Art as Medicine at Torrance Art Museum

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If medicine is an art – can art be medicine? The answer is a resounding yes at Torrance Art Museum where two exhibitions are also about medicine.

Provocative, healing and thoughtful both the museum’s galleries feature art that literally and figuratively dissects medical intervention and practice, the body’s capacity to heal and be healed , chronic illness, pain and acceptance, and the state of American medical care.

Gallery Two presents a vivid, compelling exhibition created by patient artists in Art and Med.

Curated by Ted Meyer, the show features work by Ellen Cantor, Ayin Es, Rose-Lynn Fisher, Siobhan Hebron, Cathy Immordino, Rachael Jablo, Daniel Leighton,  Krista Machovina, J. Fredric May, Bhanva Mehta, Dylan Mortimer, Kathy Nida, Alice Marie Perreault, Jane Szabo, Susan Trachman, James T. Walker, and Meyer himself.

Intense and beautiful, viewers see beautiful, heart wrenching and beautiful photographic images of a complicated pregnancy from Cathy Immordino in “Cry for Help;” “Two Mirrors,” a wall sculpture offering a look inside Alice Marie Perreault’s role as advocate and caregiver; and Daniel Leighton’s vivid iPad painting radiating pain and healing – and the admission of same – in “Opening Up.”

Also on exhibit is the delicate mix of Ayin Es’ “Inherited Shock,” a woven wonder of oil, pencil, embroidery, thread, wire, paper, and pins on canvas; Dylan Mortimer’s zen garden and glitter reimagining of an ambulance ride in “Gates in Proximity to Paradise;” and Meyer’s own sinuous skeleton figure in “Structural Abnormalities” among so many other fine works, including dream-like photography from Jane Szabo, and terrific sculptural work from Krista Machovina among more.

For over a decade Ted Meyer had curated art shows focusing on artworks by patient-artists as a means of teaching future doctors and current medical workers about the lived experience of chronic pain and illness.

These patient-artists create work that depicts the myriad of ways their illnesses affect day-to-day living, physical health and mental well-being.  Like all important art, patient artwork makes strong statements about the human condition.  These works are personal in their creation yet universal in their scope. They make up some of Meyer’s favorites from his times as Artist-in-Residence at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.  Over 10 years he has curated some 40 different exhibits tied to the school’s core curriculum, producing beautiful exhibits that are also both compelling and informational ones.

In Gallery One, the medical world is both personal and more political in Body Politics. Curated by Max Presneill and Sue-Na Gay, this potent exhibition examines not only the disabled body, but how it is seen both socially and politically. The presenting artists include Panteha Abareshi, Emily Barker, Yadira Dockstader, Mari Katayama, Katherine Sherwood, and Liz Young.

Emily Barker’s witty and scathing “Good Medicine is Bitter to the Mouth” offers pithy commentary on health in the U.S.

There are heartbreaking installations dealing with medical billing, how the physical body is treated,  specimens and body parts, and the general treatment of those with disabilities or infirmities. It’s an achingly strong show.

View these two powerful exhibitions through September 9th, along with videos in the museums screening room, featuring Surrealist Vacations In The Subconscious 2023— a video art exhibition, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne / The New Museum of Networked Art, inspired by the Manifesto of Surrealism by Andre Breton.

TAM is located at 3320 Civic Center Drive in Torrance, Calif.

  • Genie Davis;  photos: Genie Davis

A Fond Farewell to California 101

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Work by Flora Kao, above

California 101, the art exhibition that took place annually – with the excepetion of pandemic closure years 2020 and 2021 – ran for ten years in iconic South Bay locations such as Redondo Beach’s AES Power Plant, empty store space in the South Bay Galleria mall, the former Gold’s Gym spot overlooking Harbor Drive, and for it’s final two years, in the Redondo Beach Historic Library near the pier.

Helmed by curator and founder Nina Zak Laddon, this was a monumental undertaking, focusing on Southern California artists, including but not limited to those in the South Bay itself. The beachfront community has been underserved when it comes to art, with the Torrance Art Museum, Hermosa Beach’s Shockboxx gallery, and the Palos Verdes Arts Center pretty much the only venues in these beach towns.

Laddon’s art brainchild offered expansive installations – such as this year’s radiant gold fabric and projected images from Flora Kao, and the delightful exsculpating food sculptures of Eileen Oda, among other works positioned in the former library’s kitchen. There was also a rainbow room of participatory twine from Peggy Sivert, who also presented an incredible quilt-like textile work featuring a white horse.

The exhibition spaces, quirky, unique, and some more easily availing themselves of moutning exhibitions than others, were always filled with a delightfully varied mix of photographic art, paintings and mixed media, sculptures, and projected works.  The vast display of art was likewise accompanied by programming that drew community members and a range of art lovers from across the region, with this year’s entries including an art salon conducted by Kristine Shoemaker, director of Shoebox Arts, a Sound Healing, and live figure drawing with Timothy Kitz, among others. The gift shop, with it’s Last Banquet kitchen adjunct, offered a wide array of art choices at reasonable prices.

