Celia Center Arts Festival: Art and Family Fun for a Cause

Posted on by Diversions LA

n2k3Qcq4

Save the date: Friday April 12th and Saturday April 13th, the Celia Center is holding their second annual Arts Festival, Adopting Resilience, Fostering the Spirit of Creativity: The Voices of the Fostered and Adopted.

The non-profit organization is featuring the work of diverse artists in a wide range of mediums; along with the art exhibition, performances, readings, workshops, children’s activities, and an artist’s panel are all part of the event.

GW7LFr14

The artists participating were encouraged to explore their personal experiences as individuals who were adopted and/or in foster care. They’re offering experiences in musical, performance, and visual arts, as well as in the healing arts.

The event will be held at the Highways Performance Space,  a co-presenter of the festival in partnership with Celia Center. The opening reception is scheduled for 6 – 8 p.m. on the 12th. The art exhibition will be viewable through April 28th.

image3 (1) image1 (2) image2 (1) image4 (1)

The LA-based, non-profit Celia Center was founded in 2012 by Jeanette Yoffe, a child therapist with a special focus on adoption and foster care issues. Inspired by her own experiences in the foster care system and through the adoption process, Yoffe also had a strong desire to merge her previous career in the arts as a dancer and actress with her activism.

The center provides workshops, salon support groups, and other events throughout the year, supporting and uniting those who’ve worked their way through adoption and foster care.

IHkv5ork

Joffe (left) will be one of the performers at the Celia Center Arts Festival. Other highlights of the weekend event include a writing workshop, and a celebrity book reading for children with track athlete Steven Benedict (right); the opening reception is focused on the CCAF’s visual art group exhibition, curated by Nicole Rademacher (middle image), herself both an artist and an adoptee.

Attendees will have the opportunity to hear evening performances at 8 p.m. both nights of Voices from the Past to Present, a 90-minute presentation of narrative, poetry, spoken word, and theater pieces assembled by actor and playwright Brian Stanton; the event will also include Yoffe’s performance from her own play, What’s Your Name, Who’s Your Daddy. The play recounts her experiences in foster care and adoption by a New York Jewish family, a work which inspired Yoffe in her work as a psychotherapist.

Rock Willk

Also featured will be Rock Willk (above), Julayne Lee, and performance artist Kayla Tange; as well as Jerri Allyn, reading a letter written to the biological son that she found. The event will additionally include a reading from Susan Harris O’Connor, writer of a seminal autobiographical book, The Harris Narratives: An Introspective Study of a Trans-racial Adoptee.

A writing arts workshop will also take place at 4 p.m. on Saturday. Both this workshop, Writing the Unsaid, and the evening performances require purchased ticketing; tickets are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celia-center-arts-festival-2019-tickets-51995221106

96BOUAWk

Free programming at the event includes children’s activities such as face painting from 12 noon – 3 p.m. on Saturday; a celebrity book reading at 1 p.m. from professional track and field athlete and Olympic Trials Qualifier Steven Benedict, a former foster child who has run in some of the world’s most prestigious events.

Event goers can expect to experience VR painting with Google Tilt Brush as well. And for ages four and up, there will be a Healing Arts Table for children in foster care and/or adoption and their families. Free for adults will be an artists panel and Q&A moderated by curator and Highways museum director Rebeca Trawick.

For more information, visit https://www.celiacenterartsfestival.org/

Highways Performance Space is located at 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, 90404

fYILQcj8

  • Genie Davis; images provided by Celia Center Arts Festival

Borderless at Gabba Gallery Transcends Geographic Boundaries

Posted on by Diversions LA

Mikael Persbrandt - Restauranten

Mikael Persbrandt – “Restauranten,” above

For the second installment of Gabba Gallery’s international series, Borderless, three Scandinavian artists represented by Norway’s Gallery Art Oslo are coming to Los Angeles.

The three are Ari Behn, Espen Eiborg, and Mikael Persbrandt, each both popular and highly regarded in Scandinavia. The exhibition opens March 23rd and runs through April 6th.

Behn is well-known in Norway and Denmark not only as an artist but through his best-selling collection of short stories, Sad as Hell, and a national television series, Ari and Per. His rich palette and sometimes whimsical figurative work is highly narrative. Vibrant pieces each tell a complex and highly emotional story, as with his work “The Crossing,” below.

Ari Behn - The Crossing

Behn describes the piece as depicting an “opening to other worlds, and new, great experiences.” Reflecting passages in our lives, the final passage here takes us from birth to death, the work revealing his belief that experiences of transition “make miracles possible…” In this work, beneath a darkening sunset sky, a green explosion flies, labeled “Boom,” small nude human figures  – one of which may represent a Christ-like figure – fall beneath a blue river into a strange new pink, a lustrous glowing shade enveloping them, infusing their demise with hope.

VGHELG Ari Behn tegning, Kapittel 17

Ari Behn,  “Swinging London,” above

An inveterate traveler, Behn’s “Swinging London” pays homage to a city he clearly loves. Written in bold black letters on the vividly colorful surface of the work are the words “My Dear Swingin’ London Revisited” and “With Love.” The iconic “Be Calm and…” signage is posted with the classic phrase “and Carry On,” among beautifully rendered post-card-like images of the Tower of London and the Bombay Bicycle Club. There is a melancholic air to some of Behn’s work, which may fit with the well-known story of his marriage to and divorce from princess Martha Louise of Norway. From his palette to his expressive mix of figurative and abstract work, Behn offers a riveting visual story.

Espen Eiborg - Once bitten twice shy

Espen Eiborg, “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” above 

Also from Norway, Eiborg draws viewers into a world where imagination and reality mix and merge, a day-dream of art, that is both complex and passionate, infused with a sense of happiness as well as with an ever-present awareness of darker human deeds. His mediums are varied, using acrylic and oil paints, oil crayons, spray paint, tar, and glue, working with both brush and palette knife. The artist also enhances and contrasts his images with a thick glaze from industrial varnish. In “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” Eiborg gives us a Storm Trooper from the Star Wars universe, a tiger, a gorgeous rose, beautiful women, and a lightning bolt. All are stand-out images that fuse together into a mysterious, evocative, and somehow boldly familiar place.

Espen Eiborg Red Hat Kate

“Red Hat Kate,” by Espen Eiborg, above

According to Eiborg, “When a painting reaches a critical point, I see it as being in harmony and at rest after a long journey, barren and aged with the poetry of travel. It pays homage to water, earth, sky, wind and fire, the elements from which it originated.”

Mikael Persbrandt - Bacon

Mikael Persbrandt, “Bacon,” above

Swedish artist Mikael Persbrandt, is, like Behn, also an actor. Trained at Stockholm’s College for Artistic Education, his art and film career have paralleled in Scandinavia, starring in Susanne Bier’s Academy Award-winning In a Better World, and as one of the lead characters in the Netflix series Sex Education. In a solo exhibition of his art at the Gallery Sandgrunn, 80,000 visitors poured through the door to see his intense mixture of figurative and abstract expression, which though very different from Behn’s work, offers another fascinating and depth-filled perspective that blends these two approaches.

The haunting central blue figure in “Bacon” is both everyman, demon, and ghost; yellow lines around the chair in which the figure sits resemble the sides of a four-dimensional cube, or tesseract. The long horn cattle in an apparent stampede in “RUUS II,” seem to have arisen from a different dimension, a wonderfully eliptical web of sky and dust.

Mikael Persbrandt - RUUS II

RUUS II by Mikael Persbrandt, above

This isn’t the first time the three artists have been paired together: in fact, their work has been shown in over 60 international galleries since 2017.

Gallery Art Oslo partners Kenneth Stensholt and Einar A. Lund have worked with these artists for more than two years, Lund relates. For the show at Gabba Gallery the trio of artists seemed an exciting fit. “They all have a unique, honest, and expressive artistic language which I liked. They go beneath the surface and explore both their own emotional life and inner lives of others. They are not afraid of exposing themselves or their own lives,” Lund asserts.

He adds “For a long time I have admired Mikael Persbrandt, who is not only one of the most famous and merited theater and film actors in Scandinavia, but who is also a great painter. Very few are aware of the fact that he was a painter prior to being an actor.”

As to Behn, Lund explains that the artist’s divorce “resulted in a series of self-reflective, colorful, expressive paintings, for which he has achieved great recognition,” which Lund deeply admires. Behn’s open expression of coping with depression through his artwork was and remains profoundly affecting.

Espen Eiborg - Exploited

Epson Eiborg, “Exploited,” above

About Eiborg, Lund notes “His pop art has been popular in Norway. When he lived in New York, he sold works to, among others, Robert Redford, Sean Penn, Oprah Winfrey, Dolce Gabbana, Jennifer Lopez and David Bowie.” In a truly meta moment, during the exhibition’s opening March 23rd, Eiborg will paint a portrait of an invited celebrity. To find out who – you’ll have to attend.

Lund says he hopes he can continue to work with Gabba curators Jason Ostro and Elena Jacobson, who introduced the Borderless series in April 2018 with art from Latin America. Their goal: to connect Los Angeles with a different part of the world through the language of art. With Borderless: Scandinavia, they continue to do just that.

Gabba Gallery is located at 3126 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles. The exhibition opening runs from 7-11 p.m., March 23rd.  For more information, visit https://www.gabbagallery.com/

Vina Blair: Graceful Abstracts Arrive from Malaysia

Posted on by Diversions LA
49587746_401481383923572_1235988418379382784_n
Describing her work as a mixture that merges “memories, meditation, and life itself,” Malaysian-based artist Vina Blair has moved from photographic work to highly original acrylic on canvas abstract works that she says were initially inspired by her passion for Jackson Pollock, but have shifted into completely unique, dynamic forms.

“I feel that I’ve made very bold attempts and breakthroughs at this point, and I’m excited to be exhibiting in both New York City and Guangzhou, China this year,” she says.  She will be presenting her work at two art expos in both locations: Art Expo New York in April and the Guangzhou Art Fair in June.

49605338_403634343708276_3317696927163744256_n

Raised in Johor, Malaysia, Blair has long felt an affinity to both nature and busy urban environments. Both, she relates, have shaped her vision as an artist and a desire to create meaning from color patterns, surreal impressions, and her own emotions. She terms herself a quintessential “observer, having a deep affection towards the nature, emotions, feelings and spirituality that I encounter.”

In her current body of work, she then turns that affinity into lush, swirling abstract works. In many of her paintings, she uses a limited color palette, her brush strokes and lines speaking in a kind of inchoate language, resembling sky, wind, water, and floral elements. “My themes are full of philosophical speculations,” she asserts.

53413465_433744967363880_5991022797126631424_n

Largely a self-taught painter, she relates that to her, “Art is an effective communication tool that could touch others’ hearts,” a belief which has encouraged her to create expansively.

She adds “I create layered surfaces and use a strong palette, letting them both flow together to make a lyrical and yet deeply concrete image.”

In her past photographic work, she manipulated her images to shape abstract works focused on “identity, relationships, emotions like desire and despair;” images that took on the quality of dreams

MYXJ_20190309175105_save

In her painted work, she likes rich blues and glowing golds, streaks of thick white, ribbons of color that seem to twine and dance. Watery images implode with light; others seem to resemble cyclones and rivers, caligraphy and a kind of Rorschach test of art.

MYXJ_20190309175118_save

The work moves and shifts as the viewer does; the tumult of curves and lines compelling and intuitive. Blair transcends location and neatly edges into a kind of universal conception of color and movement that evokes the origins of life.

FB_IMG_1552125018714

Her “birth” of abstract images is not about fury and fire but rather more about a shifting perspective, a kind of formless grace, and a sense of transition, an acceptance of change.

MYXJ_20190309175133_save

The art fairs in which Blair is participating this year should introduce her work to a wider audience; Blair is  eager, she says, to shape more beauty for a global and universal audience.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by artist

Fantastic Four: A Super Hero and Heroine Quartet Hit the Art World

Posted on by Diversions LA

51216147_10216476267886420_7351571662296317952_n

Left to right, above, it’s the fantastic four artists and friends: Bob Branaman, Gay Summer Rick,  Catherine Ruane, and Mike Street.

At Venice’s Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque through March 15th, the work of four exceptional SoCal artists makes up the Fantastic Four exhibition. Each artist is quite different from the other, yet their work in the rambling upstairs/downstairs gallery is brilliantly compatible in a quite wonderful show curated by Bob Branaman.

Gay Summer Rick’s intense golds, oranges, and pinks are the stuff of California dreams; Catherine Ruane’s delicate, ruminitive pieces are touched in gold and have an astonishing jewel-like glow; Mike Street’s work feels both modern and yet that it would not be out-of-place in Greco-Roman times, both monochromatic and richly narrative; while Bob Branaman’s work is all vibrant color, exuberant and blossoming with life.

In short, this is an exhibition to savor, in terms of its differentness among the artists – who are all friends – and their similarities. Each in their own way present work that is emblematic of their lives in California; images born both of imagination and the emotional alchemy that arises in the diverse environments of their home state and the fertile field of aristic dreams.

Enjoy the fantastic ride: these four take you on roads of beauty that refuse to remain unmapped.

51392630_10216476267766417_5290571604617592832_n

The glow of Gay Summer Rick’s work, above and below is astonishing. It is the fire of sunsets, the rising light of dawn, the backdrop, love-song, and legacy of Los Angeles. From freeway commuter views toward the sea to the skies that simmer and shift above the downtown cityscape, Rick is perhaps the quintessential artist for LA. Radiant work here, as is her norm; with an underpinning of dreamy light even in the most prosaic landscape.

51146924_10216476267726416_7942742587394228224_n

With Catherine Ruane’s work, below,  there are familiar aspects of her oeuvre, too, and many previously unexperienced. Her gorgeous, often black and white drawings of trees and branches, flowers, and desert have been supplanted here by smaller, very jewel-like etchings.

51169448_10216476269286455_3102550689478344704_n

From beautiful, motion-filled, wind-swept palms to fish with gold highlights on their scales, this is perfect, dazzlingly precise work. Each piece is a work of wonder, something so finely crafted that the viewer simply does not want to look away.

51658232_10216476269766467_6914288779758927872_n

51155463_10216476272126526_2098400671546998784_n

Mike Street’s work here is somehow timeless: it is of this place and era and yet it could also easily be  from a distant world.

51163606_10216476271766517_7565826762987274240_n

There’s a sculptural quality to each piece, and their monochromatic use of color adds to that. Rich in depth, they remind the viewer of the  past, somehow transported to our time and space through the conduit of Street’s artistry.

50801718_10216476268486435_1246133955766255616_n

To some extent, these fascinating faces remind the viewer of a daguerreotype, as if created on a silver-covered copper plate.

If Street’s work offers an elegant, restrained use of palette, Branaman’s work provides the exact opposite: imposing color, the delight of a hippie kingdom, a tie-dyed world, rainbows.

51304345_10216476272406533_6047425067866914816_n

There is a fierceness to his colors, to his stained-glass-like patterns; an impulsive, vibrant quality that leaps at the viewer and catches one up in its powerful exuberance. Below, Branaman stands with Gay Summer Rick.

51705731_10216476271046499_3991547918329839616_n

So – which of the four is the most fantastic? It’s a tough call – you’ll have to go see for yourselves.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis