Charlene Fitzgibbon, Chair (1/19) is an accomplished communications consultant and event producer with a deep passion for music, culture and the arts. Her investment in the arts is driven by a fierce belief in its power to shape positive impact in the world. Fitzgibbon is focused on collaborating with creatives to develop and produce experiences and programs to tell compelling stories, drive meaningful connections, and build community globally.
Brooklyn, NY native, Fitzgibbon is based in Los Angeles. She garnered her public relations, branding, and marketing expertise working in the digital entertainment and technology space at LAUNCH Media, Yahoo! and Comcast Interactive Media. As a consultant she has spearhead multi-faceted strategic programs and events for brands, institutions and foundations, including: KCRW, Ingrooves Music Group, Hammer Museum, and Beats Music. Fitzgibbon holds a BA in Art History from Trinity College.
Andrea L. Collins, Vice Chair, (12/17) VP, Financial Consultant at Charles Schwab, has over 15 years of experience in the Investment Management industry. She previously worked as a Portfolio Analyst at City National Rochdale, a subsidiary of City National Bank, specializing in portfolio management for high-net-worth individuals, families, and foundations. She began her career at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, in Beverly Hills, as a Senior Associate providing comprehensive investment planning for co-managed portfolios.
Margaret Reeve, Secretary (1/15) is a freelance communications consultant with 34 years of experience in higher education. She served as Director of Communications at Otis College of Art and Design from 2003-2014, creating strategic marketing campaigns that included print and digital messaging. Previous positions include Director of Exhibitions and Lectures at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Director of Publications at Southern CaliforniaInstitute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). She was architecture editor for Art New England, contributing writer for The Boston Globe, editorial consultant for the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, and freelance curator. She is currently teaching literacy and writing workshops as a volunteer at 826LA, and past volunteer activities include the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and Somerville Arts Council. She directed art galleries in Boston and Provincetown, and earned her BA in art history from Wellesley College. www.margaretreeve.com
Elisabeth Forney, Treasurer (6/20) was born in Paris and has lived in Los Angeles with her family since 1982. From 2008-2020, Forney served as FLAX Executive Director, overseeing the day-to-day administration and strategy of this international cultural institution. She also served as its Chairman of the Program Committee, reporting directly to the FLAX Board of Directors.
Forney has long been involved in nurturing the French community in Southern California, where she originally established herself in the fashion and interior design spheres. As a board member for the Alliance Française of Los Angeles, she played a pivotal role in negotiating the school’s new headquarters. From 2000–2007, Forney owned and operated Duodeco, a successful import company specializing in French Art Deco furnishings and design. Prior to founding her own company, she was the director of programming and subtitling at KSCI’s French television division. She received a Master’s in Translation and Interpreting from the Institute of Intercultural Management and Communication in Paris and is fluent in French, English, and Spanish. In 2016, she was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
Erin Elizabeth Adams (1/18) is an American interdisciplinary artist, activist, business owner and graduate student at The University of California Santa Barbara. Their work explores themes and intersections of queer culture and family, futurism, ageism, contemporary politics, institutional power structures and race. Adams’s work employs painting, collage, installation, performance and video. Erin engages with the public other artists and volunteers on projects like the street murals “All Black Lives Matter” collaboration at Hollywood and Highland 2020.
Erin is a contractor and owner of Brainworks Inc. since 1988 an art related business employing artists and artisans.
www.BrainworksArt.com ; www.ErinAdamsArt.com
Michael Delgado (12/16) is the owner of A.G. Geiger Fine Art Books that specializes in California based artists from the mid 20th century to today. Delgado hosts the “A. G. Geiger Presents: Tales from the LA Art Underworld” podcast which is produced in conjunction with the Mayfair Hotel and the music and artist management company Regime 72. He also writes the “Bookseller’s Holiday” column for the LA Weekly. He is a graduate of the USC School of Fine Art and the former editor of the Journal of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA).
After LAICA, Mr. Delgado became the Executive Director of Business Development for iNTELEFILM, a publicly traded holding company for five prominent film and television production companies. He also earned Executive Producer credits with MTV and IMG/Endeavor.
