Student-Run Exhibition Brings Together MFA Artists
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in June, Claremont Graduate University opened its galleries to the 2026 SoCal MFA Exhibition, a juried show featuring graduate artists from MFA programs across Los Angeles County. The work on view ranged from photography and ceramics to sculpture and glass, and nearly all of it was made by people who had never set foot on CGU’s campus.
The SoCal MFA Exhibition is one of the only recurring, formal platforms in Southern California dedicated to bringing graduate-level artists from different programs into the same room. There’s no entry fee, and it doesn’t require institutional funding. And from the open call to the installation, it is organized, curated, and executed entirely by CGU students.
Building Community Across Campuses
Elise Marshburn, one of 12 recent CGU MFA graduates, helped to co-organize the 2026 edition along with Erica Soto, another MFA candidate, and Kim Alexander, the art gallery and collections manager at CGU. She said the event fills a gap that traditional graduate education leaves open.
“It was a really great opportunity for MFA students who usually don’t interact with each other to come together and look at each other’s work, uniting all the SoCal MFA program students together,” she said.
Each year, organizers issue an open call through social media and email, review submissions, and select at least one artist from each school that applies.
Bringing SoCal Artists Together
Izzai Martinez Angulo, a recent graduate from UC San Diego from Tucson, Arizona, found out about the exhibition through Instagram when a fellow UC San Diego student sent him the open call. The SoCal MFA opening was his first time showing work outside of a UCSD-affiliated context.
“It was great. I mean, I got to meet artists from all types of backgrounds, and I got to converse with a few of them. I didn’t get to meet everyone. I was only there for about an hour on the day of the opening, but it was it was cool to see so many great artists working in such close proximity that I just had no idea about.”
His large-format photograph in the show, Yo Jamás Sufrí, Yo Jamás Lloré, is a staged moment of intimacy with his mother that took 120 attempts and nearly two hours to capture. The hand-built frame uses the same wood stain his late father, a carpenter who died during COVID, used on the family’s furniture.
“He becomes the container for all of my photos. The photos are staged moments of intimacy between me and my family. They’re meant to be these very vulnerable portraits.”
Art Runs in the Family for Native SoCal Artist
Sarah Garcia, born in San Diego, came to the SoCal MFA from a different school, San Diego State University. A current MFA student in ceramics at SDSU, she has been building community in San Diego’s art world for most of her adult life, running workshops, supporting college studios, and facilitating clay-based programming for children and community members.
Her large-scale clay bow You-me (homemaking) was featured in the show, but she was unable to attend the opening in person. Still, she researched every artist in the show beforehand.
“I’ve been really blown away by the variety of the work and the really thoughtful collection of different voices and approaches.”
Garcia said the show nudged her beyond the tight-knit San Diego networks she has long inhabited.
“I’ve kind of always been a little more insulated and stayed within my own community, so I’m excited to expand that and also invite people down this way as well.”
She’s also passing down craft-making to a special person in her community, her daughter, who is 16 and shared in her work for the show.
“I invited her to be part of it, but I also see, as her artistic practice grows, I feel like she’ll be extending the invitation to me and I’m excited to participate on her terms too.”
Work that Resists the Unexpected
David Pagel, a professor of art at CGU since 1994, has attended the event for the last five years.
“Every year it’s handed off like a relay race. The CGU students jury the images, they invite students to bring their work in and install it. It’s all completely student done.”
Pagel, who visits CGU MFA students’ studios throughout the semester, said the SoCal MFA show offers him genuine surprise: work he has never seen from artists he has never encountered.
“I loved how kind of raw and ambitious and fearless just about everything was. It wasn’t following a trend or trying to fit in. It really felt like a curious person trying to figure something out.”