Photographic artist Osceola Refetoff has created many landscapes over the years that I’ve followed his work. Some are a unique take on the desert, revealing abandoned dreams and empty highways. Others feature the wings of airplanes and lustrous cloud formations; rain on a windshield; or they reveal abstract visions of urban light and land. He’s shaped stunning infrared photographs, and raw, so-dusty-you-can-smell-it photojournalism images of broken houses and jagged rock. Most recently, Refetoff has shown seemingly magical pinhole camera images that include ephemeral captures of people, mysterious places, and evocative but unrecognizable locations.
Kinematic Exposures, now at the Von Lintel Gallery at the Bendix building, available for viewing both online and in-person by appointment through October 31st, captures a sublime dreamscape of handheld, pinhole-camera exposures, primarily featuring images from a recent trip he made to Antarctica.
The desolate nature and graceful, swooping beauty of the icy landscape spins the viewer into a somewhat otherworldly dimension. Joining these images are elongated, reminiscent of Giacometti and Modigliani, vividly colored exposures of people. The latter provide viewers with the embodiment of living beings who could have come from another planet just as easily as earth.
Refetoff has described “Kinematic Pinhole Exposure™” as his own term for the images he creates “make while moving about with a pinhole camera.” The works reveal him to be not just a formidable documentarian of place and a conveyor of time and imagination, but as an artist plugged into the soul. The human soul, sure, but also seemingly that of the earth itself, and the sense of a greater being watching us with that slightly blurry but beautiful view from a pinhole camera.
He seems to dabble with turning reality into dream, and with the deeper experience of sensation and emotion as being an innate factor in creating any landscape.
In images such as “Shifting Seas,” the storm cloud of climate change and other human failings is perceived as anxiety, even within an otherwise peaceful, blue palette.
It is there again in the blur and rush of “Active Sound,” where the palette is less unified.
A fiery sun is all consuming in “Drifting Mesa,” an image that nonetheless offers a surreal memory-superimposition, at least for this viewer, of Big Bend National Park, and Monument Valley on an ice floe.
And his human forms in the “Persistence of Being” are both surreal future and mystical reimagining of our place on this planet.
Private viewings for Kinematic Exposures are schedule at 30 minute intervals; masks required. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. To schedule a visit, stop by http://vonlintel.com/.
Showing online at the Supercollider Gallery through September 30th, The Phenomenology of Hope is a visual adventure as well as an absolutely beautiful art exhibition. I had the pleasure of an advance tour given by Khang Nguyen, who co-curated the show with Eli Joteva and Kio Griffith. All three are artists themselves, with work exhibited here among over 40 artists.
Isabel Beavers Yukiko Sugiyama
Available in both 3D and 2D formats, the exhibition is a virtual-walk-through experience that has the immersive feel of attending a real, brick and mortar art exhibition – in your mind.
Neil Mendoza
The virtual-reality setting is one of the only such that I’ve experienced which does not diminish the quality of the art. While there are many video images, which would honestly appear almost identical in-person or online, the paintings and sculptural objects are so artfully presented in the galleries, so seamlessly integrated with the video images, that the viewer almost feels as if “there.” What I am referring to, “there,” is not be a recreation of a real physical space, but rather it is as if we entered a sensational gallery that blossomed in our minds.
If that sounds absurd, and it may, that is due to the limitation of words as opposed to the surprising and complete lack of limitation in the exhibition. While I did not personally inhabit my own avatar on my artist-led tour of the space, it’s one way available to enjoy the show quite fully; walking through in 2D is also wonderful, and comes with easily accessed information about the works from the artists, as well as full viewing of all the art, including the videos, which are both visual and auditory.
Diane Williams
While I have too many favorites to mention, among the standouts for me are Ann Phong’s “Looking Up from the Bottom of the Ocean,” an acrylic on panel vision of intense blue in which the viewer seems to be swimming toward a vivid, redeeming light; Diane William’s large-scale mixed media weaving, produced with the students of the Los Feliz Charter School for the arts, titled “We Can,” is so textural, in 3D one can almost feel the fabric and wire utilized.
Blue McRight’s complex woven mixed media wall hangings, “Undescribed Variations,” which appear to be gestating forms, or tribal designs are equally well-presented in terms of physicality. Eli Joteva’s interstellar-like cyanotypes are haunting; her video, “Time Reveals the Surface” is richly compelling; equally so, though entirely different, is Kate Parsons’ vivid “Valhalla.” Both mystical and visceral, Hung Viet Nguyen’s wonderful Sacred Landscapes series dazzles here. June Edmond’s work is a kinetic trip of color; Virginia Katz offers images both dreamy and profound, of which “The Hours 1” is a particular favorite. Her wall sculptures using acrylic paint and wire are very different and also quite special. Sean Noyce’s video “Portal,” is just that, luring the viewer into a glowing new dimension.
June Edmonds
I could go on and on, certainly Khang B. Nguyen and Kio Griffith each have disparate but dazzling works in the show, as do so many others.
The exhibition describes its own title and theme in part with this statement: “Hope is an evasive phenomenon. For some it is a most harmful impairment, for others it is one of the highest human virtues. It is difficult to precisely define, but seems to leave its imprints on every aspect of human life and practice.” It certainly has left one on this beautiful and unique show.
Five on the Rise is a stellar new exhibition rising up at REH Fine Art at GraySpace in Santa Barbara.
The exhibition includes the work of gallerist Ruth Ellen Hoag, as well as artists Kerrie Smith, Cynthia James, Cynthia Martin, and Dorothy Churchill-Johnson.
Cynthia Martin
The five are long-time members of the Art Salon in Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Studio Artists. The supportive groups assist artists and worked to raise the profile of Santa Barbara itself as an art destination.
The show opens September 18th, and each artist’s work is unique, with styles ranging from the abstract to the figurative, from surrealism to contemporary realism. As different as they are, they complement each other with vivid palettes and dynamic composition.
Kerrie Smith
Smith’s work here is bright and compelling, with mesmerizing patterns and interwoven layers. She describes her work as featuring a counterbalance of symmetry and geometry with oppositional color patterns; these are deeply involving works, in which the viewer can almost viscerally feel the layers. According to Smith, her work balances and examines patterns in the environment and creates a visual conversation about the “changing intersection between place/city or nature.” More timely than ever, her work also encompasses environmental afflictions, from fires to erosion. Regardless, the work is inviting and involving, and appears to move with a shifting light.
Kerrie Smith
Smith’s “Vapours 10,” above, is one such work, with images that resemble cells or tiny-living creatures appearing to float in a dark and ethereal sea.
Cynthia James
James is also concerned with nature, but for her they are “visions from an imaginary botanical record.” She paints with oil on copper, creating a sensual vision of imaginary flowers and insects. Like Smith, she has a focus on the changing natural world, with small but dramatic environments in which the flora and fauna appear to come alive. These are intimate and moving images, part of a series, Botanica, the Secret Life of Flowers. While florals as a subject can be almost clichéd if the execution is not right, there is no such issue here. Far from it: she infuses each work with a sense of mood and place; the location may be imaginary but it is also rooted in realism. Some images feature environmental mutations in plants, while others depict pollinators facing threats from every side. It is a heightened, magical version of the real, one that very much evokes the fraught state of our planet today. Yet, while this state is revealed in her work, it is lush and gorgeous, a dichotomy of beauty existing while under siege. Her soft, highly textural “Spirits of The Hive,” seen above, glows with an almost transcendent light.
Cynthia Martin
Martin’s paintings also touch on the natural world, but with a completely different way of depicting it. Using both deconstructed images and at times a “hi-tech auto finish” which she terms as being, at least in part, an homage to the car culture of Southern California, she captures an incandescent and geometric world. With the horizontal and vertical stripes of “South Coast Sunset,” for example, she gives us both deepening sky and setting sun amid the columns of a freeway overpass. The image feels dimensional and involving, as if one could step between those columns, and walk toward the sinking sun.
Ruth Ellen Hoag
In contrast, Hoag’s work is entirely figurative. Human beings are the central subject of her paintings, and she works in a variety of mediums including acrylics, watercolor, and ink. Her palette varies by piece, and at times her image lean toward abstraction. Interestingly, with a college background focused on music, many of the artist’s images seem to emit an almost harmonic vibration, as if each individual image let loose a personal, visually-revealed “score.”
Detail of “Central Bark,” Ruth Ellen Hoag
Hoag’s “Central Bark” is a wonderful depiction of city life, both human and canine. You can feel the hum of traffic, the excitement of the panting dogs. The wonderful look at a lively street scene in New York City is both urban and pastoral, with emerald park trees and furry, leashed friends paired with traffic, buildings, and busy people.
Churchill-Johnson combines realism with the abstract dramatically, examining what she terms “instant archeology” such as weeds growing in a pavement crack. She has used mirrored, kaleidoscopic techniques that remind the viewer of a galaxy, one in which the viewer is the center. Adding thin color glazes to her works, they have a shimmer that is both beautiful and surreal, or certainly hyper-realistic. In her works, too, environmental disaster looms just out of sight, indicative of climate change, and the minuteness of humankind in the greater world. One can almost feel the folds and wrinkles on the petals of her “Inner Hydrangea,” where dew drops resemble jewels or tears.
REH Fine Art at Grayspace is located at 219 Gray Avenue, in the Funk Zone of Santa Barbara. Social distancing and face covering required, and appointments encouraged during regular gallery hours Friday-Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. through October 11th. The in-person opening is from 5 to 8 September 18th; you can also view art works on Instagram @Grayspacesp
Dances With Films‘ first-ever virtual film festival experience was certainly different for me as a viewer. Rather than seeing shorts and features, both docs and narratives, on a wide screen at the TCL Chinese, I mostly viewed films on my iPhone 11; occasionally varying to my Mac. But it was nonetheless exciting and seamless.
The tech was flawless moving between the streaming of the films and the terrific zoom live Q & A’s with filmmakers. Just like at the actual theater, we could arrive early (I admit I rarely got there before the festival’s promo trailer) and hear a musical program culled from music in the films screened.
And best of all the quality of the films and the format of screening – looked just as great on my small screen as on a large screen. Would I rather be in the theater, eating dark-chocolate Raisinettes, theatre nachos, or take out sushi? Yes. But this way, I didn’t have to drive to Hollywood every day. The only glitch was not being able to take in the opening night premiere film, but I’m hoping to pick that up as a screener later.
I have a lot of favorites in shorts and features, and regrets that I couldn’t view every screening; there was nothing that I viewed that I regret seeing. Those second screenings were a wonderful addition to the festival, coming in handy for me with a packed schedule and viewing wishes more extensive that I could achieve.
Here are some capsule reviews:
Friday Night Midnight Shorts 1
A treat of fun and genuinely creepy horror shorts. Some brief but effective: the trapped-on-a-subway story of overcoming fear, Creature; others longer – the witty caper gone-bad of Buffalo Scientists, in which a convenience store robbery leads to a break-in at a cult, involving a former high school teacher and his students. While all were good, my three favorites were Ghosted, The Gift, and Smiley Death Face.
The Gift
Ghosted told a genuinely jump-scare chilling time-warp haunted house story from the perspective of the creators of a ghost-chasing reality series. The Gift offered a riveting, poetic, and psychologically terrifying story of a picked-on student in a small-town school, and the crow-girl who befriends and defends her. Magical realism at its best. Ominous, perfectly played, and pure fun in the end was Smiley Death Face, in which a ghost discovers emojiis.
Above, from Smiley Death Face
Other nicely creepy shorts in the block included the evocative Strip; Betty June Gloom, with it’s ominious and woeful titular character; Dying Message – which amusingly took on whether or not your average horror scenario could work in real life; and Green Cobra, which looked at a hit-woman’s resume.
Saturday began with Dances with Kids Program 1 – being at home, I was able to introduce a 5-year old to the festival. All smart and intriguing, the 5-year-old music-lover’s favorite was Coughing Up Flowers, the all-musical take on a Japanese love story legend. Directed by a talented 8-year-old, The Butler and the Ball brings joy into a reclusive artist’s life and that of a lonely boy.
from How Our Little Giraff Got Her Spots
Charming animation was the key to How Our Little Giraffe Got Her Spots Back and the adventures of a curious boy in The Red Button. Other shorts in the block skewed a little older for my own viewer; but veg-friendly The Impossible Way resonated; I Am Daniel: My First Eleven Years charmed, and The McGuffin’s superheroes were super cute.
Competition Shorts 2 Zoom
Competition Shorts 2 was a terrific program filled with strong and evocative films. The touching burn-out story of The Way That I Take was highly prescient; from Sweden, Slow Dance was sweet and graceful. The Rug offered a humorous take on what to do with those mortuary ashes; Fear was an abstracted and rhythmic look at racism. I had favorites here, too: the harrowing immigration story in La Ruta was heartbreaking,and fresh, with terrific performances and unexpected twists; feature-length material in a short work.
Novel Love
Novel Love was an of-the-moment, pitch-perfect coronavirus-time love story that I was thrilled to see. And perhaps best of all, it was filmed and edited entirely during quarantine. Writer-director Cameron Miller-DeSart created a richly nuanced, feel-good love story that managed to capture dating, pandemic times, and relationship roadblocks in one sleek swoop.
Competiton Shorts 3
Competition Shorts 3 served up dark comic slapstick in the era of cancel-culture with A Simple F*cking Gesture; an off-beat, poignant dance routine in Crutch Tap; and a masterful stroke of witchcraft and female revenge in the riveting Diabla, in which a victim of sexual assault takes matters into her own magic. The Foreigner turns the tables on the trope of a refugee story, with an unambiguous but heartfelt look at what could so easily happen when refugees from a ravaged U.K. must beg for a place in Turkey. Like Turtles tackled homelessness as its subject, in a poignant story of a single mom and her son on the mean streets of LA; it brought a topical subject to a personal level with a raw and intimate look at survival. Must Love Pie was a darkly comic attempt at dating, smartly executed but not as sweet as its title would suggest. From Germany, Superhero gave viewers a shattering conclusion to the story of a boy with Down’s and his childhood crush as she prepares to leave home.
Drought
I saw two features on Saturday night. Drought, written by Hannah Black, directed by Black & Megan Petersen who also co-star in the story, was sweet and quirky. Two sisters and their autistic brother (Owen Scheid, portraying their brother, is in fact autistic) – plus a platonic friend – embark on a storm chase in an ice cream truck during a drought in North Carolina. A slow start with an inexplicably controlling mom who ends up jailed for selling weed from said truck, builds to a touching character study of both sisters, the brother, and friend on the road. The equivalent of a low-fi record or what is sometimes called mumblecore in films (something producers Jay and Mark Duplass often practice), the dynamic between the two sisters is moving; the portrayal of autism in a dysfunctional family is treated with compassion. Shot in and around Wilmington, N.C., the film ably engages and includes several deeply moving moments insightfully captured.
Goodbye Honey
Goodbye Honey, a part of the midnight series, served up a straightforward horror thriller with two female leads – an exhausted middle-aged truck driver, and a girl whose actions are suspicious, as she flees a kidnapper. Jump-scares, nice acting from the two leads, and a neat third-act twist fuel the limited-location scarer.
Competition Shorts 4
Sunday brought a noon-time pleasure with Competition Shorts 4. My favorite was the near-future sci fi of Patch. Director and co-writer Jamie Parslow said “After reading about robots back in the 80s, and then looking at robot art a few years ago, I started building a concept about the aesthetic.” As good as the short looked, it was the richly rewarding story that made me love this one.
Patch
The Henchman of Notre Dame, originally birthed through UCB Comedy Theater here in LA, was a lush-looking black and white comic look at what could happen if the titular character, a former hunchback, went looking for a job. The gangster and street gang story, Cagnolino, out of France was gritty and involving, a mini-feature with a strong bite. Also screening in this block: humor and pathos at a charismatic Christian church in Brandi Finds God; the moving father/son relationship and despairing immigration story of Magic Kingdom; and the dark husband/wife revenge comedy, Dead Man Interrupted.
The Sunday evening feature, Paint, written and directed by Michael Walker, followed the travails of three young artists living in New York. Fresh and smart, the look at the art world rang true: I cover a lot of gallery openings, and know a lot of artists. Beautifully acted, funny, poignant, and sharp, it doesn’t surprise me to see the film was the Dances with Films Grand Jury Winner. While Walker is not himself an artist, he knows the scene. The acting was perfect from leads to supporting performances, Joshua Caras, Olivia Luccardi, Paul Cooper, Comfort Clinton, Amy Hargreaves, Daniel Bellomy, Kaliswa Brewster, François Arnaud – all worthy of applause. Deeply felt and fully realized, it was one of my favorites.
Nahjum
On Monday, Competition Shorts 1 had a second showing, and I was glad to partake. The surreal dark humor of one charismatic Egg did not need to make an omelet to be tasty fun. Also screening: Remember When, offered a harrowing take on a young boy left in charge of his willful younger sister; the twisty catfishing story of XoXo Darla; To and From: Crazy in Love or Just Crazy, offered a quick look at a bad relationship in a rideshare. From Mexico, in the strong Nahjum, a prehistoric family searched desperately for a life-giving magic tree, with the tragic consequences serving as a powerful allegory. Yarne was a fascinating look at two boys in a Buddhist monastery, and the dynamics of their friendship.
12 Days of Christmas
My feature that night was 12 Days of Christmas, a romantic comedy about two friends becoming one night lovers, and an unplanned pregnancy; it was an enjoyable throw-back to 90s-era teen rom coms.
Milkwater
Tuesday brought feature film Milkwater, my hands-down absolute festival favorite this year. So good I wanted to – and did – see a second showing. Writer director Morgan Ingari (below, upper right) deftly captured a story of loneliness, friendship, sacrifice, and motherhood all rolled into one.
Milkwater
Molly Bernard, in a bravura performance as Milo, decides on a whim to serve as a surrogate mother for an older gay man she meets in a bar. She imagines a different sort of relationship with him that he has to offer, and discovers a lot about herself along the way. Both laugh-out-loud funny and more than capable of drawing tears, it’s a super film that explores character and story equally, with zest. An unexpected delight, this one should be on everyone’s watch list.
Playing with Beethoven
Wednesday, Playing with Beethoven had terrific musical performances, captured live on the set. The slight but sweet teen love story centered on rivalry at a school music competition; anything that featured the music glowed for director Jenn Page.
Sightless
Also on Wednesday, Sightless. A Hitchcockian thriller about a violinist robbed of her sight and in great jeopardy, this was another favorite: seamless, scary, and filled with believable but startling twists. This strong heart-stopper has found a releasing company already with Mar Vista. One of the best scary movies I’ve seen all year – and I’ve rented a lot of them on VOD this pandemic.
Tom of Your Life
Thursday brought me another double bill of features: the gentle, touching Tom of Your Life took us on a day long “life” of a boy who aged four years every hour. Think a reverse indie Benjamin Button. His nurse takes him to Chicago, and along the way he discovers horses, card games, sex, and in the end, love. Cinematography by Chris Rejano was lovely in this film.
Tom of Your Life
Following that film, I watched the eerie Nina of the Woods – in which an aspiring actress takes a supernatural reality crew into the spell-cast woods of her youth. Unconventional structure added resonance.
Nina of the Woods
My lone documentary viewing came on Friday with Bleeding Audio – a vibrant, passionately made story about the rise, fall, and reunion of The Matches. The film rocked out while presenting a fascinating look at today’s digital world of music. This was one I wish I’d seen first screening to catch the Q & A.
Bleeding Audio
Late night, I took in 3 Day Weekend, a Rashomon-like horror featuring a kidnapping, revenge, and plenty of double-crossing twists. A smart way to film low-budget, it was great creepy fun.
3 Day Weekend
Saturday, the Fusion Shorts 2 program was filled with delights.
Thin Walls
New Henry was a delightful quick piece about a son helping his mother navigate a first-date following the death of his father. Thin Walls gave us music and super dark comedy between warring neighbors in an apartment building that really should invest in acoustic tiles. Under the Lights intensely moved me: a magical prom story about a boy with epilepsy just trying to feel normal, and the girl whose date cheated on her. Filmmaker Miles Levin himself suffers from epilepsy, and his gift in both storytelling and presenting insight into the illness is keen. Cosmo presents the charming power of a young girl’s imagination; Burnt Toast gives us a quick look at a married couple’s breakfast; Hamurabi gives viewers revenge in the desert from a young deaf woman with big daddy issues. From Azerbaijan, A Woman gives a strong glimpse into the culture of a changing world, from the female perspective; and Do You Have A… is a satirically humorous look at what happens when a put-upon young accountant gets her period at work.
Off Beat
I was able to catch only some of Fusion Shorts 3 due to other obligations, but what I saw, I enjoyed: How Can I Forget was a lyrical and lovely slice of magical realism about a blind date, romantic and sweet. Off Beat, based on a true story, was a terrific tale of ballroom dancing, an overweight pizza delivery guy, and a dance school receptionist. In Other Words presented a post-break-up conversation in which amusing subtitles revealed what the former couple was really thinking. Fantasy Pony presented a satiric collision course between girls in a model horse competition; Basic Witch cast a spell that gave her date a first-hand look at what the word “consent” actually means. Sorry to have missed Red Light, Green Light; Break In; and The Clothing Swap, which were also part of the program.
Souvenirs
The feature Souvenirs rolled serial killers, a macabre souvenir shop, and a girl set for college into a small-town-set whodunit.
The Terrible Adventure
On Sunday, the Dances with Kidz feature, The Terrible Adventure was a cute live-action contest/chase, with bad-guy ice cream dudes taking on pint-size siblings intent on winning. Fast-moving and cheerful fun for kids under ten.
Before/During/After
Beautifully modulated, the closing film of the festival, Before/During/After included a bevy of well-known day-performers in small roles. The main story: a stage actress who wants a baby discovers her husband is cheating on her; divorce is in the cards, but so is friendship and coming into her own.
A virtuoso performance by writer Finnerty Steeves in the lead; smartly co-directed by Stephen Kunken & Jack Lewars, the non-linear script, touching on the power of memory, is intense and touching.
Enjoying Fusion Shorts with my kitty
All in all I took in 8 shorts programs and 13 features; for a total of around 40 hours of programming. As always at Dances with Films, the shorts programs were wonderfully strong. Despite indulging in cinematic pleasures at home, I was still unable to achieve my personal goal after 6 years of attending this festival: that goal being to view every single film program. Unfortunately, due to my work schedule, 40+ hours of programming in 10 days was all I could take in. Maybe next year.
Huge kudos to everyone at DWF 2020 for making at-home viewing a great pleasure. The Q & A’s were fun and easy to view; the virtual lobby feature was seamless, too.
Check out the DWF trailer link to see what you missed here. Longer reviews of some of my favorites are forthcoming.
Genie Davis; photos: screen shots – Genie Davis; film stills courtesy of DWF
