05 • Lum Art Magazine • Winter 2022

LUM Art Magazine

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Introducing the Lum Art Prize

WINTER / SPRING 2022

LUM

LUM ART MAGAZINE • No. 5

Art Magazine

Lum is a contemporary art magazine for California’s Central Coast, published by California Culture Press, Santa Barbara.

winter/spring 2022

Arts & Culture Benefactor Norton Herrick

Editor in Chief Debra Herrick, PhD Art Director Arturo Heredia Soto Arts Writing Fellow Ryan P. Cruz Writers Kit Boise-Cossart James Glisson Madeleine Eve Ignon Cynthia Martin Christina McPhee Grace Miles Tom Pazderka Brenda Tan Alexandra Terry Photographers Ingrid Bostrom Brian Paumier Copy Editors Grace Miles Evelyn Spence Publishers Arturo Heredia Soto Debra Herrick On the Cover Lum Art Prize Winner Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales photographed by Brian Paumier Headpiece: Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales, Pieces of Me, wax, pigment & dried flowers Special Thanks John C. Connelly & Frederick Janka Published by California Culture Press, Santa Barbara, 2022 Printed in California All content in this publication is the property of the publishers and may not be reused in any way without written permission from Lum Art Magazine.

Art Prize Winner Feature Sponsor Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Artist Feature Sponsor The Lisa McCann Group Arts Writing Sponsors John C. Connelly & Frederick Janka Nancy Gifford Education & Culture Sponsors Michael VanStry Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science & Technology (SBCAST) Friends of Lum Art Magazine: Marcie Begleiter, Nicole Biergel, Melissa Bower, Phoebe Brunner, Nell Campbell, Lloyd Dallett, Rita Ferri, Elizabeth Gallery, James Glisson, Jane Gottlieb, Katrina Gordon, Adrienne De Guevara, Betsy Ingalls, Scott Johnson, Holli Harmon, Matt Henriksen, Lynn Holley, Kim L. Hunter & Paulo Lima, Cassandra C. Jones, Olga Krigman, Rosanne Livingston, Cynthia Martin, Teddy Nava, Jennifer Peck Wheir, Anaïs Pellegrini, Silvia Perea & Juan Heras, Marc & Laurie Recordon, Belle & Bert Regeer, Maria Rendón, Mark Ryan, Kathleen Scott, Manjari Sharma, Casey & Trent Summar, Nathan Vonk, Richard Weber, Julia Weissman, Leslie Westbrook, Wendy Wheeler Smith, Stephanie Williams, Jeff Wozniak, John Wullbrandt, Sarah York Ruben, Hiroko Yoshimoto, HK Zamani Join the Friends! Visit lumartzine.com/shop.

Funding support was provided by the City of Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Grant Program.

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California Culture Press

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Contents 6

The Big Picture Rod Rolle

by Ryan P. Cruz

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Lum Art Prize Winner Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales

by Debra Herrick

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Ba’hala ’na DJ Javier

by Ryan P. Cruz

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Studio Visit Nick Wilkinson

by Christina McPhee

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In Conversation: Rosha Yaghmai

by Debra Herrick

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A Crisis of Meaning?

The Politics of Curating-as-Art

by Tom Pazderka

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The Art of the Lie Laura Krifka

by Madeleine Eve Ignon

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Collage Communications Cassandra C. Jones

by Grace Miles

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Martian Thoughts Nick Lowe

by Christina McPhee

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Slingshot: A Vision of Ourselves

by Alexandra Terry

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Renewal/Rebirth RT Livingston

by Cynthia Martin

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...And I Live Here Porch Gallery, Ojai

by Grace Miles

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El Sol Detrás Diego Melgoza

by Brenda Tan

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Magic on the Brush Phoebe Brunner

by Kit Boise-Cossart

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Gallery Guide Artist Guide

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Pulled, Twisted, Painted Ilana Savdie

by James Glisson

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The Big Picture Rod Rolle 6

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By Ryan P. Cruz

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od Rolle’s camera has taken him across the country, from his hometown of New York City to precarious KKK rallies in North Carolina, to here on the Central Coast, where he studied photography at the Brooks Institute in the 1980s.

His first published photo in the New York Daily News happened almost by accident, when he was stuck in traffic on a bus headed for the unemployment office in Jamaica, Queens. He hopped off the bus, hoping to make it to the office quicker on foot, when he saw the source of the congestion – a large sinkhole had opened in the middle of the street. He snapped a few shots before picking up his unemployment check, then decided to make another stop.

“I went down to the Daily News and asked: ‘Can I talk to the photo editor?’” Rolle said. They brought him to the newsroom, took his film, and a few days later he received a check in the mail for $5. Over the next few decades, Rolle went on to photograph movie stars, athletes and world leaders.

When he moved out to the West Coast, Rolle became fascinated with the Pacific Coast Highway, and on weekends he would grab his camera and take a drive up the highway to explore the state’s soft hills and fertile valleys. It was on one of these drives that Rolle happened upon Guadalupe, a small farming town (technically a city) known as the “Gateway to the Dunes.”

than a narrator. His photographs capture a moment and allow the viewer to decide for themselves what it means.

He cares deeply for his subjects, and that trust is reflected in their willingness to be captured as they are by his lens.

“He has such a deep love of humanity, and that really comes through in his photographs,” she said. The photographs were initially on display at the Betteravia Gallery, but Rubin transferred the exhibit, along with ten additional photographs from the Guadalupe Project, to the county’s atrium gallery this year.

The exhibit’s main feature, The Big Picture, is Rolle’s ambitious attempt to gather the entire population of Guadalupe in the city’s main strip for a family-style portrait. Taken just after the fog burned away in the early afternoon of April 29, 1989, Rolle took four 4x5 shots and superimposed them together to create an all-encompassing snapshot of the city. A family crowds around their grandmother in the forefront, while around them, all types of retail workers, line cooks, day laborers and blue-collar folks of every shape, age and race showcase the town’s rich diversity.

Rolle chuckled when he remembered the day of the shoot. Crowding the city’s residents into the street was no easy task. “Holding their attention for ten minutes was kind of difficult,” he said. But getting them to show up was much easier. Rolle and Baca had become part of the city in those few months, and its leaders and residents were more than willing to pitch in and spread the word.

“We sent out flyers, talked to the city council and police department. They were real helpful,” Rolle said.

The small community has a population of 7,000, depending on the time of year. It’s the type of town that doubles in population during the growing season, and its charm piqued Rolle’s curiosity. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is really nice,’ and my jaw kind of dropped,” Rolle says.

“When I got back from that ride, I was telling all my friends at Brooks about this little place.”

A few years later, in 1988, Rolle was recruited along with Chicano muralist Judy Baca by the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission to document the Guadalupe community and provide reference photographs for a four-part mural that depicted the history, culture and diversity of the city.

Rolle and Baca spent a lot of time in the city from 1988 to 1989, engaging in conversation with its residents and getting a feel for the community.

The photographs Rolle captured during the Guadalupe Project are now on display in the Santa Barbara County Administration Building’s Garden Atrium.

Sarah York Rubin, the executive director of the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture, said she first met Rolle through his wife, local activist and Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle.

this page: Rod Rolle, Fieldworkers, Guadalupe, California, 1989 opposite page: Rod Rolle, The Big Picture, Guadalupe, California, 1989

Rubin describes Rolle’s work as that of a conduit rather

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this page, from top: Rod Rolle, Tractor Shop Welder; Judy Baca Studio; Mother and Four Children, Guadalupe, California, 1989 opposite page, from top: Rod Rolle, Fieldworker; Fieldworkers, Guadalupe, California, 1989

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Highway 1 was shut down for the photo, as it ran right through the street where the town had gathered.

Other photographs in the exhibition feature the people of Guadalupe, captured in Rolle’s stark black and white, each recognizing a different section of the city: a family of field workers, bandanas wrapped around their necks to protect them from the sun; a welder, peeking out from the shadow of his hood; a group of bakers, surrounded by sheets of fresh pan dulce, the sweet smell almost wafting up through the photo. Each is a reflection of the community, capturing the pulse of a city during a special time in its history.

A lot has changed since the late 80s, but Guadalupe remains much the same. It continues to be a small, blue-collar town with genuine people and a strong work ethic. A place where the names in the cemetery stand testament to a legacy of rail workers, farm workers and tradespeople.

Rubin said Rolle has a way of making space for other people. His talent is to put a moment in the frame and share that moment so that we can see it with him.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s a jazz drummer, since he uses his camera in much of the same way, shooting from the hip, letting the subjects be themselves and working around them to make something truthful, powerful and beautiful.

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this page: DJ Javier, Untitled, acrylic on wood panel opposite page: DJ Javier, Untitled, acrylic on wood panel

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Ba’hala ’na* DJ Javier

*Bahala na is a common Filippino expression used to convey an attitude of optimistic acceptance towards an uncertain future, as if to say, “all they want is to go with the flow, not minding what the outcome might be” – DJ Javier

By Ryan P. Cruz

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ucked into Santa Barbara’s vibrant Funk Zone, just steps from East Beach and hidden between a group of wineries, graphic artist, designer and painter DJ Javier’s studio is a window into the world he has created with his art.

It all makes sense now, seeing Javier in his natural habitat, listening to a perfectly curated hip-hop playlist buzzing through his studio speakers and surrounded by his work: bold-lined stylized characters reminiscent of early Southern Californian surf, skate and tattoo culture, alongside skulls, roses and waves painted on wood panels, surfboards, Dickies jackets and lunch tray “bodyboards.”

In just a few short years, the 28-year-old artist

has managed to create a steady stream of work for himself, painting murals for Amazon’s Santa Barbara headquarters, running the creative direction at SeaVees as well as his own clothing brand Canto Vision – all while finding time to paint a new collection of pieces for an upcoming show at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University.

Javier’s unique blend of surf rat, street-art motifs with Filipino and Mexican American inspired imagery is immediately recognizable, with his latest high-contrast fluorescent palette and heavyweight black linework creating a signature look that carries through each piece.

I’ve been fortunate enough to watch Javier mature into

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at left: DJ Javier, Blood of Man, acrylic on wood panel below: DJ Javier, Untitled works, acrylic on cardboard opposite page: DJ Javier, Poster design for Asian American Neighborhood Festival, 2021

the artist, husband and father he is now, and here in his studio today, I can see the fingerprints of all his influences speckled throughout the space.

I met Javier when he was in seventh grade. He was an energetic kid, bouncing off the walls and always on top of what was “cool.” Whether it was music, streetwear, skateboarding or anything stylish, he knew about it.

We had a similar upbringing, growing up in the “El Encanto Heights” section of Goleta –where the brand he shares with a high school buddy, Canto Vision, gets its name – as first-generation children of immigrants, trying to navigate a mostly white California culture.

Though my family is from Mexico and his from the Philippines, our households were similar in how different they were from “normal” families. Our grandparents lived with us; our aunts, cousins and

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various friends-of-family gathered in large numbers, gossiping in their native tongues and making industrial-sized batches of foreign foods. For Javier, it was hard for him to reconcile his non-traditional home life with those of his friends.

