Through virtual functionality, renowned ceramicist Jerry Rothman’s work is on display at SAC’s Santora Gallery

(Santa Ana, CA) - Now through September 5th, Santa Ana College’s Santora Gallery is proud to be showing California artist Jerry Rothman’s Rituals & Myths collection. Visitors can explore a virtual world of Rothman’s ceramics, in spite of the limitations of COVID-19 on art galleries and other public gathering places.

"It's refreshing that SAC is able to provide such enriching art experiences for all, even in the time of COVID," said Steven Montoya, Art Gallery Coordinator for SAC. "Hosting these types of events, even virtually, shows how much we value the perspective that the arts and humanities bring to the overall educational landscape for our student body."

Rothman was a Laguna Beach artist and a professor at California State University, Fullerton. He was known for his willingness to push artistic limits, and this particular collection ranges from traditional vessels to abstract forms. A giant in his medium, his work has been collected by Smithsonian Museums, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, and other major institutions. The Rituals & Myths collection is on loan to SAC’s Santora Gallery from the Laguna Art Museum.

Rothman (1933 – 2014) spent his career making art that pushed the limitations of clay. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933, he moved to Los Angeles and later received his BA from the Art Center College of Design and his MFA from the Otis Art Institute. He was part of a group of artists from Otis who revolutionized the ceramic art world with their radical departure from European tradition, as utilitarian vessels gave way to forms of pure artistic expression.

Rothman always worked as a potter and as a sculptor. As an artist, he maximized on his divergent interests: between functional and sculptural, between classic and baroque, between the serious and the comic. Stylistically his work is difficult to categorize, due to his varying interests throughout his career.

“Rothman’s aesthetic credo is largely based on the belief that there is no such thing as intrinsic beauty in any given material, contending that the inherent qualities are simply those that the artist can see and extract,” said noted authority on ceramics Garth Clark.

Santa Ana College is a comprehensive public institution serving a diverse population of over 25,000 students from the surrounding area. The SAC gallery program is designed to meet the needs of this population and provide students and visitors with world class art shows of prominent national and international artists, to encourage participation and discussion in the art viewing community at large, and to further enrich the cultural landscape of Santa Ana. Programming for the SAC Arts Gallery typically includes six exhibitions per year, and a full schedule of changing virtual exhibitions and tours is planned for the coming year.

Jerry Rothman: Rituals & Myths
Ceramics from the Laguna Art Museum Collection
August 1 – September 5, 2020
Virtual exhibition address: santaanacollegeartdepartment.org/jerry-rothman-tour

For more information, contact Galleries Director Phillip Marquez or SAC Art Gallery Coordinator: Steven Montoya at 714-564-5627, C-102. This exhibition was curated and installed by Tim Campbell.

About Santa Ana College
Santa Ana College (SAC), which turned 100 years old in 2015, serves about 18,000 students each semester at its main campus in Santa Ana. The college prepares students for transfer to four-year institutions, and provides invaluable workforce training and customized training for business and industry. In addition, another 11,000 students are served through the college’s School of Continuing Education located at Centennial Education Center. Ranked as one of the nation’s top two-year colleges awarding associate degrees to Latino and Asian students, the college is also recognized throughout the state for its comprehensive workforce training programs for nurses, firefighters, law enforcement and other medical personnel. SAC is one of two comprehensive colleges under the auspices of the Rancho Santiago Community College District.