Art at the Rendon: Checking In to Check It Out

Posted on by Diversions LA

R28

R29

From outdoor art shrine to indoor glitter, the Rendon Hotel became the pop-up art spot to beat all pop-ups in LA this past weekend.

R51

R52

You might not want to book at stay at the Rendon, a former single occupancy hotel just off 7th in DTLA. But if you checked out the first in a series of Art at the Rendon events this past weekend, it was all the same a terrific place to spend the night.

R60

Over 40 artists took over the hotel, creating immersive, individual rooms, some featuring performance art, some unspooling video images, some with the artists holding court, explaining the genesis of their work. Astonishingly beautiful, Hidden Rooms, curated by Cindy Schwarzstein of Cartwheel Art (below), brought DTLA-affiliated artists together to conceptualize all three floors of the building.

R48

Guests climbed the slightly-shaky metal fire escapes to access each floor, and wandered narrow halls to view the rooms.

Artists had just around 3 weeks to complete their works – and the results were stunning.

R38

R40

Above, Davia King and Lisa Schulte, artists.

From magical neon to sheer, diaphanous fabric with haunting images of the city; light and the use of light was one key element that recurred in the rooms.

Below, artist Teale Hatheway lets the wind carry her work.

R24

R20

R23

R22

Below, purple light infuses artist Jeff Ho’s room.

R54

R56

Texture was also a key element of installations: below, Guerin Swing gives us a silver room with the walls of a celestial, alien cave.

R58

Faux fur on the bed, beaded lamp dangles above.

R55

The Baker’s Son conjured up outsize, tasty, tactile treats, below.

R61

Constructs of wood redefine space in the work of Susan Feldman Tucker, who bisected her room with wood and small sparkling lights, below.

R57

R3

And what is the texture of money? As Warren Zevon once sang, “bring lawyers, guns, and money…” the lawyers were temporarily missing.

R7

R6

The weapon worship of America was touched upon in several spaces, including this haunting installation by Clinton Bopp, below, referencing Arthurian times.

R16

From evoking ocean breezes to calling up something much darker, rooms also shaped distinct notions of place and time.

R 1

R27

Other images were harsher.

R2

Or haunted…as with filmed images from the hotel by Natasa Prosenc Stearns, below.

R33

R35

Marcel “SEL” Blanco, below, gracefully took flight.

R26

Joseph Manuel Montalvo (NUKE) created the room of a Zoot-suited dancer, who interacted with hotel guests. Performance, below, by Pachuco Chino.

R 9

R8

Politics came in many forms – butterflies were one, emblematic of migration, below, from Maria Greenshields Ziman.

R34

A White House built of sand in the jungle… it is all a bit Apocalypse Now these days… from INDECLINE.

R19

R17

R18

R11

R13

Street artist Paradox gives us predictions of the future and a look at cool Sacrosanct Society clothing.

R14

R10

Whatever door viewers stepped through, there was a transformation.

R15

R12

R25

R37

R42

R36

R30

R49

R50

R53

Participating artists included:  ABCNT, Abel Alejandre Studio, AISEBORN – Visual Artist, Atlas, Kofie, Baker’s Son, Big Sleeps, Beau Stanton, Bisco Smith, Calder Greenwood, California Locos, Cassie Zhang, Christina Angelina (aka Starfighter), Clinton Bopp, Chaz Bojorquez, Darcy Yates, Dave Lovejoy, Dave Tourjé, Davia King, Dytch66, CBS, Emmeric Konrad, Francesca Quintano, Gabriella Fash, Gary Wong, Guerin Swing, INDECLINE, James P. Scott, Jacqueline Palafox, Jeff Ho, Johnny Cubert White, John Van Hamersveld, Joseph Manuel Montalvo (NUKE), Joe Prime Reza (K2S), Josh Everhorn, Josh Webb (aka Joex2), Kelcey Fisher (aka KFiSH), Kelly Graval (RISK), Keya Tama, Lisa Schulte, Man One, Marcel “SEL” Blanco, Maria Greenshields-Ziman, Mark Dean Veca, Michael Torquato DeNicola, MYMO (aka Mimo Ilie Mali), Moncho 1929, Deejay Trixter, Nataša Prosenc Stearns, Nicholas Bonamy, Norton Wisdom, Ralph Ziman (aka Afrika47), Restitution Press, RETNA, RhoXRose, Robert Sticky Shaw, Sarah K. Walsh, Shrine (Brent Allen Spears), Sma Litzsinger, Stephen Seemayer, Susan Feldman Tucker, Tanner Goldbeck, Teale Hatheway, VALTD, Vanessa Chow.

