Hello, Goodbye, Hello: The Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center

Edited by Donna Conwell and Kelly Sicat
Contributions by Sally Ashton, Byron Au Yong, Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Ian Byers‑Gamber, Michele Carlson, Christa Cesario, Charlene Eigen‑Vasquez, Taru Elfving, Niki Ford, Lisa Funderburke, Daniel Godínez Nivón, Yona Harvey, Robby Herbst, Juan Felipe Herrera, Brenda Hutchinson, Paco Inclán, Zeyn Joukhadar, Angela Torre McConnell, Willie Perdomo, Raqs Media Collective, Related Tactics, Alva Rogers, Matteo Rubbi, Rijin Sahakian, Andrew Saito, Gideon Fink Shapiro, Jeremy Thal, Jennifer Vanegas Rocha, Kimberly Varella, Fernando Vigueras, Christine Wong Yap, Lori A. Wood, Kim Yasuda, and Pamela Z

Designed by Content Object: Kimberly Varella, Art Direction and Design; Gabrielle Pulgar, Production Designer
Softcover with jacket, 272 pages
Publisher: Montalvo Arts Center, 2024
ISBN: 979‑8‑218‑20696‑3
Dimensions: 7.5 × 10.4375 in.
Copyeditor: Lisa K. Marietta
Separations: Echelon Color, Los Angeles, CA
Printing: Ofset Yapımevi, Istanbul, Turkey


Hello, Goodbye, Hello documents the multifaceted role the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) at Montalvo Arts Center has played in the work and thinking of the artists who have resided there. In prose, poetry, and art, more than thirty contributors reflect on how the LAP has, over the past twenty years, supported the creative process and fostered critical conversation and experimental models of artistic production.

This publication was a six-year long project whose design and editorial process closely reflected the experience of being an artist-in-residence at LAP. I travelled back forth between LA and Saratoga, resided in multiple buildings on the grounds, met with other residents over many seasons, invited my dear friend, Ian, up to photograph the grounds, participated in nightly dinners in the commons, and wore my own footpath in the surrounding forests of Silicone Valley as I dreamed up this book.

Results: Golden chaparral palette, wood embossed jacket, digital monospace type that melted and squiggled into unexpected shapes, running artists stories that acted like exquisite corpses. And one the most reflective moments in the book: an opening and closing collage sequence in a collaboration between Matteo Rubbi, Byron Au Yong, and myself with source photography by Ian Byers-Gamber. First Ian photographed, then I mocked up several sequences, then Matteo printed, cut-out, made shadow box scenes of LAP, and returned scans to me where I doused them in a glorious golden spot color, and, finally, laid atop a score made by Byron in a glossy silkscreen—aptly titled: California Dreaming.

Photography by Chris Gardner