Eco-Visionaries EFA Artist Salon Jan 2020

by Patricia Frischer

January 11, Sat from 2 - 4 pm . Eco-Visionaries Artist Salon
California Center for Creative Renewal, 1905 Crest Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024

Our thanks to Ellen Speert, moderator par excellence and host as well as Paul Henry. Both prepared their fabulous CCCR garden for this Artist Salon.

The presentation by the charming Ashley Mazanec was inspiring and interactive. We sang, we even moved!  Check out her EcoArts Foundation and the program where she teaches eco-art at Del Sur Elementary. Here are some more of the organizations she recommends: Parachute Arts, the Artists and Climate Change blog based in New York City and the Climate Science Alliance affiliated artist program based here in San Diego. Ashley was particularly good at naming eco-artists including those interviewed in her Let’s Talk About the Weather podcast: Diane Burko (glacier and climate photo and paint); Zack Rago from chasing coral; eco-artist professors Andrea Polli, Beverly Naidus, and San Diego-based Ruth Wallen; The arctic cycle climate change theater, Israeli artists Doron Gazit and Noam Bedein, comedian Peterson Toscano, and place-based environmental artist David Buckley Borden.

Ellen, William Lesley, Alessandra Colfi and Becky Cohen are hoping to start a branch of Extinction Rebellion  in San Diego and will be visiting the branch in Los Angeles to check it out. Hopefully they will report back on their progress.

We all had a chance to introduce ourselves and talk about our art and our passions. Then our open discussion covered topics related to how can you use your art to advance solutions for environmental concerns.

• Our own personal pain can affect the society as a whole.  That could be a starting place for healing.
  
  
• Another starting place is a sense of place. Broken pieces can be brought together for a new life. Recycling, upcycling are important but more authentic when personal stories are included.
  
  
• Look for appropriateness in your materials, sharing resources and creating balance. The art we make should be made responsibly with eye to the environment and even personal safety.
  
  
• Interactive art is essential element. How you get the public to respond to the work beyond empathy all the way to action.
  
  
• We should integrate art in everything we do: for example for gift giving, using handmade cloth instead of wrapping paper that can used again and again.
  
  
• There is a place for both open aggression and gentle persuasion but a bunch of humor is always a good way to lighten the mood and open the mind to positive suggestions.
  
  
• If you can combine your grants application with other benefit agency grants in collaboration, you could have better luck in succeeding. So look for environmental grants and add art components.

Our next meeting March 14: Portia La Touche Moderator, The Good, Bad and Ugly of art criticism. Please send idea for other Artist Salons to Angela Jackson

You can see a report about the current Endangered: Exploring California's Changing Ecosystems at California Center for the Arts Museum Escondido by Patricia Frischer

Endangered: Exploring California's Changing Ecosystems at California Center for the Arts Museum Escondido

by Patricia Frischer

Michelle Kurtis Cole

Endangered: Exploring California's Changing Ecosystems at California Center for the Arts Museum Escondido addresses both the wonder and the destruction of California's changing ecosystems. There are 21 artists in a wide variety of mediums and scales curated by Danielle Sussalla Deery with just a few of them highlighted below. 

From Jan 10 to March 8, 2020. More info museum@artcenter.org

In order for the public to get a sense that something needs to be done for endangered land and animals, it is important to establish an empathy. In this show nothing does that better for me than Michelle Kurtis Cole's very fragile glass corals. They are white because they are ghost of living corals which have bleached because of climate change, ocean acidification, diseases, overfishing, sedimentation, and pollution. These delicate perfectly created cast glass animals sit on or under glass waves. Our oceans can be protective or potentially crushingly cruel. We need to stay on the good side of Mother Nature.

Kira Carrillo Corser and Debb Solan in their Virtual Undersea Installation (part of Sea Change: ACT)  have created a total undersea environment, You literally feel you are swimming with the fishes, with recycled plastic jelly fish above and projected fish on floating silk.Marjorie Pezzoli has additional jelly fish in the gift store. 

The Malibu Conservation Camp CC #13, established 1986 are female inmate crews utilized on wild land fire suppression and county conservation including maintenance of the state beaches, and local parks and fire stations. Kim Abeles works in collaboration with these women to create art funded by the NEA and the LA County Arts Commission. Plus this crew is a jointly operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LAC). I was taken by many of her works but especially by the protected pine cone and the dining room installation with ceramic stenciled from pollution particles. 

Margaret Noble has given present us with the most interactive of all the displays and that is vital and brings a cutting edge element to the exhibition. Imagine a slot machine which a huge variety of changing images. You step on a button on the ground and it activates. Step again and your own personal selection of three images appears. But this is not a game of chance but a fight for survival. 

I am always pleased to see work by the late Jen Trute. She was environmentally concerned before the main stream and it a tribute to her and a joy whenever her works are on view. 

Michelle Kurtis Cole

Michelle Kurtis Cole

Kim Abeles

Kim Abeles, detail

Kim Abeles, detail

Kim Abeles

Kim Abeles, detail

Jen Trute

Stephanie Bedwell

Ruth Wallen

Jeanne Dunne

Cheryl Tall (don't miss the large display in the gift store as well)

Jean Lowe

Gail Roberts

Catherine Ruane

Catherine Ruane, detail

Bridget Rountree, detail

Sasha Koozel Reibstein

Sensuality - Objects of Beauty at the IN Gallery

Broni Likomanov

I was invited to choose a best of show by Irina Negulescu for a juried exhibition:   Sensuality - Objects of Beauty  The IN Gallery (1878 Main Street, SD 92113). Irina works very hard to support artists in her gallery and to also sell her own work. She is to be congratulated and supported for her efforts in having this showing space in Barrio Logan.

Irina Negulescu

Irina Negulescu

Selecting work for best of show is a very subjective process.  My choice was Broni Likomanov whose drawing you see at the top of this page as well as the sculpture below. The drawing immediately reminded me of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele whose work is known for its raw sexuality.  I ran a gallery in London in the seventies and became familiar with work from this period. He lived from 1890 – 1918 and I often saw his art come up in auction. The women depicted here might not truly meet the shows theme of Sensuality, but you know this is a woman who can take care of herself. The artist is not exploiting her for her beauty. Likomanov is holding nothing back and I think the honesty of the work shines through. I have a master degree in sculpture and so the fact that this artist is also a sculptor might also have also influenced my choice. 

Broni Likomanov

I want to congratulate all the artist in this show and remind you that not only should you think about supporting artist by buying their work, but even saying an encouraging word is a great help. So make your own personal best of show selection and let the gallery know. 

Rich Steward

Leah S. Bassett

Ansley Pye

Cassandra Schramm

Daniel James

Evgeniya Golik

Khalid Alkaaby

Randy Crawford

The gallery is open 5pm to 9 pm  every second Saturday of the month during the Barrio Art Nights and by appointment 6192788410 info@theingallery.com
And for this show: Tuesday December 17th through Saturday 21st  12-6PM shows ends on Dec 28, 2019.

Tiny Canvases: The Art of the Nail at OMA

by Patricia Frischer

I do lots of art about hands and fingers and there is a reason why we love our fingers. We can see them every day, with no mirror. They are in focus no matter how good or poor our eye sight.The are always in close reach.  They have been with us forever...we started sucking on them from our first days, maybe even within the womb. 

Decorating the nails on  our fingers goes back centuries. The small size of the canvas has just stimulated the intricacy of the designs, techniques and materials. The past has set high standards, but recently nail art has found its way onto contemporary fashion runways. At OMA, we see a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Creative Nail Design (CNDtm). This local company started in a garage by Dr. Stuart S. Nordstrom, but is now international. This fun exhibition Tiny Canvases: The Art of the Nail demonstrates that there is no place too small for fine art to exist. 

On view at the Oceanside Museum of Art until Feb 9, 2020. 

Judy Tuwaletstiwa at Lux Art Institute

by Patricia Frischer

Judy Tuwaletstiwa is a story teller and a story collector. She works with objects both found and shared but she also creates original things. Her point of view can be densely detailed or shiningly simply. Sometimes she starts at the beginning with the end in mind and other times the work seems to reveal itself only when it reaches its destination.  The work on display is varied in medium, but it all solidly comes from her.  She has a complex brain but it seems to be surprisingly uncomplicated.

I only know the actual work from the current Lux Art Institute exhibition where she is artist in residence until Dec 15 and the show will be on display until Jan 11, 2020. A native Californian, she now resides in New Mexico.

This set of works are based on objects Tuwaleststiwa has documented with stories for each one. We were allowed to choose our favorite and take away a copy image of the work. We were also invited to leave her one of our own stories, The series is called Where Does Art Come From?

The artist at her reception making a connection with her audience.

One of my choices was these scrapes of chalk gathered from a grandfather's frugal use as a tailor.

The diary of a fictitious character Patty Thompson which was aged with burnt edges.

I  thought of Agnes Martin when I saw the first of this series of memorials to commemorate a found dead crow. It begins with a very deliberate structure determined by the artist, but as the series continues, you can almost see that the crow is dictating how the remains should be placed. I ended up feeling the artist had not only channeled The Crow but also the spirit of one of my other favorite artists Eva Hess. This gave me a strong feeling of connection and context.

We measure our day from sunrise to sunset.

What if a day was a million years?

Might we hear the heartbeat of a rock?

Might we feel grains of sand forming?

Detail of above which sadly does not show the true black nature of these chips of fused glass but shows you what the surface looks like close up. 

Detail and side ways view of structure that makes certain fragments rise off the surface of the work. 

Tuwaleststiwa has a way of simplifying something complex and relating one work to the next. We see the hand print below (glass on canvas), then the full rendered hand in glass, then the photo with hands in one scene, and then not multiple photos but the one photo divided into different focus points.  Different points of view, all hers, but all as if they are coming from different people. 

Ruah, Hand 2: Breath Spirit Wind

This all red work was inspired by her Hopi husband story of murals in a sacred place. They were painted over generation after generation. Next to the work is a slide presentation of all the layers that were added,one on top of the other, before getting to this final destination. The video images part 1 and 2 are only a very few of the more than 100 images that were captured over time.

Continuing Painting 2

I encourage you to go and see the work for yourself, have a conversation with Judy Tuwaleststiwa and/or contribute a story like I did. 

Please watch the video of Tuwaleststiwa speaking of her art on her website  https://www.judytuwaletstiwa.com/about

Here is Judy Tuwaleststiwa  speaking during a residency at Corning Glass with Michael Rogers about her Jewish background which also describes part of her process of creation.