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.
A music industry legend, the song that is spilling from Macey Lipman’s artistic heart today is visual. With a new body of work, The Summit Series, Lipman offers a pinnacle – play on words intended – achievement.
The artist has painted all his life, devoting himself full-time to his art for the last twenty years. The immersive landscapes of North and South American peaks that make up this current series were inspired by Lipman’s daughter and her passion for mountain climbing. The result is exhilarating.
The artist’s acrylic on canvas and birchwood works are uniquely compelling. While the images are firmly grounded in the real world, the dreamy, vibrantly colored works also carry with them expressionistic elements. The works are also highly visceral; viewers can almost feel the chill in the shadows of Glacier Peak Volcano; absorb the crisp thinness of the air at the crest of Mt. Shasta.
On January 25th and 26th, the artist will hold two afternoon receptions at his West Hollywood studio and gallery, presenting works from this series and previous bodies that include images from California’s wine country, Cuba, and Italy.
Over the course of his music career, Lipman received 57 gold and platinum album awards, working with artists such as the 5th Dimension, Heart, Chet Baker, Ravi Shankar, and Johnny Rivers. In 1972, he established Macey Lipman Marketing, the first independent marketing company in the recording industry, through which he managed a wide range of campaigns for top recording artists from Dolly Parton to Cher.
But through it all, he painted. He paints daily, depicting pristine landscapes such as “Mt. Rainer and Nisqually Glacier”; the tallest mountain in Washington and the Cascade Range; “Popocatepetl Volcano (El Popa), Mexico,” raining ash below its slopes; and “Glacier Peak Volcano,” the most remote of the five active volcanoes in Washington State.
One of his sparest and most fascinating landscapes from this series is the 30” x 40” “Foggy Lake/Gothic Peak, Washington,” above, a dream-like vision that merges meticulous pointillist technique with wild and mystical scenery.
Equally absorbing are images such as that of a young Guatemalan woman climbing Santa Maria Peak in Guatemala while breast-feeding her baby. Other recurring motifs in Lipman’s work include the wine regions of Napa and Sonoma; and graceful images of reflections in windows, images that shape their own illusory landscape.
Having been accepted to the Michelangelo Accademia D’Arte in Florence, Italy, Lipman is learning to expand his technique with the use of egg tempera and the creation of paints and colors from scratch.
The artist says his life-long passion for painting began as a child, visiting the art section of Gimbel’s department store, attracted to the scent of oil paints and linseed oil. Despite his early inspiration, he did not sell his paintings until 2002; but by 2004 he was selling out at LACMA’s Sales Gallery. Today, Lipman works at his West Hollywood gallery and studio five days a week.
The dual receptions for The Summit Series take place at Macey Lipman Art studio and gallery, located at 511 N. La Cienega Blvd., #210 from 2-6 p.m. both days. The Summit Series will remain on view through February 20th.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
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.”
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.
“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.
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