R41

R45

R32

On the ground level, music rocked the dive-bar, while sculptures, an art car, and food truck took over the courtyard. 

R46

R47

Hidden Rooms was the first event in the Art at the Rendon series, which is planned to bring both art and music to the vacant hotel before it is renovated — and after the renovation. The idea is to  continue art programming and offer artist residencies.

R44

We wished there was an extended checkout, but unfortunately, this was just a weekend staycation.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Genie Davis

Forestiere Underground Gardens: Fine Folk Art in Fresno

Posted on by Diversions LA

22089195_10212844618777462_7835127216451075878_n

A California Historical Landmark and an artistic and architectural treasure, the Forestiere Underground Gardens is a miracle of folk art.

22046625_10212844617097420_4688730606421791833_n

Akin to the Watts Towers and Nitwit Ridge, it is the vision of a man who could craft anything, and didn’t let a little problem like hard and unyielding soil destroy his vision of a California Eden.

22049784_10212844618817463_5081084850568986946_n

An hour long tour takes visitors through the well-preserved tunnels and caves created by Baldassare Forestiere, a Sicillian immigrant. His underground rooms, courtyards, and passages include producing fruit trees and vines some now 90 years old.

22046124_10212844617017418_6809607244417718806_n

Always a digger, Forestiere immigrated first to New York City where he excavated subway tunnels. He moved west in search of his dream of a perfect climate and a rich orchard; first to Orange County, then to Fresno, where he bought 80 acres for what was then $80 in the early 1900s. But the land he purchased was hard as rock, too difficult to break through the hard pan surface to plant, particularly in weather that in the summer could soar to 120 degrees.

22045997_10212844617057419_1612898873309927774_n

So instead, he dug below, far below, creating an underground haven similar in temperature and construction to large wine cellars or catacombs. His dream evolved: he decided he wanted to create an underground resort with 50 rooms.

20882996_1607103089351781_3598047906458129683_n

He dug for over 30 years; but his dream was unrealized in full: after surgery for a hernia he contracted pneumonia and passed away. His brother Giuseppe knew what the property meant to his brother and saved ten acres from development, opening it to tours and the public.

21752491_1639264149469008_6279552876812078803_n

Today, viewers can explore the ballroom where a terrazzo floor was laid; Baldassare Forestiere‘s ingenious water piping and bathtub, his irrigation for underground fruit trees that are still thriving, his kitchen, with clever nooks and crannies, mosaic decorative work,  and more.

22140866_10212844617697435_1855324065726500427_n

15055638_1283207115074715_963324065453807534_n

It’s a wonderful place, full of smart touches from rotating cabinets to expandable tables; a glassed in pond that could be viewed from a lower level of the caverns and on the floor above.

22089010_10212844617737436_5305372012768696606_n

Giuseppe’s now-80 year old son Rick and his children still work on preserving the gardens, and the rather magical memories Rick has of sleepovers at his uncle’s place have been passed through the generations.

22050064_10212844618737461_2898783232299091806_n

It may not have become a luxury underground hotel, but it is a special luxury to visit the place, to see a wonderfully realized artistic vision. Think of it as installation art that has reached the highest pinnacle of success; something to be lived in, treasured, and preserved.

“To make something with a lot of money, that is easy; but to make something out of nothing – now that is really something.”

— BALDASSARE FORESTIERE

You want to see this brilliant space, it is art and architecture and crazy vision and faith realized all at once. Faith possibly above all.

22050348_10212844617657434_6882620527790086811_n

22089865_10212844617617433_3896952806686279442_n

20476340_1591747104220713_135244186717764737_n

Just get on the 99 and go. The tours are warmly given, the gift shop may have fruit available from Forestiere’s own trees.

On you way back to LA, stop at a Basque restaurant in Bakersfield and eat an inexpensive feast, and raise a glass of beer or wine in a toast to Forestiere – and the power of persistence, and the strength of a dream.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Genie Davis; and Forestiere Underground Gardens

 

Susan Amorde: She May Have Lots of Baggage But She’s Going Somewhere

Posted on by Diversions LA

26731456_1638794156156301_6309910006285702192_n

Susan Amorde has a lot of baggage. Or rather, her art includes many works that feature suitcases, trunks, and briefcases as a part of sculptures that travel the distance – evocative, edged with mystery and a dark magic.

23844379_1591729900862727_5840895800515958260_n

Suspended from the ceiling, or weighted on the floor, this luggage isn’t easy to unpack.

31786652_1746672432035139_5499132815624634368_n

From sculptural works made with vintage suitcases to beautiful figurative works in clay, wax, bronze, and plaster, Amorde’s work is moody and emotional; she takes viewers on a journey that is both spiritual and literal. She takes on the metaphorical idea of baggage, and how what we carry with us emotionally can become what we are in life. Her work is often witty, with a double entendre rooted within its sculptural nuance. Below, for example, from her Dick and Jane series, is “Woe is Dick.” Amusing, scatological, and brilliantly anguished, this is a fresh take on what could very well be toxic masculinity as it affects its “owner.”

31117732_1738857082816674_6150226213903269888_n

 

What travels through all of Amorde’s work is a muscular strength, a determination and a sense of a discovery. What is it that we find so precious, that we we must take with us everywhere we go? What is it that we find a necessity to bring with us, to pack away, to shape our journey through life, to shape us?

With “Mort’s Briefcase,” below, from her Baggage series, the artist juxtaposes the mixed media of a key and a wall hook with a beautiful sculpture of a man with his open brief case, standing on a small trunk. So much here: the secret content of the receptacle on which he stands; how his body has morphed into a series of objects – the key symbolic of the things he has long locked away.

32628283_1759399427429106_3257329654284943360_n

Other, smaller keys are attached to his arms. Such weight: why do we lock away our secrets, and how do they continue to impact our lives even if we keep them out of sight? Amorde has said that “We as individuals, as well as society and culture, have baggage that we carry around and that either enhances or impedes our daily lives. I incorporate the figure with sculptures of suitcases or use mixed-media to explore how we feel about  ‘baggage’ and what it looks like.”

1487435_836914013010990_3780051960651646482_n

At times, what Amorde seems to be telling the viewer is to really look inside that suitcase, to emotionally unpack. In other works, she’s showing us the richness of everything we carry, the wildness and passion of even our most fraught memories. There is a darkness and an edge to some of her works, as with her stunning “On the Edge,” below. Here a woman is weighted down, trapped under lock and key. She has literally become the baggage she carries and is in torment from it.  Is her freedom just a flick of a lock away?

25152086_1609173779118339_8981882872316163474_n

Weighted with an anchor and chain, the suitcase below is emblematic of more than just one individual, symbolic of modern life itself. The more we have to do, the more we may gain or lose, the more we have to hide. And whatever we’ve kept hidden gets heavier, and heavier, until what we are dragging with us might very well take us to the bottom of the sea and leave us to drown there. “Route 66 Anchor and Chains,” below, has an interesting title. Route 66, after all, was where we were to get our kicks, not our chains.

31400989_1742567635778952_6071274321181933568_n

And once sunk under the sea, perhaps we are still “Drowning in Indecision,” the title of the work below.

31944581_1749386621763720_6597191902640996352_n

Amorde’s series of water portal sculptures are especially beautiful, the liquid sections of each piece feel illuminated with light. Perhaps once we drown what we carry we can finally be made free. Or perhaps we are still on the hook for our burdens.

21740037_1528261827209535_8349772631331103082_n

Her “Wounded Baggage,” above, is classically framed, shot through with bloodied arrows. We can try to kill the demons that we carry, but yet they bleed.

One of the many fascinating things about Amorde’s work is how many questions her art raises. She gives us no pat replies: we are finding insight more than answers.

This is an artist ready to travel, taking viewers on a long and internal journey with her and her art.  To quote The Beatles “Boy you gotta carry that weight/carry that weight a long time.”

Amorde’s profound, anguished, and rich art might just help lighten the load.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Susan Amorde, Genie Davis

 

Aline Mare’s Glowing Requiem for a Writer and Friend

Posted on by Diversions LA

31961105_10214562028551633_2210160011261247488_n

Aline Mare’s elegant, lush, and intensely moving work in Requiem: Aching for Acker is a tribute and an inspired exhibition of visual poetry – based on a poem. Inspired by the last writing from Mare’s long-time friend, the late Kathy Acker, these multi-media works are transcendent, a fitting visual legacy to a fierce spirit and writer.

At the Mark Kelley Gallery in Beyond Baroque through May 27th, this is a poignant and highly personal show, elliptical but relatable, moving and deep.

31949185_10214562028791639_3114387181259456512_n

Mare describes the works as her own interpretation of Acker’s final poem, which beautifully merged the writer’s cancer diagnosis with Greek mythology. What Mare has done is create lush, elegiac, and glowing works; their darkness offset by qualities of light, like rays of hope shooting through the midnight of death.

31959848_10214562028751638_2021172005604163584_n

On the stairs leading to the gallery space, Mare has sprinkled roses and broken glass, above which Acker’s poem is printed as a large, pink poster. Boxing gloves and bustier are suspended on another wall; Acker and Mare both are fierce, female, and fighters. The battle is for remembrance, expression, understanding, and life itself. It does not get any realer or more potent than this.

31949782_10214562028631635_4690113530001620992_n

The artist’s images include the gatherings of nature: seeds and roots and lichen. It includes the legacy of fossils and stone hands and grave markers, the fragile humanity of scars from breast cancer survivors – Acker died of breast cancer – and the caress of angel’s wings.

31960115_10214562030591684_8741176118662397952_n

But the touch of these wings is as much about the power of angels to crush our mortality as they are about succor; they are also emblematic of the power of art, whether it is the art of words or of visual images, to transcend death and our frail bodies.

31959134_10214562031631710_7675610327551049728_n

The palette Mare employs is as rich and soft as worn velvet, the colors of moss and rust, of tarnished treasures and the ruby heart of seeds, blood, capillaries; the pulsation of life and light that beats back the eternal night.

 

32077377_10214562029751663_3527000905519988736_n

The artist incorporates quotes from Acker’s heart-breaking and powerful poem beside her images, tying the quote “’Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels?’ I know the answer: no one.” to a haunting image of feathers, foam, seeds, and what could be human or plant matter. “Tell me: where does love come from? An angel is sitting on my face. To whom can I run?” is matched to an image with an iridescent purple and green wing rising from a scarred, natural shape that could be a wounded body or a ripening, about-to-erupt seed pod.

This is not the first time Mare has created work inspired by Acker. In 2000, she created a multi-media installation examining Acker’s life and battle against cancer. However, the works here may certainly be her most universal and visceral.

31950099_10214562031351703_6192292579594207232_n

One of the glories of Mare’s work in this exhibition is the shining quality within the images, like the silver sheen beneath a tarnished surface. There is the patina of old gem stones, a mosaic of the natural and the dream-like, a tapestry with a dusty, faded, dusky hue, beneath which brilliant threads show. Her aim to create work that shapes the same female power, certain loss, and poignant vulnerability that Acker’s poem gestated in her has been fully realized.

These works are both illustrations of Acker’s poem and a new way of interpreting them, mixed media work that vibrates with passion, pathos, and connection, that innate connection we all share — to our tenuous, transient lives and the death we look to rise above. She captures echoes of eternity in dark but burnished visual moments.

Mike Kelley Gallery is located at 681 Venice Blvd., Venice.

An artist talk is scheduled for Saturday, May 19th at 2 p.m., with artist and writer Gary Brewer.

Regular gallery hours: Fri.-Sat., 3-7 p.m.; Sun., 2-7 p.m; through May 27.

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis