PHES Gallery Impermanence; Sparkling like a Star in our hand and Melting like a Snowflake

 by Patricia Frischer

Michelle Kurtis Cole.

PHES Gallery presents Impermanence a group exhibition with Wendy Maruyama, Kathi McCord, Michelle Kurtis Cole, and Andres Amador reflecting life's transitory nature. But this is not a sad grouping of doom and gloom but a hopeful one because of the beauty reflected in each of the works.

I am most familiar with the work of Michelle Kurtis Cole. Her dedication to bringing attention to climate change and how it affects the ocean and our environment is a long time theme of her work. We were lucky enough to show a whole selection of her work in the DNA of Creativity exhibition at Oceanside Museum of Art as part of the Sea Change: ACT project. A set of 7 of her dying corals from that show are newly presented here. When corals die they are bleached of all color and appear underwater as ghost of their former selves. 

Michelle Kurtis Cole and Andres Amador.

Kurtis Cole hand sculpts interpretations of the precious undersea beings from red wax. Molds are then made from the waxes as the process is so tricky, that more than one model is needed. Then they are spurred and invested in plaster. The next step of the loss wax process is to melt the wax out of the investment. Then glass frit fills the hollow, the work is adjusted so that parts get more heat than other and the long process of firing begins. Slow heating and cooling assures the safety of the art, and then the lengthy process of finishing these glass gems begins, grinding off spurs, polishing, creating and setting stands to display them. 

There are two new works made especially for this show and if you look closely you can see the glass disintegrating. They are lit from within as if they have souls yet to be released. 

Michelle Kurtis Cole

Michelle Kurtis Cole

Michelle Kurtis Cole (detail)

The delicacy of a pencil line creates the impermanence in the drawings of Kathi McCord Endangered flora and fauna of the rain forest fill two walls. Everyone knows how to erase a graphite line and everyone is invited to do so in room two of her display. It is an emotional experience as demonstrated by the box of tissues available for tears. I could not bring myself to erase a monkey, but someone did and I am sure ended with wet cheeks.

Kathi McCord

Kathi McCord (before erased)

Kathi McCord (after erased)

Kathi McCord - erasers and tissue

Wendy Maruyama makes the most incredible furniture which is solid and long lasting, so seeing her soft and flowing hanging of identity tags from Japanese Americans interred in camps during World War II reminds us of these citizens uprooted from their homes and businesses.  Having your foundation whipped out from underneath you has happened to all of us at some time, but seeing this almost Christmas tree like form in the center of the gallery, almost make it feel like a celebration of resilience, bravery and the determination to survive.  

Wendy Maruyama (detail)

Making a sand castle and then watching the waves wash it away is one of the joys of childhood. Andres Amador takes this experience to a whole new level. It is impossible to imagine how these perfectly formed geometric shapes can be created. The photographs are stunning and it does help to see a video to really experience the dissolution as a complete part of the process. The sand is reborn to be its natural self or a fresh canvas. Amador not only works with sand and water but also clay and water as he uses native American basket pattern on rock formation that are then water blasted away. 

Andres Amador sand and sea

Andres Amador

Andres Amador clay on rock

Ellen Speert, curator of this show and the ES of PHES with husband Paul Henry recalls the words of philosopher Francis Bacon, "We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake."

Impermanence at  PHES Gallery
2633 State Street, Carlsbad Village, 92008   
Open Thurs - Sat 2 – 7 until Feb 13, 2022.
More info: Ellen 760-696-3022

2021 Cannon Gallery Invitational

By Patricia Frischer

Melissa Walter

One thing you can take to the bank is display of work at the Cannon Art Gallery is always tip top and this show is no exception. Karen McGuire, the curator, has chosen the five artists from those juried into the 2021 Biennial for this 9^th invitational exhibition.  The dramatic view when you first enter the show is to the back wall and the stunning wall sculpture by Melissa Walter (SD Art Prize 2020, La Mesa).   Stark but warmly lit, the works draws your eye immediately, but you walk through the graphite black and white drawings by Samantha Barrymore (Carlsbad) to get a closer look.  Barrymore’s art is hyper-photographic and by using the regular texture of the canvas sub-strait, the works almost look pixelated.

Melissa Walter (details)

Melissa Walter

 Samantha Barrymore  (pencil on canvas)

Brad Maxey’s (San Diego) intimate views of building interiors are also hyper, this time realism. They are beautifully rendered in full color

Brad Maxey

Brad Maxey

Jiela Rufeh (Encinitas) was the surprise of the show. Her encaustic and mixed media works seem to invoke a science fiction world where animals heads with extended horns have shrouded human bodies.

Jiela Rufeh

Jiela Rufeh

Jiela Rufeh

The sculptures by Griselda Rosas (SD Art Prize 2020, Chula Vista) continue to intrigue me. These multiple media pieces use materials in such unusual combinations and they appear to have some function but that is left to your imagination.   Her wall hanging with embroidery continue to develop in theme, shape and color.

These are the ones to watch!

Griselda Rosas (detail)

Griselda Rosas

Griselda Rosas

To experience the process for making art that Griselda Rosas uses, there are some art kits that are being given away for free. I followed all the instructions and here my own multimedia art work influenced by Griselda and made with all the materials in the kits. 

Patricia Frischer

The Cannon Art Gallery  Invitational exhibition
On view from Nov 13 to Feb 5, 2022.
Carlsbad City Library complex at Dove Lane and El Camino Real in the south of Carlsbad
Tuesday through Thursday: Noon - 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday: Noon - 5 p.m.
Admission is free. Masks are required.

Buddhist Monks and Mixed Media Artists Reflect on Impermanence at PHES Gallery

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

Creating the mandala.

PHES Gallery is a small but mighty space in Carlsbad owned by a warm and creative couple, furniture-maker Paul Henry and art therapist Ellen Speert. It has only been open five months but is already drawing attention from art-lovers in and beyond San Diego County.

Their current exhibition, Impermanence,  features four top-level artists, all showing works expressing the idea of impermanence: Andres Amador, an earthscape artist from Northern California; printmaker/illustrator Kathi McCord; glass sculptor Michelle Kurtis Cole,  and woodworker/furniture-maker Wendy Maruyama.

As a special attraction, six Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery in Southern India were invited to create an ephemeral piece in the gallery, a sacred sand mandala which would take five days of painstaking work to complete as they filled in the initial outline with grains of colored sand.

Creating the mandala: a close-up.

True to the spirit of impermanence, a basic concept in Buddhist thought, part of the process was the complete dissolution of the mandala outdoors on the afternoon of December 11. “It’s not a destruction, it’s a release,” said Ellen Speert, who has been working with these monks for years. And it illustrates another Buddhist concept—non-attachment.

Also working in the spirit of impermanence and non-attachment is Andres Amador, whose large-scale earthworks are created out of natural materials that are then returned to the earth…or the sea.

Andres Amador: Washed Away.  A piece created on a beach, photographed by a drone, and then washed away by a high tide. The tiny speck in the center of the piece is the artist.

Amador will be here in person in February, giving a talk at the gallery and doing a program with Ellen Speert at her retreat center, where participants will end up creating a communal piece on the beach in low tide. (For more about this, go to www.artRETREATS.com)

And then there’s Kathi McCord, whose impressive graphite drawings address the destruction of our rainforests and invite visitors to demonstrate what’s happening by erasing some part of a drawing themselves.

A detail from one of McCord’s wall-size drawings.

 

Michelle Kurtis Cole’s contribution to Impermanence features seven small, beautifully detailed corals, whose memory she’s preserving in glass as they’re disappearing in oceans.

One of Cole’s hand-sculpted glass corals.

We didn’t get to see Wendy Maruyama’s piece, The Tag Project, honoring the thousands of Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. It was removed to make room for the mandala-making but is back now, and we’ll be going back to see it.

In these times of ongoing Covid and other uncertainties, the idea of impermanence can be a kind of comfort. Don’t miss this fine, thought-provoking show, which is also impermanent, but will be here through February 13.

Impermanence at PHES Gallery
2633 State Street, Carlsbad, CA 92008
Gallery hours: Thursday – Saturday  2 p.m.-7 p.m. or by appointment
info@phesgallery.com/760-696-3022

 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net. 

Another Covid-time Christmas Brightened by Lighthearted Neighborhood Art

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

Find Peace & Dancing Unicorns on Marisa Lane in Encinitas/Olivenhain.

Last year around Christmas I wrote about light art around our Encinitas neighborhood, then discovered another great location while the lights were still up. So of course we went back there this year to check out the current attractions, along with a return visit to last year’s light-the-block parties, all of them welcoming passersby to share their holiday spirit.
Hot tips for cold nights: Dress warm, do a quick drive-through to see what’s happening, then find a parking spot and go out on foot. That way you can spend time with your favorites, especially the ones that change colors and moods. And wherever you live, ask neighbors about the best displays nearby.

11^th Street, off Rancho Santa Fe Rd., Encinitas/Olivenhain.
This is the most widespread of local light shows, including offshoot streets like Marisa Lane, and it’s been going strong for years. The photos below were all taken on Marisa, but there’s elaborate illumination everywhere you look. 

Gitano Street, off Chapalita Drive, Encinitas.
Strings of colored lights link both sides of this neighborly street, 

What you see as you drive onto Gitano.  

Front-side detail.

One of our favorites.

Village Run East, off Gardendale Road, Encinitas.
There were many more houses lit up here last year, on Village Run’s east and west sides, but this is still one we love. I call it The House of Blue Lights, but it changes colors, and invites you to push a button to activate musical accompaniment—and maybe even do a little dancing.

A new star attraction on Gitano 

Here’s wishing us all a healthy, delightful holiday season…and many thanks to the homeowners who graciously light up our lives.

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyle in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net. 

For art-lovers this holiday season, there’s no place like OMA

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt 

Wallpaper Ghosts (Watcher). A drawing from the Neil Kendricks: Temple of Story exhibit, illustrating the artist’s audio recording of his eerie Covid-time New Year’s Eve tale titled Wallpaper Ghosts.

There are half-a-dozen shows well worth seeing at Oceanside Museum of Art this month, and you may find yourself spending quite a bit of time with them. The first-floor gallery Temple of Story features artworks and recorded works of fiction created by Neil Kendricks, accompanied by softly evocative soundtracks from composer/musician Mike Mare. The drawings and video projections are visually arresting on their own, but the storytelling component—accessed with accompanying QR codes—adds an extra dimension that will have museum visitors feeling that they have truly entered into another world. (On view through Feb. 20, 2022)

One of the inked-in drawings on secondhand books from Temple of Story.

A still from the video projections.

Also on the main floor is a what is called “a museum store feature exhibit”—The Beauty of Science, by molecular biologist Beate Mierzwa, who is also an artist and fashion designer.  She translates complex scientific information into aesthetic visuals, turning images seen through a microscope into wearable art. (Through Nov. 28, 2022)

From The Beauty of Science: An unusual depiction of the final step of cell division.

The ESCRT Dress: Another look at cell division. When animal cells need to split up, “they put on a corset and call in an ‘escort’…which forms a spiral shape…and constricts its waist to separate the emerging cells.”

Walking up to the second floor, you see birdlife—beautifully detailed versions of sandhill cranes in a series called Migration by aptly-named quilt artist Charlotte Bird. Fascinated by their ability to make annual journeys from Arctic nesting grounds to California, Texas, New Mexico and Mexico—and back again, she is also troubled by how modern disturbances like climate change and habitat destruction are changing their lives. Migration continues in a small gallery upstairs. (Through Jan. 9, 2022) 

Quilted cranes along the stairway.

Duke Windsor: A Tall Order with Monarchs.

Then you go from birds to burgers: Duke Windsor’s Burger Series, where he elevates the American fast-food favorite to iconic status with 17^th-century Dutch still-life painting techniques and more than a little imitation gold-leaf. (Through March 13, 2022)

Part of the Birds of a Different Feather installation.

Close-up of the dolled-up but head-less motorcyclist and his bike.

But the stars of the second floor are Saki and Marty O, whose eye-popping fashion extravaganzas—with socio-political overtones—share the main upstairs gallery. Both were award-winners at OMA’s 2020 virtual Night of the Living Art event and now have the space to really show their stuff. (Through January 23, 2022)

Saki: Birds of a Different Feather is a shout-out for men to step up to the fashion plate. Male peacocks and parrots “get all dolled up…to prove themselves worthy of a mate,” says the artist. This dazzling installation features rock-star looks inspired by the birds

For years, Marti O has been creating high-impact wearable art out of worn-out quilts and old clothes. Now, in her Social Security installation, she considers the price of feminine fashion, and some of the dis-empowering roles women have accepted in the last century as they dressed for success with husbands and homes.    

A Dressing Shame: The featured character in this tableau from Social Security is a mannequin in an altered wedding gown covered with graffiti that reveals family secrets.

Another part of the installation.

 

The Teeny Tiny Art Mart is now open until Dec 20 and a chance to pick up a 5" by 5" artwork for only $25. Artworks are by novices, professionals, civic leaders, and local celebrities. You will not find out the name of the artist until you purchase the work! This is a fundraiser for the education department of the museum. 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyle in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net.