Primal Instincts at Techne Art Center

by Patricia Frischer

Kelly Witmer

Another large group show loosely strung together by Chuck Thomas and Jason Clay Lewis. Most of the work is simple and striking but it seems more likely that primal is used to describe the basic instinct to create.

Kelly Witmer has combined kiln softened glass with welded metal or ceramic to stunning affect where bulges and domes seem squeezed and ready to burst out. Whether back lit or just reflective, they all seem to glow. She says she is influenced by not just the natural shapes around her, but interior spaces of her own home.

Kaori Fukuyama, a SD Art Prize recipient in 2020, gives us an outstanding work of movement, color and reflection as she continues her exploration of how hue and shapes can manipulate a space.  

John Brinton Hogan challenges to look twice at his dark landscapes that are illuminated with words. It turns out these words are cut out from the celebration grocery store mylar balloons we now see at most check out counters.  You can also find them cluttering various real landscapes!

Coming around a corner to a wall of head sticking their tongues out by Hannah Pierce, has to bring a smile to your face.   All of her ceramic and mixed media sculptures have a sense of humor, but more a delight in the world around her. They are playful almost child-like narrative works that fit fully into the Pop Surrealism movement.

Irén Tété is a self-declared oscillator. This is reflected in her piece Gently booked ended by And and Not. That is a stance that we can all relate to as the world turns around us. 

Kelly Witmer

Kaori Fukuyama

Kaori Fukuyama, detail

John Brinton Hogan

John Brinton Hogan

John Brinton Hogan

Hannah Pierce

Hannah Pierce

Irén Tété

Featured other artists including  Eva Struble,  Michael Hernandez, Alexandra Carter, Jesse Ring, as well as artists from the BEVERLY’S collective including Leah Dixon, Jack Henry, Maxx Wade, Tadashi Adamson, Morgan Mandalay, Jesus Antonio, and Maddie Butler.

Primal Instincts at Techne Art Center
Nov 11 to March 22, 2025
Thurs.,  Fri., St. 1-6pm
1609 Ord Way, Oceanside, 92056
917.972.1752 chuckthomas@techneartcenter.com

 

La Jolla Shines - Carlos Castro Arias: The Splinter in the Eye, Olivia Obrecht: Organic Ornament, Gail Roberts; Natural Selection; Frank Gillette: The Symbiotic Blues

 by Patricia Frischer

Carlos Castro Arias

I cruised through La Jolla one Friday afternoon and was refreshed and stimulated by the variety of exhibitions on view. 

Carlos Castro Arias: The Splinter in the Eye at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library

Oddly enough, it was only looking at the photos that I took of the show at the Athenaeum that I realized the deeper connection of the erected scaffolding that holds the works of art and works their way into the actual images of Carlos Castro Arias. It would be a mistake to disregard the relationship between the two while you are viewing. I think that is why the title of the show, The Splinter in the Eye is so meaningful. This quote from Luke 6. 41-46: Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?

You see a combination of images from the past and from nature and from the present as Arias continues with his exploration of power struggles both individual and collectively. Don’t miss the bird peacefully perched between two works or the severed head of the missionary Junipero Serro which was recently reported like many statues of famous men in dispute.

Please visit this show in the afternoon if you can see the full force of the reflected light from the traditional windows that gives an other worldly glow to the exhibition because of the transparent colors attached. 

Please note: Carlos Castro Arias was a SD Art Prize recipient in 2022.  

Carlos Castro Arias: The Splinter in the Eye at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library
Showing until Jan 11, 2025
Tuesday–Saturday: 10 AM–5:30 PM
1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
858-454-5872  info@ljathenaeum.org

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias, detail

Carlos Castro Arias

Carlos Castro Arias: The Splinter in the Eye at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library
Showing until Jan 11, 2025
Tuesday–Saturday: 10 AM–5:30 PM
1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
858-454-5872  info@ljathenaeum.org

Olivia Obrecht: Organic Ornament at Thumbprint Gallery

If you have not discovered this tiny gallery tucked into the back of a set of shop off of Kline Street, then make an effort to check it out. On First Fridays in La Jolla, this space is known as the after party stop as it is open until 9 pm. They are currently showing Japanese influenced designs by Olivia Obrecht. It is not surprise that she is also a tattoo artist. Thumbprint shows contemporary pop culture, nostalgia, urban art, and pop surrealism. 

Olivia Obrecht

Olivia Obrecht

Olivia Obrecht

Olivia Obrecht

Olivia Obrecht

Olivia Obrecht 

Olivia Obrecht: Organic Ornament at Thumbprint Gallery
Nov 1 – 30, 2024
Saturday and Sunday, Noon - 4pm and by appointment
920 Kline Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
858-354-6294  thumbprintgallery@gmail.com

Gail Roberts; Natural Selection at Quint Gallery

This is an additional exhibition to the one Gail Roberts has in 2021 called Color Field which we saw at the Oceanside Museum of Art and covered in our Picked RAW blog.  But these glorious images are composites of a variety of flowers. They are realistic but surrealistic at the same time because each individual panel is a true flower. Because of her vast research , the sum of the parts makes a greater whole.  

Roberts says: “The paintings are not meant to be ominous, rather a reaffirmation of my continued sense of wonder in the unending variations in nature’s patterns, colors, and shapes. As time passes, I have an even greater sense of urgency in valuing every precious moment, knowing I am just a blip in Earth’s lifetime radar.”

Please note: Gail Robert was a SD Art Prize recipient in 2010

Gail Roberts

Gail Roberts

Gail Roberts 

Gail Roberts: Natural Selection at Quint Gallery
Showing until Dec 7
Tuesday - Saturday 11am-5pm
7722 Girard Avenue, La Jolla, 92037
858.454.3409  info@quintgallery.com

Frank Gillette: The Symbiotic Blues at Level of Service Not required

First, let us clear up the name of this relatively new gallery space on Ivanhoe. LOS/NR stands for Level of Service Not Required which is a medical insurance term. There are five levels, but this is the notation when no service is required. Yes, it is three doctors that direct this space.

When you walk in the gallery space the lights are low and there are three sets of three screen with changing images. You have to slow down and even sit and then this  experience can be a prescription for relaxation and meditation. You see images of the ocean, stunning flowers, trees with canopies of leaves and then you start to notice the mirrors. Mirrors are reflecting the scenery but then, rocks are thrown that break the reflections and you see shards and rain and images are over laid on other images. But there is no flashing or strobing, so it is all revealed in a random but soothing fashion.

Gillette with Ira Schneider is one of the first to produce an art video back in 1968.  The is the world premiere of a 9-channel production. Photographed on Long Island and the show is organized by David A. Ross, the former Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Frank Gillette

Frank Gillette

Frank Gillette

Frank Gillette: The Symbiotic Blues at Level of Service Not required
Curated by David a. Ross former Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art until
Dec 5, 2024
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 4 pm 
7910 Ivanhoe Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037

If you walk between the Athenaeum and Thumbprint Gallery, go by way of Drury Lane to see a hidden mural by Rosson Crow. It is not really on Silverado, but around the corner on Drury Lane. Titled Ocean Front Property in Arizona, 2022, this is part of the Mural of La Jolla project.

Rosson Crow, Murals of La Jolla

The Mexicali Experience at Bread and Salt

by Patricia Frischer

 Pastizal Zamudio

Michael Krichman, executive director of INSITE, was kind enough to pull me into the latest workings of his organization. Andrea Torreblanca’s essay about how she met Pastizal Zamudio and commissioned him to do a work intrigued me. Pastizal Zamudio (a nomadic artist with  seemingly many names) grew up in the building yard of what was part of an amazing experiment in Mexicali. His fantasy archeological dig into his memories has produced a number of objects on display at the new exhibition at Bread and Salt, The Mexicali Experience Project.  

To better understand the exhibition, a time line might be helpful.

1903: Mexicali was founded as a sister city to Calexico to take advantage of natural resources
Mid-1960’s: US companies set up maquiladores or manufacturing center
1975: the Mexicali experiment started to offer affordable housing to workers. Architect Christopher Alexander was invited to lecture, but stayed to help build a housing project
1976: Only five of the homes were built before the times changed and track homes came into vogue. Peter Bosselmann's drawing were created to assist workers. 
1977: A Pattern Language was written by Alexander, not an instruction manual, but a philosophy of life;  A set of design elements and rules for their use much like a  word language is used to write paragraphs.
1984: Dorit Fromm and Peter Bosselman, both students of Alexander revisited the site which was closed off.
early 1990: Mario Vargus was allowed by the University of Baja Norte to live in the site for 10 years with his family and Pastizal Zumudio.
2006: The complex was re-opened as a health center and University Center for the Community
2022: Zamudio was commissioned by INSITE
2024: Hooper was commissioned by INSITE

Pastizal Zamudio’s work, Before the Last Rubble, inthe Face of Dawn (2038), explores the builders’ yard which was really more of an experimental place where the eventually owners and students tried to craft and assemble and test some of Alexander’s ideas. The builders were the owners and so one of Alexander big new concepts was to let them influence how they would be living in the spaces. The yard was conceived to eventually become a community center for the complex.

When Zamudio returned to the site for this project, after his father’s death,  the  room that was his parent’s bedroom was a hospital ward. Zamudio’s project concentrated on the central courtyard where he removed the cement and replaced it with more than one hundred clay stones molded with their bare hands.

Peter Bosselmann returned to Mexicali seven years later after the five houses were completed. He said, “It might make some architects uncomfortable that their work is being changed... When it was first finished, the housing there didn’t have the same quality of integration that it has now. Now it has reached a level of ordinariness that is better integrated into life and makes me very happy. This is the quality that is my real goal.”

The whole exhibition takes you through a history of this period. It has examples of the symbols used in A Pattern Language. It creates a mood of the 1960, hippie movement and Habitat for Humanities which we remember vividly. It has never before displayed story board like drawings  by Peter Bosselman, an installation by Pastizal Zamudio, and a selection of drawing of what you can see if you were to visit the site of the Mexicali Experiment today by Cynthia Hooper. There are also original photographic archives by Howard Davis, Dorit Fromm, Peter Bosselmann, and the Christopher Alexander Center for Environmental Structure Archive.

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language

 

Christopher Alexander 

Peter C. Bosselmann

Peter C. Bosselmann, detail

Pastizal Zamudio

Pastizal Zamudio

Pastizal Zamudio

Cynthia Hooper

Cynthia Hooper

Cynthia Hooper

Cynthia Hooper

The Mexicali ExperienceProject at Bread and Salt
Curated by Andrea Torreblanca in collaboration with Felipe Orensanz
INSITE Commonplaces The Sedimentary Effect A Timeless Way of Building Exhibition
Nov 9, 2024 to Feb 15, 2025
Tuesday - Saturday: 11am - 4pm
1955 Julian Ave, San Diego, CA

Please note: This exhibition is also part of World Design Capitol SD/TJ

Vicki Walsh: Animals to Limbs at Sip Art Space

by Patricia Frischer

Vicki Walsh: Heard detail

We know that Vicki Walsh is a highly skilled draftsperson. She did medical illustration for years and her detailed portraits are tour de forces of control that go deep into the psychology of the sitter. This is not the first time she has shifted subject matter, but this set of art works has an unusual start. She is teaching a course at Palomar College, and using oil-based ink and pen…what we a call a ball point pen, but a none smear artist quality version…not necessarily expensive, but still special.

The series starts with a rain storm over the ocean, when set the format (8” by 26.5”)  for all the works. It is followed with an image a sheep in tall grass, and one image her student found of a bear in the woods.  Those animals beget a crowd of mammals running. We leave the reason for the stampede to your imagination. This is when things start to turn a bit darker. While watching a murder mystery on TV, an amputated limb was covered with a sheet and bang, Walsh was back in her medical illustration mode. It was a short jump to a seahorse spilled out of a glass of water and a tiny father figure with a huge hand.

Fantasy and reality, innocence and irony, light and dark, all inform these narratives from childhood dreams to adult nightmares.  

Vicki Walsh: The Calm and the Storm

Vicki Walsh: Black and Blue

Vicki Walsh: Baumumaemer

Vicki Walsh: Heard

Vicki Walsh: Cover Up

Vicki Walsh: Spilled Life

 Vicki Walsh: Father Figure

 Vicki Walsh self portrait

Walsh has built a passionate community of students who continually return to her classes, engaging with each other and the broader art world through shows, events, and exhibitions. Her studio has blossomed into a vibrant center for creativity, fostering not only technical skills but a deep sense of camaraderie and commitment to the arts within the local community. To read more about Vicki Walsh and Sip art Space see the North County Arts Network profile.

 Vicki Walsh: Animals to Limbs at SIP art Space
Nov 4 to Dec 13
215 S. Pacific Street, #104, San Marco, 92078
By appointment only 858-336-6678 vicki@SIPartSpace.com