Sustaining Ourselves: Healing Workshop & Catalog Release

Join us and artist Jess Gudiel in honoring the past four seasons in the warmth and safety of community. Jess Gudiel will lead a guided meditation, journaling, and healing workshop in conjunction with the release of the Sustainers of Life catalog. The event will take place in Building H from 2pm – 4:30pm.

The afternoon will begin with Sustainers of Life co-curator Laurie Steelink sharing about the exhibition’s impact and the intersectional issues highlighted. Exhibition catalogs will be available for purchase at the event, in the gallery in Building A, and on the AGCC website. At 3pm, Indigenous artist and educator Jess Gudiel will lead a reflection session to release trauma through breathing, writing, dreaming, and setting into place intentions for the next Four Seasons, honoring the light of our corazones. Light refreshments will be provided. We will be sitting on a wooden floor, so please wear comfortable, warm clothing and bring a yoga mat or blanket to sit on. Chairs will also be available.

What to bring:

~ yoga mat or blanket

~ water

~ tea cup

~ warm clothes

~ an open mind

Jess Gudiel is a Two Spirit artist with roots in GuateMaya and on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Tongva people also known as Los Angeles. Jess has taught and practiced horticulture, designing/planting California native plants, and shadow art and puppetry since 2009. As an Art Instructor (since 2011) they have worked in Art and Culture Centers throughout LA as well as a garden teacher in affordable housing projects and LAUSD elementary schools. They taught Victory Garden classes through the Master Gardener program at their home garden and throughout the county for many years as well. In 2022, a collaboration amongst Tina Calderon, Tongva and Chumash Culture Bearer and Videographer Rosanna Esparza emerged creating Paviinokre (“we flow”, in Tongva). This collaboration created a shadow art short film about the Tongva story of the 7 Sisters. Most recently, Jess is collaborating with artist and friend Sandra de la Loza in Lez Batz. This queer bat duo creates work meant to shed light on queerness in nature and the importance of protecting wild spaces in Northeast Los Angeles and the subterranean healing found within the hills of NELA. In 2024, Lez Batz exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts in an exhibition titled From the Ground Up. 

Co-curated by Cecelia Caro and Laurie Steelink (Akimel O'otham), Sustainers of Life features seven contemporary Native and Indigenous women artists: Weshoyot Alvitre, Emily Clarke, Katie Dorame, Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain, Cara Romero, Corey Stein, and Linda Vallejo. Through diverse media, the exhibition creates space for both mourning losses and celebrating the ongoing resilience of those who nurture and protect life.

Sustainers of Life will be on view in the gallery through January 24th, 2026, with free public visiting hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, from 10am to 5pm. More information is available at angelsgateart.org.

Sustainers of Life is funded in part by the Arts in California Parks local parks grant program, administered by Parks California. Additional support for the exhibitions program is provided by the Perenchio Foundation, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Angels Gate Cultural Center (AGCC) emerged from a group of San Pedro artists in the 1970s that created art studios and exhibition space within the WWII era army barracks of Angels Gate Park near the Port of Los Angeles. Today, AGCC hosts over 50 artist studios in addition to a variety of programs to engage the diverse communities of the Los Angeles Harbor region, including arts education in local schools, community classes, cultural events, and exhibitions of contemporary art. More information about AGCC is available at angelsgateart.org.

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