As part of CalArts Alumni Engagement, join us for an inspiring evening with Pamela Jorden (CalArts Art MFA 96) and Sarah Hotchkiss—artist, writer, and KQED arts editor—as they discuss Jorden’s latest exhibition, Holds. This event is free and open to the public.

Pamela Jorden is a Los Angeles based painter. Formally, Jorden plays with the alchemy of paint and how pigments, suspended in water and solvents, move over and across and around, and interweave with the texture of the linen. Flow, gravity, and momentum result in areas of varying densities of opaque and transparent forms. Areas of exposed raw linen appose the saturation and weight of various colors in the paintings, creating balance and ruptures along points of contact within and along edges of the frame. Multiple color chords of paint, layered together, mingle with shape, line, texture and pattern in a synthesis of the whole. In her diptychs, Jorden plays with the idea of visual counterpoint and the impression of tension that it creates within the pictorial field.

Sarah Hotchkiss is a San Francisco artist and arts writer. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco and Cheymore Gallery, Tuxedo Park, NY. She loves nothing more than an artist-run space in a weird spot. From 2020 to 2023, she co-ran Premiere Jr., a 6-by-12-foot billboard gallery in San Francisco. She is a senior editor for KQED Arts & Culture.