For those of us who are visual, listening with our eyes is second nature. But when you listen, you often hear things differently depending on your mood. My mood was set when I arrived to see the Steve Gibson exhibition at the SIP Art Space in San Marcos by an article I had read in the New Yorker magazine. The article Bodies of Evidence by Anthony Lane describes the 2022 version of a film by David Cronenberg Crimes of the Future. The key for me was the "single conceit: a plan to reboot the human digestive system so that we will gradually be capable of eating plastic." So primed, I saw these organic shapes as human remodeled internal organs. I know this is very specific, but that is what I saw/heard in these works on the last day of the exhibition. When I read Doug Simay's curator statement, he quoted Gibson, "Paint like you are an alien."
I have seen many series by Steve Gibson and his technical skill using gouache is always impressive. The color is so flatly applied that it could be silk screened and the lines are so precise that it almost seems mechanical. But I am always drawn to the wonderful colors that sing from the page. Maybe that is that it what I hear above all and unchanging.
All of his works seem to me to be like comic book illustrations without the story or the figures. The color and compositions are stimulating and they seem to read from frame to frame. I don't particularly care that I don't know the meaning or if the meaning changes with each viewing. I just get lost in the complexity of the patterns and the juxtaposition of all those hues.
A word about SIP Art Space which is not just the brainstorm of Vicki Walsh, but also her studio and classroom. SIP derives from the course she used to teach at Lux (now ICA North) and the Athenaeum. It stand for Someday I'll Paint. Walsh had a successful business career, but we are lucky that she found her someday, sooner rather than later. Her current work is about the black sheep that we all adore and hopefully will be on view once the series is finished.
The large airy studio and back court yard are great for overflowing reception guests who are lucky to have a food truck available and a wine shop next door. The small gallery is the perfect clean well lit place and Walsh cleverly has offered it to a variety of curators at no charge.
Elegant exterior of SIP art Space, a wonderful breath of art air in San Marcos.
The Listen With Your Eyes exhibition from May 17 to June 24, 2022
Self-Portrait: (Tamara in the Green Bugatti), 1929. Tamara de Lempicka Estate, ARS 2022.
Few women have had a life as theatrical as Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), the art-deco artist whose name now graces a Broadway-bound musical at La Jolla Playhouse.
ABOUT LEMPIKA THE ARTIST
Born in Warsaw to a wealthy Jewish lawyer and a Russian socialite, young Maria Gorska managed to get her grandmother to spring her from a dull Swiss boarding school and take her on a grand tour of Italy where she discovered a love of painters like Caravaggio and Veronese and had a chance to take some art lessons herself.
When her parents divorced, she went to live with an aunt in St. Petersburg, and met her first husband, Tadeusz Lempicka, when she was only 15. A year after they married, the Russian Revolution broke out, and she had to use her wiles to spring him from prison. They wound up in Paris--a great place to be in the 1920s, but they were refugees, and he wasn't cut out to be a breadwinner. So she started painting in earnest, and within a few years was showing and selling seductive portraits of upscale patrons and female lovers, combining classical and cubist influences in her art while diving into a bold new world featuring Rafaela, the street girl who became her main model and muse.
As Tamara de Lempicka, her adventures went on to include a wealthier second husband--a baron whose mistress she had painted--and a well-timed departure for the U. S. before the Nazi invasion of Europe. After years of mingling with the rich and famous in New York and Hollywood, many travels, and continuing to paint even when her style went out of style, she finally ran out of steam in Cuernavaca, Mexico, leaving her ashes to be scattered on the legendary volcano Mt. Popocatepetl.
I was fortunate enough to be able to talk with Carson Kreitzer, the lyricist/playwright who originated the concept of Lempicka, and Matt Gould, the composer who also collaborated with her on the book. Their joyful spirits made the phone interview come alive.
"The show's actual beginnings are lost in the sands of time," Carson said. "I can only go back to when I met Matt in a workshop for composers and lyricists in 2010 and talked him into doing this really insane thing. I was used to writing about troublemaking women, and I'd been carrying the idea around for a few years, ever since a friend turned me on to Lempicka. Once I saw her paintings, I felt her story had to be a musical, but I don't write music… so I found Matt."
"In all fairness, it didn't take much to talk me into it," Matt said. "When I looked at the paintings and Carson showed me what she'd written so far, the words just sang off the page."
"I originally had in mind a Brecht/Weill cabaret kind of thing," said Carson.
"I saw it more as Les Miz--an enormous, sweeping musical," said Matt.
They've spent years developing various iterations of the show: first at Yale Repertory Theatre, then at the Williamstown Theatre in Massachusetts, always trying to get to the core of their mission: "to bring this incredible boundary-breaking woman into the current consciousness and give her the show that she deserves." Lempicka was heading for La Jolla when the pandemic intervened. Now, finally onstage at the Playhouse, this new version, helmed by Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin, looks like a winner.
"We're trying to do what Lempicka was trying to do: use her work as a springboard to create something new," Matt said. "Eden Espinosa, who plays her, will be a revelation, and Rachel is creating astounding stage pictures. We aspire to be as grand as a Lempicka and let the audience in on the wild ride of her life."
FOOTNOTE: Although in her last years, Lempicka fell out of fashion, her paintings have lately been selling for millions. Once again, her time has come…and you won't want to miss this chance to experience Lempicka for yourself.
EXTRAS: Googling Lempicka can give you a look at many of her paintings, and you can watch a delightfully informative talk about her by Roxana Velasquez, Director/CEO of San Diego Museum of Art, on YouTube.
You can also listen to Woman Is,a single from the upcoming Lempicka cast album, online. The lyrics not only give a real sense of the artist's passionate nature, but also her feelings about art.
"A painting is not a woman or a warhorse or a glittering sky," she sings.
"A painting is canvas, pigment, plan, and design, always design…Everything is design!"
LEMPICKA Mandell Weiss Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse 2910 La Jolla Village Drive June 14 - July 24
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.
Erika Torri resplendent in Zandra Rhodes dress in a pose we all know and love.
Athenaeum Music & Arts Library presents Erika Torri:The Continuous Thread from June 11 to July
16 with an opening celebration June 17 from 6:30 to 8:30 which is free.On display will be approximately 40 out of
1,400 of Erika’s textile pieces created in the late 1970s and 80s, along with a
selection of artists’ books, portraits, publications and ephemera that
represent Erika’s tenure at the library including some works from her private collection. Erika Torri became Executive Director of the Athenaeum in 1989 and is
retiring this year. We thank her for 33 years of service to the arts community. She will continue to build the world renowned artist book collection for the Athenaeum.
The following is just a small sampling of the miniature delights on display. The first set is inspired by the family portrait. Most of the others are landscapes or still lives, but they are abstracted. At first one wonders if this out of necessity or on purpose. But like Erika herself, each tiny stitch is well thought out and carefully placed. Even 1400 of these beauties would fit into a couple of boxes, conserving materials and space at a time when we have learned that bigger is not always better.
Here are a few of the arts works from Erika Torri's own collection.
Ed Ruscha
Ernest Silva
This is the collection of SD Art Prize Artists that have shown at the Athenaeum over the past years. Not only did Erika Torri arrange for the shows to take place at the Athenaeum, she is still a member of the SD Art Prize Committee. The SD Art Prize is produced by San Diego Visual Arts Network. We are eternally grateful for her support.
I have been waiting for months for the Timken Museum of Art to reopen and finally today the doors welcomed us in. At first I could not notice anything different except the removal of those old turn styles. But then I realized that the lighting and wall color was giving the works a different look. In fact when I took the photos for this article, there was no need for lighting adjustment. Everything looked clear and distinct and the window gleamed and showcased the view out the front and the pond out the back. Even the pristine new floor reflected calm and elegance.
There is returning statue of the Flying Mercury installed one of the side gardens and a fountain bubbled delightfully at the other side garden. The art on display is all the permanent works of the collection. Each one deserved our attention and that is why we can visit and re-visit, finding a quiet place for contemplation and an atmosphere built to allow us to feel the work as well as see it.
View out back windows
Luca di Tomme; Trinity and the Crucifixion with scenes from the Life of Christ
The Last Judgement. Russian Icon
Francisco de Zurbaran: Saint Francis in Meditation
Ella Ferris Pella; Salome. This is one of the new acquisitions and the first female artist in the collection! Let's hope that is a trend. She looks like she is ready to have a head on that plate.
John Frederick Peto: In the Library
Raphaelle Peale: Cutlet and Vegetable
Pieter Claesz: Still Life
Anonymous: Still Life
Flying Mercury comes home!
Wonderful to see a younger generation viewing the art
Lovely necklace with proceeds partly going to support the museum
A small but perfectly curated selection of items for sale in new gift shop.
Next show featuring Marianela de la Hoz as the summer artists in residence.
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