News and Press — Carolyn Castaño

News & Press

May 13, 2025

LONG BEACH CITY COLLEGE PROFESSOR RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP

lbcc.edu

“Long Beach City College (LBCC) Visual & Media Arts Co-Department Head and Professor of Drawing and Painting, Carolyn Castaño, has been awarded the highly prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for 2025, which marks the program’s 100th anniversary year. She was recognized in the field of Fine Arts for her prior exceptional achievements as well as her future promise.

‘This recognition is a powerful reminder of the caliber of faculty we are fortunate to have at Long Beach City College,” said Uduak-Joe Ntuk, LBCC Board of Trustees President. “Professor Castaño’s selection as a Guggenheim Fellow reflects the high level of talent, dedication, and scholarly excellence within our teaching ranks. Her achievements demonstrate what’s possible at a community college and shine a national spotlight on the incredible work at LBCC.’” [LINK]

April 18, 2024

GALLERY ROUNDS: CAROLYN CASTAÑO AT THE WALTER MACIEL GALLERY

Bill Moreno
Artillery Magazine

“Carolyn Castaño’s “Otros Seres” (Other Beings) exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery is an exhilarating eyeful of stealth environmental disaster. Castaño, of Colombian-American heritage, is well-known for her early extravagant and provocative Garden Heads (narco-referenced portrait) and lush landscapes. That hallmark is continued in her current works, but there is a timely shift afoot with her treatise on environmental malfeasance.

The show is organized in three galleries as a kind of mini-retrospective, with the most recent works taking center stage. The larger of the spaces is beautifully ambitious—galvanized by a monumental, glazed terracotta sculpture, Madre Monte- Reina de los Jardines (2023), depicting a reclining goddess of Columbian folklore—both a symbol of and foil to the environmental despoilation of the natural world—protecting her native lands. Along the walls are a series of poignant watercolors titled This is dedicated to the one I love, which depict, and individually identify, mountain ranges impacted by glacial melting. A large mixed media, gauche, and collage work, Cumanday- Beautiful Mountain (Nevado del Ruiz) is a tour de force of materiality and form. At 90 x 144,” it’s an immersive, de facto “altar” with indigenous referenced materials lining the perimeter of the work—a powerful proscenium for the theater of the natural world. It is difficult to reconcile the destruction at hand with Castaño’s brilliant and exuberant palettes. Slow and insidious, climate impacts are both visible and alarming, and, while Colombia is not a major carbon emitter, it is particularly vulnerable and Castaño takes this situation to heart. Perhaps that’s the point; her work insistently advocates for us to think planetarily.“ [LINK] [PDF]

December 1, 2023

CAROLYN CASTAÑO AT THE CRAFT CONTEMPORARY

Tina Barouti
CARLA (Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles)

“Carolyn Castaño’s Cumanday- Beautiful Mountain features large-scale, mixed-media artworks that combine watercolors, textiles, sequins, and other appliques to play with the conventions of landscape painting. Presented at Craft Contemporary, her show takes inspiration from Cumanday, one of six remaining tropical glaciers in Colombia. At first glance, Castaño’s work may appear to embrace the landscape genre, often identified by its idealized and sublime representations of nature. However, a greater understanding of Castaño’s concerns makes clear that the series is a stirring critique. Draining landscape painting of its presumed neutrality, Castaño uses the genre to depict the realities of environmental destruction caused by capitalistic greed.“ [LINK] [PDF]