Exhibition of Stevie Love’s work at Norco College Gallery
Dream-like and dazzling,
artist Stevie Love creates 3-D wall sculptures that are filled with an almost
kinetic energy and bursting with vibrant color. She started experimenting with paint
in this way back in her art school days at Claremont Graduate University.
“I’ve used acrylic paint as a sculptural medium for more than 20 years…making large three-dimensional free-form paint objects by pushing the paint around with my hands. Right after graduating I spent some years using squeeze bottles to apply thick paint to rectangular matrices like paper, wood panels, or acrylic panels. I made free-form shapes once in a while. But about five years ago, I began focusing on creating the three-dimensional paint/sculpture hybrids that I am making now.”
Even more recently, she began adding faux fur to the back of each piece “to create an aura. Now I am hooked on the idea and look of the fur in combination with the sculptural paint,” she says. It also “references a pelt, in which case the paint would be the inside or fleshy part of the skin.”
Love wants viewers to be surprised about the work and curious about its construction, as well as “stimulated by seeing something they have never seen before. The combination of sculptural paint and faux fur, and intense colors in combination have a sense of the absurd; playful in a way, but serious in the carefully constructed intentional objectness.”
Always searching for “super bright” colors and colors that play off each other, she seeks to “emphasize the intensity of the differences between them.” She spends days mixing paints and mediums to reach the consistency she wants, primarily selecting Nova Color paints and mediums from pourable gloss to matte to super thick.
“I get a couple of specialty
mediums from Golden Paint, like GAC 800 to minimize crazing, and Clear Tar Gel
which has a syrupy texture that causes the paint to spread forever making a
level surface. The Clear Tar Gel is impossible to control but that’s what makes
it interesting – it spreads and pushes outward making unique shapes beyond my
control, and there are times I want to take advantage of that.”
She describes herself as “naturally
attracted to zingy color combinations. I love the dark and light contrasts in Van
Gogh, and paintings by the Fauves have always been favorites of mine. But I
also am attracted to the over-the-top, not ‘normal’ color combinations. Hot
pink just makes me happy!”
Growing up in Burbank and Los
Angeles, her family made trips to border towns, where she absorbed the sheen of
colorful buildings and signs that was the norm there.
“We moved around a lot and my
Dad always painted our houses pink — not hot pink, but definitely pink,” she
laughs.
Flower – from Love’s current work in the group show Bouquet, now at Roswell Space Gallery
In regard to her textures,
she says she simply enjoys painting sculpturally and “building up shapes and
forms based on what comes naturally out of a pastry bag or squeeze bottle. I am
a modernist, in that the paint for me can stand on its own as an object in its
own right. I like the playfulness of making 3-D forms with the paint. What
results is a kind of unnatural nature based in color and form that flows
naturally, but makes forms unrelated to the everyday world we see around us.”
Her titles refer to
consciousness. “I am thinking of them less as the inside of a body but even
deeper into a human’s existence – consciousness, including everyday waking
consciousness, sub-consciousness, Jung’s great unconscious, and shared
consciousness with all of creation.”
She views the works as
existing in a space between painting and sculpture. “They hang on the wall like
a painting, but because of their physical form, they exist in the space that
the viewer occupies.”
She notes that she often fluctuates between hanging the works against the wall flat, or draping them to call more attendtion to the paint skin.
“This idea conforms to an
idea I have about the world being a thin skin – the veil which is pierced when entering
another dimension of consciousness. Like my Italian mom used to say, ‘Il mundo
e piccolo piccolo.’ The world is very thin. In other words, our existence is precarious.”
Mojave Mythos
Over the years, Love has
created landscape-related forms: currently, she’s thinking of pursuing that 3-D
space, rather than focusing on the surface. “I am interested not in making recognizable
landscapes, but using the idea of landscape as a framework to drape absurd
magical forms. I live in the wild desert hills and I am inspired by their
magic.”
Mojave Pink
As viewers are inspired by the magic inherent in her work.
Art fair weekend. Yes, PhotoLA and the LA Art Show took place a few weekends back, but we took in five art fairs this Presidents Day weekend, each with its own flavor. First off, Frieze.
In its sophomore year on the Paramount lot, Frieze Los Angeles featured a vast and beautiful collection of works in the gallery tent. From sculptures by Alison Saar to stunning light works from James Turrell and the reflective beauty of Anish Kapour, just about every contemporary art celebrity you can think of was on exhibit here.
James Turrell Anish Kapour Cindy Sherman
A massive Cindy Sherman towered over NYC-based Metro Pictures booth, while Ugo Rondinone’s ten mountains + one sun recalled the artist’s massive outdoor installation Seven Magic Mountains located in Jean, Nev.
Ugo RondinonePae White
Kaufman Repetto Gallery’s Pae White installation “Half Magic” dazzled nearby. The art hits kept coming inside. The clean white space of the tent kept things from becoming overwhelming; the well-curated works ranged across all mediums.
Moving outdoors, the effect was not close to as cumulatively grand as in the gallery tent, but included some lovely works.
Channing Hansen Barbara Kasten
Installations on the backlot included terrific textile art from Channing Hansen inside a false-front brownstone; in a larger indoor space was Barbara Kasten’s massive colored plexiglass and steel-frame sculpture “Intervention.” There was a faux disguised-cell-tower from Sayre Gomez, the sculpture “Tocayo 2020;” and a Mario Garcia Torres film exploring coincidence, “Falling Together in Time.”
Below, Lorna Simpson’s wonderful video installation, “Momentum,” presented in conjunction with Hauser & Wirth.
Lorna Simpson
All in all, a dizzying array of art with the vast richness of the gallery tent overshadowing the curation on the lot.
Outside spaces focused on sculptural works and moving images; many of the former had a humous bent.
Inside the tent, textiles, sculptures, and large scale paintings were the standouts; gallery after gallery offered stellar works, many of museum-quality. As an over-riding theme, texture was key, from crystals to fabric to the fabricated. Rocks and metals were a thing; as was a mix of figurative paintings with the abstract. Here’s a more inclusive
Tent Gallery at Frieze
Genie Davis; photos Jack Burke; additional images, Genie Davis
From vivid color to works of contemplation… from faces to the faceless…LA Art Show serves up a tasty blend of quintessentially Los Angeles art. Exhibiting international flare and the socially prescient, the often large-scale exhibitions and performance art are both glitzy and grand. Here’s a look.
When artist Kate Kelton sets out to do something – she does it. She, like her latest series, is Indomitable. Kelton’s astonishingly lovely and glowing images of women are created to tackle an important subject with grace and power: “I try to uplift and elevate Silence-Breakers, Patriarchy-Smashers, Truth-Tellers, Survivor-Hero and Sheroes to the highest reaches of architectural strata. Apotheosis through a reclaimed, reapplied Art Nouveau. Sampling my own lineage, I transform a historical body of work, itself a thing of lasting beauty; exchanging granite for graphite, plaster for paint,” she says. “To date, 105 silence-breakers accused Harvey Weinstein of gross sexual misconduct, 60 came forward about Bill Cosby. Over 200 are rumored to be coalescing against Donald Trump, with 24 having come forward already. More than 400 spoke out within the first 48 hours following the publication of director James Toback’s profile. One can’t even imagine the number for Jeffrey Epstein. With Harvey Weinstein’s trial finally coming up… I want to focus on weaving my protection spell over the subjects of my work, because I’m a hella superstitious astrology aficionado.”
She is also a riveting artist; her subjects leap at viewers, deified, as she puts it with “headdresses, helmets and crowns from my ancestors’ constructs,” as she creates she also works to “weave an unbreakable spell of protection. Could my paintings inadvertently put Harvey in jail? With a pandemic, global 1% conviction rate for rapists who even make it to the courts… it certainly couldn’t hurt to try. I suppose it’s a little like that Bible bit from Isaiah, but far less evangelical since I was raised agnostically. Even under heavy resistance and surrounded of adversaries, no weapon that is formed against me, shall prosper.”
Kelton is also donating a portion of the proceeds from the show to Citizen Lab, located in her home town of Toronto, an organization that studies how surveillance and content-filtering impact the security of the Internet, and in so doing, pose a threat to human rights. In regard to her subjects, she notes that so many have been cyberstalked, tracked, hacked and gas-lit for speaking their truth.
But in her work, the women she depicts are filled with light, life, and fierceness. Her recent paintings include E Jean Carroll, Lili Bernard, Andrea Constand, Victoria Valentino, James Safechuck, Drew Dixon, Louisette Geiss, Kadian Noble, Caitlin Dulany, Jessica Bishop, Lou Godbold, Lisa Christie, Johnathon Schaech, Tasha Dixon, Jill Harth, Lisa Christie, Reverend Vera Lauren, Eden Tiril, Alice Evans, Erika Rosenbaum, Stacey Pinkerton, Molly Maeve, Ani Easton Baker, Sand Van Roy, Natasha Stoynoff, Melissa Schuman, Samantha Holvey, Lauren O’Connor, Mhairi Steenbock, Lucia Evans, Melissa Thompson, Lizzette Martinez, Lisette Anthon,y and Jasmine Lobe.
She terms her current work both a continuation and a departure from her previous art. As to her subjects, she notes that last year she painted famous actors almost exclusively while this year she has included lesser known survivors of abuse atrocities, those who have “been on the very frontline” of bringing down predators. “Uplifting these truth-tellers is triggering, arduous, and begging for trolling from fixers’ bot armies on social media. Yet it’s more fulfilling then anything I’ve ever done. When I began painting these warriors, it was because I too had just been effectively ousted from the acting industry.”
She adds “The women I depicted last year had established careers, most with years of work under their belts. The framed, high gloss, full color, rich and finished quality to my Sentry series is something I wanted to contrast this year while working on paintings of many whose lives and careers were derailed so early they never got the traction to elevate, to become ‘household names.’” The limited palette in which she works serves as a metaphor for the limitations her subjects must surmount to express their messages when careers and platforms were stolen, she attests.
