Aviary Soared – Curated by Betty Brown at Loft at Liz’s an Astonishingly Lovely Group Show

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With Aviary, the just-closed massive group exhibition curated by Betty Brown at Loft at Liz’s, birds of many feathers flocked together in a wonderful all-media exhibition that ranged from the sculptural to paintings, mixed media, and more.

There was the fragile, poignant newspaper-based work of Nurit Avesar, and the lineoleum block ink tattoo of a fighting cock on rich crimson from Edwin Vasquez. Six stunning free-form sculptural works by Samuelle Richardson, working in fabric over armature to create birds in flight. Calling out, and about to fly, they were arrayed in the project room; Debbie Korbel’s cardboard, steel, and wood “As the Crow Flies”  took off from the floor in the front gallery.

Placed with Richardson’s work, Joanne Julian evoked the brush strokes of Japanese calligraphy in her graceful graphite, ink, and prisma color work. Cynthia James oil on copper work seethed with salmon color in the same space while Jodi Bonassi’s vibrantly colored, intensely detailed canvas works were joined by her own sepia toned, simpler birds created on paper bags, and equally sublimely magical.

Like a shedding royal cape, feathers fell from a large scale work by artists Cheryl Dullabaun and Linda Parnell in the lush, regal “Volaries.” John M. White positioned his paintings of birds on wires; L. Aviva Diamond’s riveting archival pigment prints soared in black and white.  Edwin Vasequez provided “Mayan Birds” as masks, evoking both totem poles and Mayan civilizations.

Kaoru Mansour presented works on wood panel illuminated with gold leaf and thread.

Dean and Laura Larson offered a phenomenal collaboration. Laura Larson’s astonishingly alive bronze sculptures, “Birds in Mourning,” were paired with a beautiful large-scale composite photograph by Dean Larson that placed the sculptural works within a fully invented setting.

As very different as they were striking, works by Bibi Davidson – touching on the vibrantly surreal, and rich works from Deena Capparelli both each provided immersive visual stories. Quite different works by Roberto Benevidez were equally filled with movement and power, his astonishingly alive sculptural birds perched on wooden dowls. Jill Sykes’ work glistened and shone in spare, graceful patterns.

Seventeen artists in all presented work, which viewed collectively was like entering an actual aviary, filled with varied birds from every corner of the world. Feathers, captured in sculpture or paint, photography or mixed media erupted in a swirl of motion and color, layered and lovely, fragile yet powerful.

Collectively, the works spoke to each other in a kind of contrasting, wonderful cacophony of song you could almost hear, wings you could almost feel brushing the air of the gallery space. There were resting birds, fighting birds, flying birds, perching birds, floating birds, sleeping birds. While the opening was crowded with artists and guests, on a quiet afternoon, one could almost hear the birds rustle, stir, and soar.

Vivid, beautiful odes to the longing for flight and the joy and pain of this species and our own – each work joined in this aching chorus.  If you missed it, but would like to possess a winged thing or two, reach out to the gallery or curator.

Loft at Liz’s is located at 453 S. La Brea Ave.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

Forest Bathing Takes Root at Loft at Liz’s

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Memory Tree by Catherine Ruane, above

Through June 17th, take a walk in a forest of art with Forest Bathing, now at Loft at Liz’s. Curated by Betty Brown, the exhibition is a celebration of nature. Paying homage to the Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, the exhibition takes the idea of mindful discovery and peace through nature and transforms it into an experience in the gallery through paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photography, as well as mixed media installations. 17 artists create their own depictions of nature, and it is worthy of a long, deep forest-bath.

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Above, artist Catherine Ruane.

Catherine Ruane’s brilliantly realistic graphite drawing, “Memory Tree,” draws viewers within its massive, comforting branches.

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Lyrical and wondrous, the work feels tactile, as if the branches were embracing the viewer.

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Bibi Davidson, in contrast, gives us brightly colored trees in a surreal world that leads viewers into a dream-like state. Viewing her work is a fabulous adventure.

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Linda Vallejo’s graceful paintings of the oak trees around Topanga Canyon exude peace.

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Hung Viet Nguyen’s richly textured tributes to the trees of the Ancient Bristle Cone Pine Forest outside Big Pine, Calif., seem magical and beyond this world.

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His thick paint and vibrant palette add to the sensation of having entered a new realm.

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Speaking of a different world, Marthe Aponte takes over the Projects Room, with “Sacred Trees,” using drawing, embroidery, and paint and picote, a traditional, painstaking, and delicate form of French paper art.

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To enter the room is to step into a different dimension, a hushed and holy and strange place that glows. In the back of the room, a Joshua Tree of slightly different construction stands, as if watching over the viewers who enter the room, a guardian of a reverent place.

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Another mixed media work comes from Dave Lovejoy and Susan Feldman, who have created a contemporary grotto in one of the gallery’s stairwells, one made of wood and thread, shaping trees that are instantly recognizable as such, and yet deconstructing the shape of limbs and trunks. The use of lighting, the evocative green glow of this dimensional installation, make the work seem like a portal. It beckons, fecund.

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Also contemporary: Chenhung Chen’s 3-D tree constructed of electrical cords and wires: using this detritus of technology, she’s created a poetic and lovely reduction of the essence of “treeness.”

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Another true stunner is Samuelle Richardson’s white wood tree, occupied by cacophonus crows. You can almost hear them.

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Her fabric sculpture is evocative and haunting, but at the same time, she’s managed to convey a sense of whimsy in the work, as if one had entered a fairy tale.

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Above, glittering trees from Hermine Harman.

There are many other wonderful works taking root in the gallery forest as well. Exhibition artists include in all: Marthe Aponte, Chenhung Chen, Bibi Davidson, Barbara Edelstein, Susan Feldman & Dave Lovejoy, Renee Fox, Maria Greenshields-Ziman, Hermine Harman (whose glittering trees explode with color above), Joanne Julian, Sant Khalsa, Alberto Mesirca, Hung Viet Nguyen, Samuelle Richardson, Catherine Ruane, Jill Sykes and Linda Vallejo.

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Above, beautiful, elegatic photographic work from Sant Khlasa.

If the words dream, other worldly, mysterious, and haunting have come up in this review – and they have – it is because entering the gallery, one must give up a sense of the “real world:” the noise of the street, the crowds on the stairs at the opening, and instead embrace the sensory experience of stepping into a forest of art, one that is indeed all of those things.

From the most realistic to the most fantastical renderings, Brown has shaped a forest that embraces and explores natural beauty and our perception of it, soaking us in the shadows, serenity, and life force that is inherent in these artistic woods.  Emerge from this forest refreshed, yes, but also expanded: let these images of nature and wonder slip into your soul, and feel the better for it.

You’ll need to hurry in – but once you’re there, bask. Loft at Liz’s is located at 453 S. La Brea in mid-city. The exhibition closes June 17th.

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  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, Susan Feldman installation photo courtesy Cheryl Henderson.

 

 

Nature is Nurtured in Transcendent Exhibition at Loft at Liz’s

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Jackson Pollock once responded to a colleague’s questioning of his work with the retort “I am nature.” Curator Gary Brewer has taken that idea and run with it, in a beautiful, thoughtful exhibition of the same title at Loft at Liz’s in mid-city through April 22nd.

It is not any one person who embodies nature, after all, we are all a part of the natural environment, we are its components, its caretakers (of sorts), its outgrowth. We seek the succor, inspiration, and purpose in the wonder around us, the burgeoning, blossming of the spirit. Art reveals all of this and more, our connectedness in and of nature, our revels in it, our destruction of it.

Thirteen different artists show us this connection, theirs, and ours, in a beautiful exhibition of tactile images in a variety of media.

Aline Mare Nature

Aline Mare (above) offers a variety of photographic artworks that in some cases – as with two lightbox photographs – literally glow. But each of her works here, which utilize rich and hypnotizing natural elements such as crystals, roots, and seedpods, create a light-filled world; the universe in miniature made large again; the universe within our bodies. A world of wonder pulses from her images, enveloping, beginning, a process of natural creation and passage.

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While the work and medium is completely different, Bonita Helmer’s lush acrylic and spray paint works take us on a journey that seems both inward and to a distant planet. The silvery grey and periwinkle blue backgrounds here are barely enough to contain these travels.

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Perhaps one should undertake them on Charles Dickson’s awe-inspiring mixed media work, “Sankofa Spaceship Dogon Class.” Dickson uses found objects to create a starship that goes artistically where few have gone before; highly detailed, translucent in sections, and suspended from the ceiling, it was both a focal point of conversation and attention at the exhibition’s opening, and a literal invocation of transport. His aluminum “Point of Departure,” a silvery wall sculpture that dazzled with light, accentuates the idea.

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David Lloyd offers a series of mixed media works on wood and paper, with geographic components that resemble both kaleidoscope and origami flower. If these works indicate growth and change, then they’re a natural step toward the astonishing work of Gary Brewer, below, who would’ve been remiss not to include several of his own lush oil on canvas, and watercolor works on paper, here.

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Brewer’s work offers both interior and exterior intricacies, mutable, vividly colored, dream-like. They take on inner and outer space at the same time; we contemplate what could be the molecular building blocks of existence, and life forms sailing through the stars, forming new worlds. There is gravitas and majesty in this work, but also a playful sensibility, an inward joy.

Jesse Standlea

Joy is perhaps not the zeitgeist in the narrative Jesse Standlea presents, in sculptural works that are beautiful but dark, their titles focused on “Mortality,” and an awareness of the natural order of things: all things die, some things come back.

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At least that is the case if we do not destroy our own natural world.  Monet Clark’s color photographs, give us images that point to the invasion of the natural world by human beings, and the destruction that cavalier dominance can cause.

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Nick Brown’s mixed-media painted works, which include materials such as cotton rope, white sage, and shark teeth, are beautiful, but fused with a kind of inward sadness. And it’s no wonder: the images are representative of the remains of burned homes in the San Bernardino mountains. 

Paul Paiement

Perhaps we are only a small step away from our own destruction – if we destroy nature, and it is us, then we are all nothing but ash. Or perhaps there are boundaries we could set for change, as in Paul Paiement’s works in acrylic on wood-panels, depicting the dichotomy between natural settings and man-made structures (above). His ceramic and acrylic insect “Hybrids CS” series is something else altogether: is this the mutated result of man and nature in consort?

Mabula

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Richard Mabula’s untitled oil on canvas and board four-panel painting is dark and monochrome, evoking the color of raw wood; on the far right, a smiling/fierce skeletal face seems like a warning of what will happen if we do not respect nature – and our own.

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Shiri Mordechay

Equally dark yet somehow redemptive are  Shiri Mordechay’s small individual drawings on paper, above, each offering precious clues to a different world.

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Xu DaRocha takes us full circle, perhaps, with ceramic moon rocks that appear about to gestate; blissful floral colors in acrylic on canvas works, and a world with choices to be made, as with the sultry snake and equally reptilian blue hand invading the floral bliss of “How far is heaven.”

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Perhaps that is the point here: if we are nature (and we are), it is imperfect and wonderful, profoundly holy and routinely ruinous; ready to bloom and consume, to thrill, inspire, destroy, and rise again — whether here on this earth, or in another form of natural eternity.

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Work by Aline Mare, above.

There will be an artist talk on April 17th at Loft at Liz’s – go get in touch with your natural self.

– Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis, Gary Brewer

Here’s Looking at You Kid at Loft at Liz’s: Collaborative Curation

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Here’s Looking At You, Kid, now at Loft at Liz’s through November 5th, puts the gallery’s best face forward: the collaborative curation focuses on portraiture as subject and form. And this week is the time to take a look at the subjects and their artists, with an artist talk scheduled October 23rd, featuring Justin Bower, Alejandro Gehry, Annie Terrazzo and Jane Szabo.
Co-curated with galleriest Liz Gordon and Cynthia Penna, it marks the pair’s third collaboration. Along with a stellar collection of portraits in a wide range of mediums, one of the most exciting elements of the exhibition is an artist in residency that allows individual artists to interact directly with anyone who’d like to have their portrait done. The gallery’s Project Room is the space in which artists create this work.
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Gordon notes “Each week during the portraiture show, The Projects Room will become a 1-2 week residency for you to choose among the participating artists to create your own portrait. You can contact the artist directly for scheduling and pricing.” Through the 29th, the artist is Alejando Gehry; October 30 through November 6th, Alex Schaefer.
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Portraiture here carries so many different facets, but Gordon found the show difficult to curate only from the standpoint that “there are so many  artists to choose from who do wonderful portraiture. We wanted portraiture that told a story… for example,  Alejandro Gehry’s portraits encompass an in-depth study of World War 1 and the countries that fought in it. Jane Szabo’s photographic portraits of people in their own environments gives us a glimpse into their lives beyond their faces.”
She adds: “We also chose artists whose work and mediums are vastly different from one another, with two exceptions:  Carl Grauer from the East Coast and Alex Schaefer from the West Coast – it is uncanny how similar their palette and stroke are, and it is exactly for this reason I wanted to show them together.
What is amazing is that neither one knows the other and yet when their work arrived, at least 10 of the portraits resembled one another.”
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Penna describes the show as focusing on the idea that “I exist, because I am in the picture,”  noting that photography revolutionized the world of painting. “When the photograph was introduced, the possibility of being immortalized became accessible to everyone, something which represented a social vindication, an economic means of assuring a slice of immortality.”  Unlike the raw immediacy of a cell-phone selfie with its disposable artifice, Penna posits that the painted portrait – or photographic art form as portrait “slowly fixes an existence and a personality…something that lays one bare for all time and that cannot be cancelled…”

The gallery’s exhibition is described by Penna as “a kind of portrait that seems to look back at the observer: it looks and it seems to say ‘take care, I am the one who does the looking, I am looking straight through you and laying you bare: you cannot hide from me because it is me who controls the play of the gazes.’”

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Each of the artists participating in the show give viewers this unblinking insight into the subjects they’ve shaped and documented and the viewer’s perception of them. Those exhibiting include: Carl Grauer, Justin Bower, Mary Cinque, Alex Schaefer, Annie Terrazzo, Alejandro Gehry, Antonella Masetti, and Jane Szabo.

It’s a wonderfully mixed bag:  Masetti creates female figures that mix “the fragility and strength that represents the essence of femininity. I try to represent, through my paintings, our challenge: we do not fear you,” she says.

Gehry works with a long held interest in the history and decorative nature of military uniforms.  “I wanted to paint the figure, and also incorporate the significance of historic military wardrobe by using the post Napoleonic ornate headwear of the First World War. I began making these paintings in 2013 with the intention to lead up to the centennial of the beginning of World War I. On January 24, 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta removed the military’s ban on women serving in combat. This gave me the idea to adapt the series and swap the gender of the figures I was painting. The women represented in these paintings are wearing designated helmets of the countries that fought each other during the war.”

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Szabo gives the viewer insight into person, place, and the individual’s place in their world. Her photographic work here brings an intimate look at the portraiture subject in the “wild” of their own environment: their homes. Providing a look at the life a person inhabits, the result is both an artifact and an exploration.

Schaefer offers fully alive portraits that seem to have flowed directly from the subject to brush to canvas. It is a kinetic connection to be savored.

Each of the artists create portraits that are immediate, visceral, and filled with character and contemporary style. They look at you, they meet you, they see through you – as the viewer sees into them.

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Coming up November 2nd, Loft at Liz’s offers viewers the chance to participate in An Evening of Self-Expression, celebrating diversity and individuality.  Attendees can have Schaefer paint their portrait in just 20 minutes.

Lilli Muller invites visitors to bring a piece of clothing to be painted to reflect personal style. Pick up a DIY henna tattoo kit or have one applied by a skilled artist; or arrange a portraiture session in your own home with Szabo.

The event takes place from 7 – 10 p.m. on Friday Nov. 2nd; the exhibition itself closes 11/5.
– Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis