(Photo by: Jasmine Mills)

“To me, it’s all one piece,” Garry tells me. “There is no beginning, and there is no end”.

Garry Noland is not a student here at JCCC, but an artist in the FADS (Fine Arts and Design Studios) building on campus. The Unorganized Territory spills across its white walls in deep reds, greens, and electric purples and blues. Every piece has a story to tell.

Just behind the Billington Library, the FADS building stands bright and white like a giant block of winter snow. Inside, the clean walls and open space act as a blank canvas waiting for artists to breathe life into them. That is exactly what the building is designed for–creativity, collaboration and connection across every possible art form.

Professor Mark Cowardin, who oversees the exhibitions, is a friendly face who you’ll often find in and out of classes, and helps Noland as he goes along.

At 72, Noland has been creating art since his mid-20s. He credits his love for materials and making things to the women in his family: a grandmother who quilted, and another who worked with textiles long before anyone thought to call her an “artist.”

“Nobody described anybody like that back then,” he says. “Now we’d call it something elite. But it was just their life.”

Noland isn’t afraid to let his art walk into harder territory, either. Spending time in the Midwest, he says, can sometimes insulate people from issues that feel more intense in coastal cities like LA—cramped living, extremes of wealth, the constant closeness of millions of people. His pieces even touch on racism, classism, economic inequality and fascism woven into the American landscape. One of his works explicitly addresses the reduction of rights for everyday people.

“It’s beautiful and painful, and it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Noland says. For him, it’s his responsibility to share this with the public.

Some of his works reach back years—one piece was created using 100 copies of National Geographic, reassembled into a collage poem.

That is what makes The Unorganized Territory so touching. It’s someone’s lifetime of stories layered on top of each other until they become something new.

If you are interested in seeing Noland’s work, you can visit his exhibition in the FADS building or his Instagram page, @GarryNol.