Perceive This

Posted on by Diversions LA

Kristine Schomaker had an idea. It started with the personal and has become a galvanizing collaborative project that reaches and speaks to a wide-range of viewers. It’s a conversation starter, it’s a collection of absolutely unique artworks, it’s an exultant vision of personal spirit, a creation from and of the soul that’s grounded – both literally and figuratively – by the body that holds it.

Art above by Sheli Silverio.

We’re talking about Perceive Me, an exhibition about to debut on January 25th at California State University Los Angeles.

Artist: Emily Wiseman

According to Schomaker – artist, curator, publisher and founder of Shoebox PR – the concept for the show started with a conversation between herself and artist Amanda Mears. Mears was drawing Schomaker athe time. “We were talking about body image, ideas of beauty, modeling nude, and I brought up the story that I had only been asked out on a date a couple times in my 46 years of life. I think unconsciously I took that as this validation that I wasn’t worth anything. Of course I know it is much more complicated than that,” Schomaker laughs, noting that the first time she expressed this out loud was in a previous interview for DiversionsLA.

Artist: Holly Boruck

Describing the idea as having come “full circle,” Schomaker says “I never realized that that was where a lot of myself worth came from. The need for outside validation. Or the idea that we often take our own self-worth from how we imagine others perceive us. Working with Amanda and looking back to a collaboration I did with J Michael Walker for his Bodies Mapping Time project as well as Chris Blevins-Morrison for a photographic project, I thought it would be an interesting ‘research project’ to see how I look through another person’s eyes. It was like a lightbulb.”

Artist: Austin Young

Over the next several months, Schomaker put together the idea of how Perceive Me would work, meeting with 57 different artists between November 2018-August 2019.

Schomaker selected the artists for the exhibition beginning with artists she knew who created work using a figure. “I have a folder on my computer of ‘Artists to Watch’ and culled from that. Plus, I looked at my walls, my art collection and invited those artists. And I invited friends, of course. I started off with the idea of 20 artists, then it went to 40; because I couldn’t say no then it went to 60. Most of the artists were invited, but there were a few who contacted me and after looking at their websites and seeing how their art practice was aligned with mine, I knew they were a perfect fit.”

What she mosts want viewers to take from this powerful and poignant exhibition is to “feel free to be themselves. I want people to be less afraid of ‘going for it,’ whatever that means for them. I want people to not be afraid to be different, unique, authentic and to not hide from others or themselves.”

Artist: Geneva Costa

The catalog that accompanies the exhibition is beautiful and rich; delving much deeper into both the intent behind it and presenting a fuller depiction of the images that most exhibition catalogs.

What led Schomaker to create such a vital piece of the project, or as she calls it, performance, is based on a fundamental belief in its social practice/impact and community engagement.

Artist: Marjorie Salvaterra

“I think my thesis was to see if my perception of myself changed as I saw myself through others’ eyes. Or maybe by inviting the many talented artists to collaborate with me, I thought they could make me beautiful? I am just now at this moment asking this question. This is just one project in many in my art practice that will continue helping me develop my own identity.”

Artist: Sydney Walters

“I have a story to tell, a message to relay. I want to educate and inspire. I knew an exhibition would not be enough to get the message out there. I knew a catalog would help get the word out there more,” she relates. “We are also doing artists talks; I am working with classes at the colleges, and there will be a video. I want to support others as much as I can. The catalog was one way of sharing the artists’ amazing work.”

Artist: Dani Dodge

Schomaker terms the exhibition a continuation of her own work, which focuses on challenging and finding herself. “I don’t think I will ever get to an end-point, because life changes all the time. Our identity changes all the time. Our weight changes all the time. My art practice is about telling my story of my eating disorder, struggles with weight and self-confidence. So, it will continue on.”

Artist: Nurit Avesar

The genuinely brave and beautiful show is uniquely notable from its lush and individually terrific images to the concept and Schomaker’s willingness to literally and figuratively expose herself. Following its debut at CSULA, the show will travel to Oxnard College in November 2020, Coastline Community College in January 2021, Mesa Community College in San Diego in March 2021, MOAH in Lancaster in October 2021 and the College of the Sequoias in Visalia in 2022.

Artist: Anna Stump

“We are actively sending out proposals to colleges and Universities right now, because I believe that is where a large part of our audience is. If I can reach our youth and make a difference, I feel like there is hope for the future,” Schomaker asserts.

Artist: Bradford Salamon

Perceive Me opens January 25th  5-8 p.m. at the Ronald H Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, Cal State University LA, under the direction of Dr. Mika Cho.

