Borja, Nagy, Queen, and Carter show off their art and workspaces through drawings, paintings, sculptures and ceramics.
By: Kaia Mann, Editor-in-chief
The soft scrape of charcoal fills the room as students gather in a circle, tracing the contours and shadows of the model before them. Though Amelia Borja isn’t the focus of her students’ gaze, she stands at the center of it all.
“It’s a cliche but it’s true, students are really inspiring,” said the life-drawing and painting instructor. “They have really incredible ideas and they’re able to have new ideas and be creative in a way that isn’t so burdened.”
Though teaching wasn’t part of Borja’s original plan, the impact of her own teachers motivated her to give it a try. Her path to Valley College began after struggling with math and science, where supportive community college professors helped her succeed.
“I thought maybe I could inspire people like these teachers inspired me,” said Borja. “I can be a part of somebody feeling like they belong somewhere.”
Identifying as an abject artist, Borja embraces an affinity for the “gross,” using her work to explore the realities of living in a body—particularly a female body.
“There is this shared experience of suffering in this body that bleeds and cramps and seizes and gets hot and then cold and then fat and skinny.” she says. “Anybody who has an aspect of femininity in them is then subject to the socialization of being female which I think inherently comes with hating your own body and thinking that it’s really gross which I love to explore.”
Borja got her MFA in multidisciplinary art at the Maryland Institute College of Art with her own practice spanning multiple mediums. Her pieces including sculpture, painting, and photography, incorporating materials such as silicone, plaster, and, most recently, discarded makeup in her paintings.
“I think about things that should be private and secret and internal and then bring a more external lens to them, I think that is very interesting to me.” said Borja. “Ultimately most of my work ends up existing at least in some way as a self-portrait.
By: Kaia Mann, Editor-in-chief
Katie Queen, draped in her signature ‘wooby’ scarf and pottery apron, centers her clay on the wheel, ensuring the foundation is solid from the start. In the classroom, she does the same, guiding and shaping her students.
“If you go into that classroom it’s not just a normal lecture, It’s so lab based and people from lots of different places that would never talk or have a relationship with each other are coming together in this environment,” said Queen. “That’s what I love about teaching.”
Queen specializes in ceramics, crafting both sculptural pieces and functional vessels, citing her attraction to the medium as its grounding and calming nature.
“I was a pretty naughty teenager, and art was a way for me to become focussed and find a way out of my dysfunction,” she states.
Queen received her undergraduate degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she grew up. Now an Angeleno, she “always knew” she wanted to teach at the college level.
At Valley, the mother of three wears a myriad of hats including professor of two-dimensional design, color theory and ceramics I, II and III while also serving as the department chair and curator.
In her own work, Queen creates in series and focuses largely on process while finding inspiration in her relationships and “family unit.” She cites that teaching the fundamentals of art daily seeps into her own endeavors which are rooted in formal elements. Arches, gestures, and non-linear forms are recurring motifs in her pieces.
“I love that people can kind of find similarities through art and break barriers that are present in the outside world,” said Queen. “Art can be the place that maybe makes us all become a collective unit.”
By: Angel Silva, Managing Editor
Art has followed Jenene Nagy, Valley College’s gallery director, in one way or another - beginning with oil painting classes she took while in Girl Scouts.
“I did that for many many years and enjoyed it but didn’t necessarily think I’d be ‘oh I’m going to be an artist’ or anything like that,” said Nagy.
That would change at the University of Arizona. Nagy entered without a major, and spending time with graduate students there led her to consider art as a long-term path.
“It just seemed so amazing to just work in your studio all day long and all night long to get a master’s degree, so it was more like that was my next goal to go to grad school,” said Nagy.
After earning her MFA at the University of Oregon, Nagy entered the workforce. It was during her time as the artistic director for an arts nonprofit that she realized what she wanted from her career.
“That was a very administrative role,” said Nagy. “It was very different from teaching, and it was where I realized where I was not a desk job person.”
That year her husband entered a graduate program at UC Riverside, where she later became an assistant professor. She would land at Valley as gallery director and professor of art.“This job appealed to me because it was half gallery director and half teaching, so it was good for my skillset,” said Nagy.
Nagy’s style has evolved from large-scale temporary installations, from “these big color things, and then like black squares.” She feels there’s a very visible transition point in her art.
“It’s quiet. It’s meditative. There’s a lot of repetition in my work,” said Nagy. “I use paint in my practice, but I’m more in the combination of drawing and works on paper.”
As gallery director, she has worked with Guardian Scholars, the Rainbow Pride Center, the Umoja Black Scholars Program, and Veterans Services.
“We try to partner with the counselors and design workshops and lectures that are meaningful and impactful to their students specifically,” she said. Nagy encourages her students to put in the work to make it as an artist, both at Valley and beyond.
“I try to be a model for my students. I take my art seriously,” said Nagy. “I hope that students who are thinking about pursuing a career in the arts give it the time and energy and seriousness that it deserves.”
By: Angel Silva, Managing Editor
Sculpture professor Jamison Carter strives to create situations where students “have to wrestle with their own creative mind.”
“It’s difficult to teach creativity, but you can find strategies that force a student into being creative in a way they haven’t been before,” said Carter. “Because ultimately, creativity is unique problem-solving.”
For Carter, that creativity is at the core of his own work - making the ephemeral tangible in a way that resonates with others through sculpture in many different mediums.
“You’d say the words ‘a ray of light’ or ‘a ray of sunshine’ but our hands go right through it, it’s not something that we can hold or take with us or look at more than a fleeting moment,” said Carter. “I’m trying to make those things a little bit more concrete.”
Carter’s sculptures call forth the connecting experiences that every person has - from joy to grief, his work aims to uplift the baselines that every person experiences. In his last exhibition prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter explored the process of mourning in a solo show at the Klowden Mann gallery.
“Both of my parents died right before the pandemic - my mom died in August 2019 and my dad died in January 2020, and then we were on lockdown in March,” said Carter. “The solo show that I did was about me catharting that situation, but it also gave me time to grieve I think in a way that was meaningful, effective, and I learned from it.”
Finding new ways to connect with others and perceive things differently is at the center of Carter’s approach to teaching art in his sculpture classes.
“As an art teacher trying to teach fine art it’s important for me to get them to step outside of their comfort zone and don’t make what they think about making, make things that challenge them, things that they’ve never thought about before,” said Carter.
Carter hopes that his students will take these lessons to heart, no matter where they go.
“Keep making work no matter what,” said Carter. “If you love it and that’s what you want to be in, that’s what you have to do. Our society is not set up to support artists, and you just have to push back.”
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