Art Auction for an Arty Cause

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Long Beach Museum of Art’s 75th Celebration & Art Auction is this weekend. We had the pleasure of attending an advance event last week, and the available works are truly stunning.

A wide variety of artists contributed to this beautiful collection, displayed as it should be, throughout the museum itself. From ocean view to a lovely curation and layout, this is a stellar event for art appreciation as well as a chance to meet many of the artists and add their work to your collection.

A VIP dinner and  both live and silent auction are tonight; tomorrow, Saturday, the silent auction continues along with music, dancing, and cocktails. Event proceeds supports the museum’s exhibitions, art education programs, and tours and workshops for Long Beach Unified School District’s 5th graders.

The work is jewel-perfect; the cause is great, too. Take a look at some of the auction offerings here, and via this link.

Saturday, September 20, be sure to celebrate art and community with live music, dancing, bites, drinks, and a silent auction.
Tickets available now at lbma.org with food and drinks included.
This year’s silent auction features 170+ works by 140+ artists – don’t miss your chance to collect!
  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

Scott Tansey Is Bursting With Images

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There are two new photographic books soon to emerge packed with evocative images from artist Scott Tansey. Each are quite different but both represent a lush ethos of images that linger once viewed. Wet Point Lobos and Surfaces present very different topics, but both show astonishing grace.

In Wet Point Lobos, Tansey has captured the shape of vast sweeping landscapes and the intimate, sinuous, sensual closeness of sea and shore. He has truly made Point Lobos his own, giving us a personal and profound a look at a destination that is inherently meaningful for the artist, and for his viewers alike.

In these images of Point Lobos, Tansey gives us the stones, pebbles, sea creatures, tide lines, and sea foam of the Central California Coast as an intimate gift. Each image is a jewel, sparkling and wet: he gives us the visceral texture of sand grains, the roughness of rock layers, the eroded shapes of curving and linear tide pools, the glow of water and sunlight, of winter waters and spring tides.

California, Central California, Monterrey County, Point Lobos, Point Lobos State Reserve, Rocks, Water

As a photographic artist, Scott Tansey has captured the shape of vast sweeping landscapes and the intimate, sinuous, sensual closeness of sea and shore. He has truly made Point Lobos his own, giving us a personal and profound look at a destination that is inherently meaningful for the artist, and for his viewers alike.

The cross hatching of sedimentary rock reminds us of well-worn skin; foamy waves erupting through narrow cliff-side channels pulses like a clear, wild blood through our veins. Cerulean blue stone, caressed by calm reminds the viewer of an astronaut’s glimpse of our blue marble Earth from space.

California, California Coast Line, Central California, Monterrey County, Point Lobos, Point Lobos State Reserve, Rocks

This is Wet Point Lobos: a miracle of time, tide, and tenacity, a world in which the viewer can wade through images as cool and alluring as the sea itself.

Moving from sea to land, Tansey’s Surfaces vary, but color explodes in an utterly unique and mesmerizing series of images. As Tansey explains, “Photographs are created, not merely captured,” and his creation of surfaces makes the world around us vibrate in a wild explosion of color and force.

Using post-production techniques that could have been utilized more than a decade earlier, he has shaped a vision that is nonetheless absolutely of this moment, as transforming and dazzling as if the viewer looked through a prismatic screen, exploring compelling kaleidoscopes of color, and a rainbow of resonance.

Altering the color space of simple surfaces alters the mundane, transforming it into something visionary. Whether it is a wall observed outside a restaurant or simply the ground Tansey walks on, these images appear brave and incendiary. Textures are colors, colors are surfaces, color seeps through the pores of every substance revealed in this collection. The artist creates the auras around landscapes, the auroras of opalescent light that make the prosaic into the profound and spiritual.

Seattle

As a viewer, ask yourself if you can imagine animate life leaving behind a resonant glow, a fresh color field. Tansey certainly provides that here, shaping a new spectrum of light and vision. As he notes, “Hundreds of thousands walk over the surface of [these] image[s] each year…” without seeing within them.

Exotic as many of the artist’s images appear at first glance, this abstract and vivid series of works are based on locations captured less than four miles from where he lives. It is a fascinating change for an artist who has traveled the world’s glaciers, explored cities, cathedrals, and distant seas.  What Tansey has done in these collections is a revelation of what lies within the core of the earth itself.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the artist

 

Here Comes the Shark – Jaws Celebrates 50th Anniversary at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures

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With warm remarks by filmmaker Steven Speilberg, exhilerating soundtrack excerpts performed symphonically live and set to movie stills, dun-dun dun-dun dun– Jaws has arrived at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in mid-city.

It was a thrilling introduction to a well done exhibition at the museum, one that any movie lover should brave the waters filled with LA traffic sharks to experience.

The live musical experience of the Hollywood Studio Symphony – who performed the iconic John Williams score for the film originally, added to the enthusiasm of the audience before we even got a look at the beautifully realized multi-gallery experience.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary year of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures first large-scale exhibition dedicated to a single film is also the largest exhibition to have showcased Universal Pictures’ landmark summer blockbuster, which earned three Academy Awards® and was nominated for Best Picture.

Running September 14, 2025, through July 26, 2026 in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery, Jaws: The Exhibition breaks down famous scenes, offers interactive experiences, behind-the-scenes stories, and some 200 original objects on display.

Interactive experiences include the ability to pose as the arm buried in the sand dune on the beach; create your own dolly shot on your smart phone, operate a facsimile of Bruce the shark (the real deal hangs outside the gallery, spanning massive ceiling space over the escalator), or sit in the galley of the boat where the intrepid team of shark hunters bonded in the film.

Props and notes and even a camera are on display among many objects never previously shown to the public, some from the personal collections of Steven Spielberg and the Amblin Hearth Archive, the NBCUniversal Archives & Collections, and the Academy Collection.

 

According to Academy Museum Director and President Amy Homma, who gave her remarks at the press opening, “The Academy Museum celebrates film history and with this exhibition we can bring never-before-seen movie experiences to a public audience…[and] create a space where the worldwide community of Jaws fans can gather and relive the movie while giving new audiences the joy of discovery.”

Senior Exhibitions Curator Jenny He, who also spoke at the opening noted that “It has been absolutely rewarding to engage with so many outstanding collaborators to tell the story of Jaws through an exhibition, which is as thoughtful and revelatory as it is immersive and thrilling. All of us at the Academy Museum are deeply grateful for the invaluable support and insight we have received, working with Steven Spielberg’s personal archive at Amblin, the collection at Universal Pictures, numerous private collectors, and many of the Jaws filmmakers.”

The exhibition leads museum visitors through the structure of the film in six sections: “The Unseen Danger,” “Amity Island Welcomes You,” “Sunday at the Beach,” “The Shark’s Rampage,” “Adventure Ahead,” and “Into the Deep.” The final gallery of Jaws: The Exhibition explores the enduring impact of the film.

From scene set ups to learning about the team behind the film, location scouting, and the film’s famous dolly zoom effect, visitors will uncover terrific information amid a visually resonant series of original set decorations and props, production designs, a Moviola used by editor Verna Fields, and even have a chance to play the musical notes that signal the approach of the shark.

The delightfully immersive and experiential exhibition highlights the impact of the film on motion picture industry itself and pop culture, and brings viewers into the world of movie making as well as drawing them into the enduring allure of the film itself, from the dangerous great white shark to the efforts of the town’s chief of police (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss), and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) to destroy the terrifying creature before it kills again.

As a thrilling adventure and as a remarkable feat of filmmaking – Speilberg remarked with wit about the great difficulties faced while filming on location, from rough seas to regattas showing up in his framing; and to the stress of being 110 days past the original shooting schedule. But what a reward for suffering the unexpected indignities of shooting at sea.

The Academy Museum is the largest museum in the world dedicated to global cinema and the arts, sciences, and artists of moviemaking. While you visit the brand new Jaws exhibition, be sure to also take a look the other stellar exhibits on display, from the world of Cyberpunk to the set designs of Barbie and Beauty & the Beast, the filmmaking of Bong Joon Ho, a glowing room of golden Oscars, and an astonishing collection of well known props and costumes from Captain America’s shield to Spiderman’s disguise.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis

 

Glowing Gems from S.P. Harper at LAAA

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S.P. Harper‘s Oracles of Effulgence glows literally and figuratively in her solo exhibition at LAAA’s Gallery 825 which opens September 13th. The exhibition is mesmerizing from the artist’s mysterous, gem-like geometric imagry to her use of phosphorescent material that makes these works literally glow in the dark.

Harper has used geometric form and gemstone images to dazzling effect in other series as well, each lovely and immersive.

However in her new show,  there is something resonately deep going on, a visionary transformation due to the way in which the works transition between daylit radiance and what look like bioluminescent forms in the dark.

Melding found objects with phosphorescent paint, Harper creates something entirely different, both reflecting a magical transformation and a hidden source, as if inviting the viewer to step into the depths of the earth and uncover some long buried and secret elements of the earth.

Riffing on cubism and the luster of gemstones, specifically diamonds as inspired by the artist’s diamond cutter grandfather, Harper shapes her own jewels as perfectly and precisely as nature forms minerals and crystals, or just as diamonds-in-the-rough are faceted and reimagined as stunning rings.

Diamonds are definitely this artist’s best friend, as she uses their shape and their sparkle to create richly dimensional, emotionally faceted work that is both elegant and luminous, alluring and delightful. She toys with the veiwers perceptions in a joyful and perceptive way– while we know the objects she presents here are not really aglow, they take on a life of their own, pulling the viewer into a compelling and intimate dance with a fantasy both familiar and impossible.

There is a subtle hint of throwback to the era of black light paintings and psychedelic trips– if that sort of hippie, happening past had been passed through a finely tuned filter and turned into fine art as delicately constructed as it is subversively joyous.

Harper has painstakingly applied multiple coats of an invisble phosphorescent paint. With gallery lights dimmed, each form leaps from the wall and illuminates the darkness; the gallery is tented off to fully reveal the magical mystery tour that Harper is taking us upon.

Harper’s use of transforming material is not new to her. She has painted and sculpted using recucled gemoterics in other series, utilizing media as diverse as discarded canvas and plaster scraps to reform materials into a kind of patterned contemporary vibrancy that is both unexpected and minutely rendered. The materials she utilizes in this exhibition include a shower curtain, wood salvage, and canvas. Her color palette here revolves on a series of dazzling blues and greens, an electrified ocean of  treasure.

And she knows her faceted styles, literally, titling works after their cut, Ascher, Brilliant, Princess, and Miner cut faceting, introducing viewers to her own magical knowledge of a creative skill few of us understand. Each image is immersive in this way, taking viewers into an emotional mine shaft in which gems are embedded, waiting for us to dig them out (pun intended) and take these treasures home.

The artist has explained her work simply and beautifully, saying “I paint jewels because they transfix and reflect.” Indeed they do.

Also exhibiting at Gallery 825 are Aileen Rodriguez Imperatrice with her new series Selective Memory;  Faina Kumpan with her whimsical and vivid fantastical sci fi figures in Are we alone? Aliens, mutants and visitors; and Tom Lasley with his evocative DioramaDrama.

Opening reception for all four solo shows at Gallery 825 is Saturday ,September 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery is located in West Hollywood at 825 N. La Cienega. The exhibition runs through October 17.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist