For immediate release:
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Santa Ana, CA - 4 Degrees of Separation: I Really Like Your Work
Contemporary artists rarely create in isolation; they look to their peers for inspiration, new perspectives, and challenging ideas. The group exhibit 4 Degrees of Separation: I Really Like Your Work explores how artistic influence can operate as a chain reaction across the art community, creating unexpected connections and revealing the invisible networks that shape artistic production.
For this exhibit OCCCA artist member Debra Vodhanel nominated two peers, Annette Cyr and Thai Bui, whose work she finds inspiring. In turn, Cyr and Bui nominated one peer each, Vladimir Cybil Charlier and Rebecca Bui, whose work they find inspiring, and these two artists nominated Pepe Coronado and Terry Acebo Davis, who in turn nominated the last two artists, Palén Obesa and Tessie Barrera-Scharaga which gives us four degrees of separation between the original artist, Vodhanel, and the last two nominated artists, Obesa and Barrera-Scharaga. This “curate by peer” exhibition model maps the organic networks of admiration and inspiration that already exist among artists.
By following these chains of influence, art lovers can gain insight into how artistic innovations spread, evolve, and transform across different practices. The resulting exhibition reveals surprising juxtapositions that might never emerge from a single curatorial vision. In celebrating these interconnections, the exhibition affirms that contemporary art is not a collection of isolated geniuses but a living, breathing ecosystem of mutual influence and shared stories that unite us in shared experience and exploration. This model reminds us that art, at its heart, is a conversation that can unite us.
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Exhibition Details: 4 Degrees of Separation: I Really Like Your Work
September 5th – September 26, 2026. Open Thursday through Sunday Noon – 5 PM
Orange County Center for Contemporary Art
117 N. Sycamore St., Santa Ana, CA 92701
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 5, 2026, 6PM – 10 PM
Artist Talk: Sunday September 6, 2026, 1 PM
Media Contact and more information: Debra Vodhanel, 323-807-0611
Info.occca@gmail.com; debrajoanvodhanel@gmail.com
This exhibition is funded in part by the City of Santa Ana.
