Student Galleries 

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LEO FREEDMAN FOUNDATION STUDIO AND MFA ART GALLERY

MARINA OZAKI PEÑA

Ceramics & Glass, BFA
Comedy & Agony

Public Reception November 4, 2026,  4 – 6 PM
Exhibition Dates November 2–6

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Artist's Statement: Marina Ozaki Peña is a ceramic, glass, and mixed media artist from Los Angeles County whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of sexuality, consent, trauma, and healing. Working primarily in ceramics alongside installation, photography, printmaking, and mixed media, they transform ordinary objects into vessels for conversations about experiences that are often hidden, minimized, or stigmatized. Their practice examines how trauma is carried within the body and how healing can exist alongside memory rather than replacing it. Drawing from personal experience while addressing broader social issues, the work engages themes of consent, reproductive justice, online harassment, and survival. Ceramics remain central to their practice for their simultaneous fragility and permanence, reflecting the ways trauma can both fracture and preserve lived experience. Through this work, the artist seeks to create space for dialogue, acknowledge resilience without romanticizing suffering, and affirm healing as an ongoing process of reclaiming agency and self.

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STAN MARK RYAN '75 GALLERY

KAYLEI ANDREA GALLOWAY

Drawing & Painting, BFA
Escapism

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Public Reception November 4, 2026,  4 – 6 PM
Exhibition Dates November 2–6

Artist's Statement: I am exploring my own path, finding peace and independence in nature. Whenever I want to escape my daily life and the pain it brings, I dream of being in a field of grass, embraced by nature itself: hearing the wind, smelling the grass, searching for bugs.

I wish to portray the feeling of release after a deep breath, that feeling of letting go. I wish to represent my fragile emotional illness and the journey I’ve taken to come this far. The plastic butterflies represent a necessary delicacy, while the plaster Fig beetles demonstrate the clumsy, winding path taken. The graphite drawings are intentionally soft, so as to portray the dreamscape I turn to. My goal with this series is to be both an emotional and educational experience, to learn more about the beauty and serenity of the natural world.