Lili Lakich Neon Studio. Cloutier is continually inspired by the man-man landscapes that surround her—the anatomy of the city—and its power to fabricate narrative and identity.
Alice Clements has a education Art Center College of Design Pasadena, CA 2005-2008 M.F.A., Focus in sculpture School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA Focus in sculpture and video 2000-2005 Wesleyan University Middletown, CT 1991-1995c B.A., English.
Nzuji De Magalhaes received a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Southern California. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem New York, MOAD Museum in San Francisco California, and the Hammer Museum's “Made in LA” Biennial exhibition.
Stevan Dupus is a San Diego–based LGBTQ+ artist, painter, and educator. Born in Kansas City,Missouri, his passion for art began with a childhood visit to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. After moving to California with just $650, he pursued both bartending and night classes,ultimately earning his MFA at California State University, Long Beach. His work, shaped by nearly two decades in LGBTQ+ communities, explores queer spaces, identity, and resilience. Featured in exhibitions across the U.S. and in the KPBS documentary San Diego Gay Bar History, Stevan now teaches college art and inspires future generations.
Stephanie Han was born in 1971 in Seoul, S. Korea, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978. I obtained my BFA from the Laguna College of Art & Design in 1995, and MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1999. I came back out to California after graduation and pursued a career in painting and graphic design. I’ve been in Long Beach since 2010 and am currently part of the Art Space art studios in Signal Hill, CA. I’m an adjunct professor in Digital Media Art at Long Beach City College and Irvine Valley College.
Loren Holland is a Long Beach-based artist whose practice incorporates painting, drawing and mixed media elements that engage the viewer using symbolic associations, allegory and whimsical imagery. Holland has exhibited in venues throughout California and across the country including the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, the California African American Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, the ICA LA, the Watts Towers Art Center, LA Art Core, the CSU Fullerton Main Art Gallery, the William Grant Still Art Center, the CSU Fresno M-Street Gallery and the LA Center for the Arts.
ZZ Krebs is a multimedia sculptor and installation artist. She received her MFA in Art from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2019. She received her BFA in Visual Art from the University of San Diego with a double minor in Art History and Marine Science in 2015. Krebs has been in exhibitions at Spore Space, Baroque Works, Ladies’ Room, LACE Gallery, Human Resources Gallery, Commons LA, Track 16 Gallery, which was featured in Curate LA, and at numerous colleges and universities. She received merit grants to be an artist in residence at Can Serrat International Artist Residency (Barcelona, Spain), Vermont Studio Center (Burlington, Vermont), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (Amherst, VA), Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (Hyattsville, MD), L’Air Arts (Paris, France), and the Mountain School of Art (Los Angeles, CA). Krebs currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Ann Le: is a Los Angeles based artist and Senior Lecturer of Photography and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University. She’s exhibited works at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Wende Museum, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and USC Roski School of Art and design. She excavates her lineage by revisiting her family’s experiences by using personal and found images to reconstruct slippages in time and history. Her photomontages explores identity, family history, the diaspora, and the space in between becoming Vietnamese-American.
Ezra Lunel: A graduate of UC Berkeley (BA, 2005) and Chapman University (MFA, 2013), Ezra Lunel is a former producer, director, editor and camera operator who has worked in production and development at CNN, ESPN, PBS, Lifetime Television, River Road Entertainment, Future Film Group, and KUSI-TV in San Diego, as well as on dozens of independent shorts and feature films since 2004.
Megan MacLean:is a Los Angeles based Costume, Hair, and Makeup Designer. She has her BA and MFA from Cal State Long Beach and has worked in the theatre, film, and television industry for 20 years, 8 of those years at LBCC in the Performing Arts Department. Her design and construction skills have been on display in hundreds of theatrical productions, plays, musicals,and dance concerts.
Lyra Melody: have 10 years experience on film, tv, and broadcast sets shooting documentary, corporate, and narrative content for numerous networks and studios. I am proficient in all major camera models from ARRI, RED, Sony, Canon, Blackmagic, and many more.
Jennifer Morales: is the Instructional Associate for Ceramics at Long Beach City College (LBCC), not an artist who exhibits at the college. She works with the ceramics department and is listed as a classified professional, with contact information available on the college's website. The search results show no evidence of a practicing artist named Jennifer Morales associated with LBCC's art gallery or art program.
Luis Moreno Napoles: Born in Mexico and misplaced in Long Beach California, Luis Moreno curves time and space to make the overwhelming capitalist pressure recede enough for them to catch their breath. A small but necessary resistance carried out.
Monica Nickles: Jewelry/Metalsmithing Adjunct at LBCC &ECC
M.F.A. Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art
B.F.A. Sculpture from SUNY Buffalo Artist
Michelle Ohm:is Adjunct Faculty that teaches in the Experience Design Program. Michelle Ohm is a visual artist and educator based in Long Beach, California. Since 2008, Michelle has been actively involved in both creating and teaching art. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes inspiring and empowering students, reflecting her commitment to education. Michelle’s artistic practice spans various media, including drawing, painting, ceramics, book arts, and fiber. Her work often explores themes related to the representation of women in media and pop culture, influenced by her upbringing in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at venues such as the Samuel Freeman Gallery, Lora Schlesinger Gallery, and the Forest Lawn Museum. In her personal life, Michelle resides in Long Beach.
Ruby Osorio: lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her drawings, paintings, and ceramic sculptures draw from a variety of sources - botanical drawings, photographs, and literary references - in an examination of the relationship between memory and fantasy. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally in New York, London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, and Athens, Greece. Solo exhibitions include Story of A Girl ( Who Awakes Far and Away) at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Laguna Art Museum, and three solo exhibitions at Cherry and Martin Gallery in Los Angeles. Her work has been reviewed by Art on Paper,Los Angeles Times and Washington Post among other publications and resides in notable permanent collections such as the Eileen Norton Foundation, the UBS Art Collection, and the Hammer Museum.
Antonio Puleo: born in Boston, MA and now lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Drawing inspiration and paying homage to various artistic sources including poetry, literature, architecture, and art history, Puleo’s abstract geometric arrangements of form and color favor interconnectedness. Through the systemic application of a personal index of abstract forms, structures are created that act as a through line from project to project so as they can communicate and also act as a gateway to the next idea. Puleo received his M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Wignall Museum, Rancho Cucamonga, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, NY; Kantor Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA; China Art Objects, Los Angeles CA; and The East Gallery at Claremont Graduate University. His works are included in numerous private and public collections including most recently the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed and featured in many publications including Artforum, The New Yorker, LA Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, and Flash Art.
Cindy Rehm: is a Los Angeles-based artist and educator. She serves as co-facilitator of the Cixous Reading Group and is co-founder of the feminist centered projects Craftswoman House and Feminist Love Letters. In 2021, she launched HEXENTEXTE, a collaborative project at the intersection of image, text, and the body. Rehm’s interdisciplinary practice moves between drawing, performance, and video to address the cultural suppression of women’s narratives and the legacy of hysteria. Rehm’s work has been shown at venues including Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles; Elephant, Los Angeles, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago; LACE, Los Angeles; Goliath Visual Space, Brooklyn; Paul Robeson Gallery, Rutgers; ARC Gallery, Chicago; Transformer, Washington DC; Interaction IV, Sardinia, Italy; the Archeological Museum, Varna, Bulgaria; and at Mains d’Oeuvres, Saint Ouen, France. Rehm has held residencies at Performing Arts Forum Saint Ermes, France and at Casa Lü, Mexico City. Her first book, Transference, was released by Curious Publishing in 2022. The Formless is What Keeps Bleeding was published by HEXENTEXTE in the spring of 2024.
Christian Salcedo Ward: was born and raised in Southern California. Ward attended Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon where he received an Associates of Arts; The University of Oregon, where he received a Bachelor's of Arts in studio arts with a minor in Spanish, and Cal State Long Beach where he received a Master of Fine Arts in studio arts with an emphasis in printmaking. Ward lives and practices printmaking in Long Beach, CA. where he and his wife have run several fine arts printmaking studios, most recently The Collective Print Studio. Ward is currently an adjunct professor at Long Beach City College where he has taught printmaking and drawing since 2013.
Matthew Segotta: Nearly two decades of progressive responsibility in for-profit arts management focusing on project management, benefactor development, and communication design. With an additional six years of non-profit arts experience with a dual emphasis in education and publishing.
Rachel Shimpock: is a California native raised in Orange County, Ca. by two high school teacher parents. At age 11 she got separated from her parents in historical Williamsburg and wandered into a smithy where a blacksmith let her hit steel with a tiny sledge hammer, she’s been smitten ever since! She recently received her MFA in the Jewelry/Metalsmithing program at San Diego State University with Professors Helen Shirk and Sondra Sherman. Metal and the format of jewelry in particular speaks to her and for the last 20 years has allowed her to communicate personal stories and there are many! Rachel is carrying on the legacy of her family and her trade by teaching workshops and art classes utilizing any opportunity to spread the gospel of metals and jewelry.
Kurt Simonson: is an artist/educator whose work explores the longings and tensions that surround our ideas of home, community, and identity. Questions about family, story, and belonging are at the heart of his curiosity.
Grace Suphamark: I am a writer of words and of light. I split my time between photography, writing, helping creatives develop their skills in visual storytelling, or trying to find my next snack. I’ve been trained in silver halide but am equally fluent in RGB. I dream in fixer fumes and can explain color management without causing (much) emotional trauma. I’ve been elbow-deep in photo chemicals, pixels, and camera gear since the mid-90s—back when Instagram didn’t exist and editing meant dodging and burning, not choosing a filter. What excites me most is the intersection of science and art—where technique, technology, and creativity come together to create magic.
Jillian Thompson: is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the contemporary Black women's experience through a diverse range of materials. Using metalwork, silkscreen, fibers, photo collage, and found objects, she examines narratives of culture and self-expression through both wearable pieces and imagery.
Her work has been exhibited at Emerge Gallery, MCLA Gallery 51, Angels Gate Cultural Center and the Alt Summit Conference in Palm Springs. Thompson earned her Master of Fine Arts in Jewelry & Metalsmithing from California State University Long Beach and currently teaches at California State University Long Beach and Long Beach City College.
Noah Thomas: is a Long Beach based sculptor and professor. Thomas received his BA in Piano Performance from Skidmore College in 1999 and his MFA in sculpture from California State University, Long Beach in 2003. Working primarily in wood and mixed media, Thomas has shown his abstract work extensively throughout Southern California including shows at PØST, The Laguna Art Museum, and the Torrance Art Museum. Thomas has also worked on public art opportunities through the Long Beach Arts Council. His work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and the OC Weekly. In Addition to making sculptural work, Thomas has a small line of laser cut brass and copper jewelry inspired by 2-dimensional linear patterns.