UC Berkeley Art Practice

Art Practice is saddened to share the passing of Mary Lovelace O’Neal on May 10, 2026 at the age of 84. Lovelace O’Neal joined the faculty of Art Practice as an Assistant Professor in 1979, and retired after an illustrious career in 2006.

Over the course of her life, Lovelace O’Neal developed a singular visual language that was acutely personal and profoundly political. Drawing on a broad range of influences—from Minimalism to Abstract Expressionism—Lovelace O’Neal’s practice was at once worldly and philosophical, parsing social themes of race and gender while remaining fully immersed in conceptual and metaphysical investigations of joy, exuberance, nature, and the sublime.

Throughout her six-decade career, Lovelace O’Neal produced a remarkable body of work—paintings, drawings, and prints, all reconciling the intimate and the monumental, the minimalist and the expressionist, personal narrative and collective mythology. Often working on a grand scale, Lovelace O’Neal was renowned for her keen sensitivity to color and unexpected use of materials. Her practice moved fluidly between figuration and abstraction—the suggestion of human, animal, and architectural forms often lurking beneath vivid, painterly surfaces—while enigmatic, often inscrutable, titles hinted opaquely at narratives never fully revealed.

Lovelace O’Neal spent much the last 20 years of her life in Mérida, Mexico with husband and artist Patricio Moreno Toro. In 2024, the artist’s final body of work, The Mexico Works, debuted at Boesky Gallery in New York. With these monumental paintings—all made between 2021 and 2023—the artist mined the visual language she developed over her long career, iterating on the imaginative forms, innovative materiality, and inventive handling of color that characterize her oeuvre.

Portrait of Mary Lovelace O’Neal. Photo: Aubrey Trinnaman

Installation views, HECHO EN MÉXICO—a mano (MADE IN MEXICO—by hand), Boesky Gallery, New York. Photos: Lance Brewer

Photos and text courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery.

ANNUAL STUDENT PRINT SALE
FRIDAY, April 17, 12-5PM
SATURDAY, April 18 (CAL DAY), 11-5PM
Anthropology and Art Practice Building rm 265
**CASH ONLY
* wide variety of student prints including screen prints, relief, etchings, monotypes, cyanotypes and more!

📣 This weekend!

Open Inquiry: UC Arts at the Sausalito Center For The Arts brings together a new generation of artists emerging from the renowned art practice programs at the UCLA, the UC Berkeley, and UC Davis. This exhibition, which runs from March 14 to April 16, features current students and graduates from the last two decades, whose innovative practices carry forward the artistic legacy of the UC arts.

UC Berkeley, Department of Art Practice participants:
Eleni Berg - Juliette Fifi Rae Berman - Viviana Martinez Carlos - Kristiana Chan - Reniel Del Rosario - Priyanka D’Souza - Ricki Dwyer - Tanja Geis - Nicki Green - Emily Gui - Ahn Lee - Isabella Manfredi - Merissa Mann - Hector F. Munoz - Sofie Ramos - Lucy Stark - Becky Suss - Bryant Terry - Eli Thorne - Shirin Towfiq - Samuel Wildman

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 21
4pm - 6pm
RSVP at tinyurl.com/SCA-UCARTS

Deans Panel
Sunday, March 22
1pm
From Studio to Society: The Value and Future of UC Art Education

Learn more at: https://www.sausalitocenterforthearts.org/open-inquiry

‼️🚨Announcing🚨‼️
Our Spring 2026 Public Lecture Program 🌷🌻🪻

2/26 King Cobra: creates corporeal sculptures—that utilizes glass alongside silicone, beads, crystals, rubber, synthetic hair, mysterious goo, and other materials—to explore the frequently suppressed and traumatic histories of medical exploitation of the Black body, as well as diseases spread by White Europeans during the transatlantic slave trade. Lecture sponsored by Berkeley Center For New Media, UCB Department of Ethnic Studies, Department of Women and Gender Studies, Department of Anthropology, Center for Race and Gender, and the Department of English.

4/2 Carmen Winant: utilizes archival and authored photographs to examine feminist care networks, with particular emphasis on intergenerational, multiracial, and sometimes transnational coalition building.

4/16 bryant terry(MFA class of 2025): explores resilience, cultural memory, and liberation through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges cooking, sculpture, sound, video, and social practice.

All Lecture will take place in the Anthropology and Art Practice Building (AAPB), room 285. All lectures are free and open to the public.

Kicking off our Spring 2026 Lecture Series with ‼️
🗓️:February 26, 2026
📍: 285 Anthropology and Art Practice Building (AAPB)
Event is free and open to the public.

KING COBRA (she/they), known online as the silicon don, lives and works in Philadelphia. COBRA has created corporeal sculptures—that utilize glass alongside silicone, beads, crystals, rubber, synthetic hair, mysterious goo, and other materials—to explore the frequently suppressed and traumatic histories of medical exploitation of the Black body, as well as diseases spread by White Europeans during the transatlantic slave trade. Her most recent solo exhibitions include WHITE MEAT at JTT Gallery NY(2023), REVOLTED at the New Museum NY(2022), Pale in Comparison at The SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2022) and Steal Kill and Destroy: A Thief Who Intended Them Maximum Harm -HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark (2021) In addition to her sculptural practice, she is a body modifier and filmmaker. Tattoo is an extension of her explorations in flesh, mark making, and the relationship between image physical pain.

Support for this event provided by Berkeley Center for New Media, UCB English Department, UCB Ethnic Studies Department, UCB Department of Women and Gender Studies, UCB Anthropology Department, and UCB Center for Race and Gender.