Bakersfield native Ali Vaughan led the first lecture of the spring semester on Feb. 19 amid the launch of her first solo exhibit at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, titled “The Afterlife of Rivers and Fields.” The exhibit is on display through May 2.
When Caesar reached out to her about participating in the lecture series, Vaughan was excited about the opportunity because it would be a new type of experience for her.
“I have done some college-level teaching, but this is the first university artist lecture opportunity I’ve ever had, so it was a new format to explore,” she said. “I was really interested in having the opportunity to speak to a general audience, but also to think about where students are in their lives and professional careers. Having been there myself not too long ago, I was excited about speaking to them.”
Through oil paintings, drawings and other mediums, Vaughan’s art explores the intersection of place and identity. Her experience growing up in Bakersfield is reflected in much of her work, despite the abstract nature of her art.
“To me, place is a concept that transcends just locations or geography — it can speak much more to the way they interact with a state of mind, with memory, culture and history, how all of these factors come together to constitute what we might know of as place,” she said.
During her lecture, Vaughan — who holds dual bachelor’s degrees in art practice and art history from Stanford University — talked about her career trajectory and the concept of being lost and found.
“My career trajectory has been constituted by cycles of getting lost and having to find my way, both in the way I do my painting and the way that I’ve negotiated being an artist,” she said.
Vaughan said she enjoyed doing the lecture. She especially appreciated that she had free reign to make it about whatever she wanted.
“This was a really interesting opportunity to create something, to have an hour to speak about my work in whatever way I chose to approach it,” she said. “I got to really think about what I wanted to communicate. There are many ways to approach giving a talk like that. I found it very rewarding.”
The lecture signified a full-circle moment for Vaughan. She recalled that while she was a student at Stanford, she attended many visiting artist lectures like the one she gave and was inspired by them.
“It taught me so much,” she said. “When art is spoken about by people who are not artists, it’s a different context. When you’re listening to an artist talk about their own work in their own words, you really learn a lot about how they have negotiated their life and their work.”
Vaughan acknowledged that trying to establish a career as an artist can be challenging and that it can be difficult to understand at first how to do it. That’s why she believes programming that gives students the opportunity to hear from artists directly and ask questions is so vital.
“It’s a really hard path to understand if you haven’t taken it yourself. There are so many ways to go about being an artist,” she said. “I know what it feels like to be about to go out into the world and wondering what to do. It’s a time in life when many of them might feel a bit lost, and I hope that my talk taught them that this is a normal experience that you have as an artist. I hope they feel a little less fear around that and are motivated to find ways to continue and grow their work.”
One of the students who attended Vaughan’s lecture was senior studio arts major Lili Goddard, who was interested in hearing from an artist who came from Bakersfield.
“I really liked how Ali talks about place in her work. It was interesting to hear about how she thinks about the process of making her art,” she said. “It’s very impactful to see how somebody frames their own work, and there’s a lot of beauty in the way she does it.”
Goddard, whose art is focused on fabric and photography, has attended several previous artist lectures on campus. She said they have been valuable experiences that have helped give her a better idea of what career paths are available.
“As a student of art, it is really important to get to see artists talk about their work from all these angles and ask questions about how they view their work, especially artists who do it for a living,” she said. “The lectures provide students with more options than they think are available, because they feature artists from a lot of different disciplines.”
Goddard is grateful that CSUB is able to offer the Visiting Artist Lecture Series and believes it has had a significant impact on the students who attend.
“As an artist, it’s very generative to see other artists talk about their work and what inspired them. There have been a lot of excellent artists that have come and presented their work,” she said. “This is a very unique thing we have access to as students from CSUB.”
The next event in the Visiting Artist Lecture Series will be on March 26 featuring Los Angeles-based artist Ravi Jackson. The lecture will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Visual Arts Room 103. The final lecture is scheduled for April 23 and will be led by Emma Saperstein, the chief curator and director of education for the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Both events are free and open to the public.
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