Transformations: A Review by Betty Brown

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“The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom.”
~Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World

Genie Davis has expertly curated an exhibition that features three extraordinary artists: Connie Saddlemire, Amy Thornberry, and Sharon Weiner. All three deal with expressive abstraction, to one degree or another. They do so in diverse media, from Saddlemire’s photography-based printmaking to Thornberry’s painted collage to Weiner’s acrylic on canvas.

Connie Saddlemire has developed a complex process that layers altered photographs of corrugated Corten steel on solar plates to created elegant, meditative monoprints. She is inspired by the parallel lines of Corten steel architecture, as well as other repetitive geometric forms, from quilts to roof tiles to bales of hay. Saddlemire striped works recall, but do not imitate, the geometric abstractions of American Agnes Martin and Irish-born Sean Scully. The gray tones of her Square Telescope (2023) echo the metallic sheen of Corten steel. Her Summer Haori (2025), named after the Japanese jackets worn over kimonos, is composed of three sections: the central one deploys vertical lines; the lines of the two flanking sections are horizontal. The brick-red color reminds us that corrugated Corten steel develops a rust-like patina over time. (Think of the luscious rust surfaces of Richard Serra’s immense Corten steel sculptures.) Saddlemire’s rhythmically repeating lines are calming and meditative, like the cadenced noise of rain on the roof or the quiet drumbeats of Minimalist music. Viewers are drawn into the subtle modulations of color and space that–like the Trataka of object-based meditation–cultivate intense focus and awareness.

Amy Thornberry builds layered compositions based on collaged images overlaid by paint. Her gestural brushstrokes obscure the images, like the levels of earth and detritus that cover archaeological ruins. Viewers must visually “dig” through the upper levels to find the historic remains below. The Dissolution of Fragility is based on Sir John Everett Millais’ 1851-52 painting Ophelia (the tragic Shakespearean heroine). The reclining figure seems to appear then disappear, ghostlike, under cloudy white veils. Thornberry’s composition succeeds if simply appreciated for its formal pleasures (color, texture, etc.), and the female figure gives it a certain “magical” depth. A more readily perceptible image is the translucent crouching woman, whose head is silhouetted against two poppy-red “clouds.” The rewards of Thornberry’s oeuvre are found in the visual investigation of her veils of color and form. The painted collages are never just what they initially appear to be; there are always rich levels of meaning, rich varieties of signifying artistic clues.

 

Sharon Weiner’s paintings are totally abstract. She pours paint mixed with liquid acrylic over large canvases or smaller pieces of paper to create glorious images that can allude to cosmic flow. In Night Sky (2025), a dynamic white cloud, with a deep blue underside, zooms into midnight depth. Other works have biomorphic references: in Cluster (2025), purple arteries are entangled with luminous blue and yellow cells. Yet others are oceanic: In State of Grace (2025), a wave crashes on the beach, spreading its aqueous offerings. To be surrounded by Weiner’s work is to be invited to lift and expand emotionally (or dare I say spiritually?)—which is precisely what these abstract shapes are doing. The images are inspiring and her painting titles are poetic: State of Grace, Spirit, Celestial Passage, Soar, Transform. In this age of trauma, contention, and violence, it is tremendous to see a creator speaking to our highest aspirations, rather than our lesser selves. Weiner’s paintings are, like the art of all three of these truly talented and accomplished women, radiant gifts.

In his 2007 volume The Gift, Lewis Hyde explained the value of creative labor, arguing that creative work functions as a gift rather than a commodity. Shed the blinders of our capitalist economy and give yourself the gift of seeing this art.

  • Betty Brown; images courtesy of the artists

Wonders Immerse at Angels Gate

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the moon, the womb, and they remember on exhibit at Angels Gate Cultural Center through April 26th is a delicate, beautiful series of individual works and installatations that both enchants and calms the spirit. Curated by Ann Shi, artists include: Flora Kao, Sheng Lor, Victoria May, Sandeep Mukherjee, Kyong Boon Oh, Snežana Saraswati Petrović, and Stella Zhang.

Each work is lyrical, lovely, and forms a cohesive and flowing exhibition from a soft curved curtain of red by Kao through the rich oceanic mix of sculpture and video by Petrovic, with these works anchoring each end of the gallery.

Oh’s steel and wire figurative sculpture serves almost as a stand-in for the viewer, beckoning one within what Shi describes as a “container that holds matter in transition, allowing transformation without resolution. The moon is a regulator of cyclical time, governing tides, illumination, recurrence, and withdrawal.“

Gestation in all its forms is key here, shimmering through May’s lustrous organza and complex rubber material wall sculpture, and dancing in the weave of Lor’s loom and yarn chair.

From Lang’s luminous screen…

…to Mukherjee’s resonating acrylic on Duralene universe, the exhibition is a standout awash in poetry.

Petrovic’s immersive installation is in part created to reference Indra, a forgotten Hindu god, holding “the universe in a net, each planet a jewel representing a different universe,” Petrovic says.

Indra was incorporated into the Buddhist religion where her form as a “very powerful net that holds life together in every universe,” was embraced, the artist explains.

Petrovic’s installation signifies “birth, the beginning of the universe, rebirth and feminine energy,” she says.

Bougainvillea petals on the ground evoke life, blue pillowed sea creatures on the floor invite viewers to relax and cast their gaze upward, connecting earth and sea to the galaxy above.

The artist has dedicated the exhibition to the memory of mentor Ulysses Jenkins.

Entering the wonder of Petrovic’s space, which comprises the back length of the gallery —

—as well as the exhibition itself, is an experience not to be missed.

                                                             *****

And, in the downstairs gallery, Species of Magic: From the Studio of W. S. Milner is another slice of joy.

Honoring the work of late AGCC Studio Artist W. S. Milner, curated by Phoebe Barnum and Susan Davis, the exhibition sparkles with whimsy, delight, and pleasure.

  •  Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Quantum Beauty in Quantum Matter at Matter Studio Gallery

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Quantum Matter, which closed at Matter Studio Gallery April 19, was a lush, exciting intermingly of five contemporary artists’ immersive work.  The exhibition included multiple works in mixed media, oil and acrylic painting, collage, and sculpture by artists Susan Ossman, Angelica Sotiriou, Monica Marks, Karena Massengill, and Sandra Vista.

The exhibition explored each artist’s own unique vision of all things connected, great and small. As a scientific definition, quantum matter can be topological and refer to emergent order and exotic properties. These artists each expressed and experienced such, from the vastness of the lines, conjoined brush strokes, and brilliant hues of international artist Susan Ossman to the lush and intensely lovely abstract spiritual landscapes of Angelica Sotiriou to the landscapes of desert, raw earth, and sky of Monica Marks, these artists exhibit vast and fascinating vistas that speak to a rich accumulation of the proportional or quantum energy of the world. For sculptural artists Karena Massengill and Sandra Vista, matter is an infinite use of materials as diverse as beading and gourds for Vista and fine metal works in amazingly detailed shapes from Massengill.

Among the many standouts in the exhibition is Susan Ossman’s oil on canvas “Chergui,” left above, a rush of red wind and pastel light soaring in across the desert of a region, or perhaps a heart.

Also from Ossman is the glorious “One and Many,” a swirling conjoining of blue and orange that evokes the heart of a flower, the intertwined cosmic and natural world, and the conflicts and comparisions within each living being.

Monica Marks’ use of found materials both defines and enhances her work, which here features the language, losses, and love she finds and has for the desert. Her mixed media ” House with Green Trim” uses fragments of wood and metal found near the desert Wonder Valley, Calif. homestead which she has painted. She is fascinated by the abandoned dreams of desert homesteads, and treats these sites, and the remanents of objects such as Del Monte branded cans, with revererance. Small and lovely salvaged objects receive new life in color and form, such as the rainbow paints illuminating “Salvaged Traces Series 10” and the colors of the sunset that form the backdrop to the circles of crushed cans in “Sunset Circles.”

Like Marks, Karena Massengil often works with salvaged material, creating undulating and exciting metal sculptures such as “Billabong,” which depicts environmentally impacted birds, and is shaped from repurposed stainless steel, enamel, wood, mirror fragments and feathers.  Leaves danced in a updraft in her “Joyful Dance,” a colorful stainless steel canvas utilizing oils. Always tantalizingly inventive, Massengil uses her work as a way to express both ecological concerns and political ones.

 

Vista also repurpsoes her wall sculptures, using zipper tabs to create wildly deep sculptural forms that have a deep and shimmering texture. The four long panels of “Museum Horizon” are skyscraper-like in shape, shimmery in gold and grounded in dark grey tabs. Her beaded gourds pay homeage to the death of a loved one; named for the southwest region they represent in style, these meticulously beaded works reflect upon characters such as “Pistachio Mary.”

Painter Angelica Sotiriou revels in light, the spiritual, and a passionate joy for and concern about the natural world. Her large scale, multi-layered canvases such as her acrylic work “Through a Glass Darkly #5” are filled with a luminosity that goes beyond the canvas and radiates. Like many of her works, the effect of her layers creates a kind of pearled opalesence. Smaller scale acrylic and mixed media works such as “Hiraeth #6” shine with rivulets of gold leaf in the presentation of a sanctified breath.

Jenny Hager’s colors are often bold and bright: lime green, canary  yellow, electrifying orange. Working in lines, shapes, patterns, and “monsters and monuments” as she explains, the artist adds further depth and precision to her acyrlic work by taping the canvas. Hager’s appropriately named “Gang of Glee” is a burst of gold and pale purple that brings an explosion of pleasure to the viewer’s gaze. “Cascade” is a meadow of chatreuse through which dreams wade deep.

Each artist’s work is galvanizing on its own, but when combined, of course, the work becomes “quantum.”  The quantum world may defy conventional logic, but creates its own, intense, magnetic language, as do the artists in this beautiful, seminal exhibition. The exploration of the visionary and the unseen, the massive in terms of emotion, brush stroke, sculpted forms, small elements made large when conjoined all comprises the mystical, magical work in this exhibition. The unexpected and the uncanny, the infinite and the minute are all encompassed in a collection of lustrous work.

While the exhibition is no longer viewable live, the works can be studied and purchased online.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Intense and Powerful Work from Painter Sharon Weiner

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Explosive and spiritual, intense and meditative, Sharon Weiner‘s vibrant art is a sensory experience. Currently exhibiting her work at Diversions Fine Arts, as an abstract painter, Weiner says that sheidentifies with many of the postwar American transcendental abstract artists, like Mark Rothko and Ross Bleckner.

Her technique is entirely her own, building layers of poured acrylic paint and acrylic medium. The organic shapes she forms envelop the viewer before melding into the deep space of a smooth, shining surface. Her subjects are born from both her imagination and the natural environment, reflecting her own belief in the importance of having a voice in the world.

“I am inspired predominantly by nature: oceans, mountains, the cosmos. There’s this shape that just stays with me in my work that reminds me of a mountain or a wave,” she relates. Indeed, Weiner’s work has elements that appear both liquid and vast.

“I’ve always been an abstract painter. One thing that’s changed [recently for me] is the addition of working with Yupo paper. I work in a similar way on paper to my work on canvas, with very different results allowing me to express things that I can’t do with canvas, allowing me a certain freedom and lightness,” she explains.

Her mediums are acrylic paint, acrylic ink, and water based spray paint on both canvas and paper, and regardless of the exact medium she uses, she finds that she is “always excited to see what is going to develop in my work.”

She stresses that no matter what the specific subject, color palette, or size of her work – which ranges from small to vast, “my art allows me to connect to my spirituality and has given me a voice.”

Following her show at Diversions Fine Arts, Weiner will be a part of an exhibition at 515 in DTLA’s Bendix Building in June.

But as to her art itself, it remains a part of the universe, a celestial series that speaks to space, light, color, and the promise of a new worlds unfolding.

View Weiner’s work at Diversions Fine Arts through May 3rd at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd., Manhattan Beach.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist