Was It A Car Or A Cat I Saw? | Group Show Playlist

To continue exploring the themes in our current group exhibition, Was It A Car Or A Cat I Saw? , we asked the artists to pick out one or two songs that illustrate their journey lately. Some of these tracks are reflections of their work, their thought process, motivations, or even just their personal favorites. Some of their submissions accompanied brief descriptions of how it applies to their work, their admiration for the songwriters, or where the artist’s headspace is at today.

 We’ve put them together on one page for you to look through and enjoy.

We’ve also compiled their submissions into a Spotify playlist, viewable by clicking here.

 Laura Figa

“I have frequently returned to this track by “Blue” Gene Tyranny, a composer and pianist who, among other creative pursuits, spent close to a decade in the Bay Area teaching at Mills College. The song holds a simultaneous feeling of melancholy and hope, while lyrically nodding toward the horizons of consciousness. As the title suggests, the piece also obliquely reflects on the numerous and occasionally dissonant roles one must embody over a lifetime.” - Laura Figa

Grant Gutierrez

DL Alvarez

“In tackling this..I realize how distant I've gotten from music…I revisited my Youtube playlists and the most recent was from a year ago! ….they were chosen in part for their visuals . . . So, it's less music I am listening to as it is music I was watching.” - DL Alvarez

Daniel Albrigo

“Here are a couple songs I’ve been bumping in the studio. In times like this I need some dubby/clubby stuff to the mind in a trippy positive place. They’re all from a Spotify playlist based off the song “udaberry blues” by Jura Soundsystem. I could listen all day to the radio. (Also a killer track)”

-Daniel Albrigo

Aaron Estrada

Ariel Parrow

“I've been listening to Fontaines D.C. kinda non-stop lately. I guess if I had to pick a song Liberty Bell would be one that might fit the exhibition the best.” - Ariel Parrow

Steve Powers

Kayla Mattes

“Wray wrote this as a protest song in response to the Vietnam War, but its sentiment and emotion bring my mind to where we are right now. History always repeats itself.” - Kayla Mattes

Orion Shepherd

Higinio Martinez

“Daniel Higgs is true magic. I have included the opening two tracks from his Beyond and Between album, though the whole record is best played through in its entirety. The album feels like a meditative journey across a desert of time and space—a search for some elusive cosmic truth through psychedelic poetry, ancient melodies, and a perpetual rhythm.

Higgs is raw expression, crying out to the heavens in flurries of vocal vibrato and banjo licks that feel almost like small feats of sorcery. The opening riff and rhythm drop sound to me like a symbol of evolution itself.

This record is always in rotation in my studio, and I think it speaks to the quiet yet mysterious nature of the latest work. I’ve always felt drawn to Higgs’s art. From his paintings to his music, he seems less like an artist than a conduit to another dimension.” - Higinio Martinez

Nick Makanna

Here are two songs for the playlist, the first I’m just obsessed with, my wife turned me on to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood and I’m so tripped out by their arrangements and story telling.

And the second is a John carpenter composition from his movie the thing, I love his scores and I think it fits the vibe of my work really well, and I’m constantly inspired by his films and am so awed in his control of not only the visuals but the atmosphere of his movies through music and scoring.

Willbert Olivar and Lalo Avila

“Hey, actually, lets swap put joe walsh and put in chief keef - understand me” - Willbert Olivar

Cate White

“As I'm making this 4 Horsemen painting, I'm having the feeling that our collective and personal power drives have driven us to a chaotic Biblical revelations type reckoning with our shadows. We have participated in Western empire because we think culture has something we need or want. We buy in because we don't want to be left out. So I was feeling that really hard, on a personal level, while witnessing the whole country get red-pilled by the Epstein files, UFO cover-ups, the Israeli genocide, and the theatrical cruelty of ICE raids, etc. and it's feeling like this shared delusion of Western liberalism is a dying beast. And let it die. But stay out of the way as it falls. And see what grows in the compost. So then, I Burn plays and I felt that song pretty hard.” - Cate White

JPW 3

“This is one of my favorites!”- JPW3

Joe Roberts