Culver City Art Group Walks the Culver City Art Galleries

Seven members of the Culver City Art Group met at The LAB 101 gallery on March 17 for an informal walk along Washington Blvd and La Cienega to visit the art galleries that have popped up in the last couple of years. (Much has been written about this area recently, so I won't go into that, but a good article can be found here if you are so inclined: Art of the new. How a previously industrial area in Culver City morphed into the latest gallery hotspot.)

I was still feeling a little woozy from oral surgery a couple of days before, but decided to go anyway, rather than spend the day on the sofa. Whenever I push myself to do something I have made a commitment to do, I always feel better that at least I gave it a try! And this try turned into visiting at least 15 galleries along Washington Blvd. and La Cienega Blvd. The thing I enjoy about visiting galleries is not the satisfaction of seeing a lot of artwork that I necessarily love and admire, it is more the variety of creativity on view.

At Lab 101 I was fascinated by the work of Andy Howell. I am always attracted to collages and I liked the juxtaposition of grotesque faces with the fancifully-patterned backgrounds in the exhibition “I Wish I Was Here.”

At Corey Helford the walls of the showroom were eerily decorated with rubbery arms extending out of swooping black drapes. This was appropriate for the David Stoupakis exhibit, "Sheep Will Follow." Paintings of dead children or just ghastly dolls? Creepy in a wonderfully amusing way. And beautifully framed. I am always aware of the choices of framing, as the right or wrong decision can enhance or detract dramatically from a piece.
We visited a few more galleries with nothing particularly interesting to me (which doesn't mean it wouldn't strike someone else's fancy).

Then at d.e.n. contemporary, Carlos Estrada-Vega's "About 4,000 Paintings" caught my attention. Each painting is comprised of tens to hundreds of individual squares or rectangles of varying depths, made of different colors and hues from his own mixture of limestone dust and pigment. At first it seems like a simple concept, one of those, "why didn't I think of that," ideas. But really quite complicated when you look at each piece closely.

At Blum & Poe, we walked into Sam Durant’s “Scenes From the Pilgrim Story: Myths, Massacres and Monuments.” Yep, that’s right. We couldn’t decide if it had been stolen from the Natural History Museum, was a put on, or somebody was serious about it being a work of art. Think a 70s presentation of what it meant to be a Pilgrim in wall plaques and vignettes, and you got it. Well, at least I remembered it.

At the George Billis Gallery, I was particularly struck by one painting of a 76 gas station with a dried-up palm tree in the foreground and a dinosaur in the background, everything suffocating in thick brown smog. Unfortunately there is no artist attribution on the website so I will never know who painted it. Interestingly, as a nod to the sudden hipness of Culver City, they have their address listed as Culver City with an LA address. Although the galleries along La Cienega are actually located in the city of Los Angeles, it is now considered part of the “cool” Culver City gallery neighborhood.

I believe it was about here the lack of Vicodin and antibiotics caught up with me. End of tour, to be completed another day.

I would encourage anybody who is an artist or has an interest in art to make the effort to stroll around current art galleries, whether it be in Culver City, the Melrose area in West Hollywood, downtown LA, etc. Take a friend and have a conversation about the art you are seeing… good or bad, it’s always interesting and stimulating.

(All photos on this blog copyright roslyn m wilkins and not to be used without permission.)

Los Angeles Conservancy March Mosaic Tour

The LA Conservancy is partnering with the J. Paul Getty Museum to celebrate mosaic in Los Angeles in conjunction with "Stories in Stone: Conserving Mosaics of Roman Africa." (See previous blog.) Among other activities, LAC is sponsoring a self-driving tour on Sunday, March 25. the tour will include Watts Towers, St. John's Episcopal Church and the Birth of Liberty at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. For more information go to the Los Angeles Conservancy website.

Another event, which was sold out to the general public when I attempted to sign up initially, is the Wednesday, March 21 Gallery Course at the Getty Villa. As a Conservancy member I was able to sign up for that today. Oh joy!!

I was a docent for the LAC for 15 years and enjoyed every moment of it. Unfortunately, when I decided to go back to school and devote more time to my artwork, along with still working fulltime and other obligations, some things had to go, and this was one of them. I'm hoping some time in the near future I can once again put on my tour-giving hat for the Conservancy...

Sister City Tiles at Vets in Culver City

Culver City has a plethora of Sister Cities, at least five, including: Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico; Kaizuka, Japan; Iksan City, South Korea; Lethbridge, Canada; and Yanji City, Jilin, China. The first four of these were honored on March 3, 2007, with the unveiling of ceramic tiles painted with scenes relating to those places. The tiles were painted by Lori Escalera, who was the founding president of the Culver City Art Group and has other public artwork around the city. The tiles are being installed at the Veteran's Building (at the corner of Culver Blvd. and Overland) on the doors of rooms named after these sister cities.


At left: Artist Lori Escalera with Mayor Gary Silbiger and the Uruapan tiles.

As a tile painter/artist myself, I really enjoyed the speech Lori gave about art as function. Here are a few snippets:

"I would like to address the idea of some that “Artwork may be diminished by its relationship to function.” History proves that art and functionality go hand in hand. It has provided artists with gainful wage, and survival - beginning with cave art, which functioned as a practical method to focus society on a fruitful hunt. In the Renaissance, artwork was a guild business as religious leaders communicated to the masses of spiritual interests and wealthy patrons needed portraits to record and exhibit their prestige. In the 17th, 18th and 19th century artists were hired as illustrators for secular business advertising.

However following the Industrial Revolution there was a clear understanding that artists needed to relate aesthetics to ugly massed produced goods. A true movement of function integrated with art emerged by the 20th century... Work again emerged for artists as they were hired to progandize modern war and politics. I wonder if anyone realizes in the 21st century, how “Public Art Ordinances” service the artist as a viable business [as a] functional reaction to damage caused from urban development. Proving again, combining art with function enhances the world humans inhabit. Art that is remembered throughout history IS tied to function.

It is only a very contemporary idea that art may exist without function – as a sole means of human creativity. But if we look at modern life we see that mankind finally has the leisure time to contemplate his naval - for the sheer fact that it is there. Man is not constantly consumed by survival mode.

...enjoy artwork. Do not shy away from controversy over art. Do not think that art can only be an emotional experience or an intellectual one. We are humans given two separately functioning brain hemispheres that may work together for different reasons at different times. The more art stimulates us in passion and intellect the more successful it is."

(All photos on this blog copyright roslyn m wilkins and not to be used without permission.)