“Growing up I was always, for some reason, embarrassed of my culture,” he said. “I just wanted to blend in.” It’s a similar experience with many firstgeneration Americans, a shame and urge to hide your culture to assimilate or fit in with your peers. And like many of us, the shame doesn’t turn into pride until much later in life. Javier’s flip-of-the-switch moment came when, while at home with his wife Courtney, an episode of David Chang’s Netflix series Ugly Delicious sparked a shift in perspective on his heritage and selfidentity.

“They were sitting there talking about getting made fun of for their lunch,” he said. He remembers pausing the show, and having a moment of revelation with his wife that he was not alone in that experience, and that many others could relate to the things he had felt had made him feel like an outcast. “If I ever meet David Chang, I’m going to give him a hug,” he laughed. “He totally flipped my perspective.”

Artist, writer and chef Eddie Huang is another Asian American that helped Javier find pride in being part of two cultures at once. Through learning about Huang and Chang’s journeys to establishing their identities, it helped Javier grow into his own. “That moment made me feel like: wait, why don’t I talk about this? And why isn’t it in my work or who I am? From that point on, it began to develop more in my work and in my personal identity,” Javier said.

the working class in Filipino culture. The historical imagery, mixed with his usual motifs of skulls, roses and hounds, is Javier’s newest incarnation of surf culture viewed through a personal lens.

“I’m starting to understand my work more, and starting to understand myself more. I’m learning and growing every time I do something, morphing different themes,” he said.

The use of visuals typically found in low-rider and Chicano culture, such as bandana headbands and handlebar-mustaches, represent the close relationship of Filipino and Mexican Americans both in California and in history; both cultures experienced colonization at the hands of the Spaniards, and both stood side by side when Cesar Chavez and Larry Itlong organized the Delano grape strike in 1965.

That personal identity flourished during the pandemic, when an explosion in anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes forced Javier to speak out more openly about race and inclusivity in the surfing and art worlds.

He began to put more thought into causes he could support with his work, and new themes popped up in his art.

“Filipino and Mexican peoples’ cultures collide,” Javier said. The characters that often pop up in his work are part of this world he has created: farmer-warriors and dogs breaking chains; mysterious skull-headed surfers in full body wetsuits; and a whole array of unique creatures biking, skating or ripping through his scenery.

His latest paintings reflect these themes with “warrior” characters donning conical “rice hats” and palm rain guards, holding weapons and riding Carabao, a water buffalo that symbolizes strength, power and

In his most recent show in August, Javier hand-painted 72 lunch trays, or as he calls them, bodyboards. His friends, he said, used to take the trays from fast-food restaurants and body surf with them. He thought they would make the perfect makeshift canvases, and on each, he painted a unique character and sold them at a solo show at Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Workshop.

In his studio, it’s clear that anything is a canvas for Javier. Old surf and swim fins, surfboards and skateboards are all custom painted, and his past work sits next to his newest works-in-progress, displaying his growth within the last few years.

His latest work is a testament to his evolution; precisely drawn characters smashed into the piece, twisted together and layered on top of each other, filling as much space as possible and rendered with fluorescent shades of orange, yellow and blue that contrast with his bold, surehanded carbon-black linework.

The high-contrast palette he has moved to recently is reflective of his growth as an artist. The soft pastel colors he started with have evolved into bold and bright hues, and the outline and shading techniques create an even stronger presence. The linework and deep black shading work is even more confident in his newest pieces.

In the poster Javier recently designed for the Asian American Neighborhood Festival in Santa Barbara, a dragon and a tiger are intertwined, fighting for power.

Their battle for attention and space

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creates a layered message, and their composition suggests Javier is not only creating something that looks good, but that he is speaking through his work on different levels. In another piece, a foreboding black hound with its hair raised flashes its teeth, standing on two skulls while holding in its bite a broken gold chain, all framed by ten roses. The images he once drew as an homage to surf culture are now symbols in a visual language he is slowly learning to speak.

“My work is helping me say the words I don’t know how to say, but I know how to visualize. I don’t have words for them, but it’s almost like I know them,” Javier said. “I’m not a super eloquent person. I don’t know how to explain it, so I’m just going to paint it.”

Javier’s graphic design background allows him to play with shapes, weight, balance and contrast to create striking, condensed compositions. His commercial work on murals and large-scale formats have made him even more comfortable with freehand outlines and fitting complex compositions into a contained space.

“I’ve been thinking more about my work with more of these opportunities that I’m getting,” he said. “How do I fill this space perfectly with everything? Why do I do things a certain way? Everything is very smashed in, but balanced.”

Part of his growth, he says, is learning to feel comfortable in the fine art world. Just as in the surf world, which he has felt like is traditionally viewed through a “white lens,” Javier is finding a way to be himself and belong in those spaces. “It’s not that you want to prove them wrong, you are just trying to prove yourself right,” he said.

Growing up, Javier was never the surf type. He describes thinking of surf culture as a “white guy in shorts and flip flops” – and while that may be true, learning how to surf shifted his perspective to see other driving forces in surfing, from its Polynesian roots to Venice Beach’s cholo-culture influenced Zephyr skate team, the “Lords of Dogtown.”

“I learned to surf way later in life and I did not grow up in a household or do things that are even adjacent to surfing,” Javier said. “My roots are not necessarily found in surfing, so this is surfing to me.”

Now that he and his wife have a son, Duke, his maturity and perspective will only become more complex. I look forward to seeing where he can take it from here, getting a chance to see culture through his lens as he continues to grow, and watching what kind of impact he will have on emerging artists of color.

DJ Javier, Detail of untitled mural on roof of Amazon headquarters, Santa Barbara

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In Conversation: Rosha Yaghmai

By Debra Herrick

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outhern California sculptor Rosha Yaghmai’s striking blend of industrial and handmade materials is featured in two regional exhibitions this year: Drifters at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (October 2021 – January 2022) and Rosha Yaghmai: In Residence at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, Ojai (March 12 – May 7, 2022).

Yaghmai, whose father immigrated to California from Tehran, Iran, brings the legacy of a deep and elusive personal history to her immersive installations. Viewers walk among earthly registers, architectural structures and radiant abstractions, experiencing the force of hidden

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waves of memory, history and the psychedelic.

Rosha Yaghmai: I live and make work in Los Angeles where I grew up. I moved to New York for several years to go to SVA (School of Visual Arts) and came back to LA to go to CalArts for grad school. It had always been a dream of mine to go to CalArts. I studied with Martin Kersels, Leslie Dick and Michael Asher – all of whom were incredibly influential for me.

Possibly even more eye opening were my years working for Martin (Kersels), Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy after grad school. I didn’t grow up around artists and that world; I had never had any models of what that life would look like.

It was incredible to see how others found their way and the ways in which art and “life” were inextricable. I also learned a lot about making sculpture.

Debra Herrick: Your recent exhibition, Drifters, at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (October 2021 – January 2022) has elements of the transcendental, such as the luminous organza and resin “afterimages,” alongside artifacts of earthly creation, ie. the boulders and pipes. This reflects the breadth of materials that you utilize in your practice to achieve an immersive installation. The curved wall that divides the space and the color lighting were also definitive architectural elements to the experience.

Tell me about your immersive installations and what you are seeking as you move from concept to execution of the work.

I think of my shows as sort of collections of works, usually sculptures, that are arranged in a “scene” or Surrealist tableau. There are connections I’m making between the objects, but the objects are not contingent upon each other.

They are coming together for a brief time to evoke a certain feeling or mood – one that hopefully draws the viewer into the psychology of each work individually while they are ensnared in the overall emotional aura.

I will often combine unrelated materials and objects. The organza works are elusive/ illusory, ever shifting as your body moves through the space. They are hard to focus on and imply an unseen depth. The pipes also act as a stand-in for something unseen – an absent, fragmented and reconfigured (inner) architecture. The rocks provide real weight and density, a “real” landscape. The curved wall maps an “inner” and “outer” space.

of Kings references your Persian ancestry. At the same time, your approach to this imagery is to remove all human narrative, photoshopping away battles, castles, historical figures and so on. What the viewer ultimately sees is a pared down space created from layers of organza embedded in resin. Psychology is a part of your work, I believe, and you also haven’t shied away from saying that your work has psychedelic elements. I’m curious to know more about how your personal history, as well as knowledge of the metaphysical and/or psychological aspect of art, intersect with your practice.

For me, all my work is personal. In the Afterimage works, I am using the ancient Persian imagery to highlight my distorted relationship to that cultural history (passed down mythology, values, etc.). To play with the imagery is for me to examine what emerges.

Almost like a scientific slide sample, I lay out the material, zoom in, enhance, eliminate, zoom in further, and see what reveals itself. Often the final works will appear as if they are from the inner body, veins, etc., and others appear as disappearing landscapes.

I often think about occupying other bodies and times.

That’s where the psychedelic comes in; it’s about this potential, this desire. These works are my attempt to place my unknown histories back in my body. To let them exist as a ghostlike veil over my vision, to allow this “afterimage” to exist simultaneously with my life.

Fascinating. The work is so personal and yet completely

Why do you think you’re drawn to elements of the unseen and elusive? Are there any philosophical or theoretical lines that you are thinking about while approaching your work?

Making work has always been a way for me to place myself in the world, to understand my position and to encourage my personal unconscious to come forward and see how it relates to the collective unconscious I have inherited.

I’m intrigued by your use of personal history in your work which is both potent and elusive at the same time. In the series, Afterimages, material from Shahnameh: The Book

all images: Rosha Yaghmai, Drifters, 2021, Installation view, Courtesy the Artist and MCASB, photo by Monica Nouwens

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available and inviting to the viewer. How much do you think about the viewer when you’re working?

I do not think about the viewer when I am making the work.

I try and focus on what I want and work on being free. But I do think about the viewer when installing a show. I am always conscious of the viewer’s movement through the space, and as I mentioned, setting the proper mood.

Your upcoming show at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation will be a site responsive installation. What can you tell us about this exhibition?

I am so excited for my upcoming project at Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, and to work with Frederick Janka. The exhibition will be made up of new experimental sculptures that expand on a series of poured silicone screens I started in 2017. Working with the silicone as a kind of skin or membrane that is a thin distinction between inner and outer worlds, I am hoping to push the works to engage more directly with the body as an architecture, highlighting entangled systems and hidden structures.

above, from left: Rosha Yaghmai: Afterimage, Blue Aura; Afterimage, Rainbow Eye; Afterimage, Blue Moon, acrylic and ink on organza and cotton, photos by Elon Schoenholz, courtesy the artist and Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles at left: Rosha Yaghmai, Drifters, 2021, Installation view, courtesy the Artist and MCASB, photo by Monica Nouwens

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www.leftfieldgallery.com

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Anne Ward, Sunlight on Lemons, oil, 30x30 in., detail.

1036 Los Osos Valley Road Los Osos, CA 93402

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The Art of the Lie Laura Krifka’s intimate acts of deception

By Madeleine Eve Ignon

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o look at Laura Krifka’s paintings is to feel privy to – or rather, implicated in – intimate, disquieting and deeply intriguing snapshots of charged human interaction. Desire and fetish are laid bare, in some instances quite literally.

Krifka’s carefully constructed scenes play out themes of sex, power and desire, and the churning undercurrents of taboo that correspond to those themes. The paintings capture the real and the unreal, the fleeting and the fixed, the interior and the exterior. They cleverly draw on and reinvent canonical tropes and techniques, allowing Krifka

to explore modern psychologies and dynamics.

Her figures, seldom fully clothed and often contorted against intricate patterns, seem to anticipate the viewer’s inevitably voyeuristic gaze. It’s as if you just happened to catch them in a private moment, and in an instant of sudden, unwelcome awareness, you are confronted with what it means to be The Gaze.

There is always more to see in in Krifka’s paintings, through her clever use of mirrors and windows to expose new angles, uncover another intimate scene a moment

above: Laura Krifka, Tipping Point, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 60 in.

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opposite page: Laura Krifka, Unreachable Spring, 2020 oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in.

All images courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

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of exhibitionism. Krifka’s paintings pose many subtle questions about the relationship of the figures within the works to each other and to their surroundings, and, most crucially, their relationship to the viewer.

Krifka’s works are about “the art of the lie.” She skillfully creates worlds and myths that paw at and entice the viewer. One is coaxed to see beyond the lushly painted skin and colorful patterns to the dark and deceptive clues hidden within.

Krifka is subtly engaging with the act of seduction, crafting a multi-layered mise en scène in each work.

Like a filmmaker, she controls every aspect of the scenes she constructs, from building small-scale dioramas to capture lighting and composition, to posing, dressing and photographing her subjects – including herself.

Many of her works feel like they could be a stolen frame of a warmly-lit, long-lost, Surrealist soft-core California porn-noir. And they are reminiscent of the inherent dichotomies of pornography.

“No one gets implicated if they don’t get seduced,”

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Krifka says. “You have to get pulled in for you to also be implicated.”

And as she pulls us in, we are compelled to ask: Who are we when we gaze? What happens to us in the space between attempting to maintain a safe distance and fully engaging with a provocative image – when the very act of looking is a kind of participation, and demands culpability?

One might say all paintings need a viewer to be complete.

What becomes of art history’s infamous female nudes without the countless gazes that devour them?

As a female painter directly confronting this question in the twenty-first century, Krifka questions and subverts art historical tropes and the venerable tradition of the nude as subject, as well as the history of men painting women (or girls) with questionable motives. In her painting Copy Cat (2017), for example, she creates a subtle reference to Polish-French artist Balthus’ highly provocative and controversial 1938 work Thérèse Dreaming, which depicts a girl of about twelve with her legs on a chair, bent to reveal the slightest stain of menstruation blood.

In Krifka’s piece, a woman in her early twenties is posed similarly, exposing pubic hair instead of the early mark of womanhood.

“It is an inherently cruel act to be a figurative painter,” Krifka says. She contorts and controls her subjects, butchering the body and creating amalgamations of things that can’t exist on the human body. That act, she says, is “powerful but mocking.”

However, Krifka does this with visible care and attention and, as she describes, her figures exist in a world where that potential cruelty, that control, is readily acknowledged.

Krifka’s paintings also steer away from gore or the overtly grotesque or pornographic.

Much of Krifka’s new work, which debuts at Luis de Jesus Gallery in the spring of 2022, shies away from faces and the erotically charged confrontations exhibited in her previous solo show. After a long period of isolation during the pandemic, Krifka describes a feeling of absence from people, of abject unknowability. She became acquainted with that all-too-familiar feeling of gradually losing touch with the people around her. Other peoples’ motives, desires and beliefs seem farther removed than ever.

Her previous paintings describe a particular kind of interior containment, but what happens when that containment is forced? How has our collective relationship to each other, and to our own gaze, changed since March 2020, when we were cut off from regular, casual access? How does this new period of liminality change our interior and exterior spaces, both physical and social?

Laura Krifka is an artist committed to the exploration of these questions in her curious, generous and generative works.

above: Laura Krifka, Between Us, 2019, oil on canvas, 36 x 42 in. below: Laura Krifka, Lions, 2019, oil on panel, 60 x 40 in. opposite page: Laura Krifka, Piggyback, 2019, oil on canvas, 60 x 72 in.

All images courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

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Pulled, Twisted, Painted Ilana Savdie

By James Glisson

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n emerging artist, Ilana Savdie has already crafted a formidable painting practice that turns the .human body inside out and spreads dismembered pieces across the canvas. Because of the riotous blanket of colors, however, the work does not feel violent or abject. Indeed, one point of reference is the marimonda, a carnival character who originated in Barranquilla, Colombia, where Savdie spent her childhood.

Marimonda has an elephant head and wears an oversized suit and tie – a jab at the uniform of wealthy men and urban professionals. While Savdie’s figures lack the satirical bite of Marimonda, they do have the light-hearted tone of a carnival figure, one that masks a deeper, perhaps disturbing message.

In addition to dazzling colors and deft brushwork, Savdie adds layers of textured wax. By dilating the canvas’ surface and giving the illusion of depth, these wax areas seem biological in appearance, possibly a membrane, skin or a slice of cell tissue under magnification. The skin does not feel flayed or hacked off: more like fabric swatches in a patchwork quilt or a torn piece of paper in a collage. Here too, the dismembered, flayed body feels less violent than it should.

Ilana Savdie, Lágrimas y mocos (exploiting a suitable host), 2021, oil, acrylic and beeswax on canvas stretched on panel, 72 x 60 inches. Museum purchase supported by the Luria/Budgor Family Foundation and The Museum Contemporaries Santa Barbara Museum of Art

When she takes the human figure and twists it into nearly unrecognizable parts, then endows these figures with artificially bright and discordant colors, Savdie, in her words, “queers” the body. This means that she seeks to make her art strange, unconventional, and difficult to categorize. Indeed, one body has breasts but “her” face is hidden behind a cartoonish mask, while the other, who stands behind her in a menacing, dominating way, lacks obvious markers of gender. By dressing in a costume, shredding the costume into a confetti of fluorescent colors, then stretching limbs out like hot taffy and opening up portals to the body’s interior, the artist

gives us the impression of a body without necessarily having a human body present.

Paintings like Lágrimas y mocos (exploiting a suitable host) question when it is that a portrait becomes a still-life, or, when a subject shifts from animate to inanimate. Is that a costume with someone inside, or just a costume, an empty shell? The ability to detect consciousness must be hardwired in our brains, for it underpins the recognition of potential dangers. Who has not been startled, if not terrified, when noticing something move that had been still, and who has not stared at a shadow or rock after having detected a false flicker of life? The prolonged examination that Savdie’s figures invite partially comes from this facility.

Savdie’s paintings further engage with our ability to distinguish between the animate and inanimate. Her painting technique and paint application is marvelously varied, sometimes appearing as a modified version of an écorché, common in life drawing classes in which the skin is removed to show the underlying musculature and bones. In two places in Lágrimas y mocos, the artist seems to pull apart the body, an area that resembles a calve and in a jumble of toes. Beyond these two passages, there is a general sense of the body pulled apart to be put on display and the privacy of its interiority is violated. Into how many pieces can something be separated before it becomes mere parts? How can one then look past the bits and pieces to recall the whole?

These are pictures of bodies that fall just short of being portraits of sitters who possess consciousness and vividness. Savdie does not give us a portrait, but neither does she give us still life or an écorché. Whatever this in-between genre might be called, it is all the more compelling for being neither dead nor alive.

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Slingshot: A Vision of Ourselves

By Alexandra Terry

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rica Miller started attending the Slingshot / Alpha Art Studio in downtown Santa Barbara in 2015. Though she had no previous experience making art, it quickly became clear that the studio would provide a generative platform for her budding artistic practice to flourish.

Seven years later, Miller spends two days a week at the studio devoted to art-making. Her intricate embroidery pieces, humorous and pithy drawings, minimalist scratchboards, and narrative ceramic works are informed by popular culture, featuring recognizable public figures that range from Donald Trump and Universal’s Minions, to Frida Khalo and Hello Kitty. A prolific artist, Miller has no lack of inspiration or ideas. When it comes to turning a critical eye on the talking heads that populate our TV screens every day, she does not hold back; the sarcasm and wit that imbues her art is near tangible.

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Founded as an artistic branch of the Alpha Resource Center, Slingshot is a studio and gallery specifically for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Providing space, materials and instruction for over 30 artists at a time, the program takes an individual-centered approach to support each artist in developing an independent and meaningful art practice. The open studio environment is designed to encourage creative expression, and Miller particularly treasures the opportunity to share ideas and artistic approaches with her colleagues. The studio is run by teaching artists, many of whom have graduate degrees or equivalent experience, and is led by a studio manager who has a background in disability advocacy, education and program development.

As facilitators, the teaching artists

and studio manager track the unique process of each resident artist. By furthering their own understanding of each artist’s intentions, they can more readily provide opportunities for experimentation with materiality and approach.

The gallery at Slingshot hosts quarterly exhibitions featuring work made by its resident artists. Gallery Director Jessica Schlobohm, who curated the recent exhibition PoP, started her work at the studio in 2018 as a teaching artist. Following a short hiatus, Schlobohm rejoined in her present capacity with an aim to identify methods that would better serve the artists while broadening the visibility of their work within the community and beyond. She explains, “Art is a form of communication, and so when you’re working with a

Taking inspiration from the studios founded by Florence and Elias Katz in the Bay Area – Creative Growth, Creativity Explored and NIAD (Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development) – Slingshot was established as a discrete program in 2013. The name Slingshot came from resident artist Kim McDaniel (1969–2020), who felt that the program was helping to slingshot the participating artists out into the world to pursue their dreams.

population that doesn’t have the same access to discourse or speech – whether it is because they are marginalized or non-verbal, as a number of our artists are in varying degrees – it can be an incredible form of expression.”

Alpha Resource Center began its life as Alpha School, founded in Santa Barbara in 1953 by three mothers seeking educational opportunities that were otherwise denied to their children with developmental disabilities. Their vision led to a center that to this day aims to empower individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, support their families, and build a community where the contributions of all people are valued. Beginning in the 1980s, Alpha fostered an internal arts program, then called Alpha Art Studio. Operating a few days a week alongside the broader day program activities, the studio was run by members of staff with varying degrees of experience in the arts.

Sparked by the nationwide deinstitutionalization of individuals with disabilities in the early 1970s, artist Florence Katz and psychologist Elias Katz opened Creative Growth in 1974 in Oakland, establishing a model for a creative community guided by the principle that art is fundamental to human expression, and that all people are entitled to its tools of communication. Perhaps the best known of the three art studios founded by the Katzes, Creative Growth has nurtured artists who have gone on to see their work exhibited in museums and galleries nationwide, acquired by estimable special collections, and sold internationally at art fairs in over fourteen countries. One such fair, the Outsider Art Fair, has joined the ranks as an annual must-visit event for art collectors and patrons, attracting big-name curators and blue-chip artists such as Takashi Murakami, who curated the

exhibition Super-Rough at the 2021 New York edition of the fair.

The term ‘outsider,’ coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972, has been used to describe work made by self-taught artists, or artists who have had little or no contact with mainstream art or art institutions.

Cardinal was responsible for translating the writings of Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term ‘art brut’ or raw art, which for Dubuffet included graffiti, the work of the intellectually disabled, prisoners, children and ‘primitive’ artists.

What Dubuffet detailed was the raw expression of a vision unrestricted by convention.

Subsequently, the term ‘outsider,’ which has become a catch-all for a type of artistic production that supposedly exists outside of a conscious relationship with ‘traditional’ artistic discourse, has been criticized by many for pushing individuals with disabilities further into the margins. Curators, critics and art historians have struggled to find a term that encompasses this vast and diverse community of artistic production, now tenuously described as ‘progressive’ art.

Lynne Cooke, senior curator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, has curated some of the most formidable exhibitions devoted to artists producing work outside of institutions and the Western European art historical canon, contributing to a discourse

this page, above: Maria Arroyo, Bloody Mary, acrylic on foam core below: Erica Miller, The Last Dragon, drawing on scratchboard opposite page, above: Slingshot artist Erica Miller below: Mark Pasquini, Mr. Face, ceramic WINTER/SPRING 2022

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at left: PoP, Installation Shot, Slingshot Gallery, 2021; all artwork by Dylan Long, drawings on scratch paper, linocut prints below: Leonard Wilson, Arm In Arm, permanent marker on paper opposite page: Marc Sucher, In Honor to Chris Mars, colored pencil on paper

that criticizes terms such as ‘outsider,’ ‘naïve’ or ‘folk’ as yet another way of discriminating against practitioners working in the margins.

In a lecture on ‘insider’ or ‘self-taught’ art at the Brooklyn Museum (2015), Cook says, “What we need is a re-definition of those relationships where the margins can become, in (author and activist) bell hooks’ words, sites of resistance where an artist might choose to work from the so-called peripheral as a place to contend with some of what’s contained in the center.”

It was the Katzes view that studios such as Creative Growth ideally needn’t exist, and that the artists they sought to serve would be provided the same access and respect that able-bodied artists receive. However, in a society where individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been, and still are severely marginalized, it is essential to provide the support necessary for fair and equitable access to the opportunities that any artist would receive.

artwork with the appropriate level of professionalism,” Schlobohm says. “Much of the work has broader commercial appeal and the vision of the artists is unique.

Art lovers are always looking for unique work.”

Erica Miller is very conscious of her audience, producing art that often includes political undertones intended to impact the viewer. When asked what she loves most about making artwork, she quickly states that there’s nothing she doesn’t like about it.

Making art makes her happy, and her work is imbued with a playful sense of joy and observation.

Schlobohm asks that we approach the work produced at Slingshot with respect and curiosity, holding space for what we might not understand, as we would for artwork being produced by any contemporary artist. “(In) seeing the true value of the diversity of vision that comes through the work, (we see) the expression of the world around us,” she says.

“Individuals who have been disenfranchised offer a different vantage point and a different way for us to look at ourselves collectively. There is a lot for us all to see about ourselves and how we all process our world in this work.”

“The caliber of work that’s been produced (at Slingshot) is on par with other studios across the world. We want to increase the visibility of the artists and their

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...And I Live Here Porch Gallery, Ojai, presents landmark exhibition

Senon Williams, Untitled (Deep Cuts), 2021, hangs above the fireplace; Ben Todd, Monument and New Relic, placed on top of the mantle; Beatrice Wood, Dinner Set #2, c. 1960, on table; furniture supplied by Whatever Gallery includes six DSX fiberglass chairs by Charles and Ray Eames, 1951, and a dining table, After Arthur Espenet Carpenter, California, 1973, photo by Ingrid Bostrom

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By Grace Miles

W

ith its sunlit porch and broad windows opening onto the streets of downtown Ojai, the Porch Gallery’s unique role as both a residential and community space became the inspiration behind the gallery’s latest exhibition, It’s My House! Bringing together an eclectic mix of artists and mediums, the exhibition is a testament to the importance of collectors and the joy of collecting. Visitors are encouraged to consider collecting not as a financial machine that funds the larger art world, but as a deeply fulfilling practice that can satisfy our creative and artistic spirits when we incorporate art within our most intimate spaces.

It’s My House! was curated in close

collaboration with CURA Art, an organization that seeks to support collectors in the care and management of their acquisitions.

Founded by Georgia Powell and Liza Shapiro, they keep their approach simple but essential, advising prospective collectors not to start with what they think will make a good investment or warrant name recognition, but simply something they like. With such genuine affinity at the heart of collecting, collectors themselves are able to contribute the legacy of an artwork, as they strive to care for and preserve the cherished items in their possession.

As a historic home well integrated in the local community, the Porch Gallery was always the intended venue for the exhibition. Established

in 2013 by owners Lisa Casoni and Heather Stobo, the pair sought to fulfill the area’s need for a gallery that specifically catered to contemporary artists. After careful restoration, the gallery now occupies much of the house’s ground floor, though it retains the distinctive flow and atmosphere of a residential space.

Designed to fit these domestic contours, the exhibition perches atop fireplace mantles, squeezes between windows, and trots up the staircase. With slight direction from the Porch Gallery and CURA Art, a number of the artworks were created especially for It’s My House! and incorporate the artists’ perspectives on housing and domestic life on both societal and personal levels.

above, from left: Firoozeh Neman, Ivy; Ben Todd, Monument; Beatrice Wood, Detail, Dinner for Two, photos by Ingrid Bostrom

at left: Sean C. Flaherty, Baldwin Hill Stool, two Butaque chairs, After William Spratling, Mexico, 1950s, provided by Whatever Gallery, photo by Ingrid Bostrom WINTER/SPRING 2022

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at left: Hormazd Narielwalla, The Beloved below: Senon Williams, Don’t Matter Who Made It, photo by Ingrid Bostrom

Motivated by issues of wealth inequality, visual artist Michael Shaw works in the unconventional medium of cyanotypes. Using fragments of masking tape and layers of photographic negatives to assemble the design, his Above and Below illustrates the harsh divide between the housed and unhoused, and the injustice that lies beneath the attractive facades of gentrification.

Rebecca Farr’s Earth to Shore I then takes the notion of home outside of the constructed house and into nature. Rendered in soft oils, impressions of trees and foliage form a muddled cradle of greenery reminiscent of Ojai’s hiking trails.

Similarly inspired, Londonbased artist Hormazd Narielwalla acknowledges the town’s cultural

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history in his collage series, The Beloved. Composed from repurposed sewing patterns, the circular cuts of these iridescent panels cause them to appear as moons in orbit; a tribute to Ojai’s name, which derives from the Chumash word “awhay,” meaning “moon.”

It’s My House! also features a variety of furniture pieces, such as tables, chairs and benches, so that visitors can settle down and linger with the art as they move through the exhibition. Two benches constructed from decades-old wood salvaged from the streets of Los Angeles are the work of Senon Williams. Painted black and emblazoned with bright white text, these benches engage in direct dialogue with viewers, calling for a greater awareness of the spaces we choose to occupy.

Within the past few years, homes and residential spaces have been reexamined in light of the pandemic; their influence on our mental and physical health has never been more apparent. By simulating the experience of a home curated through attentive collection, It’s My House! demonstrates the joy that we can create for ourselves when we make space for the things we care about.

It’s My House! is open from January 13 to March 21, 2022. Proceeds from selected works will be given to local charities with an emphasis on homelessness.

Jonathan Prince, Detail, Pixel Block (Maquette), plywood and archival glue, photo by Ingrid Bostrom WINTER/SPRING 2022

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Magic on the Brush Phoebe Brunner

By Kit Boise-Cossart

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f ever a landscape was a living, breathing thing, it’s under Phoebe Brunner’s brush. Plants and flowers; clouds, fog and mist; open plains, mountains and shorelines – all transformed by thick layers of lightfiltered paint that seem to pulse with an inner radiance.

She admits to working as a sort of conjurer: “I use beauty as a ‘hook’ to get the viewer to enter, experience, and travel to a landscape that’s enhanced. What’s important to me is the magic.”

It’s a uniquely Western kind of magic. Much of her youth was spent saddled up on a horse, wandering through the hills and valleys of a remote California ranch.

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“There were no people, only solitude,” she says. The essence of those years, and her ensuing relationship to the land, followed her into the studio and onto her canvases.

Brunner’s studio hides among a tree-filled Santa Barbara neighborhood. Behind tall garden gates is a courtyard home that feels like a modernist Mexican villa. Situated on a hillside, the studio is reminiscent of Guadalajara, where she studied art.

On the ground floor, the studio appears industrial and spacious, with 15-foot ceilings, no windows, a sky light and movie set lighting.

While enamored with the drama, expanse and colors of 19th Century Hudson River School painters (i.e. artists Fredric Church and Martin Johnson Heade), Brunner says she also feels a strong connection to contemporary narrative landscape artists.

Pulling a catalog off a crowded bookshelf, she says, “You’ve got to search for this guy online (Midwesterner Tom Uttech).” “Look at Melissa Millar (Texas artist),” she says, thumbing through a book of Millar’s work. “Look at that,” she adds, pointing to a large, surreal narrative of animals titled The Ark. “I wish I could paint that good.”

Brunner’s work, in contrast to Uttech and Millar, is almost tame, more grounded in landscape realism. She has much in common with one of her favorite like-minded artists, New York’s April Gornick, though she also admires the work of Inka Essenhigh (NY ), Sue McNally (Rhode Island), and Emma Webster of LA. In viewing her new paintings, there’s a sense that something slightly dangerous and foreboding is hiding in the mist and foliage, as in the unfolding drama of The Open Hand or Big Love. Will the advancing rain unleash a devastating flood or nourish the land?

Aware of our various cultural crises at home and abroad, Brunner says she’s not a political activist, but wants to help people be aware.

“I’m optimistic,” she says, in spite of any danger seething within her unpolluted visions of the West. She’s hopeful nature will heal.

Brunner’s oversized flower paintings are testament to this hope. The fertility of plants with their explosive seeds, tentacles and winddriven dispersion spread life. Flowers dominate the foreground and appear disconnected. They float above Western landscapes, as in Invocation, or lower to the ground, as the poppy does in Fortune Teller. Bomba is a version of a ‘still life’ in action.

Part of the allure of Brunner’s paintings resides in their unabashed wildness – no towns, animals, people or even fences.

“These are all places I’ve been,” she says, describing a rediscovery of those places as she paints them.

“Sometimes they seem to paint themselves.”

