ENCINITAS, CA — (June 25, 2009) — Lux Art Institute, San Diego’s interactive art destination, announced today the artists who will participate in Lux’s third Artist-in-Residence season, which begins this September.

A significant contemporary art venue in San Diego County where visitors can “see art happen,” Lux is one of the first museum facilities in the United States to establish an innovative artist-in-residence program that focuses on the living artist and the creative process.

“We are thrilled with the artist line-up for the 2009-2010 season,” said Lux Director Reesey Shaw. “Lux is bringing a fresh and exciting pool of talent here, a group of inspiring artists that work in a variety of media, from marble to charcoal to metal. We hope the public will visit often throughout the new season to explore, experience and see great new art for themselves.”

2009-2010 Artist-in-Residence season includes:

Elizabeth Turk
In-Studio Sept. 10 – Oct. 3, 2009
On-Exhibit through Oct. 31, 2009

A native of Southern California, sculptor Elizabeth Turk kicks off Lux’s new season on September 10, 2009. Though she has mastered a variety of media, she currently embraces and brings new vision to the classical practice of stone carving. With chisel in hand and fueled by her fascination with patterns, she painstakingly transforms solid, 400-pound blocks of marble into fantastic and improbable shapes — collars, pinwheels and ribbons — that illustrate the tension between the inherent strength and fragility of the stone. Her exhibit at Lux will feature numerous examples of sculpture as well as works on paper. While in residence, Turk will be carving a sculpture for her “Collars” series.

Other venues for Turk has exhibited at include Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Calif.; and Ben Maltz Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles. Her works are featured in such collections as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum for Women in the Arts, both in Washington, D.C., as well as the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.

Susan Hauptman
In-Studio Nov. 12 – Nov. 21, 2009
On-Exhibit through Jan. 9, 2010

New York City-based Hauptman is Lux’s second artist of the new season. For over twenty years, her enigmatic, charcoal self-portraits have been her focus. Drawn with complete candor and near-photographic exactitude, the works display not only Hauptman’s astonishing technical mastery but also serve as the artist’s own means of self-revelation and reinvention. Her work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the country and is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; and Norton Gallery of Art, Palm Beach, Fla.

Iva Gueorguieva
In-Studio Jan. 16 – Feb. 6, 2010
On-Exhibit through March 17, 2010

Bulgarian-born Gueorguieva starts the New Year as Lux’s third resident artist. Her large-scale abstract paintings are filled with exuberant hues, dizzying brushstrokes, ghostly humanoid characters and churning landscape melodramas where themes of beauty, violence, isolation, sex and death are revealed. Gueorguieva has exhibited at Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, Calif.; Outline, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Electric Works, San Francisco; and Stephen Stux Gallery, New York. She also teaches drawing and painting at UCLA.

Robert Lobe
In-Studio March 27 - April 24, 2010
On-Exhibit through May 22, 2010

Inspired by the shapes, materials and textures found in the woods, New York City sculptor Robert Lobe depicts rock and trees in shimmering, hollow forms. He uses an adaptation of the ancient process of repoussé to recreate ephemeral, natural objects as monumental sculptures whose aluminum surfaces glimmer with the play of light and shadow. His work has been commissioned and exhibited in galleries and museums across the country, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Sati Zech
In-Studio June 5 – June 26, 2010
On-Exhibit through July 31, 2010

Born in Southern Germany and currently living and working in Berlin, Zech’s vibrant cloth fields in the series titled Bollenarbeit encompass elements of painting, drawing and sculpture. While the sumptuous displays of thick, red mounds of paint on torn rows of canvas hint at domestic handicraft and historically ritualistic mark-making, her bold, dynamic creations defy category and inhabit a world of their own. She made her stateside debut in 2008 at Howard Scott Gallery in New York City. Since 1985, Zech has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, as well as art fairs, in cities including Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Salzberg, Zurich and Bilbao.

About Lux Art Institute

Lux Art Institute, located in Encinitas, Calif., opened its doors to the public in November 2007 and is redefining the museum experience with its unique artist-in-residence program. At Lux, artists live and work on site, while producing a commissioned work of art.

Throughout the year, Lux invites significant regional, national and international artists to participate in the Lux residency and encourages visitors from across the country to observe and engage them. This one-of-a-kind institution invites visitors to not only “see art,” but also to “see art happen.”

Slated to be the first “green” (LEED certified) art museum in California and located alongside one of Southern California’s few remaining coastal wetlands, Lux’s five-acre site overlooks the San Elijo Lagoon and is surrounded by a wildlife preserve that stretches to the Pacific Ocean.

Santa Monica, California-based Renzo Zecchetto, AIA, designed the two-story building, a recent recipient of the San Diego Architectural Foundation’s top design award.

Lux Art Institute is located at 1550 South El Camino Real in Encinitas. Lux hours are Thursday and Friday, 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; cost is $10 for two visits.

For more information visit www.luxartinstitute.org or call 760.436.6611.