Kija Lucas

About the artist:

"Several of my childhood memories take place in someone’s garden, weeding alongside my brothers, planting with my father, watching him prune a tree while a client stood at the bottom of the ladder talking about one thing or another.

The Enchanted Garden explores home, heritage, and inheritance. I consider the ways our environment shapes us, as it has shaped the people who have come before us. It is an attempt to understand Palo Alto—where I grew up, where I was shaped, and where I felt and still feel on the outside looking in. A city whose name is so loaded, with the lore of innovation and fortunes made in garages often top of mind, is in its own way “enchanted.”

Named for my father’s gardening business, The Enchanted Garden includes opulent botanical still life and time-worn gardening tools that recall my childhood in Palo Alto. The images of botanicals represent trees and plants that are common in Palo Alto and throughout the Bay Area. The wallpaper covering the gallery walls attempts the impossible task of organizing nature through arranged patterns, the way a gardener might, and visually transitions through the installation, changing as the viewer moves through the gallery. Artworks hung atop the wallpaper echo layers of history and memories on which our knowledge and beliefs have been built."

--Kija Lucas

Kija Lucas earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College. Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally at institutions that include the Oakland Museum of California; Headlands Center for the Arts; California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; Palo Alto Art Center; Mission Cultural Center; Root Division, San Francisco; Venice Arts, Los Angeles; La Sala d’Ercole/Hercules Hall, Bologna Italy; and Casa Escorsa, Guadalajara, Mexico. Additionally, Lucas has received grants from the San Francisco Arts commission and Nancy Graves Foundation, and has held artist residencies at Montalvo Arts Center, Grin City Collective, and The Wassaic Artist Residency.