The South Pasadena Arts Council (SPARC) is pleased to present the exhibition Craters — New Work by Katie Shapiro at SPARC Gallery, located at the South Pasadena Chamber of Commerce on Mission Street. Claudia Bohn-Spector, Independent Curator and Chief Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, organized the exhibition which will run from March 4 – April 7, 2017.

A Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in photography, Katie Shapiro has long enlisted her camera to explore rooted in supernatural phenomena: energy vortices, force fields, and auras. On her work for this show she writes: “Impact craters fascinate me. They are the result of cataclysmic cosmic events that signify something at once violent and poetic, visually signalling trauma. “ She notes that according to American astronomer, Carl Sagan, impact craters are visible marks, or scars, on the face of the earth that can last for billions of years. “I thought about how people often hide their own personal trauma, making it invisible underneath the surface of their own memories and experiences. I thought it was a beautiful thing to contemplate how our planet, instead, exposes its wounds and traumata, there for all to see and experience. I also couldn’t help but reflect on the “meteor” that hit our White House just weeks before embarking on this work, realizing how we’ve been communally traumatized by game-changing events seemingly beyond our control.”

Ms. Shapiro created new sculptural work specifically for her exhibition at SPARC Gallery.

She received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine, in 2015 and a BFA in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 2007. Her work was most recently exhibited at Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles; LTD Gallery, Los Angeles; and Aperture Gallery, New York. Her work has received coverage in Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, and New York Magazine. It is housed in private collections as well as in the permanent collection at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

The SPARC Gallery is located at 1121 Mission Street, South Pasadena.

SPARC Gallery Hours are Tuesday – Friday 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. or by appointment. Please call the Chamber office before arriving at (626) 441-2339.