Roy Dowell (5/19) Born in New York, lives and works in Los Angeles and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He holds a BFA and MFA degrees from the California Institute of the Arts. He has had numerous one- person exhibitions that include those at the Fawbush Gallery, Curt Marcus Gallery and Lennon/Weinberg Inc. in New York and at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Margo Leavin Gallery, Various Small Fires, Tif Sigfrids Gallery and most recently, at as-is.la Gallery in Los Angeles and at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle. He has had solo exhibitions at Santa Monica Museum of Art, Otis College of Art and Design Galleries and at LACMA. His work is included in many museum collections including LACMA, MOCA, the HAMMER Museum, MOMA San Francisco, the Berkeley and Oakland Museums as well as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, the Phoenix Museum of Art, the Weatherspoon in North Carolina and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum in Logan, Utah. Additionally his work is included in numerous private and corporate collections such as the Foundation Jumex in Mexico City and the Capitol Group and CAA in Los Angeles. His work has been included in numerous group exhibition both nationally and internationally including the 1st annual HAMMER Museum Biennial and 20th Century Collage at the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Nice, France. In 1990 he founded and then chaired the Otis College of Art and Design Master of Fine Arts Program until his recent retirement. He has been, over the last 25 years, an artist in residence, critic and instructor at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado. He has received a Getty Fellowship and an Art Matters Inc. Grant.
Jessica Fleischmann (3/19) is founder and creative director of Still Room Studio, a graphic design practice in Los Angeles that specializes in socially engaged cultural work and is. Clients include Art Omi, CalArts, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Ghery Partners, Hammer Museum, Jessica Silverman Gallery, the LA Philharmonic, LACE, Luce et Studio Architects, MASS MoCA, MCA Chicago, Night Gallery, Ojai Playhouse, Productora, REDCAT, and cultural organizations, artists, architects and publishers throughout LA and beyond. Jessica was on the board of the LA Forum for Architecture from 2013 through 2018. Her work has been recognized by the AIGA, British Book Design and Production Awards, the MAGGIE Awards, Mohawk 100 (Best in Show), Print Magazine, Under Consideration’s FPO Awards and others; and been published in several books on graphic design and typography. Before establishing Still Room, Jessica was Art Director of Western Interiors and Design magazine and design associate at Lorraine Wild Design (now Green Dragon Office). She received an MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts in 2001, after obtaining two liberal arts degrees and working in non-profit arts management, as a chef, and as an art instructor. She has taught graphic design and typography at Otis College of Art and Design, USC, and SCIArc.
Michael Gonzales (1/19) is a Los Angeles based land use attorney, founded Gonzales Law Group APC (“GLG”) in August 2011. Prior to founding GLG, Michael practiced land use and real estate law for over 8 years at two Los Angeles based law firms. Michael has successfully run his boutique law practice for the last 7 years, implementing the development and construction of various hotels and multi-family projects.
Michael has significant experience developing entitlement strategies and obtaining entitlements for a range of commercial, residential and mixed-use projects throughout Southern California, with many projects in Hollywood. Michael has also served as a member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors for the last 6 years. Michael obtained his undergraduate degree from UCLA and his law degree from USC. Michael currently resides is Los Angeles with his wife Sunny and his two kids, Sebastian and Violet.
Ken Gonzales-Day (6/22) Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems from lynching photography to museum displays. Gonzales-Day’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of The Getty, LACMA, École des Beaux Arts (Paris), Nation Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. His monographs include Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke) and Profiled (LACMA, 2011). Gonzales-Day hold the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art and is a Professor at Scripps College and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
Mark Steven Greenfield (1/21) A native Angelino, Mark Steven Greenfield studied under Charles White and John Riddle at Otis Art Institute in a program sponsored by the Golden State Life Insurance Company. He went on to receive his Bachelor’s degree in Art Education from California State University, Long Beach and a MFA in painting and drawing from California State University Los Angeles. From 1993-2011 he worked for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs as director of the Watts Towers Arts Center ,and later as director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park. Greenfield’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and international spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the California African American Museum, and the Gang Dong Art Center in Seoul, South Korea. His work deals primarily with the African American experience and in recent years has focused on the effects of stereotypes on American culture. He is a recipient of numerous residencies and awards including COLA and CCF fellowships, and currently represented by the William Turner gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
Mark has served on the boards of the Downtown Artists Development Association, the Armory Center for the Arts, the Black Creative Professionals Association, the Watts Village Theatre Company and was past president of the Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825. He currently teaches drawing and design at Los Angeles City College, and also serves on the boards of Side Street Projects and the Harpo Foundation. www.markstevengreenfield.com
Young Joon Kwak (6/22) (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations, creating connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. Through sculptural manipulations in the form, functionality, and materiality of objects, they question common modes of perception and bodily objectification, while posing alternative ways of viewing bodies “beyond the skin.” Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for collaborative performances and installations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. She and Mutant Salon were LACE’s 2018 Summer Residency artists, creating the exhibition Cavernous. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.
Kwak presented solo and collaborative exhibitions and performances internationally at galleries and institutions including Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Korean Cultural Center, LA (2021); Commonwealth & Council, LA (2021, 2017, 2016, 2014); Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2018); the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2018); The Broad, LA (2016); and the Hammer Museum, LA (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2021); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Antenna Space, Shanghai, China (2019); and Le Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France (2015). Kwak received the Korea Arts Foundation of America’s Award for the Visual Arts (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and the Art Matters Grant (2016). Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. In addition to LACE, Kwak serves on the board of the Feminist Center for Creative Work. Kwak taught and mentored at schools including California Institute of the Arts; School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s low-residency MFA program; University of California, Riverside; and University of California, San Diego. Kwak’s work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and LA Times, among others.
www.youngjoon.com
Grace Oh (5/21) is an advocate for intersectional contemporary art across various cultural organizations in Los Angeles and the Managing Director of Formation Association, an award winning architecture firm with a wide ranging body of work. Formation Association cultivates on-going work with LA artists which have been presented both locally and internationally via cultural channels and institutions such as the Main Museum, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the Hammer Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture in Paris.
As a board member of Fellows of Contemporary Art, Grace works to highlight the ever growing community of emerging artists in Los Angeles. Additionally, she serves on the board of GYOPO, a collective of diasporic Korean cultural producers and arts professionals, and engages in local efforts to increase visibility on behalf of the AAPI contemporary art community in Los Angeles and beyond.
Grace’s current work is informed by her previous production experience in entertainment for MTV, VH1, the Disney Channel, and independent films, and as a keynote speaker for entertainment marketing events both globally and locally.
Bryan Smiley (1/19) is currently President of Film and TV at Hartbeat Productions, the production company of comedian and media mogul Kevin Hart. He was previously Vice President of Creative Development & Production at Columbia Pictures, a Sony Pictures Entertainment company. At Columbia, Bryan spearheaded a major production deal with Unanimous Media, the production company of NBA star Stephen Curry. In addition, Bryan completed a multi-picture deal with Issa Rae, the star and producer of the critically acclaimed INSECURE on HBO. Before joining Columbia, Bryan co-fou
Kathie Foley-Meyer, Chair Emerita (12/11) is a mixed media artist and arts consultant based in Los Angeles. In her work as a nonprofit arts consultant she is charged with facilitating connections between the organizations and potential funders, artists and collaborators. She has also worked as a graphic designer on behalf of theater companies, museums and other nonprofits. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. In 2016 her work was featured in the group exhibition “SKIN” at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, which explored the subject of race and identity in contemporary American life. She also created an installation at the Pasadena Playhouse for the production of FLY by Trey Ellis and Ricardo Khan, a play that tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. In July her piece Colored Entrance, was featured in the “Real American” exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center. In 2015 she was part of a group of American artists who traveled to Japan and exhibited their work with Japanese artists in Kitakyushu, Ashiya and Kyoto. Her sculpture Brown People, Glass Housewas featured in “Hard-Edged: Geometrical Abstraction and Beyond,” a group show at the California African American Museum that ran through April of 2016, and her solo exhibition of photographs and mixed media entitled Memory Parade was on view at LA Artcore in the fall of 2015.