Among the other highlights this year:

Jane Szabo’s haunting photographic images; delicate paper cut outs from Lorraine Bubar; repurposed objects in sculptural art from Ben Zask; Pam Douglas’s figurative installation honoring refugees; stunning black and white images from both father and son Richard Chow and Caden Chow; the lustrous light in the urban landscapes of Gay Summer Rick; Gina M.’s poignant and harrowing installation about gun violence in our schools, “Hate the New Normal.”

Also exceptional: Eileen Oda’s gorgeous large scale painting “Pilgrammage to Concentration Camp Where our Parents Were Imprisoned During WWII;” Scott Trimble’s haunting figures; Ann Bridge‘s exotic look at Southern California sky; Susan Else’s multiple, whimsical cloth sculptures; Karena Massingill‘s lustrous sculpture; Janet Johnson‘s felted fish; and of course, Jason Jenn‘s spectacularly spiritual ” a hundred and one dreams and stories,” utilizing poetically repurposed found and upscycled materials cast in sacred shapes.

Beanie Kamen‘s vibrant fabric work; Erika Snow Robinson’s dramatic palms; Michael Stearn’s motion-filled work in wood – all terrific, each unique.

Also powerful: colorful combos of paint and old dress forms forms Susan Melly; Aimee Mandala’s black and white, hypnotic “Heart Opener;” the soft rose of Beth Shibata’s “Petals Falling,” Mike Collin‘s sharp and witty “The Inventory of Scoldings;” the sparkling stars of Vojislav Radovanovic‘s mixed media “New Constellation,” and the interactive possibilities of a third-floor installation asking attendees to create their own rock stack.

The pandemic closures were a difficult recovery in terms of the volunteerism and donations upon which California 101 depends in part, and while this may or may not have been behind Laddon’s decision to conclude the annual exhibition this year, she also has new and exciting plans ahead, including a 2025 art exhibition that will include international artists.

So while we bid a fond farewell to 2023’s final California 101, it doesn’t mean this road has come to an end. Think of it more as a freeway interchange, a new highway toward art to be established, hopefully, in the near future.

And in the meantime, through September 10th, enjoy visiting and viewing Friday-Sundays from noon to 7 p.m.  Offer up your own 101 salutes to an ever changing and awe inspiring collection of diverse art – by the sea.

The Redondo Beach Historic Library is located at 309 Esplanade in Redondo Beach. Street and hourly pay lot parking both available.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Dive In

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Where the blue waters caress and also hold secrets, where the plants swim and sway, where secrets lie deep, both angels and demons may sleep…this is the sort of visual poetry C. Fodoreanu’s Ode to the Lake Sacalaia holds in its depths. If the lake inspires the artist’s creations, so does his creation inspire such visions in others.

An ancient Roman town lies on the deep silty bottom of this unsually deep freshwater lake in Romanian Transylvania.  Also resting there are the bones of divers who went in search of that almost mythical place and did not come back to the surface. And surely drifting there, too, are the remains of Fodoreanu’s childhood, his history, his dreams, and the circles and eddys of the artist’s self-discovery and promise.

There are photographs, some old and appropriately slightly watermarked; some large and bright in royal and midnight blues. Pedestal towers, with tree like markings, stand in a darkened back gallery. Each contains images of trees and water illuminated within viewing portholes. Behind this forest of pedestals, a projected image of branches and shoreline dances on the wall. On the ground are rune-like markings, vestages of a more distant past.

Projected images of water lap in an intimate deep blue on another such pedestal, a low bench allows the viewer to sit and contemplate the rhythm of the water, and resist the compulsion to dive in. Across the gallery, wavering cloth sheets hang from the ceiling, a circular spinning dance evoking the ripples on water.

Some of the photographic images are haunting, ephermeral, shadows of disconnected limbs and torsos in a gauzy film of sepia light. Others, are taken “From Far Away” and hung, pigment on rag, mounted on board, a landscape series seemingly taken from space, from the outer reaches of time. Then there is the large scale, board mounted pigment on rag image titled “Stars” which dances with blue on blue light.

A poem by the artist leads into the last gallery, dimly lit, and hung with large-scale blue images of diving and water so liquidly depicted that once again, the viewer wants to find that water and dive on in.  “We are the same, me and you, you and me…” Fodoreanu’s poem reads… and if we are the same, can we swim together in these crystaline yet dark depths?

For a little while, we can imagine that we do.

Ode to the Lake Sacalaia is at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery at CSULA through August 30th. A walk through by the artist will take place that day. Don’t forget to join in and take a dip.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis

Get Pulled By This Current

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photo above, courtesy of Wonzimer Gallery

Curated by Lawrence Gipe, how swift, how far is a beautiful, cohesive group show with a pointedly ecological theme. Riveting, captivating works provide diverse perspectives on nature and humankind’s havoc upon it. The show includes work by Gipe, as well as from Luciana Abait, Johnnie Chatman, Lawrence Gipe, Alexander Kritselis, Aline Mare, Liz Miller-Kovacs, Ryan McIntosh, Beth Davila Waldman, and Daniel Tovar.

Thematically inspired by Risa Denenberg’s “Ice Would Suffice,” the nine artists reach beyond typical documentary-style depictions of ecology, climate change, and the like, creating instead rich metaphors for our ecologies, and adding other concepts into the mix, such as identity, class, and societal norms. The entire exhibition is poetic visually as well as in concept. Mysterious, magical, and momentous images converge in a heady mix of painting, photography, sculpture, and video.

In the center of the room, Alexander Kritselis offers a large-scale mixed media work, acrylic on metal panels, along with a variety of other materials. “We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat” references the cultural zeitgeist of recent years past, the television series Lost, in its use of iconic figures from the show as well as in the title, and with words painted on the piece.

Angled and metallic, it evokes a grounded airplane wing (another Lost reference) and touches how past culture influences present and future action – or inaction. What have we all “lost?” What might we find if we were to build that bigger boat?

The large sculpture works impactfully with curator Lawrence Gipe’s massive two back-wall canvases, part of his Russian Drone Paintings Series. Based on footage taken from drones, Gipe’s luminous large-scale oil works shine with complexity, as with “Russian Drone Painting No. 7,” in which he leads us right to the edge of fiery cataclysm, the Darvaza Gas Crater, otherwise known as The Gates of Hell.

In shimmery contrast, “Russian Drone Painting No.5 (Hong Kong, 2019, Pro-democracy protesters on Lantau Peak)” presents the shadow of hope and sunrise. Eerie and heartbreaking, in Gipe’s hand, even disaster is beautiful to witness.

Aline Mare also offers work that shimmers with an interior glow. Taken from Her Dangerous Landscapes series, Mare gives us fecund, lush images the color of Earth and the crystals taken from her heart, emeralds and topaz and sapphires.

Working in both photographic and painted mediums on metallic paper, entering Mare’s verdant, magical space offers a sense of fragile succor, one that is fleeting in a riparian world deeply affected by drought.

Beth Davila Waldman layers her visceral work of acrylic paint and pigment on tarp mounted on panel in “La Ocupación No. 2.” The uneven bifurcated surface poignantly reveals what appears to be tent and shack houses lost in the wasteland of rough desert border land.

Liz Miller-Kovac’s multiple works are mysterious and catharctic. Whether in video projected in the gallery’s backroom, or in large photographic images that include parched earth, rare red algae blooms in the desert, and a supple, surreally fabric-covered model, her work speaks to longing, desire, death, and resurrection. These striking, entirely unique and surreal visions weave both landscape and human body in a hum of beautiful, if terrible, despair.

“Owens Venus” positions a bright aqua-swathed figure against that cracked Owens Dry Lake ground and ruby algae; “Caspian Siren” gives us a red cloaked goddess wading and adrift toward massive oil platform in the sea. It is beautifully paired with Miller-Kovac’s “Anthropocene Artifact,” a mixed media installation that includes a suspended black torso that appears to be dripping black oil into a metal pan, in which an iPad floats, playing images of water. It is the ultimate depiction of pollution – and the fossil fuel industry.

Luciana Abait’s images stun, involve, and evolve before the viewer’s gaze. A mix of photography and acrylic paint on raw canvas – the texture of which Abait says appeals to her for these works, and it truly does offer an additional layer of involvement, recalling the rough texture of the land she depicts.

Both “On the Verge #4” and “On the Verge #3” offer wildly beautiful, primarily melon and beige hued looks at the American West and are a poignant commentary on open land coopted from nature. Here are man’s encroaching houses, there is the rest stop on the highway, each skewing and stealing from the natural wonder. Abait’s classically precise detail and exquisite use of light shape a visual novel on each large canvas.

An entirely different look at the Western landscape emerges from Ryan McIntosh’s series of 8 x 10 silver chloride contact prints.

Oblique, haunting, and opalescent, images range from an eerily abandoned date farm in Indio, Calif. to oil rigs pumping in the desert around Taft. His Bakersfield gas station evokes a platinum version of an Edward Ruscha’s “Standard Station.”

Daniel Tovar’s looped video is perched on a pole and weighted with hand-cast concrete cylinders.

His “untitled” offers a mix of lush images, urban skyscapes, and forgotten landscapes.

Johnnie Chatman gives viewers two archival inkjet images, self-portrait silhouettes taken in a vast, profound landscape that man’s image only fleetingly – but all too powerfully – can visit. “Self Portrait, Grand Canyon” features a solitary silhouette standing sentinel on the very edge of the canyon; the same hauntingly dark figure stands amid the otherworldly, sensually sculpted boulders of Page, Ariz. We are all aliens, just visiting. We would be wise to remember that.

Above image courtesty of Wonzimer Gallery

The exhibition runs through September 20th, and its images will possess you. See for yourself. Wonzimer is located at 341-B S Avenue 17 Los Angeles, between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis; installation photos from Wonzimer Gallery