Participating artists include: Amanda Mears, Anna Kostanian, Anna Stump, Ashley Bravin, Austin Young, Baha Danesh, Betzi Stein, Bibi Davidson, Bradford J Salamon, Caron G Rand, Carson Grubaugh, Catherine Ruane, Chris Blevins-Morrison, Christina Ramos, Cynda Valle, Daena Title, Daggi Wallace, Dani Dodge, Debbie Korbel, Debby/Larry Kline, Debe Arlook, Diane Cockerill, Donna Bates, Elizabeth Tobias, Ellen Friedlander, Emily Wiseman, Geneva Costa, Holly Boruck, J Michael Walker, Jane Szabo, Janet Milhomme, Jeffrey Sklan, Jesse Standlea, John Waiblinger, Jorin Bossen, K Ryan Henisey, Karen Hochman Brown, Kate Kelton, Kate Savage, Kerri Sabine-Wolf, Kim Kimbro, L Aviva Diamond, Leslie Lanxinger, Mara Zaslove, Marjorie Salvaterra, Martin Cox, Monica Sandoval, Nancy Kay Turner, Nurit Avesar, Phung Huynh, Rakeem Cunningham, Serena Potter, Sheli Silverio, Susan Amorde, Susan T. Kurland, Sydney Walters, Tanya Ragir, Tony Pinto, Vicki Walsh.

CSULA Gallery is located at:
5151 State University Drive
Los Angeles CA 90032
Opening Reception: Saturday January 25, 5-8pm

Artist Talk with Alexandra Grant Sun February 2, 2-4pm
Artist Talk with Leslie Labowitz-Starus Sun February 16, 2-4pm
Artist Panel and Closing Reception Sat February 22, 2-4pm

Artist: Daena Title
Artist: Mara Zaslove
  • Writer: Genie Davis; photos: provided by artists through Kristine Schomaker

Margaret Hyde: Transformative Jewel-Perfect Images Dazzle

Posted on by Diversions LA

Photographic artist Margaret Hyde creates images that are as precise and glowing as gems. Describing herself as a “transformative” artist, she shapes lustrous, natural subjects that are worthy of contemplation.

The Memphis-born and raised artist literally and figuratively focuses on the minutiae of the natural world, using close-ups and macro lenses. The result is a cross between the meditative and the transcendent; qualities that she also bring to her life outside her artwork, exemplified by her work in support of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis through her family’s Hyde Family Foundations.

 Eleven years ago, she produced an Emmy nominated documentary short, The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, detailing the last days of Martin Luther King; she’s also written children’s books; shot documentaries in Bhutan, and photographed orphanages in Liberia.

But her recent art veers considerably away from the documentary. She uses images such as shells and flowers to create an entire celestial universe of emotion and beauty. Hyde says “the purpose of art is to make you stop and look and think…if you keep seeing different things and asking different questions then that’s a successful piece of art.”

Her current series involve the collection of tiny objects such as shells, beach glass, scrap metal, and simple flowers and seeds. From these prosaic, intimate bits of life’s flotsam, she builds tiny sculptures, utilizing water and light to reshape these materials into her own tiny, glowing universe. The dimensionality she creates, the rich and mysterious color palettes she shapes, are matched by the inner shine of her work.

“I collect and photograph things most people would walk by,” she notes in her artist’s statement. “Water… flows through the sculptures, reflecting its infinite memory of the people, places and things that it has encountered along the way.”

It’s a fascinating idea, that water holds memory – one that oddly enough is a key tenet of the current Disney film Frozen 2. But Hyde’s work makes this messaging far more profound.

Her unique vision is an outgrowth of macro photography, most often used to examine something more closely. But what Hyde examined was more an internal imagining than an object itself. “I walked into an alley and someone had drained a swimming pool, and the water was rushing down the alley. It no longer looked like an alley…I put the macro lens on my camera and took photographs of light on water. I realized I didn’t need to go anywhere – everything I needed was right here, beauty, transformation right in front of me, I just was not seeing it…I went from being a photographer with a good eye, to an artist who used a camera to create art.”

Now she shares the butterfly images and Batman’s cape she finds in a protective mussel shell; an eternal moment in a drop of dew that glows like a diamond on multi-hued green leaf.

Arguably, color, light, and her use of water to illuminate are the main components of her macro work, but the textures she conveys are perhaps the true entry point into her radiant world. The ridged striations of a leaf, the ripples in a dot of dew, a sense of rounded, thick suspension in a drop of water.

In Hyde’s Shell Eddies series, the lapis lazuli blue and amethyst crystal quality of works such as “Shell Vortex” and “Shell Pirouette” are smooth and seductive; a whirl that is soft and supple yet somehow as solid as a stone, a universe unfolding in motion.

Her Shell Scapes series, including such opalescent, winged images as “Pastel Pinion” use essentially the same color palette as Shell Eddies, but in lighter shades, and with a quicker, brighter feel that evokes mother of pearl butterflies, seeds, twins, and with an airier more translucent texture.

Mystic Masks turns a simple dandelion flower into something cosmic and ethereal; “Canine Mask” is both wolf and flower; “Imp Mask” the genesis of a fairytale character.

Hyde’s Migration Series takes a single dandelion seed and turns it into a study in perfection in “Feathered Seed;” the simplicity and wonder of this image, an embodiment of life, is both alien bird and message of hope. But it is a translucent cosmos that Hyde captures in another work, “Cosmic Dandelion.”

There are the certainly the origins of this astonishingly minute, perfect work in her earlier photography– Hyde’s travel images in her Seascapes series is pearled and reflective with light; her Memphis images rippled with visceral texture.

Jeweled and mesmerizing: Hyde gives viewers memorable images spun from the imagination in close-up.

Partita II at Durden & Ray Adds Art for the Holidays

Posted on by Diversions LA

Who wouldn’t want to enjoy the works of stellar contemporary artists, have a fun and festive evening, and help support one of the most cutting-edge and globally-linked art collectives in LA? Certainly not you, right?

Artist: Nadege Monchera Baer

Partita II at Durden & Ray in DTLA’s Bendix Building this Saturday night offers you the opportunity to bid on, enter a raffle for, and simply enjoy the art of:

Lillian Abel, Kim Abeles, Mark Acetelli, Daniel Adkins, Robin Adsit, Kim Alexander, Dawn Arrowsmith, Nurit Avesar, Carlos Beltran Arechiga, Christine Morla Armstrong, Dawn Arrowsmith, Kristine Augustyn, Nadege Monchera Baer, Malado Baldwi, Marsha Effron Barron, Quinton Bemiller, Arezoo Bharthania, Jodi Bonassi, Jorin Bossen, Gary Brewer, Janine Brown, Stefan Bucher, Suzanne Budd, Gavin Bunner, Julian Bustill, Gul Cagi, Jane Callister, Debbie Carlson, Jennifer Celio, Chenhung Chen, Sijia Chen, Mika
Cho, Trine Churchill, Norman Clark, Daniel Barron Corrales, Natalie Cruz, Joe Davidson, Ismael de Anda III, Ilknur Demirkoparan, Mark Dimalanta, Glenda Dixon, Dani Dodge, Tom Dunn, Lana Duong, Martin Durazo, Cliff Eberly, Michael Emmanuel, Mitra Fabian, Marielle Farnan, Roni Feldman, Cia Foreman, Christian Franzen, Sarajo Frieden, Josh Friedman, Steven Fujimoto, Sean Michael Gallagher, Martin Gantman, Gabe Garcia, Michael
Garcia, Yvette Gellis, Lawrence Gipe, Audra Graziano, Phyllis Green, Kio
Griffith, Jenny Hager, Steve Hampton, Stephanie Han, Aska Irie, Ben Jackel,
Claire Jackel, Dion Johnson, Brian Thomas Jones, Flora Kao, Yasmin
Kazam, Kate Kelton, Shane King, Nadim Kurani, Jay Kvapil, Connie DK
Lane, David Leapman, Tidawhitney Lek, Stephen Levy, Echo Lew, Nikki
Lewis, Kevin Linehan, Susan Lizotte, Amelia Lockwood, Mela M ( Mela Marsh), Maya Mackrandilal, Alanna Marcelletti, Aline Mare, Jane Margarette, Kim Marra, Anne Martens, Javier Martinez, Lynne McDaniel, Annelie McKenzie, Amanda Mears, Kathleen Melian, Yevgeniya Mikhailik, Hagop Najarian, Hung Viet Nguyen, Khang B. Nguyen, Sean Noyce, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Elizabeth Orleans, Miguel Osuna, Billy Pacak, Paul Paiement, Kristopher Paos, Chris Pate, Olga Ponomarenko, Elizabeth Preger, Max Presneill, Michael Provart, Katie Queen, Mei Xian Qui, Kristopher Raos, Samuelle Richardson, Frederika Roeder, Ann Marie Rousseau, David S. Rubin, Frank Ryan, Liza Ryan, John Sollom, Annie Seaton, Sonja Schenk, Kristine Schomaker, Nike Schroeder, Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Steve Seleska, Rafael Serrano, Shilla Shakoori, Maccabee Shelley, Stephanie Sherwood, Dimitra Skandali, Jeffrey Sklan, Charles Snowden, Robert Soffian, David Spanbock, Curtis Stage, Kayla Sweet-Newhouse, Eric Minh Swenson, Jill Sykes,Vincent Tomczyk, Katya Usvitsky, Emily Van Horn, Melissa Walter, Ann Weber, Joan Weinzettle, Dana Weiser, Stacy Wendt, Tracy Weiss, Valerie Wilcox, Sammy Jean Wilson, Surge Witron, Steven Wolkoff, Alison Woods, and Jacob Yanes.

Artist: Christine Morla

The one-night-only small works exhibition and fundraiser is designed to help Durden and Ray to continue its international artist exchanges which this year took viewers on a one-of-a-kind art exploration here in LA with compelling contemporary artwork from Rome, Luxemborg, Greece, Berlin, and Iceland. The result for viewers is an exploratory adventure.

Artist: Max Presneill

For this show, Los Angeles-area artists were invited to make small-sized art that represents, according to Durden and Ray member Dani Dodge, “the unification across distances through image and discourse. They are the physical remnants of experience.” The works are available for $50 each, with 100% of the proceeds benefitting Durden and Ray.

In short, the night is a holiday gift for attendees and might just help you wipe out your entire gift list besides.

The raffle will include larger artworks and experiences such as portrait sessions and studio visits. Raffle tickets are $5 each and will be available at the event. The raffle will be held at 8:30 p.m. the night of the event.

Event curators are Arezoo Bharthania, Joe Davidson, Ben Jackel, Alanna Marcelletti, David Spanbock, Curtis Stage, and Valerie Wilcox.

The evening runs from 6-9 p.m. at Durden and Ray, 1206 Maple Ave. #832 in the Bendix Building. Santa says go, and so do we.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by Durden and Ray and Genie Davis

Chung-Ping Cheng: Light, Color, Beauty – All Blooms

Posted on by Diversions LA

Chung-Ping Cheng revels in light, color, and texture. Her photographic images are vibrant with all three. Her current artwork consists of primarily floral images, but Cheng wants her viewers to know that “The theme of my work, although most are flowers, is that they are not only beautiful as we see them, but that they have significance as related to life, to feminity.” In short, to Cheng, her flowers are a force of nature.

Her blossoming images feature an intense and intimate color palette that Cheng carefully selects. “It depends on the subject of the work, the palette that I choose,” she says, noting that her palette also depends on not just what the subject is, but whether it is “representational or metaphorical, somber or happy, whether the image is of something brilliant.” According to Cheng, “I think the color palette comes from my aesthetic both in the West and East.” Certainly the fluidity and the natural vibrancy of her colors reflect that universal spirit.

The riveting lushness of Cheng’s current series mark a new direction for the artist’s work. “My latest work is a new direction, more of the experience of occurrences in a cycle images impart.” If the viewer studies them long enough, they are like taking a deep dive from the minute petaled perfection of a single blossom into a hidden universe. There is a strong life-force present in her work.

Vibrating with life, highly visceral, yet delicate – both in her current floral works and in a previous rich-looking cake series, too, among others, each of Cheng’s works somehow manage to be both exuberant and graceful. She says that this combination of visual style is “intrinsic,” and that she is not sure how the composition asserts itself, it just happens for her artistically, a natural conception of the image.

Of her past “Cake” series, Cheng says that she created it in part “because I love sweets, and I think that they should bring people pleasure not only in taste but also in sight.” Her floral works she approaches as a richly pleasurable experience, but an experience that is also reverant as well. For Cheng, these flowers are jewels, sparkling with light, and revealing many prisms of natural beauty.

Living in Los Angeles has broadened both her ability to reach an appreciative audience and her own perspective; but her work process remains rooted in film rather than in the digital age so much of Los Angeles represents and embraces. There is nothing immediate about her act of creation, and she likes it that way. “Although its digital era, I still like working with a traditional camera and film. I shoot with a medium format camera and film, and print my work myself in the darkroom.”

Returning to the meaning within her current floral series, the idea of rebirth and spirituality is strong for the artist in regard to the lotus flower. She introduces these concepts seemingly effortlessly into her work. “The lotus is an iconic flower in Chinese culture. It has a meaning of purity, it’s very strong in spirituality.”

She adds that in the latest images from this series, the palette is a sunshine yellow and flame red. “The image is yellow with a little red, like a refining fire. It is thought that those colors make a person restore, confirm, strengthen and establish themselves.” The idea of a refining fire, she explains, extends to the creation of beautiful jewelry, as well as for people. That refinement is a process uses in creating fine jewelry as well, and ties into Cheng’s idea of the flower itself as a jewel.

Certainly each of Cheng’s images are jewel-like: a prism of perfection that radiates both beauty and strength. Dive in.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist