Gallery Roaming in Venice on Thursday

I visited North Venice Blvd. see what was new at the L A Louver and the Shulamit galleries.  They are just a half a block off the famous Venice Beach walk which was busy on this sunny Thursday morning.

The L A Louver has an exhibit of the works by Enrique Martinez Celaya entitled "Lone Star." Celaya was born in Cuba and spent his childhood in Spain and Puerto Rico.  He studied Applied & Engineering Physics at Cornell University and Quantum Electronics at U.C. Berkeley.  He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and also has his M.F.A. from U.C. Santa Barbara.  He has been a professor of Art at Pomona College and Claremont Graduate Univ., honored at the University of Nebraska and at Dartmouth.  He currently lives and works in L.A.

The exhibit flier states that the beginning and end points of the exhibition experience are marked by two installations.  In the first floor, a bronze sculpture of a young boy stands in a pool of water; tiled mirrors cover the surrounding walls.  Tears trickle from the boy's eyes into the blackened pool.  The sound of the tears dropping into the pool creates a multi-sensorial immersive experience.

"The Invisible (or The Power of Forbearance," 2015

The second installation upstairs in the gallery's open-air Skyroom, features the same boy who now stands within a wire cage shaped like a house.  Holes in the figure's chest serve as refuge for five live birds that live within the cage.

"The Treasure of the Patient," 2015

The flier states that the paints and sculptures presented throughout the first and second floor galleries navigate between these two installations that according to Celaya, "point to a world that is familiar and unknown, radiant and brutal, personal and vast...I approach it as a totality or as an environment where one artwork is revealed or hidden by another."

"The Prince," 2015

"The Childhood of Fountains," 2012

"The Deeper Life," 2015

"The Border," 2015

"The Vertex," 2014

"The Sigh," 2015

"The Ballad of What is Yours," 2015

"The Relic and the Pure," 2013

"The Grateful," 2015

"The Nursery," 2015

The Shulamit Gallery has a solo exhibition by L.A. based multi-media artist, Carol Es, entitled "Exodus.".  The exhibit shows the new work that delves into the artist's experience on a 10 day trip near Joshua Tree National Park in Spring 2014.  The gallery flier states that Es spent this time in deep meditation and study, keeping a journal, photographing her surroundings, generating sketches, DVD footage, and blogging about her process.  The exhibition is anchored around two new bodies of work - Es' mixed media collages and a series of paintings, Abstracted Desert Landscapes.  In her mixed media collages, rocks morph into calico dreamscapes set against exposed wood grain.

Carol Es was born in 1968 in Santa Monica, CA and her works are featured in numerous private and public collections.

Beautiful April Day in the Huntington Gardens

My friend Bill and I enjoyed a walk through the Huntington Gardens.  The Roses were blooming out all over as were many other flowers and trees.  The new cafe is wonderful with outdoor views of the gardens while munching on a scone and sipping iced tea.  Here are a few photos:

The entrance is enhanced with this sculpture, "Jerusalem Stabile," 1976 by Alexander Calder (1898-1976).

Chances Are we were a bit Misty on Saturday Night

We enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Johnny Mathis.  Yes the 79 year old crooner still has it, vibrating and modulating each note to perfection.  I have so many memories of the late 1950's and early 1960's dancing slowly with the lights turned low to the great Johnny Mathis.  Here are a couple of pics:

"Whistler's Mother," and friends at the Norton Simon on Friday, April Third

My friend Nancy and I enjoyed seeing the three visiting paintings from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris that were temporarily traded to the Norton Simon.

"The Card Players," 1892-96 by Paul Cezanne, French, 1839-1906, oil on canvas.  The description states that as if engaged in a silent ritual, Cezanne's peasants play out their game, each intent upon his hand.  The scene is arranged like one of the artist's still lifes with not interaction between players, a "collective game of solitaire."

"Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist's Mother)," 1871 by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American 1834-1903, oil on canvas.  "One does like to make one's mummy just as nice as possible," said the artist in an interview,

"Emile Zola," 1868 by Edouard Manet, French, 1812-1883, oil on canvas.  The great novelist was only 28 when the picture was painted.  Zola was a defender of Manet's painting style saying "Manet's place is marked for him in the Louvre." 

Roaming on Thursday with my friend Jesse

After a great breakfast at Back on the Beach in Santa Monica, Jesse and I checked out the Hammer Museum in Westwood.  We enjoyed the permanent collection of Armand Hammer and then visited the many other temporary exhibits.  Here is a bit of what we appreciated:

We were greeted by the work of Lily van der Stokker entitled "The Tidy Kitchen."

Lily van der Stokker was born in 1954 in the Netherlands.  She resides and works in Amsterdam and New York City.
The program states that for this exhibit, "The Tidy Kitchen, she may have created her most political work to date.  In this work which goes from floor to ceiling in the entry of the museum, she uses heavily text-based approach which she brings to the subject of housework and cleaning.  The phrases "Washing and Cleaning" and "Organized and Tidy," are surrounded by descriptions of objects and actions from the domestic world, such as "sticky honey bear" and mildew on the shower curtain."   At one time or another we all have to deal with issues of cleaning.  The phrases like "oven clean in 2 hours and 45 minutes" remind us of how we are constantly bombarded with ads for products claiming to make our lives easier and better.  The program states that women have been expected to do the cleaning without compensation.   The artist believes that women should be paid for the skills and contribution with the text "Crying Crying for $320 per 8 our day.

We then went up to see the permanent exhibit and appreciated several favorites that are seen below:

"Don Quixote and Sancho Panza," 1866-68 by Honore Daumier, French, 1808-1879, oil on canvas

"Portrait of a Man Holding a Black Hat," 1637 by Rembrandt Harmensz, van Rijn, Dutch 1606-1669, oil on panel.

"Portrait of a Man in Armor," 1530 by Titian, Italian 1488-1576, oil on canvas.

"Touc, Seated on a Table," 1879 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French, 1864-1901. oil on panel

We then roamed into the exhibit entitled "Provocations:  The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio."  This fun exhibit shows the designs of Thomas Heatherwick in London.  The program states that this shows the breadth of the studio's practice by focusing on the design concepts behind these various designs.   Here photos of a few of my favorites:

1:10 scale model of the Olympic Cauldron, London, 2012, copper-plated brass.  The description states that his design was created to engage every country in the Olympic Games to take part in making and lighting the Olympic cauldron.  During opening ceremonies, a representative from each nation placed its copper element on slender rods radiating from the heart of the stadium.   Lit by young athletes, the individual flames were lifted and surged into a single, symbolic blaze.  

Afterward, the elements, patinated by the heat, became individual mementos of the 204 participating countries.

Zip Bags, 1993, Reel of zipper with an imaginative staircase design in the background.

Jiading Bridge, Shanghai, China, 2010.  This scale model of a design for a 65-foot-long waterway span that rises for boats to pass underneath.  

"Extrusions," 2009, Electroless-nickel-plated aluminum. "Can you squeeze a chair out of a machine, the way you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube?
A design for a modern London double-decker bus in the background.

A portion of the bus.

"Raw Extrusion," 2009

Next we passed into the gallery with an exhibit by Charles Gaines entitled "Gridwork 1974-1989.  The artist lives in L.A. and is on the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.  The seventy-year-old African American artist also has an current exhibit at the Art + Practice gallery in Leimert Park neighborhood of L.A.  The artist created the gridwork style of painting as a rules-based procedures to construct order and meaning in contrast to the free expression style of artists like Jackson Pollock.  Here are some photos of his works:

From the series "Walnut Tree Orchard, he begins with photographs.

He then translated the photographs into drawings on paper with a hand-drawn grid. 

He used the same process with black-and-white photographs of people.

The facial features are then presented as negative space in a field of numbered squares.

"Numbers and Trees (1986-89).  The description states that the painted tree is composed of differently colored and numbered squares that are overlaid so that the numeric information about the other trees in the series is collapsed into one image.  Each vertical axis depicts the same number in each of its squares, beginning with zero at the center axis to form the trunk of the tree.

We ended our day at the outdoor concert stage behind the Jimmy Kimmel Life show in Hollywood. Thanks to brother-in-law Pat, we were enjoyed a performance by Chicago and Earth Wind and Fire.
It was great fun...we "Boogied On Down."  Here are a few photos: