Chiachio and Giannone at Lux Art Institute: Painting with Needles and Thread

by Patricia Frischer

Chiachio and Giannone at Lux Art Institute (1550 S. El Camino Real, Encinitas, 92024) from Jan 25 to March 21. More info: info@luxartinstitute.org 760.436.6611.

One of the challenges I like best about art is that it makes you look at ordinary things in a completely different way. And if those ordinary things are recycled objects....that is all for the better. Re-purposing items and saving them from the land fill is a service to the whole community. Leo Chiachio & Daniel Giannone made me look at kitty cats with new eyes and  did this by embroidering over parts of old tapestry vignettes adding geometric shapes and bright colors in an off kilter way that stops you in your tracks. 

In their show and residency at Lux, you can see their work station with drawings and lots of small scales works but it is the giant triptych that hits you in the face. They take the tapestry format and makes it their own. They place themselves, their friends and their pets into the scenes which are perspectiveless.  They create something very rich in texture which only gets more interesting the closer you get. This is a new sort of Latin American art which is personal to these partners from Buenos Aires who have shown their art extensively throughout the world. 

Chiachio & Giannone invite you to bring in to Lux your own bits of fabric to contribute to their palette. You should also watch for a presentation of some sort at the Studio Door in Hillcrest during their residency. 

The Artists

Their work station

Studies with samples

Three details to follow. 

detail of above

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