It is an overpoweringly beautiful tree. A tree that has survived storm and history, hurt and war, human suffering and tyranny, the vicissitudes of life itself. Catherine Ruane’s “General Sherman” captures that hard-won grace in a vast work that, at present, arcs from floor to ceiling on the wall of the Yiwei Gallery in Venice.
Ruane’s work, which I’ve previously observed shown in a more horizontal construct at the Brand Gallery some months ago, is an awe-inspiring presence here, as alive in every detailed individual charcoal and graphite leaf as if it grew into this space, creating it’s own forest. The General Sherman’s fraught history aside, the most overpowerfing sensation in observing the artist’s recreation of it is of a blessing – for the continuation of life, the ways in which trees talk to the earth, among themselves, and through their whispered rustlings, to us.
The artist has constructed this beautiful work in multiple layers that evoke those rustlings. She’s described assembling the large-scale piece as something similar to “creating a paper doll” of massive proportions, with each leaf and limb a separate, delicate piece mounted on the wall, shaping a stunningly dimensional image.
Long a capturer of trees and nature, working at present in primarily the nuances of grey and black, Ruane offers a living world reimagined, a sensorial recreation of the natural one. Also on exhibit among her works are several sepia toned floral images, including the beautiful “Left Behind Rose,” above. The coloration resembles a dried and pressed flower, an old memory preserved.
Along with the multiple works by Ruane in this exhibition, Wanderland’s sweet, contained gallery show also features the work of Lynn Hanson and Elizabeth Orleans. Their work, too, features a peacefully monochromatic color palette, one that dovetails well with Ruane’s lustrously, luminously created flora and fauna. Each artist has shaped an almost mythological sense of meandering through a dream-like, yet resilliant universe in which color lives more in the mind’s eye than in the artworks themselves, rendering them, if possible, even more alive.
Ruane’s massive tree is a seminal work within a group of beautiful works. Don’t miss it.
Yiwei Gallery is located in Venice at 1350 Abbott Kinney; the show runs through early December. Settling in among its branches is highly recommended in our own turbulent times.
With three fine solo shows and one group show, the Los Angeles Art Associations Gallery 825’s current exhibitions, which opened February 22nd, are each deeply rewarding.
Suzanne Pratt
Suzanne Pratt’s exhibit bird·song, which is profoundly meditative, focusing on the transitory yet eternal in the immediate moment. The precise but seeming infinite images weave a complexity rooted in a primal sense of life-force. Spirals, shell-like shapes, seemingly-petaled pieces such as the artist’s richly dimensional “niyamita,” compel a closer look at the world itself as filled with meaning. Dimensional and riveting.
L. Aviva Diamond
L. Aviva Diamond’s large-scale photography also offers a dazzle of meditative works – these riveting works depict water as an entire world – in her glowing Light Stream. Euphoric and filled with a swirling dance that pulls the viewer within them, these sensational abstract images transport the viewer to another world that is both mysterious and magical.
Mark Indig
Photographer Mark Indig uses architectural shapes in his new body of photographic work, Naked Triangles. Skeletal and powerful, described as “x-rays of our culture,” radio towers and cell phone transmitters are depicted with grace, as stark, lovely, and spare, like castle turrets and church steeples for our time. Electric wires and their connection points stand like robotic sentinels, watchfully ominous. The delicacy of their construction reminds the viewer of the art of Watts Towers at first glance; a second look creates a less benign view, as if of a technological take-over.
Osceola Refetoff
And finally, the group show on exhibit, Penumbra, juried by stARTup Art Fair’s
founder Ray Beldner, offers black and white as the palette in a variety of
mediums. Participating artists include Larry Brownstein, Amy Fox, Donna
Gough, Rob Grad, Gina Herrera, Susan Lasch
Krevitt, Campbell Laird, Rich Lanet, Colleen Otcasek, Joy
Ray, Osceola Refetoff, Melissa Reischman, Catherine
Ruane, Seda Saar, Catherine Singer and Stephanie Sydney.
Catherine Ruane
From Catherine Ruane’s lushly nuanced nature in her graphite drawing “Magwitch” to Osceola Refetoff’s haunting infrared photographic sunset image of “Leaving Trona,” to Joy Ray’s mystical, textural wall sculpture, this is another rewarding powerhouse of a show.
Don’t miss!
Genie Davis; photos provided by the artists; exhibition photos from LAAA
Left to right, above, it’s the fantastic four artists and friends: Bob Branaman, Gay Summer Rick, Catherine Ruane, and Mike Street.
At Venice’s Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque through March 15th, the work of four exceptional SoCal artists makes up the Fantastic Four exhibition. Each artist is quite different from the other, yet their work in the rambling upstairs/downstairs gallery is brilliantly compatible in a quite wonderful show curated by Bob Branaman.
Gay Summer Rick’s intense golds, oranges, and pinks are the stuff of California dreams; Catherine Ruane’s delicate, ruminitive pieces are touched in gold and have an astonishing jewel-like glow; Mike Street’s work feels both modern and yet that it would not be out-of-place in Greco-Roman times, both monochromatic and richly narrative; while Bob Branaman’s work is all vibrant color, exuberant and blossoming with life.
In short, this is an exhibition to savor, in terms of its differentness among the artists – who are all friends – and their similarities. Each in their own way present work that is emblematic of their lives in California; images born both of imagination and the emotional alchemy that arises in the diverse environments of their home state and the fertile field of aristic dreams.
Enjoy the fantastic ride: these four take you on roads of beauty that refuse to remain unmapped.
The glow of Gay Summer Rick’s work, above and below is astonishing. It is the fire of sunsets, the rising light of dawn, the backdrop, love-song, and legacy of Los Angeles. From freeway commuter views toward the sea to the skies that simmer and shift above the downtown cityscape, Rick is perhaps the quintessential artist for LA. Radiant work here, as is her norm; with an underpinning of dreamy light even in the most prosaic landscape.
With Catherine Ruane’s work, below, there are familiar aspects of her oeuvre, too, and many previously unexperienced. Her gorgeous, often black and white drawings of trees and branches, flowers, and desert have been supplanted here by smaller, very jewel-like etchings.
From beautiful, motion-filled, wind-swept palms to fish with gold highlights on their scales, this is perfect, dazzlingly precise work. Each piece is a work of wonder, something so finely crafted that the viewer simply does not want to look away.
Mike Street’s work here is somehow timeless: it is of this place and era and yet it could also easily be from a distant world.
There’s a sculptural quality to each piece, and their monochromatic use of color adds to that. Rich in depth, they remind the viewer of the past, somehow transported to our time and space through the conduit of Street’s artistry.
To some extent, these fascinating faces remind the viewer of a daguerreotype, as if created on a silver-covered copper plate.
If Street’s work offers an elegant, restrained use of palette, Branaman’s work provides the exact opposite: imposing color, the delight of a hippie kingdom, a tie-dyed world, rainbows.
There is a fierceness to his colors, to his stained-glass-like patterns; an impulsive, vibrant quality that leaps at the viewer and catches one up in its powerful exuberance. Below, Branaman stands with Gay Summer Rick.
So – which of the four is the most fantastic? It’s a tough call – you’ll have to go see for yourselves.
One of the best ways to start a brand new year is by exploring art which resonates with life, promise, joy, and beauty. Southern California-based artist Catherine Ruane exemplifies all of these in her work, and specifically in one large scale piece currently on display at the Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825 as a part of LAAA’s signature survey exhibition featuring the best in emerging art.
The stellar Open Show 2016, on display now through January 13th, includes Ruane’s simply gorgeous, inspiring 36″ by 72″ “Minaret,” which is reason alone to take in the exhibition, juried by Jennifer Inacio of Perez Art Museum Miami. Featured artists include:
Elizabeth Bailey, Kelly Berg, Clovis Blackwell, JT Burke, Mario Canali, Chenhung Chen, Nathaniel Clark, Jaime Coffey Bateman, Karen Duckles, Holly Elander, Birgit Faustmann, Laurie Freitag, Dwora Fried, Kaori Fukuyama, Miguel Galán, Danielle Garza, Tanner Goldbeck, Antoine Guilbaud, Yoon Chung Han, Gina Herrera, Sol Hill, Mark Indig, Paul Ivanushka, Lynda Keeler, Carol Kleinman, Kevin Michael Klipfel, Faina Kumpan, Tom Lasley, Barbara Lavery, Jung ji Lee, Stuart Marcus, Randi Matushevitz, Dan Monteavaro, Alexis Murray, Makan Negahban, Robert Nelson, Denise Neumark-Rreimer, Eric Oliver, Elizabeth Orleans, Thibault Pelletier, Lori Pond, Meghan Quinn, Margaret Raab, Catherine Ruane, Larisa Safaryan, Shilla Shakoori, Chris Shelby, Susan Swihart, Haikuhie Tataryan, Reisig and Taylor, and Terry Tripp.
We’ve written before on the stunning work of Chenhung Chen, whose life-filled sculptures vibrate with delicate, contained motion; Dwora Fried’s intricate tableaux that inspire passionate discussion; and the touching, funny miniature worlds of Tom Lasley. Each of them and so many more terrific artists are represented in this show. Do explore it.
But today, we are writing about Catherine Ruane, whose graphite and charcoal works, of which “Minaret” is one, are quite simply profound.
Above, “Minaret.” The perfect, delicate detail in this intricate black and white image of a fan palm is nothing short of astonishing. Rough fronds, the scaled surface of the palm’s trunk, the finely caught shadows – this is an image of life itself, contained is a literal and lovely evocation of a palm tree.
Viewers who study this work will find, as with so many of the artist’s pieces, something that goes beyond the literal, that morphs a perfect tribute to nature into something ethereal and transcendent.
“The ubiquitous palm tree is both a part of Southern California which is my home, but also a plant that is a survivor despite long hot summers. The tree was once used as a tall tower to call people to prayer before a temple with a minaret could be built. I am fascinated by how this tree has been used as a way to bring people to a place of spiritual calm. I experience an internal peace while carefully rendering all the complicated mix of details in the bark and leaves. Within the chaos there a structure of order. Opposites thrive,” Ruane says.
Above, “Transgression.”
Ruane’s work is pristine, but it’s almost photographic nature is just one part of what pulls the viewer into her world. She doesn’t just chronicle, she creates a transporting experience, pulling viewers into what feels like a sacred space, fecund with life.
Above, “Gila River II.”
Below, “Cloister.”
Her water series ripples with light, the life of the water is vivid motion and shadow; her cacti are so sharply drawn you can feel the spines.
Above, “Unravelled.”
About her palm series, the artist says “The palm tree is the iconic tree growing throughout much of Southern California, Arizona, and Mexico. The Washingtonia Filifera or California Fan Palm…defines my personal experience of ‘home.'”
Above, “Invocation.”
There is a sense of awe and wonder in each piece, a complexity that is as nuanced as it is sweeping. Above all, Ruane takes a realistic approach that is exceptionally vivid and at the same time that approach is entirely poetic. It is a true experience of beauty to look at her works, and to study their detail is to fall in love with them and the desert life they represent.
Above, “Chaparel,” yucca.
Here’s the thing: the natural beauty she depicts, whether it is her palms, water, or other desert plants, is truly wonderful. But she inhabits each aspect of this flora so viscerally and so completely that her work involves the viewer in the intrinsic life force of that particular piece of nature. One can feel it breathe, feel compassion and empathy for a growing thing, an eddy in a river, a sheaf of cactus blossoms. Feel admiration for the resilience of a desert plant, feel the danger of its spines, feel the magnificence of wind, water, branch — she creates a vibrant personality in each work. These are living beings that she shapes.
Above, “Only the Wind.”
The artist also shares with the viewer a sense of discovery, both of the exceptional wonder of the natural images she depicts and of our ability to view them. Ruane says she hikes and explores the area around her home constantly, observing visual images that help her develop a work.
Feel the artist’s intimate observation in her “Constantine,” below, barbed wire pinning back desert blossoms.
Explore the glowing detail in this section of Ruane’s water series, below, focusing on the environmental improvements on the Gila River.
Do not miss a chance to view the lush, personal, thoroughly alive nature in Catherine Ruane’s work. It’s a beautiful way to start the New Year.
Catch Ruane’s “Minaret” in the exciting group show now at LAAA, located at 825 N. La Cienega in West Hollywood.
