Dream Talk
Saturday, May 11 | 2-4 PM
18th Street Arts Center Airport Campus
3026 Airport Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90405
Free + Open to the Public

What happens when you bring artists, psychologists, and dream experts together in the same room? A dream circle, of course!

Karla Diaz: Wait 'til Your Mother Gets Home features work as the result of a year of insomnia. As a stroke survivor, she practices repetitive memory exercises, using drawing as a tool for excavating and retaining information. In her commitment to rendering a painting every night, Diaz turned to the unfiltered, spontaneous imagery that surfaced during her insomnia, whether dreams, fantasies, or memory.

Join us in a lively discussion between artist Karla Diaz and dream experts George Bermudez and Brooke Sprowl about the connection between dreaming and art making, followed by a “social dreaming” circle, where participants will be guided by an expert on how to interpret and analyze their own dreams.

George Bermudez has been an Associate Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles, specializing in Multicultural Clinical Psychology; and Director of Training of a Clinical Psychology Internship accredited by the American Psychological Association. In addition, Dr. Bermudez has a Certificate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. George Bermudez has been striving to develop and train others in a multi-dimensional, integrative approach to psychological theory and practice that brings together developmental theory, psychoanalysis, family systems, group psychology, and multiculturalism.

Karla Diaz is a writer, teacher, and multidisciplinary artist who engages in painting, installation, video, and performance. Using narrative to question identity, institutional power, and explore memory, her socially engaged practice generates exciting collaborations and provokes important dialogue among diverse communities. Notably, she is the co-founder of the socially engaged collective and community artist space Slanguage. Critical discourse is central to her practice as she explores social, subcultural, and marginalized stories. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003 and a BA from California State University Los Angeles in 1999. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Pitzer College, Claremont, CA; California State University Los Angeles, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ; LAXART, Hollywood, CA; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI; the Serpentine Gallery, London, U.K.; and Museo Casa de Cervantes, Madrid, Spain.

Brooke Sprowl is a UCLA-trained psychotherapist and founder of My LA Therapy with a decade of experience specializing in anxiety, relationships, trauma, and codependency. Having studied the intricacies of the mind both through her neuroscience degree, through my many years as a clinician, and through her own personal 20-year journey of self-transformation, she’s created a systematized framework that blends evidence-based psychotherapy, peak performance and flow neuroscience, and time-tested spiritual and mystical practices.