Hasta La Gadget!

Note: This exhibition contains lots of (painted) nudity. Be warned.

With all the juicy melodrama of a telenovela and the gravitas of a Baroque painting, Laura Krifka pumps her canvases full of love, lust and a thirst for blood. Her exhibition “Reap the Whirlwind,” now in its final week at CB1 Gallery, features paintings and sculptures of sex, mischief and betrayal, postmodern parables filled with obvious symbolism and overblown innuendos. They’re over the top in the best possible way, appealing to Renaissance audiences and TV addicts with a single sharp stroke.

Laura Krifka, Judith and Holyfernes, 2014, Oil on canvas, 60″ x 48″

The works on view depict instances of punishment, both slight and severe. In “Flying,” a nude young man floats temporarily above a menacing crowd of cacti, while in “Judith and Holyfernes,” a woman giddily slits a nude man’s throat while a third woman crouches nearby, smelling the victim’s hair. Despite the noticeable gash spurting from his neck, the new Holofernes’ expression appears placid, even pleasured. In “The Prick,” an androgynous blonde gazes open-mouthed at the viewer, displaying a needle and blood-soaked finger. Although the golden curls, soft breasts and willowy physique hint at femininity, a penis poking out from tight white shorts complicates the frame.

Laura Krifka Lambs, 2014 Oil on canvas 48″ x 48″

Although Krifka doesn’t hold back when it comes to depicting sex, her aesthetic, teetering between classical realism and caricature, fully embraces the ridiculousness of its subject matter without ever veering into the ironic. Her faces, despite their relative naturalism, feel more like board game characters who’ve jumped out of “Guess Who” than genuine human beings. Beautiful Decay dubbed them “renaissance blowup dolls,” alluding to the inflated nature of both traditional values and debauchery, and the spaces where both can coexist.

Aside from the paintings, Krifka also creates small, lumpy mixed media sculptures, similarly dressing explicit content in fairy tale whimsy. The gloriously rendered, morally questionable scenes lead the viewer to take pleasure in the subjects’ pain.

Laura Krifka The Prick, 2014 Oil on canvas 40″ x 30″

Thematically, the show centers around ideas of moralized violence and the desire for retribution. Whether in a Hollywood film or a Renaissance painting, entertainment often revolves around the ambition of serving punishment where it’s due. But why? When did we embrace this high-minded bloodlust, finding in others’ anguish? In the words of CB1 Gallery, “This artificial and vicious world pushes the question of when and why we root for punishment, why we crave the purge of destruction yet weep when it touches our own world.”

“Reap the Whirlwind” runs until February 28, 2015 at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles. See a preview of the exhibition below.

Julia Hamm has 15 years experience advising and collaborating with utilities, manufacturers and government agencies on renewable energy and energy efficiency strategies and programs. The knowledge and experience she has gained as the President and CEO of SEPA since 2004 makes her one of the world’s foremost experts on the nexus between utilities and solar energy. Julia guides and oversees all of SEPA’s research, education, and collaboration activities for its 900+ member companies. She has expertise on the business models and solar programs of more than 400 utilities throughout the U.S., as well as utilities in Europe and Asia. Prior to joining SEPA, Julia worked for ICF International where she supported EPA’s implementation of the ENERGY STAR program. Julia – a graduate of Cornell University – walks the talk, living in a PV-powered energy efficient home in Northern Virginia.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
I grew up in a very small town in upstate NY. I went to a public school where there were 23 people in my grade. As an introvert, I wasn’t interested in being a leader, but the pool of people in my school was limited so whenever no one else stepped up I found myself compelled to do so. As a result I ended up in formal leadership roles throughout high school. But then I went to Cornell University for college – a large Ivy League school – and I was surrounded by peers who were leaders. For four years I was able to step out of any formal leadership role and simply be a productive member of the team. Looking back, I think these two very different experiences influenced me, teaching me early on that there are times when I need to step up but other times when it’s okay to sit back and let others lead.

How has your previous employment experience aided your tenure at SEPA?
Prior to taking the top job at SEPA I experienced a variety of company cultures and leadership styles. It helped me to figure out what type of culture I wanted to create for SEPA and what type of leader I wanted to be for my team. We have a culture where collaboration and transparency are highly valued, and we balance working hard with playing hard.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at SEPA?
There have been many highlights, most of which have to do with times when SEPA did something that directly and tangibly advanced our mission. For example, we take a group of electric utility executives on an annual trip to places that have significant solar deployment. There are always executives who are solar skeptics that come along to see first hand what solar is all about. On our trip in 2008, I was standing next to one of those skeptics while we were visiting a large solar project in Germany. He turned to me and said “We could do solar in a pretty big way without any problems”. And he has. He’s been turned from a skeptic to an advocate, deploying large amounts of solar electricity into the electric grid.

