San Pedro Art Walk – First Thursdays

Posted on by Diversions LA
San Pedro Art Walk - Photos by Jack Burke
San Pedro Art Walk – Photos by Jack Burke

San Pedro is a treasure-trove of artist-owned galleries and dynamic exhibitions. Every first Thursday the area around the iconic Warner Grand theater from 6th to 8th Street manifests a bountiful art scene in an evening art walk from 6-9 p.m.

Erika Lizee
Erika Lizee

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Works by Erika Lizee, Echo Lew - Angels' Ink Gallery
Works by Erika Lizee, Echo Lew – Angels’ Ink Gallery

Yesterday, Erika Lizee and Echo Lew were among those featured at the opening of “Exuberance,” at Angels’ Ink Gallery, whose monochromatic theme was devoid of bright color, but nonetheless compelling.

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Huz Galleries
Huz Galleries

At Huz Galleries, Ngene Mwaura was putting the finishing touches on a piece that offered a beautiful contemporary spin on traditional African effigies; the water images of Huss Hardan’s blissfully surreal photographs, and the stunning colors of Wawi Amasha’s “Peacock Manifest” vividly drew viewers into this new gallery.

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Jumbie Art
Jumbie Art

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“Holographic Enlightenment” is the artistic message spread at Jumbie Art, where the owners provided 3-D glasses to enhance the enjoyment. The eye-popping wow needs to be seen in person to fully appreciate.

Gallery 478
Gallery 478

At Studio/Gallery 478, Ray and Arnee Carofano respectively showed evocative photographic art, many of Ray’s depicting LA River scenes, Arnee’s pieces including travel shots illuminating ocean shores and windshield views.

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Michael Stearns Gallery
Michael Stearns Gallery

And at Michael Stearns’ Studio 347, Stearns included pieces such as “Totem Forest” made whimsically from bathroom bamboo, in  a vibrant exhibit that also included the work of Lance Green.

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Studio Hiroko
Studio Hiroko

Beautiful origami cranes representing the prayers of all religions, and utilizing the wood from a toppled bonsai tree, formed one of many untitled creations in the poetic studio and gallery space of artist Hiroko at her Studio Hiroko at 382 7th Street.

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Rapping Sailors
Rapping Sailors

If art isn’t enough, check out street performers – including a group of excellent rapping sailors; food trucks, happy hours at local watering holes, and sidewalk sales by local boutique shops.

Rockin' in the alley
Rockin’ in the alley

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The Garden Church: Rev. Anna Woofenden, resident park dinosaur, live music
The Garden Church: Rev. Anna Woofenden, resident park dinosaur, live music

There’s live music, delicious food, and a “feed and be fed” message at the welcoming Garden Church, too.

Other fine exhibits included the offerings at Warschaw Gallery. Artist Teresa Lewis Pisano exhibited in a converted-for-the-evening hair salon.

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Warschaw Gallery
Warschaw Gallery
Wild Things by artist Teresa Lewis Pisano
Wild Things by artist Teresa Lewis Pisano

We’ll be profiling some of the individual San Pedro artists here in coming weeks, so stay tuned, and mark your calendar for September’s First Thursday art walk.

  • Genie Davis, all photos by Jack Burke

Erika Lizée

Posted on by Diversions LA

Erika emanantions

The delicate beauty and underlying strength of the paintings, drawings, and installation pieces created by Erika Lizee take viewers into a detailed world of flora and fauna, of magical phenomena, of the journey between the stamen of a flower and the multitude of stars in the universe.

Lizee’s coupling of the minute and beautiful with the infinite and grand just won the artist 2nd place at a LA Municipal Art Gallery exhibition. Lizee explains that she’s “awed by the vast intricacies of world we live in.” Her awe is evident in the magical quality of her work that shifts from the detailed reality of a perfectly rendered flower to cellular vastness that may be the unfolding of life itself or of a single living organism. In the artist’s words “I seek to express the sense of wonder I experience contemplating the fluid nature of reality. I am interested in representing the relationship between the known and unknown, the visible and invisible, the tangible and intangible.”

Erika And yet things continue to unfold

The artist creates installations that work as journeys, drawing the viewer down mysterious paths on a pursuit of nature and rebirth. Her sculpted acrylics work to mesh shadow and light, recreating the magical feel of the Northern Wisconsin woods in which Lizee spent much of her childhood. “I have a particularly vivid memory of studying the unfurling coils of a fiddlehead fern, and finding the mystery and beauty of this event,” she relates.

It’s the coupling of mystery and beauty, of a vast wonder and precise detail, that the Chicago-born Lizee shapes for the viewer. With a BFA in Painting from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and her MFA in Painting from California State University Northridge, Lizee is an Associate Professor of Art at Moorpark College and Director of the Moorpark College Art Gallery when she is not crafting her enigmatic, lush, and galvanizing works.

Erika Moving closer to solidity

Lizee’s drawings are perfectly nuanced graphite on paper, each more riveting and precise than the last. In “Moving Closer to Solidity,” two flowers, one light, one dark overlap. Sheer petals over solid, these flowers remind the viewer of lillies, orchids, the fecundity of spring. In “Clearly Visible,” three sprays of orchids are each wrapped inside cellophane. Are they isolated from each other and from us, or we from them? What do we see, in plain sight, but refuse to unwrap? What mysterious gifts await us that we package and contain, set aside and limit?

Lizee explains “Abstracted plant life emits ethereal and luminous forms that transcend our notions of natural phenomena. The viewer is often transported into a realm where pure essence radiates from bulbous pods and reaching petals, whispering a private invitation to the moment.”

erika breath

Her paintings continue such an invitation. In “Emanations,” a violet flower with grey and white circling ever outward from it, lights up this acrylic-on-canvas work. With “Connecting Breath,” white, purple, teal, and grey notes slip out with amorphous filaments born from a flower. Acrylic on linen, “Searching the Landscape of the Unknown” radiates an almost neon-quality brightness to white, blue, lavender, and brown filaments floating like smoke. It reads almost as if it were a detail taken and redefined from the artist’s larger, darker installation piece “…and yet, things continue to unfold.” This piece was a part of Lizee’s installation at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, created with acrylic on Duralar in shades of silvery blue , white, and light violet. The viewer wonders at what is unfolding here – the universe, a flower? Or perhaps both, all at once.

Like the lush flowers and filaments in Lizee’s work, the artist’s career is likewise unfolding, with exhibits scheduled for 2016 at the LAX, and at the 643 Project Space in Ventura. Lizee has recently exhibited at GALA Exhibits in Glendale, Calif., the JK Gallery in Los Angeles, and the FireHouse Gallery in Grants Pass, Ore., among may other locations. Lizee is currently exhibiting at Angels’ Ink Gallery in San Pedro, Calif. through September 25th, and at the BG Gallery in Santa Monica, opening on August 8th. She is also exhibiting at the LA Municipal Art Gallery Juried Exhibition through September 20th.

  • Genie Davis