Waiting Room: Craft and Wellness at the Central Library Gallery

By Vallo Riberto

Judith Christensen, NEW YORK BLINDS II

 

 

Waiting Room is a richly appointed exhibition curated by Bonnie Domingos, with eighteen artisans crafting an array of metaphorically, symbolic art objects that to one degree or another make conceptual or representational references to the exhibition’s theme, emotional and physical illness, suffering, healing and wellness. 

 

The waiting room theme is the curator’s metaphor for; “those liminal spaces that often invite introspection into our mental, emotional and physical worlds.”

 

Most of the work in this show moves between representational imagery to abstractions and conceptual and was created my members of the Allied Craftsmen of San Diego, with four exceptions, Michelle Montjoy, Christian Garcia Olive, and collaborators Victoria Fu and Matt Rich.

Judith Christensen, NEW YORK BLINDS II  (above) is on the conceptual side and is a large installation of hanging, folded paper. A series of folded paper strips are meant to act as window treatments, and attached to the many folds are a long list of unrelated, autonomous proclamations and statements like: “The white lotus season finale..,” “ All vacations come to an end..,” “ California mega storm, a different Big One is approaching ..”, or, “Cheney goes down, and more results from last night.” Randomly culled from newspaper clippings, put together cut and pasted, William Burrows fashion, a linguistic cacophony, to be read in any order, but instead of a Naked Lunch, we’re presented with a Rear Window view of urbane communiques that will “affect our personal health and well-being and the well-being of the culture.”  This work contains individual affirmations of trust and mistrust, anxiety ridden provocations, murder and mayhem, with an occasional, positive human interest story.

Linda Litteral, EVOCATIONS, 2022. 

Linda Litteral, EVOCATIONS, 2022.   At the opposite end of the room and opposite in application, another large, hanging installation, Evocations is a representational work with an array of small, ceramic faces, thin, shallow cupped forms with a glazed face on the convex side and on the concave side, child-like, graffito including a variety of imagery that reference repetitive, childhood sexual abuses. Hanging in alternating sections and rows are dark and light faces of different hues to represent the whole, with hallow or closed eyes, symbols for the silence that is the mode that allows the abuses to continue. 

  

 

Maggie Sasso and Adam John Manley, Mutually Assured, 2022

Maggie Sasso and Adam John Manley, Mutually Assured, 2022. Mutually Assured from the collaborative duo, is a thought-provoking object “born out of the stacked personal and societal anxieties of the past three years.”  Mutually Assured is a masterfully crafted wooden replica of a WW ll underwater “Naval” mine, decked out with colorful, intricately woven warning flags, alerting viewers to the object’s potential dangers. This work speaks volumes to the exhibitions theme -  the naval mine floats massively just below the water’s surface -  a perfect metaphor for “the many festering threats” that challenge modern societies.

Warren Bakley, Disease, , 2022

Warren Bakley, Dominance, Destruction, Disease, and Death, 2022.  Another work that aptly addresses the shows protocols is the very accomplished ceramic art with very powerful, stoneware, grouping of four, apocalyptic horsemen This work above, my personal choice,  is titled Disease, 2020 as a reference to Covid. Excellently crafted and well conceived, the forms are muted in color, reinforcing their intended meanings.  Disease, the hauntingly, ghostly grey rider - sophisticated simplicity with a chilling silent presence, and deceptively monumental in form.  This modest sculpture could easily be scaled up for public art as a fitting tribute to the San Diegans who lost their lives to Covid 19. Formalistically the work reminds me of Rodin’s heroic portrait of Balzac in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. 

   

Victoria Fu and Matt Rich, Purple Potato and 13 Holes, 2022

Victoria Fu and Matt Rich, Purple Potato and 13 Holes, 2022.  In this collaborative work, two large aprons are hung side by side, physically connected by a thin, fabric, binding material that circumnavigates both aprons before hanging to the sides of each object as binding ties for wearing. One of the aprons takes the form of a house a child would draw, rectangular lower portion with an A line roof. The lower portion has 13 large holes neatly cut into it with other fabric elements and a plant frond attached loosely across the openings.  Ms. Fu’s Purple Potato is simpler in appearance with only one pointer-like decoration.  This work makes a rather obtuse reference to domestic or institutional care giving and the aprons worn by medical researchers in the lab.

Michelle Montjoy,  Sweater.

Michelle Montjoy,  Sweater.   Montjoy is a well-known San Diego artist and deeply respected for her knitted constructions Sweater is classic Montjoy, completed a few years back.  You can almost feel the warmth and healing effects of this work. 

Kathy Nida, Doctors Orders, 2023.

Kathy Nida, Doctors Orders, 2023. Nida created a large, and powerful protest work of finely quilted images, admonishing the medical profession for the way many of its practitioners handle certain women’s cases, especially women of color and women trapped in a cycle of poverty.  Nida’s fierce protagonist encircles her arms in a protective stance around a group of women, keeping them out of harm’s way from the menacing hands of a male doctor who is insensitive to the real needs and care of the women. This work skillfully illustrates the impact of the curator’s message about health and wellness and long, emotional periods in the waiting room.   

Polly Jacobs, Giacchina, 2023.

Polly Jacobs, Giacchina, 2023. Jacobs created a wall relief of four open weave, nest-like forms that represent security in all of its various manifestations; safety, shelter and protection, absolute necessities for the healing process. 

Gail Schneider, Tundra, 2023.

Gail Schneider, Tundra, 2023.  The artist states “A response to the problem of Global Warming, I have made these pieces of white brick to give the pieces a permanence that does not exist in nature but is a material with artistic and ancestral importance in human life” Tundra represents the curious forms of snow covered trees in the arctic region. Moderate in scale these art objects express a monumental quality.  

Kathleen Mitchell, Chrysalis, 2022. 

Kathleen Mitchell, Chrysalis, 2022.   Each layer of material, from the heavy, spiked metal base and the barbed wire to the fragile blown and carved glass, documents a personal journey. Chrysalis, a state of impending flight, expresses the rise from a dark, heavy depressive state to eventual liberation. This is a tour de force act of courage and fortitude! 

Charlotte Bird’s, Wonder.

Charlotte Bird’s, Wonder.   Shinrin-yoku or "forest bathing” is a stress reduction strategy to slow down.  This strategy lies at the heart of lovely, memory book Wonder an accordion fold book with mixed media images of rocks and stones collected on the artist’s forays into the arctic wilderness.

Richard Burkett, TheCure 1 , The Cure 2

Richard Burkett, TheCure 1 , The Cure 2.  Mounted on two, thick, saw toothed shelves are a series of three each, small Ceramic and found vessels with ornate luster glazes and surface treatments referencing the high cost of medical research and treatment.  

Ross Stockwell, 2D-3D, 2023

Ross Stockwell, 2D-3D, 2023 is a finely crafted walnut, ash and canary wood sculpture. “A 3D interpretation of a 2D logo for Sarah’s Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant.” 2D-3D is representative of the more abstract interpretations of the curator’s title, and we must assume the intention here is good health through good eating.

Christian Garcia Olivo, Untitled White on Pearlescent Green, 2020

Christian Garcia Olivo,  Untitled White on Nacreous, 2020

Christian Garcia Olivo, Untitled White on Pearlescent Green and Untitled White on Nacreous both from 2020.  Intricately woven strands of thin, white acrylic pigment and yes, you read it correctly, (woven acrylic pigment!). These works are totally abstract in style and therefore the most difficult to read in relationship to the exhibition's theme of wellness. The only clue we are given in the artist’s statement: “Within history, marginalized groups and forms of art have been “recognized,” brought to the surface and semi “liberated” but still controlled/manipulated to maintain a categorical identity. This tension is a powerful reminder that in understanding ourselves and the surrounding world we must question our own understanding, perception, and true reality.”

Waiting Room
Central Library Gallery
9th Floor, 330 Park Blvd.,
San Diego, CA 92101
OnView@sandiego.gov
Mon/Tues: 1 – 7pm
Wednesday/Thurs/Fri: 12 - 5pm
Saturday: 12 - 5pm Sunday: closed

 

Vallo Riberto is the Alliance Studio Visit Program Chair, a support group of the Oceanside Art Museum. He is an Independent curator, Oceanside Museum of Art, and the Bonita Museum of Art and Culture, the Zone Contemporary Art Gallery, Osaka, Japan and is on the Exhibition Advisory Committee, San Diego Public Library Gallery
valloriberto@gmail.com 619.603.2214

 

  

Amanda Farber: DRAFT HORSE, 2023 at Oolong Gallery

 by Vallo Riberto

Aesthetics and quality; How do we come to recognize quality? Is it as simple as choosing the things we like?

Why is quality important in works of art?  Some art works are made in a way that disparages the very idea of quality.  But these same works are sought after and command high prices,  so much so, that such amounts by definition connote a sense of quality. Fashion and taste are indeed fickle!  

Draft Horse by Amanda Farber, 2023 is a large, painted, shaped, wall relief. I call it a relief because it projects out from the wall with a fairly substantial dimension. Draft Horse is a stylized abstraction but with easily identifiable, representational elements, and therein lies its beauty, mystique, commanding presence and power. 

The work’s gestural stance expresses strength and exertion, the sway of the back, the bend of the knees, and the way the large hooves are planted firmly on the ground plane. The bend of the neck and the position of the horse’s head all contribute to the animals effort, straining at its heavy load.  There’s definitely a disconnect between the figure's obvious, expressive gesture and the actual, physical shape of the figure.  This is a draft horse after all, a very powerful animal, a Clydesdale, Shire, Percheron maybe? Ms. Farber has depicted a Belgian Draught, the strongest horse breed in the world.  But what we’re confronted with is a skinny, loopy, spaghetti like creature. The kind of cartoon figure you may have seen in an early Disney Cartoon like Steamboat Willie or Gallopin’ Gaucho, wherein the character’s arms and legs would often become extended to accomplish an impossible feat!

The entire girth of Ms. Faber’s draft horse is only a few inches thick in any one direction, but oh, those hooves!  A very different matter all-together!

Again, I’m reminded of old Disney cartoons where the hooves of an old horse are exaggerated for comedic effect.  Despite the curving skinny structure, devoid of the faintest sense of musculature, Draft Horse is rife with animated, gestural power and strength. This work has real presence and commands our attention, the kind of attention that draws the viewer in closer, to inspect details or to question methods and applications.

Silly, abstract, irrational, beautiful, representational, a bouillabaisse of wonderful contradictions! Draft Horse may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it’s a lovely cup all the same, and intelligently concocted with quality ingredients that any discerning viewer can appreciate. 

If you can, make the time to get over to Oolong gallery located right on highway 101 in Solana Beach.

Cool School (Trane of Thought) until Oct 7, 2023
Farber, Bey, Madoo, Rabinowitz
Oolong Gallery
349 North Coast Highway, 101 Solana Beach, Ca 92075

 

Vallo Riberto is the Alliance Studio Visit Program Chair, a support group of the Oceanside Art Museum. He is an Independent curator, Oceanside Museum of Art, and the Bonita Museum of Art and Culture, the Zone Contemporary Art Gallery, Osaka, Japan and is on the Exhibition Advisory Committee, San Diego Public Library Gallery
valloriberto@gmail.com 619.603.2214

ENVZN: A Very Special Event

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt 

ENVZN.  If these letters don’t mean much to you, read on, since they stand for a coming attraction you won’t want to miss.

Try to envision a panorama of arts performances from both sides of the border in a two-block commercial district you’ve probably never been to before. Presented by Vanguard Culture, an adventurous non-profit dedicated to advancing San Diego’s creative industries, ENVZN is a grand-scale experience that will take place in Logan Heights on Saturday, September 2, from 5-10 p.m.

“This is the largest undertaking we’ve ever attempted and we’re so excited about how it’s coming together,” said Susanna Peredo Swap, founder/executive director of Vanguard Culture. “The tenants here have been a joy to work with, and we’re using their working environments—a shoe factory, a screen-printing machine factory, a cross-fit gym, a loading dock—to lead us into the artworks. There’s the beginning of a burgeoning arts community in Logan Heights and we’re thrilled to support that.”

There will be so much going on, it’s best to look through the list of events beforehand. You’ll find a link to the full schedule below, and here are a few I’m planning to check out, though I’ll surely have additions once I get there and see what I see. 

Steamroller Printmaking. 6-10 pm.
In 2021, I had a chance to catch Alessandra Moctezuma’s original demonstration of this fascinating process at Mesa College. Now Mesa’s gallery director and her team are at it again. Stop by to watch at least some of what happens when 7 artists + 1 steamroller take turns creating works of art.

The last stage of the printmaking prep at Mesa College in 2021.
Photo Credit: Maurice Hewitt

Parking Sin Estrellas: A Spanish-speaking puppet show. Performances 6 and 6:30 pm. 
I’m planning to test my Spanish comprehension with this unusual puppet theater piece about street children in Tijuana’s dangerous Zona Norte whose strategies for dealing with their daily lives include escapes into their own imaginations.

The Alchemist in His Elements. 6-10 p.m.
A brilliant use of reclaimed bits of trash, Debby and Larry Kline’s giant-size sculpture references an antique Chinese jade burial suit and a hulking mud-born character from Jewish folklore who was meant to be a protector—though that never worked out. 