The biggest challenges have largely been driven by rapid growth. When I took over the organization in 2004, the organization was essentially pushing the reset button and starting from square one. I was the only employee and had to build the business from the ground up. Growing quickly has been fun but it has also been hard. With new people constantly joining the team, I’ve realized we have to be in a constant state of employee education. You can’t roll out a new policy, for example, and think your job is done because you explained it really well at the time of implementation. The same goes for the strategic plan, and the connection between that plan and our specific programs and projects. It all comes back to the need for frequent and consistent communication with the team, which takes a lot of time and effort.

What advice can you offer to women who want a career in the energy industry?
Know your stuff. Own it. Speak with conviction when you are talking about subject matter in your area of expertise. But don’t pretend to know it all. Admit, but don’t apologize, when the discussion goes into an area where you aren’t an expert. This has been my approach and it’s allowed me to become respected and credible with my peers, regardless of their age, experience or gender.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?
Building relationships far and wide is the key to success. I could list example after example of times where I built relationships with people who, at the time, didn’t seem like people that could help SEPA in any way but eventually became critical to our success. You never know who others are connected to or where they may end up later in their career. So be nice to everyone, treat everyone with respect, and ask people the right questions about who they are and what they care about so you can file away the answers in your head for future use.

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
Before kids, my husband and I both worked long hours, and I was almost always the last person out of the office in the evening. But when I was pregnant with my first child, my husband issued a challenge: for us both to be home by 6pm every day. He said he knew there would be days when it wouldn’t be possible, but those should be the exception rather than the rule. I thought he was crazy and there was no way we could do it. But then our son came and when the clock hit 5:30 every day, I simply got up and walked out of the office. Our kids are now 5 and 3.5, and I’ve managed to pick up my kids by 6pm most days, at least the days when I’m not on the road…which leads me to the bigger challenge.

I’m on the road approximately a third of the time speaking at industry meetings. That’s a lot of time to be gone from my family. But it’s a necessary part of my job. Perhaps that’s why I don’t feel so guilty about leaving my desk at 5:30pm on the days I’m in the office.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
I am still relatively young, and I think I had it much easier than many women who came before me. I personally haven’t had any challenges that I believe are specific to the fact that I am a woman. But based on what I’ve seen from my position as the head of SEPA, most women seem to be less likely to speak up as loudly as their male counterparts about what they want. Women need to realize if they want something, they need to ask for it.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Early in my career I reported directly to the president of the company where I worked. Although I was only a year out of college when I started, he gave me responsibilities that I sometimes wasn’t sure I was ready for. But I was always able to succeed. He helped me gain confidence in my own abilities and built my interest in tackling rather than shying away from tough challenges.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
I don’t have any particular names to provide, but I most admire female leaders who got to where they are by being who they are, rather than trying to be like someone else. Women shouldn’t have to act like men to make it to the top.

What do you want SEPA to accomplish in the next year?
SEPA just launched a bold new initiative that will run throughout 2015, called the 51st State. Today we work with 50 different sets of energy policies in 50 different states. We operate with the decades old legacy of electricity market rules and structures designed for the central station power world of the 20th Century. So it is not surprising that the rapid rise of an easily scalable energy source like solar – along with advent of affordable energy storage, expanded microgrids and a growing electric vehicle fleet – is causing disruption that will only continue to grow.

We think that the time is right to take a step back from what exists today, and imagine what we could create if we started over with a clean slate, in the proverbial 51st State. Our initiative is soliciting the best and brightest ideas from solar industry companies, electric utilities, related associations or think tanks, universities, consultants…anyone with the best and brightest ideas for a sustainable path for distributed energy resources and the infrastructure and needs of managing the electric grid.

We established an independent and distinguished Innovation Review Panel of five energy thought leaders who will review what we hope is a diverse set of compelling concept submissions, and select the most promising of those concepts for SEPA and the authors to share far and wide.

We have a lot of other things to accomplish in 2015, but this initiative has the potential to be one of the most impactful things the organization has done in its 22 year history.

Last November, Latonya Suggs, a 28-year-old Cincinnati woman with an infant son, went to a hotel ballroom in Southern California and told two of the federal government’s top education officials that the U.S. Department of Education had failed her.

The previous month, Suggs had graduated from Everest University, a for-profit college, with a degree in criminal justice. Her online program, one of many owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., saddled her with more than $70,000 in debt. She had hoped the degree would lead to a career as a probation officer. Instead, she could only find work as a hotel housekeeper, she told Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell and Deputy Assistant Secretary Lynn Mahaffie, according to a transcript of the event. Suggs is now unemployed.

Corinthian, once one of the nation’s largest for-profit college chains with more than 110,000 students, is effectively shutting down under the weight of numerous state and federal probes that allege it cheated students by lying to them about job placement and graduation rates. Though the chain has previously disputed allegations from state and federal authorities that it defrauded students, it recently sold more than 50 campuses under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, and Canadian authorities last week forced another 14 into bankruptcy.

A contingent of former students, backed by prominent student advocates, the Massachusetts attorney general and more than a dozen Senate Democrats, has demanded the Education Department forgive federal student loans that thousands of people took out to attend Corinthian’s schools. The department has the authority to cancel loans in instances where students demonstrate that schools defrauded them. Lawyers from the Department of Justice have argued that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has “complete discretion” when it comes to canceling loans for all students at a particular institution if he determines it defrauded students, even absent a formal application from individual borrowers.

But in the case of Corinthian, the Education Department has done almost everything it can to avoid forgiving any taxpayer-backed debt incurred by current and former Corinthian students.

In response, Suggs and 14 other former Corinthian students announced on Monday that they will not repay any federal student loans they took out to attend Corinthian’s schools. They’re calling it a debt strike.

“The Department of Education allowed this to happen,” Suggs said Monday about her experience at Everest and subsequent struggle to find work. “It’s their responsibility to make sure these schools hold up their end of the bargain. If they kept up their promises, I’d pay it back. But they haven’t done anything, so why should I pay?”

With help from anti-debt activists borne out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the “Corinthian 15” students are challenging the Education Department and Duncan over lackluster supervision of a chain of for-profit colleges. In refusing to make payments, the group alleges the department allowed Corinthian to lure students into taking out loans backed by taxpayers that were used to pay a company that lied about the quality of education students would receive.

Experts in higher education have previously assailed the Education Department for its spotty track record in protecting students from unscrupulous colleges. Some have said the department views colleges as its partners, rather than as regulated entities. Others have said the department puts the needs of colleges over those of students.

After a multi-year investigation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with protecting borrowers from unscrupulous lenders, accused Corinthian in September of inflating its job placement rates by creating fake companies, defining a “career” as a job that lasted one day with the promise of a second, and by paying employers to temporarily hire its graduates.

In effect, Suggs and her like-minded colleagues argue that since the Education Department should’ve known Corinthian students would have difficulty repaying their loans, they shouldn’t be held responsible when the loans come due. By giving Corinthian the ability to tap federal student aid, the Education Department — rather than students — should be on the hook for loan defaults, the group says.

“I’m not going to pay anything,” Suggs said. “I had perfect attendance, graduated when I was supposed to, and this is what I get in return for trying to better myself. I have nothing, and it’s not my fault.”

The consequences of a default can be devastating. A borrower’s credit report is wrecked, which can reduce his or her ability to get future loans or even a job. Tax returns are seized. To recoup its money, the Education Department will even garnish a borrower’s Social Security payments to the point where monthly checks are below federal poverty thresholds.

With unpaid student loans swelling to more than $1.3 trillion, prompting dire warnings about future effects on the growth of the U.S. economy, new pressure is being placed on the Education Department to improve how it regulates colleges and manages the federal student loan program.

For former Corinthian students, they’re likely to learn that the department is unwilling to acknowledge its oversight failures by allowing them to discharge their debts. The department’s history suggests the debt strikers are unlikely to obtain much, if any, relief.

Take the experience of students who attended for-profit schools operated by Wilfred American Education Corp. Last year, the New York Legal Assistance Group sued Duncan on behalf of thousands of low-income borrowers who took out federal student loans to attend Wilfred schools, in an effort to force Duncan to stop collecting on their loans and cancel them all based on Wilfred’s alleged defrauding of its former students.

In their complaint, the lawyers alleged that the Education Department has known for years that former Wilfred students had been cheated by their schools, pointing to criminal convictions of former Wilfred executives, federal court determinations that the company’s schools defrauded taxpayers, and past Education Department reviews that found the company’s schools had falsely certified that former students were eligible for federal student loans.

In fact, according to the complaint, the department’s in-house auditor recommended in 1996 that the department approve all loan cancellation requests by former Wilfred students. The inspector general pointed to the fact that the Education Department found fraud at the company’s schools more than a decade earlier.

The Education Department fought the lawsuit by arguing in part that because Duncan has the discretion to cancel former Wilfred students’ loans, rather than an obligation, the courts had no say in the matter. The judge in the case reluctantly agreed, “despite the reality and credibility of plaintiffs’ grievances,” he said.

In the Corinthian case, the Education Department has had ample warnings that the company’s schools may be cheating students and taxpayers.

The state of California settled with Corinthian in 2007 after amassing evidence that it allegedly inflated its job placement rates. The state of Massachusetts launched an investigation in 2011. California sued the company again in 2013, alleging it lied to students and its investors about job placement rates.

In January of last year, the Education Department denied Corinthian’s request to expand because, as Duncan explained in an August letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the company “had admitted to falsifying placement rates and/or grade and attendance records at various institutions and because of ongoing state and federal investigations into serious allegations with respect to Corinthian’s administration of the Federal Student Aid programs.”

The issues suggested “systemic deficiencies” at Corinthian, Duncan said. In July, the Education Department moved to effectively shut down the company by forcing it to sell off or close its schools.

Meanwhile, current and former students were left to fend for themselves. The Education Department left it to Corinthian to inform students about its troubles. By comparison, the federal consumer bureau published a special bulletin meant for current and former Corinthian students that explained what the agency found and steps students should take.

Suggs said school officials dismissed her questions about the company’s regulatory woes during her final semester. Joe Hixson, a spokesman for Corinthian at Abernathy MacGregor Group, did not respond to requests for comment.

While enrollment likely dropped, according to Corinthian’s disclosures to investors, federal student aid still poured in.

Even after the Education Department struck a July deal with the company that called for it to dismantle itself, the department originated more than $253 million in federal loans for students attending Corinthian campuses during the six-month period ending Dec. 31, department data show. More than $156 million in federal grants were disbursed to Corinthian students. Federal student aid money inevitably flowed to Corinthian in the form of tuition and fees.

In other words, despite Education Department concerns that Corinthian was misleading its students, taxpayers continued to subsidize the company and enrich its executives through hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student aid.

Over the last 4 and 1/2 years, the Education Department has disbursed $6 billion of public money in the form of loans and grants to students at Corinthian’s campuses, department data show. Nearly all of that has likely gone straight to the company.

In December, while citing lawsuits filed by state attorneys general and the federal consumer bureau, 13 Senate Democrats, including Warren, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, urged the department to forgive debts incurred by Corinthian students.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey asked Duncan earlier this month to acknowledge the evidence her office has gathered in documenting Corinthian’s alleged frauds by canceling federal student loans taken out to attend Corinthian schools in her state.

“Schools should not obtain public monies based on actions in violation of state law, and students should not be required to pay for such violations,” Healey said in a Feb. 4 letter.

“By failing to provide broad debt relief for Corinthian students, this administration is continuing the [Education] Department’s decades long practice of relentlessly pursuing borrowers, even when there is voluminous evidence that unscrupulous school operators engaged in widespread illegal recruitment practices,” said Robyn Smith, a former California deputy attorney general who now works on student loan issues for the National Consumer Law Center.

In a prepared statement, Education Department spokeswoman Denise Horn indicated no such relief was forthcoming.

“As we continue our conversations with students and advocates about options for borrowers, we also encourage borrowers to continue paying their student loans and to explore the various income-based repayment options offered by the department in order to avoid risking the serious consequences of default,” Horn said.

Suggs dismissed the suggestion. Even though she has no income, and likely could qualify for a repayment plan that would allow her to remain in good standing by making monthly payments of $0, Suggs said she’d rather fall into default than acknowledge the legitimacy of the loans.

Earlier this month, the new buyer of more than 50 former Corinthian schools announced that current students enrolled in their criminal justice programs would be given a full refund upon request.

The program was among many that had “failed to keep pace with workforce demands and that have consistently fallen short of meeting baseline standards for job placement,” according to Zenith Education Group, an arm of debt collector and Education Department contractor ECMC Group.

Suggs is the kind of student the Education Department had tried to protect in keeping Corinthian’s schools open. While student advocates urged the department to allow the schools to shut down, which would give Corinthian students the opportunity to get their federal loans cancelled, Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell defended the department-brokered sale to Zenith by arguing that the plan would allow students to finish programs “that they have worked so hard to obtain.”

“This sale … will avoid disruption and displacement for tens of thousands of students — approximately 22 percent of whom are within 3 months of graduating,” Mitchell said in December.

Suggs graduated in October, making her ineligible for Zenith’s refund option. She said that had she been given the option, she would’ve taken the refund and had it applied in full to the federal student loans she took out to attend classes at Corinthian.

Instead, she said, she’s stuck fighting an Education Department that refuses to acknowledge its mistakes.

GIRDWOOD — The password to the legalization party was “I get high with a little help from my friends.”

On Tuesday, Alaska became the third state in the nation to legalize recreational marijuana.

It turned out to be both a historic moment and a deeply understated occasion. With retail pot sales still at least a year off and public consumption banned, people who marked the moment mostly did so in private.

Anchorage police said they had handed out zero tickets for public consumption of marijuana as of midday Tuesday.

But at one rented condominium up a gravel road in Girdwood, legalization day was cause for an all-out party.

Alaska Green Cross, an organization devoted to cannabis advocacy, hosted the event, billed as a “Thanks and Treats Dinner.”

“Come show us how Green and grateful you are to have realized the dream of Legalization,” read an online announcement.

People started arriving at the house at 4:20 p.m. sharp to say the password and gain entry to the party.

READ MORE AT ALASKA DISPATCH NEWS