The Santa Monica College Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibit of the work of the inaugural Otis College of Art & Design's Masters of Fine Arts graduates of a new, and rare, program - one that focuses on public practice through art.

The show runs from May 12 to June 5

The exhibit covers a wide range of media. The common denominator of the art is work outside the gallery within a community or public space, including, in this case, New Orleans, will be at the gallery May 12-June 5. The opening reception will be from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 9.

The gallery is located in the SMC Performing Arts Center on Santa Monica Boulevard at 11th Street.

"The exhibit will feature installations by five emerging artists who have been focused on community engagement, with concerns ranging from ecological to cultural or social," said Suzanne Lacy, chair and founder of the Otis Graduate Public Practice program.

For example, one student will install shopping carts filled with portable gardens, similar to those he has made into public art in his neighborhood near the Los Angeles River. Another student, Ofunne Obiamiwe, a Nigerian-American who also teaches art at SMC, calls attention to oil extraction practices in Nigeria with videos and sculpture made of gas station equipment.

"Public Practice is a relatively new term that is used to describe a variety of art practices with differing histories and aesthetic sources," Lacy said. "The center of gravity of this work is outside the gallery, within community or public space, and its artistic concerns cover local and global topics from ecology to the economy. Often the media of performance, digital technology, photography and video serve to communicate the impact of publicly sited projects-ranging from community-based arts to critical commentary-to audiences in the gallery or museum."

Lacy said the students in the program, which was launched in fall 2007 and which has studios in the historic 18th Street Art Center complex in Santa Monica, have come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including music, drama, visual arts, arts management, technology and teaching.

"During the first year of this innovative program, they talked into the night, cooked and traveled together, fought, were lost and frustrated, evolved their political perspectives, worked with world-renowned artists and curators such as Mel Chin and Rick Lowe, and performed spectacularly in a remarkable group project in New Orleans," she said.

For the New Orleans project - conducted in 2007-08 - the students worked with Transforma and The Crescent City Peace Alliance, local community organizations, to put on a performance art piece featuring area high school students commemorating an important historical civil rights figure.

"In their second year they began to find their respective places as young artists in the Los Angeles art community and beyond" Lacy said.

Besides Obiamiwe, the featured artists in the show are Candida Ayala, Andy Manoushagian, Jules Rochelle and Tory Tepp.

For information, call (310) 434-3434