Jenny Hager Makes Magic Myths, Gay Summer Rick Finds Calm in a Firestorm

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Jenny Hager Makes Magic Myths, Gay Summer Rick Finds Calm in a Firestorm – Genie Davis

At the Jose Drudis-Biada Gallery on the campus of Mount Saint Mary College in Brentwood, Mountains, Monsters, and Cosmos converge in a stunning solo show from artist Jenny Hager. As impressive as the works themselves are, perhaps even more impressive is the fact that they were all created within the last two years.

Vibrant in color, startling and compelling in line, these works are a swirl of motion, representing horses, planets, earthly landscapes, and chimera-like behemoths, all hovering within riveting explosions of raw, fierce, abstractions. The artist has shaped a dream-like lore of magic and myth, an alchemic recipe for reflection and passionate perception in a mix of emotional darkness and light.

Hager explains the exhibition as an “exploration of complex traumas (both personal and observed), situated in the immediate experience of the chaos and expansiveness of such moments, as well as the synthesis and examination of such experiences as it becomes one narrative of many.” In short, the artist examines, extrapolates, and rewrites her own stories, and makes them one with the histories of her viewers.

She reveals that the abstract expression of her subjects “produces a hierarchy of things allowed to speak and things that are censured… a representation of confrontation and incomprehensibility that defies categorization through language structures and resides in the visceral.” Her art speaks what words cannot.

Compelling and multi-textured, these paintings are fairy tales and alchemic myths writ large, bold, and entirely beautiful in a landscape of vivid palette and startling juxtapositions that create both haunted landscape and fiery, fierce hope.

The exhibition runs through November 8th. The gallery is located at 12001 Chalon Rd, Los Angeles, CA 90049

Moving slightly south to Bergamot Station, Gay Summer Rick offers a wistful, peaceful view of coastal life in her new series Stratus, now at Bg Gallery through November 1st.

Like Hagar’s work, Rick’s is intensely personal and created in a consolidated time period; in her case, created entirely in the fraught 8-month time period following the January firestorm in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Rick’s work is the calm in the firestorm, an immersion of recovery, a peaceful protest against the shocking aftermath of the devastating blaze. Like a moment of held-breath, a captured meditation, the work exudes a calm resilience in atmospheric paintings which also reflect on the inherent beauty within even moments that are most uncertain.

The artist notes that the series title comes from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s definition of “Stratus” clouds: “broad, layered, diffuse forms that blanket the sky with soft cover.”

It is with that sort of softness and wonder that each oceanscape and sky fills the viewer with a special sense of place and peace.

Bg Gallery is located at 2525 Michigan Ave #A2, Santa Monica, CA 90404

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis

Night Gallery Shines a Light

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Night Gallery Shines a Light – by Genie Davis

With four dazzling exhibitions on view this month, Night Gallery lights up October with revealing solo exhibitions. Closing November 1st, hurry to see these shows, which are each entirely unique and richly rewarding.

Ross Caliendo’s Peace Fellow turns landscape painting inside out with beautiful images that contain mysterious otherworldly visions within. Lush and infinitely dreamlike, gorgeous natural images of flora and fauna can be taken at face value, while deeper truths tease and immerse the viewer moving from the illusion of the recognizable to an unseen universe peering through the heightened lens of the artist’s vision.

 

This is exciting work from a mesmerizing artist, pairing beauty and wonder with a deeper, more haunting experience within.

Nasim Hantehzadeh mixes a variety of mediums to create images that evoke memory and magic. Working with acrylic on linen, dreamy colors and patterns converge in sinuous, motion-filled images that dance and delight in Tickles, Dance, and Goosbump Blooms.

Vast in size and complexity, shimmering and joyous, the works vibrate with a rich intensity and dimensionality that speaks to the artist’s early years living in Iran, as well as a universal desire for freedom and love. The images are a dance of motion in a watery world.

LaRissa Rogers’ Dust of the Streets is a tour de force of mediums, from layered ceramics to photographic work, all of which revolves around a gazebo holding the most monumental of the ceramics works. Dealing with the difficult legacy of her mother’s immigration as an adopted, mixed-race Korean, the often poignant images are startlingly transformative, asserting the blossoming of life despite traumatic and potentially crippling emotional injury.

The resilience of the human spirit and the support of a creative soul takes deep hurt and turns it into power, power which can ultimately form art, art which shapes joy.

And finally, Wanda Koop’s Magnetic Fields brings a galvanizing dimensional intensity to abstract images that speaks to the unsettling presence of AI, as it inserts itself even into the limbs of trees. Using a color palette that enhances a sense of the surreal, the work is both amusing and terrifying, even as it simmers with graceful lovliness.

Summing up, don’t let another day go by before you enter Night Gallery, with exhibition space at 2276 E 16th Street  and 2050 Imperial Street in Los Angeles.

  • Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis 

 

 

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

 

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