Her moving, lush images, and the almost frenetic pace at which she creates these visually and spiritually glowing works are inspired in part by a story “about a woman who received her poetry on the wind and allowed it to flow through her from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers,” according to Kelton.
She describes her use of gorgeous headdresses with faces as a combination in the “hope the Gestalt elevates the individual pieces into a third and separate whole, something alchemically different.” She credits the subjects for selfies as well as photographers such as Freddie B, Rich Klein, Naomi Kaltman, Dawn Quiacos, Skip Gue, Lou Noble, Sabrina Reeves, Matt Sayles, Dana Patrick, Brooks Freehill, and Ernst Tramposch, who provided images for her to work from.
Her palette has its own poetry. “When paint becomes swampy and muddled from too many changed minds and crazed brushstrokes; when the lines lose their vibrancy buried under the weight of simply too much frenetic gesticulating, OCD levels of surface decoration on my part generally mean color is where I have to place emphasis on simplicity anyway. The eye already moves about so much over the surface of my pieces, that a full rainbow spectrum feels as garish and overwrought to me as it must have to the initial critics of Fauvism, back in the day.”
Kelton says she also clings to the natural color schemes her mother uses in her own painting and assemblage, and uses patient applications of thinly layered glaze in her work, as did one of her father’s favorite artists, Rothko.
“I’m additionally experimenting with the textural differences between matte and glossy surfaces. It’s expanded my grey scale considerably, working from Stuart Stemple’s Blackest Black to various silvers and iridescent whites that exceed even titanium white, given the right light.”
She stresses that she refuses to “lose a painting’s ability to alter through time by reflecting changing lighting conditions.” Her passion for mutable light is both geographically and seasonally driven. “Have you ever noticed the quality of light in different cities? Blue-ish white light bounces from Lake Ontario over most of Toronto, while smog’s red haze hyper-saturates every stunner sunset in LA.”
More on Kelton’s palette: “Underpaintings have always fascinated me. Desaturated, black and white work that emphasizes the importance of Notan, a Japanese design concept involving the play and placement of light and dark elements as they are placed next to the other.” She adds “The only color I’m adding alongside the various metallics, grays and neutral browns I’m working with this year, is green. Partly because it represents lush growth – in plant life as well as one’s finances, something all Silence Breakers could stand to enjoy after all the illegal punitive retaliation – but also because seeing how subtle an infinite amount of different greens naturally appear in the undertones of the gold, or in copper’s oxidization, is unendingly inspiring to me.”
The
visceral quality of her work goes far beyond color, and pay tribute to Kelton’s
ancestors. “Listen, you’d rip off your ancestors too if you suddenly found out
they’d designed the Central Train Station in Prague and hired incredible
sculptors to blow people’s minds… just because. There are dozens of arches on
either side of the train station’s main entrance. Each one is crowned by a face
wearing a helmet, crown, or headdress of some kind. They represent, presumably,
the people and places connected by those trains.”
Just as connected are her recent series of works: With Joe’s Train Station, she paid homage to her great grandfather, Josef Fanta, the architect, engineer, painter and sculptor behind that station. “My father’s family fled Prague when Czechoslovakia was handed over to the Russians after the war. The real repercussions of politics – something that many Americans only seem to be waking up to now – were always a tangible part of my life growing up. Metaphorically rebuilding my great grandfather’s train station became as soothing as any balm or salve for the times.” That exhibition was followed by Artstar, in which portraits of artists “were now cloaked in the garb of statues my great grandfather tasked Ladislav Šaloun with sculpting onto his train station. The work presented a tactility against the digitized space, and represented a taking, an acquisition of power back from the tastemakers.” Next came Sentry, marking the #metoo movement, and combining “the faces of brave silence breakers with photos of the statues’ headpieces, in situ. I asked the incredibly talented artist Steve Seleska to add a super high gloss glaze to the pieces, to bring out the rich reds, blues and browns.”
All of Kelton’s work has a dream-like quality despite its realism. “Working to combine the stone statuary with living, breathing flesh is the trick for me now. The spaces in between fall into an abstract category bridging the gap, hopefully suspending the viewers’ disbelief long enough to be enchanted by the whole; the Gestalt of it.” She describes the headdresses worn by her subjects as “heavy crowns to bear — sometimes showing up in gilded hands holding up heads hung low. These powerful Silence Breakers have been doing the work of moving the dial thanklessly and tirelessly for years now,” she explains.
The inspiration for and genesis of Indomitable comes from those who, Kelton says, “have spoken up at great personal cost to inspire the #metoo wave that’s swept the world…To champion them and their work seems such a small token of gratitude, since they risked everything to make this industry safer.”
Kelton is working on plans to tour the series, starting with the Arkansas Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s Masquerade Ball on May 2, 2020.
