The theme for this semester’s Studio Arts course Art Outside the Bounds is “Everything was once something else.” Instructor Roksana Pirouzmand said she was inspired by the opening line of Tiny Epiphany 5 by Ankita Shah, a poem she came across while thinking about the curriculum.
Offered by Oxy Arts, students are taught by an LA-based artist through the year-long Wanlass Artist in Residence program, where selected artists investigate their own art and share it with the wider Occidental community. This year’s artist is Pirouzmand, an Iranian multidisciplinary artist.
“I thought that [my art] was really a nice concept to shape a class around,” Pirouzmand said. “Specifically, clay and ceramic — the transformation of the material is the core element of it. From clay and through the process of firing, it becomes ceramic, so that could extend to any material.”
Pirouzmand was publicly announced as this year’s Wanlass Artist in Residence Aug. 15. Every spring, the selected artist puts on a solo exhibition at Oxy Arts. Oxy Arts Director Meldia Yesayan said the program seeks to engage with important social, political and cultural issues, and this is an area in which the Occidental community can get more involved with the gallery and the artist.
“In the past, we’ve partnered with different departments and courses [that] have integrated the exhibition into their syllabi,” Yesayan said. “The lecture, performances and community projects which are planned alongside the exhibition are always wonderful ways that students can connect with the broader community, including meeting local artists and engaging with new ideas.”
Pirouzmand said she was born and raised in Iran and has lived in LA for the past 14 years.
“I can say that my journey started from when I was in Iran,” Pirouzmand said. “I always like working with my hands, being creative. I went to an arts high school, and that’s where that journey started.”
In 2022, she graduated from UCLA with an MFA in ceramics and currently works from her home studio in Sherman Oaks. At Occidental, Pirouzmand said she has been working with movement and sound for her exhibition and experimenting with combining bronze metal with her ceramics.
“My approach is not starting with a concept or a message; it’s usually the material leading me to a concept,” Pirouzmand said. “The heat from the metal and that interaction with the ceramic, the sudden shock of combining them together is interesting. It creates cracks and leaves smoke marks, and the interaction of the two materials creates an image that could potentially provoke a poetic feeling.”
Pirouzmand said the idea for her exhibition, which will open Spring 2026, came from thinking about two spaces that are apart, and the cause and effect of something happening in one space and transferring to another. It will coincide with another solo show at Joan Arts Space.
“The objects and movements that are happening at Oxy Arts are creating a sound, and that sound is going to reverberate and activate something in the other space,” Pirouzmand said.
Yesayan said she invited Pirouzmand to the residency program last year, but Pirouzmand was already aware of the program through her mentor, Candace Lin. Lin was the Wanlass Artist in Residence in 2018, and Pirouzmand worked as her assistant.
“I was at the opening then, so it was like a very nice circle, now that I get the chance to be the artist in residence for this program,” Pirouzmand said.
Pirouzmand said this semester will be her first time teaching at the college level and returning to the LA arts scene.
“My last solo exhibition was about two years ago at Murmurs Gallery, so this will be a good [return] to LA and having my next solo exhibition,” Pirouzmand said.
This coming spring, there will be two different Wanlass exhibitions at the same time — Pirouzmand’s and The Industry’s. Experimental opera company The Industry was last year’s Wanlass Artist. Lucia Pier, Administrative Coordinator at Oxy Arts, said their spring exhibition had to be pushed back twice due to scheduling issues.
“Because our fall exhibition went well into the spring semester last year, we needed to find a Wanlass who could do an off-site installation. So The Industry is going to mount an off-site, experimental experience,” Pier said.
Pier said that despite one show being off-site, Oxy Arts plans to facilitate community partnerships in the immediate area for both Pirouzmand’s and The Industry’s shows.
“They’re such different projects, with no doubt overlapping audiences,” said Pier. “So much of what we do here at Oxy Arts is about engaging with the immediate Northeast LA community, so I think there’ll be really different opportunities for community engagement around the two different shows.”
Pirouzmand said working at Oxy Arts and with liberal arts students has allowed her to begin creating a community around ceramics.
“Everyone is from different programs, and we are all getting together around ceramic,” Pirouzmand said. “If even one of the students gets involved in this material longer after this class, I feel like I have achieved something.”
Contact Wura Ogunnaike at ogunnaike@oxy.edu
