OMA Mega Opening: Naked, Invisible, Sister, Family, CA Dreaming

Mega Reception for NAKED: 20th Century Nudes from the Bram and Sandra Dijkstra Collection , My Sister’s Voice, Neil Shigley: Invisible People, Omar Lopex: RELÁMPAGO, and California Dreaming: An International Portrait of Southern California until March 2015  at Oceanside Museum of Art
(704 Pier View Way , Oceanside , 92054) Free for members, $10 public. More info  Katie 760.435.3721 

I attended this exhibition with Cathy Breslaw and it was so refreshing to discuss the show and compare our choices. You will see below some images chosen by each of us. Seeing five shows all at once leads one to compare them and to find some common ground. Almost all of the works are figurative, nudes, portraits and figures in a certain context. As with all shows, it is intriguing to choose your favorite works or even works that you might like to buy or at least imagine hanging on your own walls. We hope you go and make up your own list of favorites. It is only by looking often and challenging yourself to make choices that you become more discriminating. 

20th Century Nudes from the Bram and Sandra Dijkstra Collection

So much of this show was variations on the Renoir ideal of full frontal lush volume of flesh. We mainly choose those who did not fit this profile.  

Natalie Newking - This work reminded me of Matisse's Petite Dejeuner sur Herbe but with all women. The women are interacting and because the artists is a women, you don't get the feeling of a voyeur and instead just capturing a moment of a society not of our world.

William Newport Goodell.- although badly framed this work has that look of a Balthus...under ripe but looking directly at us, not at all shy.

K Groak - a grouping of nude figures but maybe on the beach, a joyful combination of lines and shapes

Julio de Diego.- a de Chirico influenced surrealist view...the nude in a dream of war and parachutes with a strange tea pot shaped village in the distance

Hugo Crosthwaite - always beautifully draw, Crosthwaite nude seems to part angel. This was one of Cathy's picks.

Charles Ashford Binger  - this Hollywood type painting is also a lurid cover for a noire paper back novel.

Belle Baranceanu - this almost oriental composition has dark outlines and low intensity color palette that treats the body in the same way as the background.

Alexander Brook.- we both were drawn to the quiet perfect beauty of this back view.

 

John Wilde - a final surreal, almost mystic gather of  little naked angels.

  California Dreaming: An International Portrait of Southern California 

In this selection we tried to choose work that represented the contemporary California dream, not one from the 80's or 90's. 

Cynda Valle.- So LA...is she a prostitute or a starlet...is she have a pre-party drink or is the party in the next room?

Jen Trute - no one does it better than the late Jen Trute. Her fabulous technique and strong environmental message is the essence of California in the new millennium.

Glena Jennings represented that crossing over the border into the unknown., I think this was Cathy's favorite.

John Eden (top) and  Jeremie Riggleman (bottom). John Eden takes surface to the next level which is over the top and Jeremie's photo of a photo of two fallen companions observed by one of them is so very now. At first we thought they were meant to be one work.

Laura Jo Regan - I was obsessed with these three images of dark hair roots which take on a landscape aura and yes, the obsession with beauty is a California dresm.

Steve Gibson - my choice as I just like Gibson's style so much. It is recognizable and distinct, like no other, this artist is getting stronger and stronger.

Yoichi Karamura -  this view of Santa Monica pier is the second non-figurative work along with the one above.  With the large blank sky, it is the view that those of us on the coast see everyday.. One of Cathy's favorites.

Barbara Sexton - chosen by Cathy with my added stamp of approval, this has the humor  Location, location, location is everything

Omar Lopex: RELÁMPAGO

We were both intrigued by the description by the artist of how he arranged families. At first we thought he put together people to make what looks like the oldest possible glass wet plate photos from a paste era. But then we noticed that this one figure appears in many of the photos. Lopex has inserted himself into the situation before the image was taken. These become almost performance art works. 

 Neil Shigley: Invisible People
I am very fond of Neil Shigley's work. He made a presentation at my home as part of the SDMA Contemporary Art Committee meetings. The video helps to show the technique of the large block prints and also shows Shigley interacting with the street people who are the subject of these works. We both like the large hand drawn graphite images,  how the soft edges of the seams of the paper made the subject almost glow.  We also liked the rough nature of the prints where seams did not meet, There was only one image of a women. She has the look of Janis Joplin....ridden hard and put away wet.

These symbols that appear in the composition are part of the hobo

's code and was used to help each other to survive during the depression. .

My Sister's Voice: Photography by Pablo Mason

 Most of these portraits looked like studio shots instead of art works. But we likes the following three especially. Each women has something to say, advice to pass on. And it was wonderful to see a whole room of these diverse visages. 

Samantha Shine McPherson  - this young women told the story of how her mother put her into a bath one day when she was hysterical  after a failing grade in school. She was told to let the disappointment of a bad grade wash off and go down the drain. She always thinks of this when she needs some comfort.

We loved the back light hair on this one and each of these had a message and a small description of the subject

Proud sister to us all....wearing he art on her chest.

African American Painter Jack Whitten - Retrospective : Five Decades of Painting, MOCA La Jolla

Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting

Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla

Article by Cathy Breslaw

Dead Reckoning 1  acrylic on canvas    84" x 84"   1980

Artist Jack Whitten has dedicated the last fifty years to making paintings. The work of this African American artist from the south, is a huge exhibition referencing art history, Jazz music, politics, race and cosmology. This retrospective is beautifully curated by Kathryn Kanjo, and Whitten's passion for painting is eminently clear as the viewer moves from room to room.  Whitten, who now lives an works in New York City,  came into his own as a painter during the early 60’s - he met and spent time with Martin Luther King, musician Miles Davis, and artists William de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and others. Titles to his works are tip off to what he was thinking about: “Head IV Lynching”, “The Blacks”, “NY Battleground”, “Martin Luther King’s Garden”, “Mask of God(for Joseph Campbell)”, “Homecoming: For Miles”,”Apps for Obama”. Whitten continues to use his broad based experiments with paint to express his philosophies about history and culture, and his concepts of space and personal identity. His black and white paintings of the 60’s are minimal, lending an out-of-focus photographic quality to seemingly “ghost imagery”.  The 70’s paintings consist of  thick layered paint surfaces that have been raked, trowelled and leveled like concrete, of varying color combinations but are clearly experiments in the viscosity, material and substance of paint. Whitten’s paintings from the 80’s appear to be explorations with the composition of paint and casting, creating new surfaces and textures. Whitten’s works from the 90’s and 2000’s are primarily tessellated paintings resembling ancient mosaics and seem to be influenced by the significant time Whitten spends in Greece. He developed a way of creating slabs of multicolored acrylics  cut into small rectangles as well as castings of acrylic to form large paintings. The most recent two works in the show from 2014, appear to be a conglomeration of his techniques developed over the years, and express a sense of the spiritual and bear relationship to cosmology. Named “Black Monolith, V Full Circle: For LeRoi Jones A.K.A. Baraka” and “Self Portrait 1”, these two paintings are powerful and intense, and begs the question “what will we see

next from this prolific painter?”

Apps for Obama     acrylic on hollow core door   84" x 91"    2011

Ann Weber, Jay Johnson and Adam Belt at Lux

Ann Weber
Am I the only one that has noticed young women collecting cardboard boxes around Encinitas the last few months? One theory for this strange behavior is to aid the artist in residence at the Lux from Nov 15 to Dec 13,  Ann Weber and her work will be on display until Jan 10, 2015 and you can see how she is transformed the humble cardboard, which has been cut into strips and stapled together. They form large strangely satisfying shapes that are coated but still remain fragile enough to have to be kept indoors. 

Weber created works while in residence reflective of the plants in the Lux garden. She also made one huge work looking for a temporary or permanent home in mid-January. And all that cardboard was also used by the multitude of students who visited the artist and was taught the technique in fun lesson plans. The artist who came down from Oakland was one the most favorite visiting artists of the children of our community. The the work appeals to the child in all of us. 

Lux has a wonderful line up of local artist workshops coming up. Watch for Iana Quesnell, Jay Johnson and Adam Belt...all SD Art Prize recipients and Vicki Walsh one of our New Contemporary Artists who is also a visiting artist on display in the Education Pavillion.

Adam Belt and Jay Johnsonare filling the front lobby gallery at the Education Pavillion.

Adam Belt topographical work glow with tiny glass beads

Adam Belt - the area's in between are also glass beads that make this work sparkle in the light

 These mini metal works by Jay Johnson are display in a row above a light box and are the most charming tiny sculptures

Colter Jacobson and Rita Mabride: Opera Ambulate

It is the time of the year for bonuses and we were given a real treat when on Dec 5 we attended the double show at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego of Colter Jacobson and Rita McBride.  Not only was the work great, but we had real live, up close and personal opera singers performing in and about the works of art. 

Ópera Ambulate, a production of the Centro Cultural Tijuana is a group of professional musicians who create operatic interventions in venues or public spaces not necessarily related to concert music. There were asked to relate to Rita McBride’s Arena - the highly celebrated and well-travelled 4 meter by 4 meter modular tribune has hosted more than 100 artists, poets, writers, architects, musicians, curators, and politicians since its inception in 1997. But instead they choose to expand and perform not just in front of the arena structure but also in McBride's grid structure, out on the patio across from the train station and in the exhibition by Colter Jacobsen: This is How We Walk on the Moon on until Feb 8, 2015.

So far from being a concert, this was more like a flash mob and there is nothing more special than being inches away from an opera voice which is able to raise the hairs on your neck and give you goose bumps. Seeing the expressions on the faces of the public who were not in the museum, but boarding the train, was priceless. 

 

Mr. Jacobsen travelled by foot and train along the west coast and these are photos of found object stains.

Here we see on the left a drawing by Jacobsen made from a photo and on the right FROM MEMORY, the same photo drawn again

In this case the work on the left, the original drawing from a photo, is very much enhance in contrast in the memory drawing

Jacobsen uses an upside down image of a men with paper hat so that we see the man in reflection right side up

Rita McBride's rattan car on a polish wood raised base

Entering the McBride grid

We are watching opera singers in and above the grid

A small visitor in the area

Cecuit Opera troupe

a flash mob singer performs on the train platform

2014 Cannon Art Gallery Juried Biennial

The Cannon Art Gallery’s 2014 Juried Biennial was juried by Tina Yapelli, Director of the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University, and John D. Spiak, Director and Chief Curator of the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana. The exhibition features 66 works of art by 34 artists. The exhibition runs from Dec 14, 2014 to Feb 7, 2015

This was truly a show with something for everyone and this is only a small selection from this quality show. 

Annette Cyr presents this charming 3-d combo

Brian Canfield light box of glass is the Incredible Hulk

Impressive to see these new cold worked glass pieces by Dick Ditore

Don Fike's photo of this line of beach feathers was poignant

Fritzie Urquhart's climber is made mainly from paper and it is so fascinating that this slim elegant women sculpts robust and hearty female forms.

Gail Schneider never fails to intrigue us with these footed branches

Ralyn Wolfstein stand entranced by Irene de Watteville's ceramic centerpiece that you can see in more detail below

Joyce Corum shows us her selection of pins and clips

Leslie Nemour's painting is fun when you read the title Fist Fight over Realism

This detail show the stitchery of a large oval work by Michelle Montjoy called Thumbsucker