Botart: Barrels of Art for World Art Day

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Celebrating World Art Day, an exhibition featuring Botart International artworks offered barrels of fun and fine art at the Brewery arts complex on April 17th.

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Botart is a collection of art pieces produced on wooden wine barrels, featuring work by invited artists around the globe. These beautiful free-standing pieces are as varied as the artists chosen to create them. At the far right, the beautiful glowing pastel of Hung Viet Nguyen’s barrel.

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Above, artist Cynthia Friedlob created “Tipitina,” titled after the classic new Orleans jazz song that was this Los Angeles artist’s inspiration. “My art is inspired by jazz. I essentially created a Mardi Gras piece to lighten it up. There are beads on top of the barrel. The black stripes on the barrel represent city streets – it’s very much a New Orleans-style piece,” Friedlob explains.

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Hanging behind her barrel was her painting “Notes 101C” which is one of a series of paintings based on general chords and orchestral passages. “I was inspired by the great jazz towns of the 40s and 50s, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Louis,” Friedlob says.

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Above, Yvonne Beatty with Baha Danesh.

Yvonne Beatty’s barrel is titled “Linear.”  The title refers to the way “wine” is written in a variety of languages. “I looked up the word, and each of the images on the barrel is based on a particular script in which the word ‘wine’ is written. What I discovered is that calligraphy is based on a actual being in the world. There is a ghost of a living creature in each script image,” she reports. Beatty’s both charming and pointed painting of another living creature, a squirrel armed with a gun, was hung behind her barrel.

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Titled “Phil,” Beatty says of this piece “I know this squirrel. He lives in my backyard. He’s protecting himself from hunting season for squirrels.” The hyper-realistic piece is created in acrylic ink and paint on canvas.

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Sunflowers burst from both an oil-on-canvas painting and the wine barrel created by Ada Pullini. “The painting is a sunflower field in Tuscany that I painted while burning up in the sun.” The heat and intensity still radiates.

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The exhibition was curated by Shawn Barrett, with creative direction from Andre Miliposky and Baha Danesh. A tour of a number of artists’ studios at The Brewery complex was organized by Dale Youngman.

Art work was also on display at Gallery I-5 in the Brewery complex.

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Above, the delicate, mosaic-like landscape of Hung Viet Nguyen. From trees, to sea,  the work depicts an internal, spiritual world as well as the external.

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  • Genie Davis; all photos: Jack Burke

 

Fresh and Fine: Fundraiser for South Bay Contemporary

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A beautiful sculpture by June Diamond graces the trees at the South Bay Contemporary fundraising gala, Fresh.  The piece, “Chain” will be installed at the Hollywood Sculpture Gardens in the Hollywood Hills in the next week, but for the gala event, it was one of a number of site-specific installations, creating a lush outdoor gallery.

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Held April 23 in the Italian-style courtyard of the Shriver estate in Rancho Palos Verdes, Fresh was exactly that, a bright and engaging artistic take on the fundraising scene.

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Above, video installation by artist Cie Gumucio, who describes her work as “sometimes whimsical, sometimes profound.”

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The mermaid skirt on the sculpture above was just one of several at the event, with additional, mylar-created pieces available to try on and dance in, all created by artist Beth Elliot.

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Above, the work of Rob Hutchins, retired mechanical engineer and vibrant sculptor.

The art highlight of the evening was for us the the beautiful sculpture garden installed, with a wide ranging variety of pieces from artists such as Cansu Bulgu, who created Transformative Sand drawing sessions; a vibrant video installation by Cie Gumucio (above); Taco Bell sauce tarot readings from Chrysanthe Oltmann; sculpture created from tire shavings by Nate Jones;  a brilliant kinetic wind sculpture by Rob Hutchins (above); as well as pieces by Anne Olsen Daub, June Diamond (top of article), Jake Dotson, Beth Elliot (above), Jan Govaerts, Patty Grau, Theatrium Elysium, and Thinh Nguyen.

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Above, artist Sylvia Greer with her table centerpiece.

Silent Auction Sculptural Center Pieces created magic in the courtyard and was donated by many artists who will also have their work displayed in the upcoming Skyline exhibit May 7th at SBC’s Loft in San Pedro. Participating artists included Anita Dixon, Lauren Evans, Patty Grau, Sylvia Greer, Nicholette Kominos, Connie DK Lane, Carolyn LaLiberte, Kristen Marvell, Karrie Ross, Denis Richardson, Peggy Sivert, Ron Therrio, Tracey Weiss, Jaye Whitworth, June Diamond, and Ben Zask.

South Bay Contemporary director Peggy Sivert Zask, said the evening was about “unity” as much as it was a fund raiser to support SBC and the culture of contemporary art in the South Bay. Certainly attendees were unified in their enjoyment of the asparagus crostini, chicken alfredo, crab cakes, and quinoa salad, the fun and fruity mixed drinks and homemade wines, and fun touches like the silver mylar mermaid skirts for swirling, live music, and the chance to peruse the art-filled auction tables.

Stay Fresh, South Bay Contemporary – and readers, don’t hesitate to volunteer to support SBC, through donations, attendance at events, and administrative support. Founder Peggy Sivert Zask is looking to welcome a wide community into the artistic fold south of LAX.

  • Genie Davis, Photos: Jack Burke, Ron Hutchins’ sculpture photo by Gloria Plascencia

The Superhero and his Charming Wife: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a play

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Based on his own dream, Aaron Hendry, artistic director of Not Man Apart, wrote and directed The Superhero and his Charming Wife, running through May 18th at the 18th Street Performing Arts Center in Santa Monica.

This vibrant performance includes incredible dance and physical moves by an absolutely first rate cast. You’ll never look at sheets of plastic the same way again after you see them transformed into living waves. Performers dance on boards carried by stagehands/background performers, there are leaps, dances, and feats of daring-do as passionate as any that could be created by a caped hero.

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The fear of the unknown is the theme; demons, witches, wives that appear and disappear, whether a person is more than who he or she appears to be – all of these elements are addressed. Choreographed superbly by Michelle Broussard, you have a superhero who works for a living just like your average cop on the street, and his volatile marriage, made the more so by the fact that his wife can morph into different women. Played by Jones Welsh, the superhero craves order and reason; his wife Julie is either simply looking for herself or under the spell of a witch or demon.

This is both a lively if surreal hero’s journey and a pop cultural tour de force, complete with off-the-wall humor and fierce action.

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Not strictly plotted, this is a dreamscape and visual landscape on which emotions from fear to heroism to passion are writ large, scenes and set pieces resemble pages torn from a graphic novel, and the collective experience of the performances is magical and mysterious, evocative of the true superhero which is the human heart.

THE SUPERHERO AND HIS CHARMING WIFE  runs through May 15 Friday/ Saturday at 8:30 p.m.; and May 8 and 15 at 3:30 p.m. at Highways Performance Space at 18th Street Arts Center, 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, 90404. For reservations and information, call (310) 315-1459 or visit http://highwaysperformance.org/.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: courtesy of production

Heidi Duckler’s Site Specific Dance Classic: Parts & Labor

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“At the car wash…talking about the car wash…” that’s what audiences will be doing on Saturday, May 7th, when the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre stages a classic dance performance at the Santa Palm car wash in West Hollywood.

Presented in part with a grant from  City of West Hollywood and its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission through WeHo Arts (www.weho.org/arts), and support from Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, this exciting piece features four dancers staged on a vintage 1970s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The Cadillac is more than a stage and a prop – the percussion trio Antenna Repairman will be miking it and using the car as an instrument, too.

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Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre creates deeply innovative dance experiences in non-traditional, site-specific locations, inviting its audience and artists to connect with their community in a fresh way. Duckler founded the troop in 1985, and the choreographer has earned the moniker “reigning queen of site specific performance.” Each staging is a contemporary art experience that integrates audience and performers.

Duckler has created more than 200 dance pieces around the world, receiving awards from the City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment of the Arts. With original percussionists Bob Fernandez and MB Gordy of Antenna Repairman still performing, Duckler felt the time was right to re-stage “Parts & Labor.”

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Originally performed in 1993, “Parts & Labor” explores our love/hate relationship with cars, and our dependency on them. The theme is more timely than ever, as LA highways grow increasingly congested and alternative transportation becomes more and more relevant. The piece was originally performed in a Studio City car lot, where dancers performed on an amplified Cadillac, a used car salesman tried to sell Caddys to the audience, and vintage film clips of Detroit’s view of the future screened in the background.

Percussionist Fernandez came up with the original idea to mic the car as a resonant instrument after visiting Cuba and noting the metal in pre-60s era vehicles driven there.

The 1992 performance featured four women in long black veils cradling gas pump nozzles, then changing into doctors’ scrubs, with the Cadillac going into labor and giving birth to a hood ornament. The current iteration will focus on the car as a symbol of freedom, as well as having the potential for entrapment.

“We live in our cars,” Duckler notes. “The car is our home.”

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This Saturday’s car wash location should also add a new look to the piece. “It’s more about relationships,” Duckler relates.

Combining exciting rhythm with progressive dance in a wide range of local settings is hardly a first for Duckler, who has been creating pieces and setting them in locales from the Los Angeles River basin to laundromats for decades.

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Check out her new vision for “Parts & Labor” this weekend, and be prepared for one “driving” evening of stellar dance and riveting rhythm.

“Parts & Labor” will be performed May 7, 2016, at 8 p.m. in the Santa Palm Car Wash, located at 8787 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.

See http://bit.ly/hddtpartsandlabor for more information and to purchase tickets. Tickets will be available at the door as well, until sold out.

Visit http://www.heididuckler.org/ for more information about the full range of programming planned by this innovative dance group.