Royal Curation at Gabba Gallery

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Looking for a group show that’s got a kingdom’s worth of artistic treasures? Then hasten lords and ladies to Royal Curation at Gabba Gallery through May 14th, where four such shows are on display.

Curators Jim Daichendt, “Word;” Mat Gleason, “Blood on the Track Lights;” Isabel Rojas-Williams, “I am More;” and Cindy Schwarzstein, “/Brit-fluence (d)/;” have each assembled unique exhibitions that drew an enthusiastic crowd to Saturday’s opening. Not that energy plus art plus enthusiasm are a surprise at Gabba.

We caught up with some of the artists – and you should, too.

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Macha Suzuki’s exciting sculptural pieces have a story behind their letter grade “F.” According to the artist “These pieces started off as a reminder to myself that there are always things to gain when you fail. You should be proud of the moments when you failed, because it means you tried. If you don’t go for it, you can’t propel yourself forward.”

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“This sculpture is made from welded steel. I started welding not so long ago, this was my third go at it,” the artist reports.

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John Hammersmith draws and then digitally converts his pieces. “I show my works in different venues, the medium is the message, the symbology creates an icon.”

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Artist June Edmonds started off with a single circle theme and was “inspired by meditation. I got more detailed and elaborate with my color relationships. There are explorations of space and rhythm.” Her works are rich, layered, textured oil on canvas.

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Ester Petschar created a work of art that was placed right on the floor of the gallery.  “In Leonardo’s painting the eyes were closed…this is my version of his work, with the eyes opened.” She worked in oil pastel on canvas.

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Christina Ramos comes from a long line of artists; her father worked in figurative oils. “I work in acrylic but I have always admired the work of the masters, the work of Norman Rockwell, paintings that tell a story. There is a little air of expectation in each of these pieces as they’re looking into where they are going; there’s an air of mystery in each piece, but they are also very illustrative.”

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Artist Mei Xian Qiu explains her work here as a part of a series, “Let a Thousand Flowers Move.”  She says that the art “ultimately is about individualism and cultural identity in an increasingly global society.”

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Works by artists such as Teale Hatheway, above –

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and Nicolas Bonamy, above, are also included in the show. Both artists create quintessentially LA images in radically different interpretations.

And of course there’s a full royal court of other art to see as well.

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The exhibition is available for viewing Wednesday – Saturday 12-3 pm or by appointment until May 14th. The Gabba Gallery is located at 3126 Beverly Blvd.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke

Dulcepalloza: Art Extravaganza in El Segundo

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Curated by Dulce Stein and Tricia Banh, Dulcepalloza features the work of over thirty artists, and includes some incredible installations along with sculpture, found object art, pottery, paintings, and more. At the opening April 30th, live music and painting were also a part of the mix, in a truly engaging exhibition that transforms an El Segundo warehouse space into an exciting temporary museum.

Participating artists include:

Debi Cable
Amy Kaps
Mark Tovar
Skye Amber Sweet
Nikolai Molecules
Billy Pacak
The Night Owl Players
Vicky Barkley
Gabriela Zapata
Reidar Schopp
Arlene Mead
Mondo Bobadilla
Kellie Cracker
Sheri Neva
Sybil McMiller
Scott A. Trimble
Sheila Cameron
Jim Caron
Dulcinea Circelli
Shalla Javid
Achille Morie
Cie Gumucio
Bethann Shannon
Marianne Magne
Julian Hernandez
Robyn Hardy-Alatorre
Helena Gullstrom
JonMarc Edwards
Kristine Augustyn
Moe Betta

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The curators included a wide mix of artists from throughout Los Angeles, including a number who call the South Bay home.

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Artist Dulcinea Circelli’s mixed media – above and below – includes objects she found in the streets. “I try to up-cycle materials. I hand grow the crystals using a crystal growing kit. My artwork is an expression of Zen Buddhism.” Titled Indra’s Net Number 3 of 10, this piece represents the “totality of the universe and everything within it.” It’s a fascinating piece.

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Below, artist Amy Kaps in her incredible black and white striped installation. “I’m primarily a performance artist. I was doing living sculpture with striped cloth, and I was approached by photographer Eric Schwabel. We made the first striped room, and the photos hung within this room came from that time. Curators started asking for this installation. My works have a lot to do with perception. I’m interested in you asking what you’re looking at, and what you see.”

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Below, Hermosa Beach artist Scott Trimble with one of three pieces he exhibited in the show. “Is this Propaganda,” the title of this piece, refers to social issues regarding women. “I have a strong feminist background. The title really refers to the idea that while I find women attractive, I do not want to be exploitative.” Trimble paints up to sixteen works a week.  “I never approach with a thought clear in my head. I let my hand and my eye paint. It’s a process that’s so freeing, to turn my mind off and engage in emptying myself into the canvas as I work.”

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Below, co-curator Tricia Banh. This is her first curated show, and she hit it out of the ballpark.

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Below, artist Vicki Barkley with a piece that she originally created at Coagula Curatorial. “It came from my heart. People respond to the emotional content here. It came out of a transitional phase as I was going through a divorce.” The panels are plastic but flow as if they were cloth. “There are eight panels hung in sequence, and they correspond to a little bit of numerology and metaphysical tradition. Water represents the heartbreak goddess, so I made them blue for that reason.”

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Above, Robin Hardy-Alatorre provides an interpretation of the history of art itself that she says parodies perception.

 

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Below, curator Dulce Stein. She designed the event to be “a celebration of art through the eyes of the artist.” She adds that taking over the warehouse space gave her “the opportunity to explore the many ways one can display art and still be fun and innovative.”

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Below, inside the true “3-D Wonderland” of Debi Cable’s installation.

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Below, JonMarc Edwards with his installation, Debriti. His “shop” sells text by the ounce: letters, sentences, words, poems. “Choose your words carefully,” he suggests. The installation texts are made of natural, bio-degradable tag board. “You can take it and throw it in the air, and the letters will decompose over time,” he says. “The excess and meaningfulness of words are both everywhere.”

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Achille Morio, below, created another portion of the “Wonderland” installation, working in vibrant 3D. “I try to make visible a continuity between the visible and invisible, fluorescent and phosphorescent, to create a surprise,” he says.

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Below, artist Cie Gumucio with one of several very diverse pieces in the exhibition. The striking red and white mixed media piece below is called “A Million Tiny No’s and I Said Yes, Yes, Yes.” Gumucio notes “The stitching was important, I think what’s so beautiful is that one object, the zipper, can be imbued with so much meaning, whether open or closed, it can be communicated across languages.”

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Below, Shelly Heffler with a variety of ceramic works. “They’re very organic. Like my paintings, they come out of movement. They start with a lump of clay that I just start forming, it’s a sensuous movement of positive and negative space.”

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Outside the exhibition, The Night Owl Players performed exciting live music, created and performed to inspire live painting.

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Missed the opening? Head to 140 Center Street in El Segundo all the same – the exhibit runs through May 20th, hours are 7 to 9 weekdays and 2-5 Sunday, by appointment only. Call or text Dulce Stein at (424) 789-1788; the closing reception and an artist panel will be open to the public from 6-11 pm on Thursday, May 19th. Artist’s panel will run from 7 to 8 p.m.

  • Genie Davis;  photos: Jack Burke

 

 

Leavened with Humor: Dough

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Dough is a lighthearted take on the relationship between Nat, an aging, widowed Jewish baker (Jonathan Pryce) and Ayyash, a young Muslim immigrant (Jerome Holder) he takes on as his apprentice.  Directed by John Goldschmidt, this sweet relationship forms the – pun intended – leavening of the film, and with stellar acting from both leads, creates a compelling feel-good story.

Yes, there’s a nasty developer who seeks to take over and tear down Nat’s Kosher bakery, a hard-nosed drug dealer who proves to be Ayyash’s nemesis, a love-hungry widow, and some fortunately obtuse policemen involved, but it’s the appealing father/son connection between the baker and his new assistant that makes this kindhearted, gentle comedy/drama a charmer.

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The story: business at the bakery booms when the cannabis Ayyash sells to help support his impoverished mom mixes into the challah loaves, and some tense moments of would-be disaster inevitably follow. But not to worry: it’s not giving too much away to say that racial and religious divides fade easily, and by the ending credits you’ll have a smile on your face.

This is a confection, a lighthearted, delicious puff pastry of a tale that will have viewers enjoying every tasty morsel.

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Randi Matushevitz: Artist Profile

Posted on by Diversions LA

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The art of Randi Matushevitz is magical. It has the quality of a fairy or folktale; a narrative brave, loving, and a little bit spooky. There are symbols and signs, figures and landscapes – the impact of viewing her work is immersive and emotional. Enter the world of Matushevitz and become transformed. This is an alternative universe, like our own but unlike it, both delicate and intense.

“My process swings from intuitive to formal and back again. I draw. The work develops over days and weeks or more. I layer. I draw. I spray. I look and repeat.” In short, Matushevitz, working in pastels, deep charcoal, and acrylics, creates works as physically layered as they are emotionally dense.

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In her “Bad Habits By The Pool,” she works in charcoal, pastel, and paint on paper to depict what appear to be two small nymph like creatures – or children – watching a woman smoking a cigarette by the pool. The pool is dark and dense, inky. The smaller figures stare, and near them is a box, which could be Pandora’s, perhaps. The yellow background and the pink of the woman’s skin are both the colors of dreams.

Throughout her recent series, “Mysterious,” the artist uses symbols and figures drawn and stenciled. “I provide the innuendo of space, intentional references and implied mood or location,” she says.

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In “Liberty or Death” burnt sienna patterns dot a piece that also includes the outline of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. A bed, a bus, pipes, hearts, flowers – there is a wildness and an energy, a garden of technology, an infusion of love into our often harsh world. Are those bombs exploding? Fireworks “bursting in air?” Are the hearts floating in space simply symbolic hearts or are they living creatures infused with the ability to create love where none previously exists?

Matushevitz is less interested in explanations than she is in emotion. She says she includes “the power of color, texture, and pattern” to create the perception of love. “What we see has influence over how we perceive, interpret, and absorb information and thus determines what we think and who we become.”

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The artist’s work is based on the idea that what we see has a deep effect on human perception and feeling – and what affects the individual also affects a larger society. She’s exploring all sides of the idea of love and the artifacts of human emotion, using tools of harmonious and disharmonious color, and her own unique combinations of symbols, colors, and patterns.

“I use memory, sentimentality and childlike whimsy to create images that are embellished and decorated to reveal kindness, respect and accountability,” Matushevitz says. “It’s a multi-sensory message that has been metaphysically explored since the beginning of time.”

In short, she believes we are what we think. While earlier works by the artist reflected a brighter tone and more whimsical nature, her more recent series plays with the idea of perception in an edgier tone.

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In “Elephant in the Room,” for example, symbolic depictions of elephants are scattered across the page, a car, a butterfly, a fireplace, and over that fireplace, a painting or a mirror or a window reflects more cars. Is the elephant a metaphor for our lumbering vehicles, creating environmental chaos?

“It is a fight for the sanity of our culture as we know it,” the artist says, “we neglect and take for granted what is so important that it is discounted as if disposable. As if it is something that will always be there, until it is not.”

There is much to see and absorb in Matushevitz’s work. Like life itself, her works dance on an edge between belief and perception, light and dark. We are creations of our own dreams, she seems to be saying. But can we dream better?

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In “Movie Time,” the answer appears to be affirmative, as two children watch a stream of flowers, and a small, fairy-like figure surfs a tangle of water-like roots on a seed pod. The niche in which the children are positioned is in the shape of an eye. Is this all an image taken from the mind’s eye, a moving picture of life?

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Perhaps her “Self-Portrait” holds the answer. This piece is nearly monochromatic, touches of red like fire in her eyes, touches of green like growing things in the foreground. Her hair is wild, what could be fairies, trolls, or dybbuks wait on either shoulder. But her eyes are calm and kind, her lips pressed into a half-smile. Matushevitz seems to be saying what we accept, what we cannot know, what we see, what is unseen – it should all be approached with equanimity.

Whatever the world holds, in its mystery, in its magic, in its folklore and fairytales, the artist believes we need to give expression to that vision.

Matushevitz’s works have been shown both nationally and internationally in New York, LA, Las Vegas, Miami, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Madrid, and Xalapa. Her most recent exhibition was held in March on the UCLA campus.