NEWS - JANIS CRYSTAL LIPZIN / ARTIST

current and recent shows + announcements

My video sculpture, Home Entertainment Center for a Farmworker, is on exhibit in the show entitled UNRULY at the Museum of Sonoma County from February 15, 2025 through June 8, 2025. The show highlights work by alumni of the San Francisco Art Institute .

This video sculpture features re-edited footage appropriated from an advertisement for an agricultural pesticide sprayer. The video is housed within a cabinet crafted from a reconstructed farmhouse pantry, built using reclaimed materials. Inside, a selection of preserved vegetables that I personally grew is displayed along with a United FarmWorkers cap and a simulated Diazinon pesticide bag. To underscore the theme, an organic pesticide --diatomaceous earth--is lightly dusted over the contents, presenting a safe alternative to the harmful organophosphate pesticide depicted in the video.
More about this video sculpture:
film & video sculpture
view a virtual tour of the exhibition
museumsc.org/unruly/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIXduZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaPPqS_62_QyNfkn78apw1LihX0ffzrsxuisC3Ulj9_H8p4ump8ljZ1vlg_aem__IH-ecjvRu8MAkXZ15YnWg

A 16mm film print of my Visible Inventory Six: Motel Dissolve, was shown at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in the "Xcèntric 2025" program "Synesthetic Fictions: 4 California Filmmakers" alongside work by some of my favorite artists: Gunvor Nelson, Dorothy Wiley, and Amy Halpern. 24 April 2025.
https://www.cccb.org/.../synesthetic-fictions-four.../247147
view the film here: Visible Inventory 6: Motel Dissolve

"British Vision" a recent archival pigment print was on view in the Krappy Kamera 2025 show at the SoHo Photo Gallery in New York from March 5 - March 23, 2025. 11in x 17in framed... Created with a mint-green Imperial Savoy plastic camera

My film, Other Reckless Things, with soundtrack by Ellen Zweig, was screened on Friday, December 13, 2024, in the film series, Gravitational Lensing: Feminist Film Dialogues, at Shapeshifters Cinema, Oakland, California in the program Reproductive Health and Justice . The 1984 film is a response to a newspaper account of a self-inflicted Caesarean section.

Amaryllis, Trillium, Sweet Pea, Willow, a recent archival pigment print extending my Improbable Hybrids series, was on view through December 29, 2024 at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts.
(13 in x 19 in)

My archival pigment print, What the Creek Revealed 2, was on exhibit at the Museum of Northern California Art in an exhibition entitled "Spell It Out" from November 14, 2024 through January 12, 2025.
22in. x 26in.

After winter rainstorms, remnants of past generations emerge from the creek near my home—vintage soda bottle fragments washed up from years gone by. I collect these glass pieces and reimagine them, using a photo scanner as a lens to capture and enlarge their intricate details. These fragments, scattered along the gravel beds, become my subjects. Through painterly digital techniques inspired by action painting, I transform each image, presenting these discarded relics of history with a renewed visual identity
monca.org/posts/show-item/spell-it-out-a-juried-exploration-of-art-and-language/

My film L.A. Carwash
was presented April 22, 2024 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco in the
Women of Canyon Cinema program
https://roxie.com/film/women-of-canyon-cinema/

My digital film Mirrors and Screens was presented April 25, 2024 in the New Year/New Work Festival at the Film-Makers Coöp in New York and at the Cauldron International Film/Video Festival in Salt Lake City in May 2024. Original musical score by Rob Stephenson. In addition the film has received "Honorable Mention" in the L.A. Underground Film Festival .

Canyon Cinema Foundation has announced the acquisition of 18 exhibition files from longtime artist member Janis Crystal Lipzin. Spanning six decades of work, this deposit includes recent digital transfers of Lipzin’s 16mm films of the 1970s and 1980s, new digital copies of videos from the 2000s, as well as several born-digital works that are new to the collection, including Some Mistakes I Have Made (2021), 3 Seasons in 2021 (2021), Ontogeny (2021), and Mirrors and Screens (2023).
Info: http://canyoncinema.com/.../now-available-18-digital.../

A new digital file of my film Visible Inventory 6: Motel Dissolve, streamed online through March 6, 2024 as part of the program: CANYON CINEMA: RECENT ACQUISITIONS.

more information about the film here: https://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=1578

The world premiere of a new video Mirrors and Screens took place at the Magikal Charm Experimental Video and Film Festival XI in New York on December 28, 2023. https://magikalcharm.com/archives-2023/ The video received the "In the Spirit Of Visual Storytelling" Award.
Risk and uncertainty lurk while navigating through history, improvisation, perception and understanding. Mirrors and screens are everywhere...
with original musical score by Rob Stephenson

17.5 in x 21 in.

Some Mistakes I Have Made II, archival pigment print
was on exhibit at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts
from December 9 to December 31, 2023.
images in this photo-collage are from my digital film
Some Mistakes I Have Made

My artist book, Autumn Stratum, was exhibited in the
Illuminating Perspectives: Exploring Light in Innovative Art
exhibition at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts
in Sebastopol, California from January 6 - February 4, 2024.
https://www.sebarts.org/exhibits

©2019 unique hand-made artist book in accordion flag format.
12 archival pigments prints on transparency film, vellum, & Rives BFK paper.
Dimensions: 11.9 in x 6.9 in. closed. 10 in long open.

micro book available

a micro-book companion to Some Mistakes I Have Made containing 21 images from the film is now available HERE
at the San Francisco Cinematheque online shop
and HERE
at the Shapeshifters Cinema online shop
Issued in an edition of 8; all copies signed and numbered by the artist. 2.5 x 3.75 inches softbound

note cards depicting images from my Improbable Hybrids and Botanical Exposures photo series are now available at Shapeshifters Cinema online store of artist-made goods in Oakland here:
shop.shapeshifterscinema.com/collections/hand-made-goods/products/note-cards-by-janis-crystal-lipzin

more recent shows & announcements

13.625 in x 13.6 in.

Brandywine, my archival pigment print transfer from the series Tomatoes I Have Grown, was sold in the 23rd Annual Bakery Photo Collective's Photo a GoGo benefit auction December 8, 2023.
https://givebutter.com/c/gogo/auction

My artist book, Autumn Stratum, was exhibited in the Illuminating Perspectives show at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts in Sonoma County, California, from Jan.5 - Feb.4, 2024 AND in the C O N T E N T Artist Book show at the Artery Gallery in Davis, California from September 1 - 25, 2023.

©2019 unique hand-made artist book in accordion flag format.
12 archival pigments prints on transparency film, vellum, & Rives BFK paper.
Dimensions: 11.9 in x 6.9 in. closed. 10 in long open.

an image from my Guggenheim film-in-progress entitled Sub Rosa

I am overjoyed to announce that I was awarded a
2022-23 Guggenheim Fellowship
in the field of Film-Video to support the creation of a film exploring
my family's flight from Ukraine 100 years ago.
https://www.gf.org/announcements/
https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/janis-crystal-lipzin/

My digital film De Luce 1: Vegetare was screened at WORM in Rotterdam on May 24, 2023 in the Cinema Chloroplast program curated by Georgiana Barcan, a Romanian programmer based in the Netherlands. The show "traced a tradition between vegetal beings and film, since plants were some of the first subjects to be shown in moving images. I think there is also a beautiful parallel between photosynthesis and film projections, how both are about a certain distribution of light, and how we as the viewers are the ones to absorb the light of the screen. Nonetheless, plants deserve more than an anthropocentric analysis, therefore I would like to dedicate an evening to them." GB.
https://worm.org/production/film-cinema-chloroplast/

3 Seasons of 2021 streamed online during 2022 in the 9th Annual New Year/New Work Festival of the Film-Makers Cooperative. Original musical soundtrack by Rob Stephenson. Watch an online discussion among the festival filmmakers here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKj7swqjQC4&t=1666s.
I discuss my film starting at 25:37.

This Improbable Hybrid photo "Blue Sky Iris" was sold at the Bakery Collective Photo Auction, Photo A Go-Go which happened Friday, December 9, 2022,, at Maine Studio Works 170 Anderson St. Portland, Maine. .https://www.bakeryphotocollective.org

My two videos, Ontogeny, and Covert Ciné were screened November 26 - 27, 2022 in Hanoi, Vietnam in the Satellite Program of the Saigon Experimental Film Festival. watch it HERE: https://vimeo.com/770008954
"Ontogeny portrays the first-time blooming of a thirty-year old organ pipe cactus and the flower’s gradual decay to explore themes that are central to all living beings: mortality, ephemerality, ...Ontogeny uses a flow of painstakingly composed stills and images in motion to convey the paradox of how death is part of life, and of the beauty inherent in the entire life and death cycle.”--- Steve Anker in “An Anatomy of Live Cinema” in Gravity Spells II: Bay Area New Music & Expanded Cinema Art. 2022, 2022

Covert Ciné is a reverie prompted by the sale of my father's final home on Covert Lane, created from hand-processed super-8 film and cell phone video. watch it HERE

The World Premiere of my digital film, Ontogeny, took place in the Crossroads 2022 Festival produced by the San Francisco Cinémathêque at Gray Area in the Mission District of San Francisco on Saturday August 27, 2022 , in the program titled
"Before You Witnessed This Entropy."
During the worst drought in decades and in the summer of the second year of the pandemic, my thirty-year-old organ pipe cactus finally bloomed. Ontogeny exposes a startling display as the cactus develops from flower to fruit, “the pink-tipped sepals peeling back millimeter by millimeter until… it retreats and shrivels, a ball gown turned to rags.” JC Lipzin citing Ligaya Mishan, "The Ephemeral Beauty of Night-Blooming Flowers," NY Times Magazine, Oct. 11, 2021.

Some Mistakes I Have Made recent screenings

My digital film Some Mistakes I Have Made was presented March 31, 2024 at
Experimental Brasil , Campos Dos Goytacazes, Rio De Janeiro

the Engauge Experimental Film Festival in Seattle November 4, 2022. Engauge only screens work that originated on celluloid film.

the 25th Anti Matter Media Art Festival in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from October 21, 2022

5th Photometria in Motion International Photography Exhibition, in Ioannina, Greece , October 2, 2022.

the non-syntax Experimental Image Festival in Taipei daily in the Obscure Mediation Program from June 24 - 28, 2022 at the Roof Light Space.
103, Taiwan, Taipei City, Datong District, Gangu St, 10號7樓

Gravity Spells II: Bay Area New Music and Expanded Cinema Art Publication Launch and Performance Series presented Some Mistakes I Have Made with new original live music by Molly Fishman with Janis Crystal Lipzin on May 22, 2022 in San Francisco at The Lab. A replay of this event is available starting at 1:07:51 HERE
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1491503664

Some Mistakes I Have Made streamed from May 9- 23, 2022 in the free online Experiments in Cinema Festival HERE

The first public screening of my digital film Some Mistakes I Have Made was an in-theater screening December 1, 2021 at the Pacific Film Archive in the program PERSISTS, RESISTS, EXISTS in the series: New Time: the Future is Feminist https://bampfa.org/event/persists-resists-exists
with 6 other short films which share a materialist approach to 21st century feminism.

still frame from Some Mistakes I Have Made. 19 min. digital film. Click on the image to view excerpts from the film

"engaging and dense imagery,
full of life, melancholy,
and nostalgia"*

*That's what the Thomas Edison Film Festival called Some Mistakes I Have Made in awarding it Honorable Mention in the 41st 2022 TEFF . Watch it here: https://www.blackmariafilmfestival.org/winners.php

Some Mistakes I Have Made was an Official Selection of the 45th Big Muddy Film Festival and was on view in the University Gallery of Southern Illinois University, Carbondate, Illinois from Feb. 1 - March 12, 2022 in an exhibition of film installations commemorating the history of the festival: Moods of Modernity. http://www.bigmuddyfilmfestival.com/big-muddy-at-the-siu-museum/https://museum.siu.edu

On October 24, 2021 at the Pacific Film Archive Shut Out the Sun was screened in conjunction with the Berkeley Art Museum exhibition New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century

watch Shut Out the Sun