Art Center artists show how their majors—and the scholarships that support them—can be powerful investments in creating community.
She often invites strangers to stop and make art with her, and sends out announcements via social media to spur gatherings of artists. At other times, small learning communities will spring up around her without warning — like the time a group of women walking through Union Station noticed her sewing one of her signature paper quilts and came over to investigate.
“It turned out they were a quilting group,” Lovich says. “They were fascinated by what I was doing, and so excited to see a younger person interested in quilting as a contemporary art form.”
Photographs by
Jennie Warren PHOT 05
What followed was, in essence, an impromptu seminar in which the quilters shared their experiences and exchanged ideas about the role of art in the domestic sphere. “Everyone took away something meaningful from the experience,” she adds. “It was art school. It was community. It was education.”
At other times, the act of creating in a public space sparks confrontation. Lovich recalls the time she positioned herself across from Starbucks in Union Station — and proceeded to offer memories for sale to passersby for 50 cents each.
“Of course, the police approached me and said I couldn’t sell things there,” she says. “I explained I wasn’t selling ‘things’ but rather my own memories to people who wanted to hear them. The police were really confused. We had a long discussion about semantics. They eventually agreed that if I changed the word on my sign from ‘sale’ to ‘barter’ that I wasn’t violating any laws.”
If Lovich sounds like a bit of a troublemaker, she insists that her efforts are well-intentioned, growing out of a strong personal commitment to social justice and a high regard for activists, writers and artists dedicated to what she calls “sculpting our communities into healthy and equitable spaces.”
For Lovich, that means using art, and the place and manner in which it is created, to prod at existing assumptions about public space, power, privilege and history. “I want to create situations that puncture those assumptions just a little bit,” she says. “To be effective as an activist you don’t need to hold up a sign saying what you think the problem is, because the action itself will expose the problem within the system.”
The scholarships she has received to support her Art Center education reflect the value others see in her work as well. She has received funding from several sources, including an annual scholarship fund benefiting Fine Art majors established at Art Center by the San Marino League of California, a nonprofit organization of local women committed to philanthropic work and furthering their own knowledge of fine art.
“Everyone took away something meaningful from the experience.... It was art school. It was community. It was education.”
