Grief and Loss: the Face of Fire

Posted on by Diversions LA

Grief and Loss: The Face of Fire – Genie Davis

There has been an enormous amount of loss and grief throughout Los Angeles, as artists and other creatives have lost homes, studios, work, livlihoods,  and family history.

It is unprecented: isolating due to air quality and the heaviness of sorrow; galvinizing, as in the outpouring of community support; infiuriating due to society’s collective ignorance of climate change and the politicization of even the natural landscape.  Still ahead of us are spiked rent increases, the tangled web of insurance and government bureaucracy, and the immediate loss to the art community of canceled shows, diminished sales, and actual artworks.

All we can do is mourn, and express our inchoate longing for the life that came before, and hope for a time that comes after.  All we can do that is, except to express our generosity of spirit, plan fundraising efforts, respond to Go Fund Me accounts of loved ones and friends, donate goods and foods and a helping hand.

It is with that in mind that I want to suggest that anyone with a personal – or a friend in the art community’s – GFM or other fundraising platform that benefits this community, please mention it in the comments section.

Here are a few to start off:

For all the non-human victims out there please give generously to: Pasadena Humane Society  

Drop off donations:

Torrance Art Museum, TAM. Per museum director Max Presneill:

“To help where we can Torrance Art Museum (TAM) will be accepting donations (in goods, not money) for those families devastated by the Los Angeles fires. You can drop off things you think they might need to TAM: Tues 13 – Sat 18, from 10am-4pm. Please ring the bell at the staff entrance (not Museum entrance) around the back, to drop off your donations: 3320 CIVIC CENTER Drive, Torrance, CA 90503

The Torrance Theater Company will also be accepting donations at the same times: 1316 Cabrillo Ave, Torrance, CA 90501

We are especially looking for:
– Clothes and shoes
– Personal hygiene items and sanitary products – new toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, diapers, etc
– Tinned food, bottled water, dry goods, snacks, baby formula
– Blankets, sleeping bags, pillows
– Charging cables and extension cables
– Books, puzzles, games, cards

These items will be delivered by TAM staff to the Bendix Building at 1206 Maple Ave, downtown LA, and available for those hit by the fires to collect on Sunday 19th January, 10am-4pm in suite 800, on the 8th floor.”

Los Angeles Makery

  • What’s available: Tools, supplies, and materials for artists who lost studios.
    Items such as paints, canvases, cameras, paper, and more are available for free.
  • Contact to donate or receive supplies: thelosangelesmakery@gmail.com | Text 213-392-2611
  • 260 S. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles (Little Tokyo adjacent)

Superchief Gallery LA

  • Collecting supplies and essential items for fire victims, including art materials.
  • Location: 1965 S Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, CA 90011

Thinkspace Projects

  • Collecting supplies for the Red Cross and distributing N95 masks.
  • Location: 4217 and 4207 W Jefferson Blvd

Per ArtShare LA:

Below is a list of additional resources, spaces, and grants available to help you recover and continue creating:

Temporary Space and Resources

Immersive Art Collective

  • What’s available: Temporary storage for salvaged artwork, instruments, and more.
    • Large space with internet access, air purifiers, seating, tables, heating, and restroom facilities. Small kitchen area with tea, coffee pots, refrigerator, and microwave.
  • Location: 1035 S Olive St, Los Angeles, CA 90015 (south of L.A. Live)
  • Contact: 310-894-3638 | info@immersiveartcollective.org
  • Cost: Free

Emergency Grants and Financial Support

Emergency Micro-Grants for Artists

Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+) Emergency Assistance

Rauschenberg Emergency Medical Grant

  • The Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grants program provides one-time grants of up to $5,000 for recent unexpected medical, dental, and mental health emergencies to artists in financial need* who are creating in the visual arts, film/video/electronic/digital arts, and choreography.

Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

  • The Foundation provides financial resources up to $50,000 for visual artists to create new work, acquire supplies, rent studio space, prepare for exhibitions, attend a residency and offset living expenses.
  • Apply here: https://pkf.org/apply/

Entertainment Community Fund Fund Entertainment Assistance Program

Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Emergency Grant

  • Financial aid for painters, sculptors, and printmakers who have experienced catastrophic events.
  • Applicants must demonstrate 10+ years of mature work. Grants range from $5,000 to $15,000.

Artists’ Fellowship, Inc.

  • Provides financial assistance for visual artists facing unexpected emergencies, natural disasters, or extreme hardship.
  • Open to active artists who make their livelihood through the sale of artworks.

LA Art World Fire Relief Fund

  • Mutual aid fund to assist artists and art workers with severe loss or damage to homes, studios, or property.
  • Apply or offer aid: LA Art World Fire Relief Fund

MusiCares

  • Support for music professionals impacted by the fires. MusiCares provides crisis relief, preventive care, recovery resources, and need-based financial assistance for people across all music professions.
  • Contact: musicaresrelief@musicares.org | 1-800-687-4227

Mental Health and Social Services

We Rise LA

  • Offers a 24/7 Help Line and links to mental health resources.
    Get Help Now: Call 1-800-854-7771 or text “HELP’’  to 741741 anytime for a crisis counselor.

Mental Health America of Los Angeles

Los Angeles County Arts and Mental Health Resources

  • Joint resources from the Departments of Arts and Culture and Public Health.

THIS IS THE SPACE TO CONTACT ME TO ADD GO FUND ME ACCOUNTS

Go Fund Me accounts shared with me as of this writing:

John Knuth family 

Camilla and Josh Taylor

Eva Montealegre

Ann Storc and family

Margaret Griffith and the Carter family 

LA Yoga Aid (instructors and other community members who have lost homes)

I will cut and paste other links as they come in and add to this post.

You can also reach me personally with this information via email, genie@diversionsLA.com.

Sending love out to those who are experiencing the devastation, and to those who are processing it, lending a helping hand, and hoping for a reborn and better tomorrow.

  • Genie Davis; photos, Genie Davis

Lock/Unlock Opens New Doors to Art at Loft at Liz’s

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Lock/Unlock Opens New Doors to Art at Loft At Liz’s  by Genie Davis

LOCK/UNLOCK examines the past, present and future of security, privacy and protection through art and technology. Interactive, inventive installations and artwork cover the gamut from 19th century BC lock and key mechanisms to today’s present encryption and biometrics.  Participating in the exhibition, a part of the Getty’s PST programming of art and science pairings, are artists, engineers, coders and historians, including:  Krista Blake, Derek Curry, George Dyson, Liz Gordon, Jennifer Gradecki, Debby Kline, Larry Kline, Laure Michelon (Studio MMR), John Peralta, and Lena Alexandra Root.

As the exhibition’s curatorial notes state, the artists in this exhibition are posing questions such as: “Do we consider privacy a human right? What is the trade off between privacy and transparency? Are we afraid of technology or who controls it? Are we willing to change our digital behavior?” All intriguing questions and premises for art exploration, as is the notation that “the need for security systems remains resolute” in today’s world.

Along with new work by these artists, there are on exhibit historical wrist restraints;  locks and dead bolts and keys, all displayed  by gallerist Liz Gordon. The installation of antique keys is both beautiful and mysterious.

It’s exciting and innovative work, including many fascinating and viewer-involving, thought-provoking works such as Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry’s “Generative Persuasion,” an interactive installation with a mobile command center that reveals the startling effectiveness of live language models at generating false content – the world of disinformation we live in now come to demonstrable life.  Those who participate can enter their or another’s bias in perception to generate completely different takes on “reality.”

Debbie and Larry Kline offer “Unlocking the Truth,” in which stone sulptures – granite and powdercoated stainless steel – are washed periodically in water to reveal the word “truth” only when the flow of water stops. The intentionally blurry carving increases the viewers focus and analytical capabilities, ably demonstrating an exploration in clarity and confusion. The thematic approach is inspired by a talk given by Thomas Albright at the Salk Institute for Biological Sutdies, discusing the brain’s inability to see accurately.

Even more visceral in terms of the Lock/Unlock subject matter is the Yale safe lock and bitcoin piece created by John A. Peralta, “How Safe,” which is both a visual game and an apt illustration of the illusion of security and the ability to “crack” it.

Lena Root’s “Men” takes a feminist viewpoint of technology and “locking” the truth, with images that depict chastity belts in front of a woman’s face.

Studio MMR has another immersive work in technolgy that interacts in words and image to one’s presence in the secondary, smaller space at the Loft, just off the main gallery – impressive and involving work. “Mediated Realities” provides sensory inputs to interactions with the viewer.

Krista Blake and George Dyson also present involving and thought-provoking work.

Art talk and closing reception are February 1, from 3-5 – time to unlock all the vicissitudes of the new year and uncover possible remedies with a visit to this exciting exhibition.

  • Genie Davis; photos, Genie Davis

Kaleidoscopes of Color and Light at MOCA Geffen

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As dazzling as the midnight sun – a sight doubtlessly familiar to Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson –  is his new exhibition OPEN. The exhibition fills the MOCA Geffen with light and color in an astonishing series of works by a powerful and deeply compelling artist. As a part of the Getty’s PST ART programming, it’s a dynamic one, and my favorite body of work within it. OPEN is the first solo mueseum show by Eliasson in the greater LA area.

Merging light with color, the precision of the geometric form with child-like wonder, Eliasson continues and expands upon his own explorations, here involving parts of the museum’s  own architecture.

The main gallery is home to towering kaleidoscopes beneath observation structures that point both skyward and to the MOCA Geffen building itself.  While some show the effects of light and mirrors, others offer looks into the sky or roof top.

Some offer fascinating, even surreal hexagons and interconnecting, jungle-gym-like lattices that seems as if they came from another world; another is a simple rainbow. Images shift with time of day and weather, creating marvelous illusions of color, shadow, light – and pure joy, in both the artistry and the wonder of the exhibition.

In another gallery space, colorful jeweled rings and painted works represent the color spectrum along the gallery walls.

In the center of the space, triangular shaped kaleidoscopes point not outward but inward, forming shifting geometric color shapes that resemble flowers or buildings. In the same gallery a large geometric prism hangs, a sculpted version of light and shape made manifest.

Elsewhere on the museum’s cavernous ground floor, an interactive room invites viewers to become colorful shadow participants in light and color magic; upstairs a series of mirrors and large half rings create riveting optical illusions as if one is standing inside a ring within a ring.

The artist and the museum encourage viewers to borrow a pillow from the information desk and recline or sit beneath the main gallery’s large structures to contemplate and view the magical shifts of light and form. Yes, it is all smoke and mirrors – no real smoke, just that of the imagination – and it is an incredible illusion, one that will entrance, enthrall, and change how you view the world.  It’s the vision of magicians and angels, and the viewer is the better for having seen it.

As the artist himself posits:

“AM I OPEN/ To facing my numbness?/ To receiving a No?

To explore where I place my attention?/To wonder?/To vulnerability?

To explore where I place my attention? To wonder?/To vulnerability?

Step into this exhibition and invite yourself to find out.

Olafur Eliasson: OPEN is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, and Rebecca Lowery, Associate Curator, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistant, and Anastasia Kahn, former Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The exhibition runs through July 6, 2025 – OPEN up your eyes to it this year. MOCA Geffen is located at 152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles in Little Tokyo.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Linda Stelling Explodes with Color

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According to artist Linda Stelling, her work is inspired by color, sound, texture, scent — and the “raw, visceral experience of feeling the world deeply through all of my senses.”

Pulsating with color and form, Stelling turns her sensations into what she describes as a visual language, a way to translate her intensity of feeling and explore the inchoate, a world of exploring “the ways we experience and perceive beyond what is immediately visible. It’s about creating a space for viewers to ‘see’ with more than just their eyes, to feel the complexity of existence in a single, suspended moment.”

Indeed, Stelling’s work literally and figuratively flows with meaning, as she creates a dialog with the natural world. She explains that “My work…is a dialogue mostly about the natural world. I am very close to the earth, the people and the animals that live here.”

While sometimes taking on figurative or impressionistic form, Stelling’s work primarily focuses on the abstract, and the freedom abstraction provides for her. She relates that she is “fascinated by curvilinear forms and how I can use them to evoke a response.”

She also utilizes dream work, touching on dream symbolism in order to “develop a choice for initial creation [and] involve color, imagery, emotional attachments, and abstraction as the projected expression of connecting the inner world to the outer world in the form of a painting or sculpture.”

Connecting inner and outer worlds is the heart of Steling’s work, as she converts a personal dialog with color and shape into meaning through her, and the viewer’s, perception.

“Perception is the subjective roulette wheel and can be altered by position, mood, size, and relationship to social climate, as well as how I was raised,” she says, with her upbringing including early exposure to familial artisans and her mother’s profound love for the garden.

According to Stelling, her favorite medium for painted work is oil, whose qualities she asserts is “the most seductive, and gives me the color I crave.” However, she also loves working in clay, and the tactile nature of doing so.

Shaping multi-layered work in whatever medium she selects, Stelling’s goal is to allow viewers to find their own entry point and response to her images. “I am making beauty for all,” she says, noting that “Many of my paintings and installations are about women’s issues, the environment and our responses to the world.”

For Stelling, regardless of subject, her paintings are both conceived and created as journeys, layered materials that she carefully builds up over time with each element ultimately contributing to a finished piece. Simply put, she explains that “I try to make what I like and what gives me joy,” which she then shares with her viewers.

Having shown both internationally and throughout the U.S., Stelling is especially excited about a recent 20-work purchase by UCLA Stein Eye, and by her inclusion in the “Open Show LA” at LAAA’s Gallery 825 through January 10th.  Gallery 825 is located at 825 La Cienega Blvd. in West Hollywood, and is open by appointment.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the artist