Debby and Larry Kline with their original Alchemist in 2016.
Photo Credit: Maurice Hewitt

Since its creation in 2016, the Klines’ Alchemist has appeared in different iterations in various locations. This newest version—now legless but taller than ever—will be surrounded by drawings that illustrate the four elements of the alchemical process: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. You’ll find him in a space that welcomes meditation, with a soulful soundscape by Tijuana-based multimedia music artist MALU and an offering bowl for you to share your hopes and dreams.

The Alchemist will also be the 3-D backdrop for live performances at 8 and 8:30 p.m.

Malashock Dance is presenting Convergence, a short piece about how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how we would really like to be. It’s choreographed by John Malashock and Jessica Rabanzo-Flores, features five dancers and strolling composer/guitarist Rann Golamco, and should be a lovely and thoughtful treat for audiences.

A duet from Convergence. Photo Credit: Jim Carmody

Cenotes. Performances 9 and 9:30 pm.
DISCO RIOT Artistic Director Zaquia Mahler Salinas offers a preview of her latest work—a live dance and film installation that promises an opportunity to experience the everyday world in a magical way. If you love the experience, the completed work will premiere in San Diego this November.

Flower Pot Music. Performances 9 and 9:30 pm.
Hundreds of flowerpots will become musical instruments in this piece led by Art of Elan musicians who invite everyone to pick a pot and join them in creating a community concert, with simple instructions given in English and Spanish.

 There’s much more to ENVZN, and plenty of food and drink vendors onsite.
See the full schedule of events HERE

A helpful map of the area

In a few months, ENVZN will be part of a year-long celebration of the San Diego/Tijuana region, recently designated the 2024 World Design Capital, but we can have a great taste of it now.

ENVZN-23 tickets range from $20 for students, active military, creative industry professionals and residents of Logan Heights or Tijuana to $125 for VIPs.  Hot tip: If you order before September 2, you can use the promo code SDVAN for 20% off at http://www.bit.ly/ENVZNSD

 An Artful P.S.
While we’re still in August, here are two soon-to-end art shows you won’t want to miss.

O’Keeffe and Moore at San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park (Closing August 27)
You still have time to see this brilliantly curated collection of works by Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore that seem to relate to each other while displaying varied aspects of their individual talents. There are also re-creations of both artists’ studios built by the SDMA team but filled with their original furnishings, right down to the brushes and paint samples. 

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Studio
Photo Credit: Maurice Hewitt

I loved this re-creation of her studio and was sorry I only had time to watch a few minutes of the film about her at the end of the exhibition. Just watching her face as she speaks is an experience.  

Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure”
Photo Credit: Maurice Hewitt

This elmwood piece was my personal favorite, even more so when the security guard pointed out how you can tell by the chisel markings how difficult some of the work had been and how long it must have taken to get it right.

Photo courtesy New Village Arts

A Weekend with Picasso at New Village Arts Theater in Carlsbad

A solo performance by Herbert Siguenza. (Closing September 3)

I’ve seen this terrific show in different venues since its 2010 work-in-progress days and am ready to see it again. Siguenza not only channels Picasso with energy and humor but also wrote the script, based on Picasso’s writings, and manages to complete several Pablo-like paintings onstage. I first saw him perform as part of the traveling theater troupe Culture Clash, but just learned from Wikipedia that he actually started out as an artist, with a BFA in printmaking from California College of Art and Crafts. 

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

Glimpses at Techne Art Center

 By Vallo Riberto

Kathleen Graham - Vermillion Cliffs 
(please note: photo size are not relative to their original sizes)

Whatever your interest in art, be it appreciation or practice, and you haven’t made it over to the Techne Art Center yet, then you are missing out on an in-depth aesthetic experience.  Techne Art Center (T.A.C.) co-owners and director Chuck Thomas and girlfriend, Leslie Wang, a multi-national couple (with roots in New York City and Cheng Du, China) is now in its second year of operation and located east of the five freeway, just a short drive from downtown Oceanside.

T.A.C. is a venue that we would associate more with L.A. or NYC, a large, 8,700 sq. foot warehouse structure including an upper mezzanine with additional exhibition space and offices. The exhibition on the main floor has been divided into four galleries. The large central space has high ceilings and can accommodate almost any large project. 

Allison Renshaw, curator

The current, group exhibition titled, GLIMPSES, features artworks by Carla Goldberg, Kathleen Graham, Christine McKee and Deborah Myers, and was curated by San Diego painter, Allison Renshaw.  It was under Ms. Renshaw’s mentoring that these four painters have now come together. The title Glimpses alludes to what might be deduced or intuited from within these mostly abstract compositions. 

Kathleen Graham

Kathleen Graham - Cup of Sugar

Kathleen Graham Ancient Journey

The exception is the three works by Kathleen Graham.  In one piece titled, Cup of Sugar, a stand-alone, representational, mixed media work, Graham offers her viewers an intimate, personal environment with paint altered photos. This is an homage to family and friends, with loosely composed elements of collage, layers of personal experiences and memories that convey a sense of time and place. She deftly combines images with abstract patterns and shapes. The two other works, Ancient Journey and Vermillion Cliffs are also representational with elements of abstraction. Her compositions are well crafted and reinforced by her excellent color choices. Vermillion Cliffs with its deep, sonorous shadows and interlocking planes of grayish colored rock displays a mature, disciplined hand.

Christine McKee - Synapse

Christine McKee - Major Tom 

Christine McKee - Beacon

Synapse, Major Tom and Beacon are by Christine McKee. All three of these works are abstractions with elements of collage. Major Tom, is a reference to the persona developed by the late David Bowie.  McKee hones in on this galactic theme and melds together the micro with the cosmic. An arch of four or five multi-colored lines and shapes are suspended over a vertical, muted orange form tethered to a strong, dark line. That line moves off the form in a soft geometric arch to another, larger, abstract, muted white and yellow shape. All together this works gives the impression of Bowie’s space man persona about to break away from our world and float off into a cosmos beyond.  Beacon and Synapse both play with the concept of combining the cellular with the cosmic-macro.  Beacon uses lines effectively, connecting painted and collaged elements to suggest clouds drifting through a sky scape, or in the painting Synapse connecting loosely depicted, neurons and synoptic activity.

Deborah Myers - Untitled

Deborah Myers - Moulin Rouge

Deborah Myers - Nashville

Deborah Myers is also represented by three, abstract paintings, her Untitled, is a color rich composition with interlocking, map-like forms of vivid reds, muted blues, yellows, turquoise and grey, clustered together in a shallow space and interlaced with black. Untitled, at 30”x 30” is the largest of the group and the largest painting in the room.  Moulin Rouge appears very large scale in reproduction but is a small 8”x12” composition. It’s an action painting that could easily be taken as a painting from the New York School of Abstraction.  The palette is rather unique in contrast to the more colorful Untitled and Nashville compositions. Moulin Rouge is more open with broader forms of pale yellows, oranges, greens and creamy whites juxtaposed with four, dense black forms. One of these rises from the left bottom of the canvas toward another horizontal swath of black and is balanced against a large, muted yellow green form to the right.  In the lower light there appears to be a small, horned animal in black sgraffito, and just below, another black that could be referencing a Paleolithic cave image. This work, despite its small scale has movement and a certain sophistication seen in more developed professional painters.

Carla Goldberg - Untitled

Carla Goldberg - Untitled

Carla Goldberg - Untitled

The last in the group are a quartet of small paintings executed between 2021 and the present by Carla Goldberg. Mrs. Goldberg’s work is comparatively diminutive at roughly ten by ten inches, but rich and engaging in color and concept.  Goldberg traverses an aesthetic territory between fantasy and abstraction.  Her untitled, underwater seascape is pure fiction, an intuitive window onto the ocean’s depths. Although Goldberg has opted for a darker palette, she affixes elements of found detritus, bits of wood or cardboard that she then animates with bright, pure hues of primary and secondary colors.  Mrs. Goldberg has spent a good part of her adult life around visual culture as a volunteer in museums and galleries.  She spent some time at university studying architecture, but had to quit to attend to family duties. It is just recently that she has begun to paint with passion and determination. These small works, like all of the paintings in this exhibition are a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit, the desire to express feelings of freedom, mystery and deeply personal experiences, and take that deep dive into the simple joys creative life. 

This exhibition is also a testament to the vision of Chuck Thomas and partner, Leslie Wang, having the insight to mount such an exhibition and to Alison Renshaw for shepherding these four women to excel and blossom. Its inspiring, refreshing and very much need in the present, post-modern visual culture.

Leslie Wang - co-owner, Techne Art Center

Chuck Thomas - co-owner of Techne Art Center

Glimpses from August 11,2023
Techne Art Center
1609 Ord Way, Oceanside, CA 92056
Wed-Fri 1-7pm, Sat 12-6pm
chuckthomas@techneartcenter.com  917.972.1752

Vallo Riberto is the Alliance Studio Visit Program Chair, a support group of the Oceanside Art Museum. He is an Independent curator, Oceanside Museum of Art, and the Bonita Museum of Art and Culture, the Zone Contemporary Art Gallery, Osaka, Japan and is on the Exhibition Advisory Committee, San Diego Public Library Gallery
valloriberto@gmail.com 619.603.2214