Event Info

Artists with roots in the Inland region, Lewis deSoto, Sant Khalsa, Thomas McGovern, and Susan Straight, will discuss what it’s like to have a practice rooting in a geographical region and how Douglas McCulloh’s work was also grounded in this approach.

Presented in connection with the exhibition, Dispatches: The Photography of Douglas McCulloh, 1990-2025.

Image: Douglas McCulloh, Untitled from the series Dream Street, 1999-2009. Courtesy of the estate of Douglas McCulloh.

Speakers:

Lewis deSoto (Cahuilla), born 1954, in San Bernardino, California is known for his installations, sculpture, photography, writing and public art that engages cosmological questions, notions of self, and plays with inherent phenomena. His work has shown internationally and is featured in numerous collections. He was educated at UC Riverside and Claremont Graduate University. He is an Emeritus Professor of Art at San Francisco State University. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2024-2025.

Sant Khalsa is an artist, educator, curator, and activist whose work develops from a mindful inquiry into complex environmental and societal issues. She is a recipient of the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship (Legacy Award). Her artworks are internationally exhibited, collected, and published in numerous publications including two monographs. She curated the Getty supported PST ART exhibition and book, Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees. Khalsa is Professor of Art, Emerita at CSU San Bernardino.

Thomas McGovern is a photographic artist, art writer and local educator for over 20 years whose photographic work compassionately documents people, sites and events in the Inland Empire since moving there in 2000.

Susan Straight has published ten novels, including Sacrament, Mecca, and Highwire Moon, as well as one memoir, In the Country of Women.  Her work has won the California Book Award, the Lannan Prize for Fiction, and the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times.  For twelve years, she worked with Douglas McCulloh on narratives published in Granta, The Los Angeles Times, KCET, as well as four museum exhibits. Image credit for Susan Straight headshot: Dustin Snipes

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