Magic?

this page: Phoebe Brunner, Detail, We Are Gifted, oil on canvas opposite page, from left: Phoebe Brunner, Bomba, oil on panel; Hush, oil on canvas WINTER/SPRING 2022

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Lum Art Prize Winner Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales

By Debra Herrick

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e are honored to present our first Lum Art Prize Winner, Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales. The depth of Wallace-Gonzales’ work captured our attention in 2019 at her solo exhibition, The Individuation, at The Basic Premise, Ojai, and more recently, in the 2021 show Planet Earth at the Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College. When we visited her studio at Bell Arts Factory in Ventura, it was clear that WallaceGonzales was an artist of today: intelligent and brave, putting herself and her practice at the threshold of authenticity and poetry.

In the following conversation with Wallace-Gonzales, the artist’s roots in Black culture and coastal California’s ecology come into focus, as she describes growing up in Santa Barbara’s historic Black neighborhood and the North Ventura Avenue community along the river that connects Ojai to the ocean.

Her cultural and environmental background has been further shaped by her academic formation at the Maryland Institute College of Art. All this to say that while WallaceGonzales is in the early years of her career, she is anything but an accidental artist; she brings years of cultural examination, research and skill to her work, presenting a pleating vision of the self that is fresh and intriguing.

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Debra Herrick: Much of your work is based in self-portraiture – life-sized silhouettes, cyanotypes of the body, masks and other mold casts of your body. Tell me about who you are and why you were drawn to art and particularly, the self-portrait.

Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales: I’m very interested in the human body and how your body plays a key part in how the world interacts with you and how you interact with the world.

I think when people see bodies in art it is natural to quickly make the connection to ourselves. I want my audience to see my work and bring their own interpretations, their own stories to the works. I think including bodies or images of bodies makes it easier for my art to serve as a conduit that other humans (the audience) can use. I also think of the bodies in my work as avatars for myself and I’m constantly trying to reimagine this world and these beings in it. By doing this, it’s my way of honoring the fluidity and my disinterest in being defined by the outside world.

I see myself as an ever-changing being with nuances and many elements of my identity, but I often feel that in this very binary society we exist in, there is a push to put yourself in a box. I’m not really interested in that and so I’ve been building this world in my art, reimagining it over and over again but still building upon what was there before. I think as long as I am

making work, I will always use the body and especially my body because I too am evolving with the work.

And who I am is a difficult question to answer, but I guess if I had to introduce myself I would say I am Vanessa Lynette Wallace-Gonzales.

I am the child of a Black and Indigenous woman, my father is a Mexican man. I would say that I am a queer Black Latinx femme artist, who was raised by a single mother with the help a of a village, meaning my mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother and aunty. I am the result of my elders’ passion and love.

Your grandmother moved to Santa Barbara in the 1970s and was a part of a strong Black community on the Eastside. In a recent conversation we had, you called it “a mecca for a lot of Black people.” You also grew up in Santa Barbara before moving to Ventura as an adolescent. Tell us about that community, your grandmother’s experience and your own.

The community we had in Santa Barbara was like one huge family, at least from what I can remember, maybe part of that was due to being young. I remember having a lot of different friends from many different backgrounds and ethnicities. I lived in an apartment complex off of Milpas. It was full of working-class families. The adults took care of everyone’s kids, not just their own, so if my mom was working that day,

Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales, Skin You Can’t Hide Your Eyes, paper, pigment, acrylic medium, abolne, gold leaf, photo

by Brian Paumier WINTER/SPRING 2022

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I would hang out with a neighbor and my friends in their apartment until my mother came home. It truly felt like one large family.

I think for my grandmother she found a community of Black people who were coming from the South in search of something new and something beautiful. I think they found that in Santa Barbara.

You’ve mentioned to me that after moving to Ventura, where you lived in the North Ventura Avenue neighborhood, art became more important to you. You talked about isolating yourself because of acts of racism, and seeking out methods to understand your identity through art. I’m hoping you feel open to talking about that here. What happened and what impact do you think that time had on you as an artist?

We moved to Ventura because Santa Barbara was becoming too difficult to afford. Moving to Ventura was a culture shock for sure. For the first time, I didn’t really feel safe in my neighborhood because my family experienced a lot of racism. Some of our neighbors let it be known that we were not welcome by doing things like painting swastikas on our fence and leaving dead snakes on our front door.

This led to us spending more time inside.

Art became my sanctuary, and I was able to create my safe space in my art.

In the real world, I was very limited, but my art had no rules and that is what I love about it. Art became a way to express myself in a safe way. I also came to realize that art was a way to share my feelings but also to get others to feel those feelings. At some point, I realized how powerful that was and that is what pushed me to study art.

A lot of the materials you use come directly from nature, such as shells and insects you collect. You also incorporated living creatures in your 2018 solo show at The Basic Premise. Tell me about your relationship with nature and why it holds a strong place in your art and practice.

Nature is an important element in my work because it’s an important element in my life. My work really reflects my personality, interests and loves. I think of myself as a being of nature and so I use it in my work

because I see the connections between humans and nature as inseparable.

Nature has also become a way for me to channel my ancestors. My grandmother and great-grandmother both had green thumbs and every time I spend time watering my plants or going on hikes, I think about them and imagine what they would say. I imagine them telling me about the lessons I can learn from nature and so I use nature in my work in the same way. The natural elements are symbolic for lessons we can learn about ourselves.

Self-study and self-discovery are important to your practice. You’ve also told me that you see your work less in terms of where it fits in the art canon and more in terms of mental health and community. Can you expand on this concept/objective?

When I think about it again, I do think there is a place for my work and what I am interested in. Thinking about it further, many of the artists I follow have found a way to merge the two outside of the traditional canon and I believe that’s what I’m interested in. Artists like Guadalupe Maraville and Theaster Gates create spaces for community and healing while sharing their work.

I love making art, but I also think I need to make art and I think that art has played a huge part in my mental health and healing. When I was young, I didn’t know of many artists that looked like me or had similar backgrounds, so the idea of being an artist didn’t feel accessible and the art world felt very distant. As I got older, I started to meet more artists I could relate to, I found a community and I started believing that art was for me too. Now I’m interested in showing others that art is for you. So when I have had the opportunity for solo shows, I had these thoughts in mind. I tried to curate spaces that felt healing, safe and inviting for everyone, not just the usual gallery goers. I think for me sometimes going into an all-white gallery space can feel intimidating and foreign, very separate from our own realities and I do believe there is a place for that.

familiar. I do this by considering all of the senses, designing food for taste, scenting the rooms for smell, working with musicians to create music for sound and offering tokens like crayons molded from my fingers for touch. I try to invoke all of these senses, because I want the audience to really feel like they are in this world I created and in the hopes that even if you’re someone who considers yourself “not really into art” you still may find the scent of the room reminds you of a memory and then you start looking at the work differently, maybe it becomes more familiar and maybe you’re able to see your own story in this world I’ve created.

*The Lum Art Prize feature is sponsored by the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation.

Lum’s biannual art prize is awarded to regional artists from BIPOC communities or other historically underrepresented groups, including people with disabilities.

below: Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales, Pieces of Me (mask), wax and pigment, photo by Brian Paumier opposite page: Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales, Lovers’ Shadow, cyanotype on cotton fabric

But in my work, I’m interested in reclaiming these spaces and making these spaces that can feel strange, WINTER/SPRING 2022

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at left: Nick Wilkinson, Wlee, oil and colored pencil on canvas, photo by Elliott Johnson opposite page: Nick Wilkinson’s Los Osos studio, photo by Christina McPhee

Studio Visit: Nick Wilkinson

By Christina McPhee

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ick Wilkinson lives and works on California’s Central Coast. Beyond having a full-time painting practice and owning a specialty plant nursery, Nick owns and directs Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, with a focus on contemporary painting and sculpture.

Notable exhibitions of his paintings include Body High, a three-person show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, alongside Rema Ghuloum and John Mills (2017); and Does It Make a Sound at Ochi Gallery, Ketchum (2018).

I visited Nick at his studio, tucked in the back lot of his “grow zone,” a nursery for plants destined for his two horticultural businesses, Botanica Nova and Grow. Here, behind a near-forest of succulents and other droughttolerant species, Nick tenaciously pursues a vision of abstract color and line, in canvases that themselves seem to proliferate like new growth at every turn. We jumped into a discussion of form and process almost immediately.

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Christina McPhee: Nick, you and I share certain territories as painters, not least, the love of color and how the interrelationships of color create rhythms across canvasses, spilling from one to the next. With these new paintings you’re refining key gestures – arabesques, lines, colors.

Nick Wilkinson: Yes, here I’d make a line, like a blue line, but over here, echoing in another canvas, the blue is more spare, operating more tightly, catching up and tethering some visual energy.

Like a joint, you stabilize a joint, like a little metal corner, a little key point, going on in that sense, or a turning point.

I find that very few things in a painting’s development are easy all the way through. I find myself loving a certain move, and then making a slight change, and then having to react to that: I may start in one way or direction, but then constantly, literally turning the canvas, I do a reverse move. I’ll turn it.

It looks as if you are using a lot of oil sticks right now. And I see how you are applying your oil sticks with force and then creating a general shape; and then, you’re refining the edges of these shapes on canvas with your precise, smaller brushes. Oil stick is for the big decisions?

Yes, in most instances.

So with the process of moving from oil stick to brush, you are still intent on drawing.

We all want there to be nuance, little moments, that’s what I’m trying to get at, so there might be a hard line here, or the nick of a brush there, and the trace of these moments look as if they are creating depth from within a really shallow field.

For at least the last two years, my paintings are kind of like weavings of shapes. Woven effects – that’s the thing I’m always coming back to. Within the weave, I look to fix an edge here, make another feel like it’s popping.

Little moments. And the longer you stay with them, the longer those moments are revealed. There are two-second moments that catch your eye and there are five-minute moments, it’s a matter of pacing.

Conversations with several artists come to mind. One is the contemporary painter Stanley Whitney.

I love his work.

I’ve really enjoyed Stanley Whitney’s recent interviews on YouTube, especially with the Brooklyn Rail. Stanley, in a conversation with painter/critic Tom McGlynn, talks about how he understands drawing as a foundation for painting.

He says: “I had to figure out what drawing meant to me – I

wanted drawing as a really solid skeleton. So, when I get to these paintings, I know where I am in space, I don’t have to figure out where, I know where the color is immediately... then there is improvisation, through the color.”

Yes, for a long time I was suspicious, dismissive of a painter who makes the same painting a million different ways; but then, every time, it’s like – crack!

Whitney’s color shapes are especially revelatory as rhythms.

Yes, that’s definitely what I’m after.

It looks like you’re now entering into something so engrossing that you can’t see the end of it! You’re already going, oh yeah, wait, I gotta do this one, only now it’s going into a new field.

Each painting becomes a new site for the same query.

Yes, sometimes I’m not clear at first where the painting needs to go and and also OK with not understanding. But then, you do something you think is right and then you step back and you realize, you were wrong; and then, you have to wait for a little while to let it tell you what to do again, or to go out on a limb and make a move made on that intuition.

Oh, so they obsess you when you’re not here.

Like a lot of other artists, I don’t have the luxury right now of a practice that’s eight hours a day.

You have to do it efficiently, get down to it.

I have a lot of things happening, and so when I come in here, I think that’s part of the reason these things have, kind of, found a bit more of a meditative space here.

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I’m imagining that endorphin hit we get in the pleasure of painting...

That’s true. I’ve surrounded myself with people, my businesses, plants that I love, people that I care about, projects that keep my mind moving. Doing a landscape, laying plants out, stepping back, is the same process essentially as doing these paintings. Yet in the studio, definitely, these moments are more meditative, more solo.

Because the studio is at the grow zone, I can come in here and look and not necessarily make a move.

This is ideal.

I can come in, sit down, look, put a dab of blue to make a change and then run out.

It’s a growing space, so I can imagine these paintings are like little plots, slowly growing and proliferating. You’re keeping to a very strong reference, the plant life a cognate to what you live with every day.

They are like little groves.

You’re intensely tuned into the plots, site, place. Have you always worked in painting exclusively?

I got my undergrad degree in painting, but really, coming out of school, I was doing more installation, sculptural work, using found objects, industrial objects. I am a collector. I have collections of collections, I collect plants, I collect textiles, paintings, ceramics. I collect lots of oddball objects. I’m always picking up stuff and leaving it in the space to be able to react to it. Something too beautiful not to pick up.

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Do you think it was a natural thing to start the gallery? You’re gathering new experiences – you seem to have maybe two thirds of the shows around painting practices.

Those are artists whose work I enjoy, whose work I think is happening.

You make sure that their work actually shows up. It’s in Brooklyn and now it’s here. And this has to do with one of your other principles about life, being surrounded by people who have common empathic ground, and share interests; and people come to you.

The gallery has become a place where like-minded people get together, it’s a place to connect, the allure of that.

Trying to show work that I find to be valid is paramount.

It’s not a stress for me to have the gallery, I don’t have to make decisions based on sales only; it can be about other things, it can be about me feeling good about doing a show. It can be about giving an opportunity to someone who is making amazing things but is not getting opportunities to show the work as often, or just calling on someone I don’t know, because I want to see the work in person and show it.

Left Field Gallery also participates in greater LA now – seems like a three or four hour travel tolerance is not that different from driving from West LA to Laguna Beach at the wrong time!

Left Field is part of that ecosystem.

I would like to think that. The nice thing about this, that I believe appeals to artists, especially from the other coast, and even from Los Angeles, is you are in a completely different world here. The sense of nature is so raw here.

Connecting and collecting: it sounds like you set out to be a collector for participatory and empathic reasons. You have a talent for nurturing community. What were things like for you as a child?

I grew up the son of a farmer in El Centro, east of San Diego, along the Mexican border. My mom was always the more free-spirited one. She’s a nurse and a Reiki master, with silver bracelets up her arms. Between my parents, there was a duality in my experience.

They, of course, got divorced. I didn’t grow up making art, but I always knew that the farm lifestyle and living in that area was not something I was interested in. But you can’t get away from yourself.

I got a degree in art. My dad said, you’re never going to use that. So it all comes around!

I love that your mom is a nurse, you run a nursery, you’re nurturing.

That’s really deep for you.

Where I grew up, there are rich farmers, but my family was not one of them. In school, there may have been art classes, but I wasn’t tuned into that at all. It wasn’t until my mom moved to Bend, Oregon with my stepdad, when I was fifteen years old, that I realized I could study art. I had this amazing teacher, her name was Mrs. Carvallo, and she nurtured it. I was good at it, and I found quickly in that art class that I loved this – I wanted to do this.

Then coming out of school, I decided to go into art, and my dad said, it’s a waste of money. My mom said, whatever you want, honey! I moved to San Diego. That’s where all my buddies moved.

When you live in a little rural farming community you look at the mountains over on the way to San Diego and every morning or every evening, you know, it’s the Virgin Mary over there, waving at you. Cool breezes and the beach, and I don’t want to be here, it’s 120 degrees today. So, I went to San Diego State, and enjoyed my experience, and then, moved here (San Luis Obispo).

Getting back to your paintings, I’ve noticed you like to pop a red.

I’ve never thought much about the red. These are subtle color push and pulls. It’s cadmium red light here. Well, the important thing is, the color and the color shapes are not autonomous beings. Colors move from canvas to canvas. For instance, there’s a moment here, where up top, a blue-red-green shape appears, but then it’s also appearing in this smaller canvas. I’m pulling these events out of one painting into another painting.

You could call it a research method: to collect, then flow things together, then grow them into life.

this page: Nick Wilkinson’s palette, photo by Christina McPhee opposite page, from left: Nick Wilkinson, Tight Knit, oil and colored pencil on canvas; Rougher Yet, oil on canvas, photos by Elliott Johnson

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A Crisis of Meaning?

The Polemics of Curating-as-Art

By Tom Pazderka

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hat follows is a two-part polemic inspired by two art galleries, separated by time and space: Semi-Public in Asheville, North Carolina, where I first began contemplating this tension; and The Basic Premise, a newer, thriving gallery in Ojai. Both galleries have built communities around pushing the boundaries of art and the practice of curation at the local and regional level. But can curation be considered art itself? Here, I use the specific character of these two galleries to approach the question – which I don’t believe is clear-cut.

beyond fraught for me. There are several reasons for this.

First, the encroachment of the outside world into the world of art is reason to be suspicious. The banality of phrases like ‘he’s not a cook, he’s an artist,’ for example, waters down the meaning of the word ‘art.’ We need to bring ‘art’ back into focus as that which the activity itself describes, the actual creation of art (without all of its appended and associated pseudo-activities). Art as therapy, art as politics, art as investment, art as intellectual activity, art as consolation, art as anything other than art itself adds to this semantic problem.

In the early 2000s, while I was living in Asheville, I would regularly attend openings at Semi-Public, a small, artistrun gallery space. Located inside a former grocery store, Semi-Public held solo and group shows curated by its owner Gary Byrd. A small but fascinating network of artists passed through the space, and the work was unlike anything else around town. It was raw, and often dark.

Byrd’s approach was to link together a few close artist friends and curate based on his own sense of what would make for an interesting viewing.

Second, the notion of curation doubling as art practice is equally suspicious given that curators at most museums occupy the most visible and well-paid positions. There is no ill-will in my view on this matter. I understand what role the curator plays at the institutional and cultural level.

But let’s attempt to excavate what lies buried beneath such ambivalent notions as deeming curation an art form.

Here was a small network of artists unburdened by the pressures of commerce and modern culture, free to make whatever they wanted, however they wanted. Rent was still cheap in Asheville at the time, and many artists could avoid the pressure to enter the labor market to make ends meet. It was here, in the presence of a group of much older artists, that I was able to sharpen and focus my ability to discern what constitutes ‘good’ art.

In a similar way, a few years ago, I became involved in The Basic Premise, including having a solo exhibition in 2018, curated by gallery owners Teddy Nava and Matt Henriksen.

The Basic Premise provides for its community of artists and attendees something akin to what Semi-Public did. It provides a shelter and a fortress for artists from which to mount creative and intellectual assaults on polite society through exhibitions, installations, artist residencies and live events, be they raw and experimental or polished and resolute.

As an artist, I must say that the topic of ‘curating as art’ is

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The relationship of artists to curators is often marked by anxiety and power. Curators are the gatekeepers for taste and content. When artists do not suit the tastes of curators, they essentially do not exist, at least at the institutional level.

As a result, artists themselves have begun to take on the roles of curators, filling in gaps wherever possible, such as at Semi-Public and The Basic Premise. Thus, the practice of curating and art have blurred significantly in recent years.

Of course, the relationship between curator and artist was never one of equal footing. Whatever the individual issues may be within institutions and the art world at large, when viewed in terms of class, it is obvious that the curator occupies the position now described as professional managerial class (PMC), while the artist is, and has historically occupied the precariat class, marked by uncertainty, gig work and wild swings between success and failure.

Perhaps it is the perception that an artist has a relationship to authentic existence through form, function and creativity, that occupies the fantasy space of the curator/

PMC. In reality, the curator/PMC is highly constrained by institutional norms when it comes to expression and creativity.

Yes, for curators, careers and incomes are more stable, their futures more certain, possibilities of failure less of a threat, but such a life does not offer much satisfaction of the creative impulse to offset the tasks of managerialism.

Curating-as-art has been a hot topic for many years within the academic world, where artists, curators and academics of many sorts have been busily excavating various nooks and crannies of university archives.

This type of research gave rise to the practice of curating objects into large, installation-type displays, often presented at university museums and conferences, and resulting in all sorts of interesting concepts, and some less appealing, such as the vapid pronouncements like ‘body-asarchive.’ Others embraced curating-as-art as a way to move art beyond or outside of the studio.

By the mid-2010s, the ‘post-studio’ practice had taken on a life of its own, even though curating-as-art had been around for many years prior. Arguably, the first object of this category was Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, the infamous Fountain of 1917. Since then, the practice underwent various mutations and by the twenty-first century was standard practice, sanctified by MFA programs throughout the US under ambiguous titles like New Media and Social Practice.

Entire programs have been revamped to fit the growing trend. Students can run makeshift hotels from galleries, present cooking, body painting and emailing politicians as post-modern post-studio practices.

Really, it got quite bizarre and ridiculous at times. The irony was that these various post-studio practices were meant to lead critical inquiries into the underpinnings of how and what is art, but instead resulted in some of the most uncritical, platitudinous art ever presented to the public.

Novelty and fresh ideas that once reigned supreme were almost immediately replaced by rote copying and lazy interpretation of subject matter. How many times does one need to see an artist recreate a fully functional chocolate factory inside a gallery space? How interesting can yet another exhibition made of special collections books, newspaper articles and Hollywood photos be? And to be honest, was any of it really art in the first place?

Still, let’s look at ‘curating-as-art’ from a different light – perhaps more favorable. Is it possible to operate beyond the ‘official’ establishment today, to curate life itself?

Spaces like The Basic Premise and Semi-Public are vital components of this kind of thinking. Essentially, The Basic Premise operates as an experiment in art, somewhere between the commercial and non-commercial sphere, promoting and supporting creative people from all walks of life – artists, musicians, writers – Henriksen and Nava,

gallery owners, would probably say something else entirely.

But they are building a community independent of the outer pressures felt by artists to create work that is either commercially or algorithmically ‘viable.’

I would be at pains to say that The Basic Premise is ‘curating culture’ because that would sound silly and pretentious. It is, however, their fairly raw and immediate style of the shows they present and the sort of artists they foster that functions as a kind of self-curation, a selfselection of the culture and the community that surrounds it.

Culture, if it still exists, necessitates a constant sifting through of its various components and appendages. No wonder that the practice of ‘curation’ is today undergoing a kind of boom cycle in every aspect of cultural production – including social media – and the word is quickly losing meaning and impact.

Curation acts as a filtering of content and information that produces a narrow selection designed for the increasingly balkanized denizens of digital worlds within worlds.

Perhaps this is where curation-as-art is most useful, as a screen against neoliberal banalities and meaningless academic jargon.

Small galleries like The Basic Premise exist in that gray zone where commerce and anti-commerce merge and their art exhibitions take on the role of live events, rather than cheese and wine receptions. The ‘clientele’ is therefore much different.

The Basic Premise and Semi-Public supported what Czech writer and art historian Ivan Marin Jirous called the ‘second culture,’ made up of outsiders, outcasts, misfits and various hangers-on, a self-selected group of people whose connections usually center around taste and the inability to function within ‘the system.’

The ‘second culture’ is comprised of people that are abandoned, excreted, left out, self-exiled and priced out of the system whether it is neoliberalism, capitalism, socialism, meritocracy, aristocracy and so on.

Artists have historically belonged to this group and so the formation of communities around spaces like SemiPublic and The Basic Premise largely take on basic survival mechanisms. Of course, these spaces and communities are limited by their ability to reach wider audiences, their geographical areas, the rules by which they are allowed to operate, the cash flow they are able to generate, and the whims of the landlords and banks that own their spaces or mortgages.

The exhibitions these galleries curate and the thriving community that surrounds them make clear the mounting need for these types of spaces, particularly in communities where art is often reduced to nothing more than background noise.

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Collage Communications

Cassandra C. Jones

By Grace Miles

C

ompelled by “the mechanics of visual culture,” Ojai-based artist Cassandra C. Jones uses digital art and photography to consider the forces of environmentalism and consumerism on our threatened world.

With her heart firmly set on becoming an artist, Jones earned her BFA at the California College of the Arts in 1998, and her MFA six years later at Carnegie Mellon University. Her work in photography and film has been shown in galleries and exhibitions across the country, and she regularly participates in speaking engagements and teaching opportunities in the California area.

Collages flush with color and mesmerizing in their detail form the core of her work. Illusory and delightful, she transforms bulbous hot air balloons into delicate orchids; metallic gold party balloons into daubs of dandelion fluff; the feathers of a bird in flight into the roaring maw of a bear.

While the effect on the eye is dazzling, the artistic process is in fact relatively straightforward. Each component of the collage is photographed by Jones herself, and carefully spliced into a transparent image in Photoshop. The image is then duplicated, sized and rotated with great precision to create a new composite image. This type of collagebased art requires the viewer to “be generous;” to take a

Cassandra C. Jones, Old Soul, digital collage

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step closer and let the eye roam as it attempts to unravel the initial deception.

Large-scale installations, featuring multiple designs crafted from hundreds of individual photographs, offer a particularly immersive way to experience Jones’ art. Her 2018 wallpaper installation True Stories wraps around the public stairwell of Baltimore’s Revival Hotel, enlivening the space with colorful motifs that are not only decorative, but informative. The designs were specifically crafted to pay homage to the city’s unique quilt-making history, using such items as beach balls, hula hoops and cat-eye glasses to echo traditional stitching patterns.

Closer to home, Jones recently completed Love Letters, a 2020 installation at Santa Barbara’s Paseo Nuevo done in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. Here, her distinctive designs embellish a massive, six hundred-tile mural in the mall’s north court.

Just as True Stories commemorates the culture and history of Baltimore, Love Letters commemorates those unique to Santa Barbara. Her designs are arranged to mimic the familiar movement of waves and the rays of the sun, featuring bursts of brightly colored surfboards, fans flared in the hands of flamenco dancers, and intricate rings of Spanish guitars.

Though the Covid-19 pandemic brought the routines of ordinary life shuddering to a halt, Jones refused to neglect her creative pursuits as California went on lockdown. She took the initiative to establish an artist residency program at Ojai’s Taft Gardens, where she had visited years earlier and had long envisioned doing some kind of project for.

Set amid the furrowed hills along the edge of Los Padres National Forest, the secluded gardens contain a wealth of botanical wonders. With fifteen acres of exquisitely curated gardens, separate areas are devoted to trees, flowers and succulents particular to South Africa and Australia.

at left: Cassandra C. Jones, Aloe of Sixes, digital collage above: Cassandra C. Jones, Gravellia, digital collage

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With the global effects of quarantine beginning to refresh concerns over the depth of humanity’s influence on the environment, Jones spent her time at the Taft Gardens creating art that examines this perilous relationship between man-made objects and the natural world. Basing her designs on plants that were just steps away from her studio, she sought to creatively represent the ways in which “the natural world absorbs the human world on a subatomic level.”

In this series, photographs of mass-produced, disposable objects take the shape of stalks, leaves and flowers. Fern features strands of densely interlocked mylar party balloons, their metallic bodies deftly arranged to mimic the appearance of veins running through a leaf. Rows and rows of a single beach ball, meticulously sized and rotated, become a bulbous barrel cactus in Old Soul, as curving tendrils of green billiard balls form Aloe of Sixes.

This tenuous marriage of natural and artificial elements raises questions about the sustainability of our consumerist culture – what happens to these plastics, manufactured and replaced year after year by the thousand, when a birthday party ends, when summer is over or the game has ended?

What are we creating, and what are we preserving?

Cassandra C. Jones, Emoting, digital collage

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The lively colors and whimsical nature of Jones’ art may appear at odds with this urgent message – but this is an artistic decision, entirely intentional. Collages such as Banksia, with its cluster of open-mouthed Muppet heads forming the flower’s central pod, use a playful visual appeal to entice the viewer closer as their eyes unconsciously strain to solve the illusion. Upon sparking that initial connection, the deeper conversation can begin. As visitors made their way through the Taft Garden studio, they were able to apply the shapes and forms of Jones’ collages to the very same plants they had seen outside, and consider how these plastic commodities have come to integrate themselves within our natural environment.

Whether displayed in a large public installation or an intimate gallery show, the art of Cassandra Jones seeks engagement with its audience in order to stimulate social and environmental awareness. It asks us to examine the ways in which we construct our contemporary lifestyles, and how we interact with a dangerously commercial world.

So, things might look bright and delightful, but what are they really made of?

event brand portrait art prints

@ingridbostromphotography WINTER/SPRING 2022

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Martian Thoughts Nick Lowe

By Christina McPhee

A

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t Left Field Gallery in Los Osos, Nick Lowe’s expressive fields of oil stick markings spread in anxious cumuli like a viral load.

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A simultaneous desire for and fear of proximity infuse these 30 x 40 inch canvases, whose materiality as textile has vanished after Lowe’s application of as many as eight layers of polished gesso. Having erased all signs of coarse canvas, Lowe’s oil stick mark-making risks flights of cheerful, deadpan and slightly nutty abandon, infused with a mid-century-Modern, definitively Angelino color sensibility, as in Three Ladders.

Lowe’s Martian Thoughts recalls those goon-squad guys “just driving around and smoking” in Philip Guston’s late paintings. Lowe bounces matted balls of oil stick marks into tight tangles as if to suggest we’re inside a game of catch with a cabal of feral cats. He skirts the edge of horror, then swerves.

Another cognate comes to mind: Dana Schultz’s 2005 Presentation, in which she lays her victim before a ravenous mob. A similar sense of the grotesque edges around Lowe’s restless line, and yet something else is happening here, not sequenced to the ‘shock and awe’ aughts. Today, that spirit of Grand Guignol meets the most everyday terms of domestic life. Nick Lowe delivers dry humor in massed bubbles just past their saturation points; now, they’ve precipitated out as Diet Dr Pepper in

a Champagne Wine Glass, and Hairdryer Left On All Night.

Lowe’s workman-like attitude and non-romantic understanding of the artist figure into these deadpan equations between hot color and gritty linework – that idea that you finish a drawing, you go get a taco, then you come back and draw some more.

this page: Nick Lowe, Blue Pool, oil on canvas opposite page: Nick Lowe, Martian Thoughts, oil on canvas photos by Elliott Johnson

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Renewal/Rebirth RT Livingston

By Cynthia Martin

U

C Santa Barbara’s Special Research Collections is now the home of RT Livington’s photographic documentation of her Lower Manhattan neighborhood during the year that followed Sept. 11, 2001. The exhibition opened in 2021 in commemoration of twenty years passed since the attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers.

At the time, Livingston resided in lower Manhattan, nine blocks north of Ground Zero. For months following the strikes, Livingston roamed the surrounding streets with a 35mm point and shoot camera and a video cassette recorder, documenting the neighborhood’s gradual recovery from devastation.

“I wandered the streets of Lower Manhattan day and night, often sneaking beyond guard posts or making friends with military personnel as I documented the surrounding areas,” Livingston says. “The imagery, often gritty and sometimes out of focus, was quickly snapped as a means of avoiding having the film and/or equipment confiscated. I didn’t rely on the polish of the print to tell the tale. I relied on its guts.”

Livingston’s work, however, is not limited to documentary photography. Before moving to Santa Barbara in 2003, she had worked in studios throughout New York, founded The Page Museum, acted as the owner of Lapp Princess Press and even formed a band. She is a conceptual and performance artist who describes her work as “(going) from the sublime to the ridiculous, commenting on life and the human condition along the way.”

CHAIN/LINK, Livingston’s 2003 installation in the Mojave Desert revisited her connection to the 9/11 attacks. The simple rectangular enclosure acts as a memorial to those who died, she describes: “We are either chained or linked together. The enclosure is either a cell or sanctuary. You choose.”

Livingston’s focus has since shifted towards the Pacific Ocean but continues to engage with contemporary crises, such as recent works that incorporate the devastation wrought by the Thomas Fire and the mudslides in Montecito that followed, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.

As for what’s next, Livingston has plenty of ideas, and her eye on producing a rock opera.

above: The Page Museum, curated by RT Livingston at left: RT Livingston, photo from Renewal/ Rebirth documenting the damage to the sculpture, The Sphere,

by Fritz Koenig, at Ground Zero, 2001.

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El Sol Detrás Diego Melgoza

*This artist feature is sponsored by the Lisa McCann Group.

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By Brenda Tan

O

riginally from Mexico City, Santa Barbara based artist Diego Melgoza, aka Melgo, is a painter, graphic designer and musician working across media. His upcoming show at the Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop, slated for April 2022, is a study in the theme of “progress through knowledge.”

Of Mexican heritage, Melgoza’s practice incorporates concepts drawn from different indigenous cultures with an aim to promote a collective culture that values nature and seeks connection with the Earth. He is inspired by indigenous cultures and the efforts led by indigenous peoples to protect the land and natural resources.

One can see the emergence of these motifs in Self-creation of Flora and Fauna (2019), in which Melgoza depicts a creation story through abstraction. Fragments of living, anatomical shapes – muscles, bones, and organs – are presented as flat two-dimensional objects on a color plane. Imbued with living qualities, the objects are alchemized into one another as they come into being. The piece speaks to the idea that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.

El Sol Detrás del Sol (2020) incorporates the concept of sacred geometry to consider the presence of spirituality in painting. The precise measurements and shapes reflected in the representation of celestial bodies as well as the non-representational shapes on the left side of the painting balance the composition in a way that mirrors the harmony of geometric shapes found in all organic matter – from the shapes of molecules to the symmetry of a leaf.

When painting Obliterate the Beast amidst the political upheaval of 2020, specifically the George Floyd protests, Melgoza says he felt angry. Rather than creating meaning through abstraction,

in Obliterate the Beast, Melgoza embedded lines of text, such as “Profit for War” and “Profit for Incarceration” to make his statement of protest clear.

“I felt the need to create something brutally honest,” Melgoza says. “I feel that a lot of people in the US have the privilege to look the other way when social injustice or tragedy occurs. I think people need to know the harsh truth of this country, to recognize and see how we operate as a nation, in order to progress. It’s up to each individual to do their part to make a better society/world. The macro

relationship begins by seeing each other and hearing one another – to take into account other individuals, life forms, ecosystems, etc. To change our relationship with the land and all living things.”

Diego Melgoza, Obliterate the Beast, oil on canvas opposite page: Diego Melgoza, El Sol Detras del Sol, oil on canvas

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PACKING HANDLING I N S TA L L AT I O N

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presents

A collaboration with An immersive installation-exhibition celebrating the role of the collector in the arts.

Artists included: Adia Millett, Alex Asher Daniel, Alexandra Grant, Beatrice Wood, Ben Todd, Brett Childs, Chad Attie, Firoozeh Neman, Hormazd Narielwalla, Jonathan Prince, Margaret Mellis, Michael Shaw, Patti Oleon, Pia Pack, Rebecca Farr, Sean C. Flaherty, Senon Williams Porch Gallery Ojai | 310 E. Matilija St., Ojai, CA | 805.620.7589 Visit www.porchgalleryojai.com for a schedule of shows and events

A Movement Born in

PROGRESS THROUGH KNOWLEDGE A ONE NIGHT EXHIBITION BY DIEGO MELGOZA

The first home by legendary architect George Washington Smith, this Andalusian farmhouse built in 1918 in Montecito sparked Spanish Colonial Revivalism in California. Intact in the care of Lily Hahn, the home maintains original architectural elements throughout.

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Lisa McCann Group Real Estate is proud to support local art and architecture and showcase this important slice of Santa Barbara history.

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GR UGH )KNOWLEDGE ) THRO

ROUGH E) DGE ) KNOW) THR S

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Two Destinations, One Luxury Lifestyle WINTER/SPRING 2022

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Artist Studio Guide

Kerrie Smith, Flora Ficciones

Kerrie Smith Studio Smith’s paintings describe and reflect the complex counterbalance of asymmetries found in the dynamic forces of nature. Exploring balance, she examines ‘patterns’ in our environment. Subtle variations of complementary hues, and warm and cool rhythms of light create an equivalence on all sides of the canvas – recording nature and feeling its rhythms and changing seasons. She is influenced by her solitary walks and direct relationship with the environment in California.

Diego Melgoza / Melgoza Visual Design Melgoza Visual Design is a studio located on the East Side of Santa Barbara. In this space, artist and graphic designer Diego Melgoza (aka Melgo) focuses on different art mediums such as painting and media arts. Visits are available by appointment only.

Paintings and prints are available for purchase.

101 S. Quarantina St., Santa Barbara, melgocreate@gmail.com, (805) 280-1375, melgo.art

Elisa Ortega Montilla Elisa Ortega Montilla is an artist currently based between California and Barcelona, Spain. Her practice involves installation, wood sculpture and collaborations with other artists. She reclaims, deconstructs and reconstructs overlooked and discarded materials, addressing themes of transformation, adaptation, feminism and immigration.

Santa Barbara, CA and Barcelona, Spain, elisa.ortmon@gmail.com, elisa-ortega-montilla.com

593 Los Feliz Dr., Santa Barbara, (805) 570-1663, KerrieSmithStudio.com

Madeleine Eve Ignon, Now

Cynthia James, Everest

Madeleine Eve Ignon

Cynthia James / C. James Fine Art

Madeleine Eve Ignon is a multimedia artist and graphic designer who works in a wide range of painting and collage techniques. She currently teaches art and design at UCSB and Santa Barbara City College.

My work explores plants that could have existed in prehistoric times or in exotic corners of the world.

Birds and bees are foragers of specimens appearing in fictitious field notes, a guide into a dreamlike setting, luminous and at times slightly menacing with a reference to current environmental impacts.

@madeveart, madeleineignonart@gmail.com, madeleineignon.com

130 Cedar Lane, Santa Barbara, (805) 698-8790, cjamesfineart.com

Kit Boise-Cossart, Santa Barbara Island, oil on canvas

Kit Boise-Cossart Simply put, a painting or drawing increases our awareness of ourselves and the world. arthouse@fastmail.us, kitboise-cossart.com

Tom Pazderka a secret plot Tom Pazderka paints (mostly) black and white images from ash and oil on burned panels and writes and edits ‘a secret plot,’ an online publication about art and theory. Follow him on Instagram at @tompazderka and subscribe to ‘a secret plot’ at tompazderka.substack.com.

Tom Pazderka, Nostalgie II - version II

1218 Anita Ave., Ojai tompazderka@gmail.com tompazderka.substack.com

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Gallery Guide

Susan Petty, Explorations VII, graphite

Marcia Burtt Gallery

Santa Barbara

Located in downtown Santa Barbara, Marcia Burtt Gallery features contemporary landscape paintings, photographs, prints and books.

517 Laguna St., Santa Barbara, marciaburttstudio@ gmail.com, (805) 962-5588, artlacuna.com

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) seeks to enrich lives and inspire critical thinking through meaningful engagement with the art and ideas of our time. MCASB provides Santa Barbara and the Central Coast with exhibitions and programming that encourage discovery, cultivate new perspectives, and challenge the way we see and experience the world, ourselves and each other.

653 Paseo Nuevo, Upper Arts Terrace, Santa Barbara, hello@mcasantabarbara.org, (805) 966-5373, mcasantabarbara.org

Ruth Ellen Hoag, Rock, Paper, Scissors

Ruth Ellen Hoag Fine Art at GraySpace Ruth Ellen Hoag is the Resident Artist at GraySpace Gallery, and a founding member of Santa Barbara Studio Artist. She invites the gallery visitor to explore her working studio where ongoing projects take form and art is created.

219 Gray Ave. (in the Funk Zone), Santa Barbara, (805) 689-0858, ruth@grayspaceart.com, grayspaceart.com

La Cumbre Center for Creative Arts – LCCCA LCCCA is a haven for artists and for those who love art! 24 distinctive artists working in all mediums – bronze, paint, wood, sculpture, assemblage, ceramics, collage and photography – present their work in three galleries, the Fine Line, the Hangout and Illuminations. Visit artists’ studios, attend workshops and special events throughout the year.

121 S. Hope Ave., Santa Barbara, info@lcccasb.com, lcccasb.com

Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery The Gallery/Conference Room of the AFSB is a dynamic space within a historic setting for curated exhibitions of contemporary art, photography and design. Four solo exhibitions and one group exhibition are presented annually. Local artists, architects, photographers and designers are invited to submit work in a wide range of content, mediums and styles.

229 E. Victoria St., Santa Barbara, info@afsb.org, (805) 965-6307, afsb.org

Silo118 Tommy Neumeyer, Taco & Burrito, ceramic

Slingshot promotes artistic opportunities for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities, guiding each artist to develop an independent and meaningful art practice.

Why go to Los Angeles, New York, Paris or Tokyo to buy art when you can find exciting, contemporary work in the Santa Barbara Funk Zone at the gallery located in an old grain silo?

Pick up a little bit of Santa Barbara history while adding to your fabulous art collection. Featuring a wide range of creatives: local, national and international emerging and established artists.

220 W. Canon Perdido St., Santa Barbara, (805) 770-3878, slingshotart.org

118 Gray Ave., Santa Barbara, (301) 379-4669, silo118.com

Slingshot Art Studio & Gallery

Sullivan Goss Gallery Sullivan Goss Gallery has represented the work of American artists since 1984.

The contributions of American artists from the 19th century to the 21st century can be found in Sullivan Goss’ expansive galleries in downtown Santa Barbara, California.

11 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara, Nathan Vonk, Owner, sales@sullivangoss.com, sullivangoss.com

Ventura

Laurie MacMillan, Hawaiian Holiday, acrylic on canvas

10 West Gallery Located in the Art District surrounding the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 10 West Gallery features contemporary art, ceramics and sculpture. On display are the works of local and regional artists with a broad range of genres including abstracts, urban landscapes, figurative work, digital and more.

10 W. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara, director@10westgallery.com, (805) 770-7711, 10westgallery.com

City Hall Gallery & Channing Peake Gallery City Hall Gallery, 735 Anacapa St, Santa Barbara, art@sbac.ca.gov, sbac.ca.gov, (805) 568-3994 Channing Peake Gallery, 105 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara, art@sbac.ca.gov, (805) 568-3994, sbac.ca.gov

Thousand Oaks

Vita Art Center Since 2008, Vita Art Center has brought quality art education, community outreach, and outstanding monthly exhibits to Ventura. Vita is a place for the community to gather and engage in the arts. At the core of every exhibit is our commitment to bringing museum quality contemporary art to Ventura.

28 W. Main St., Ventura, (805) 644-9214, VitaArtCenter.com

Solvang

Solvang Fine Art Solvang Fine Art specializes in historic museum quality prints, contemporary paintings, and original sculptures by American and European artists. The gallery recently opened at the remodeled Shops at Clök Tower in the heart of Solvang’s tourist district.

482 First St., Solvang, solvang fineaart.com

Ojai

Museum of Art Thousand Oaks The California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks (CMATO) is a contemporary art museum that engages, educates and enriches our visitors and our community through the visual arts. Established in 2008, the museum showcases established and emerging artists, with a unique focus on participatory art.

350 W. Hillcrest Dr., 2nd Level, Thousand Oaks, info@cmato.org, cmato.org

Firoozeh Neman, Ivy

Porch Gallery Ojai Located in a historic building in downtown Ojai, Porch Gallery represents emerging and established contemporary artists and produces artistic events throughout the Ojai Valley. Porch Girls Productions, owned by Heather Stobo and Lisa Casoni, officially took over management of the gallery in May of 2013.

310 E. Matilija St., Ojai, (805) 620-7589, porchgalleryojai.com

Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation/Ojai Institute The Ojai Institute is an artist-residency program in Ojai that extends the dialogue between artists and the public through exhibitions and programs.

248 S. Montgomery St., Ojai, fjanka@cgbfoundation.org, cgbfoundation.org, theojaiinstitute.org

Los Osos

Installation view of works by Austin Eddy and Sylvia Fragoso

Left Field Left Field is a contemporary art gallery located in Los Osos, a small town on the Central Coast of California, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The gallery presents exhibitions with the primary goal of bringing to the region contemporary art not otherwise seen here.

1036 Los Osos Valley Road, Los Osos, Nick Wilkinson, Gallery Director, (805) 305-9292, leftfieldgallery.com

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