Dulcepalloza: Art Extravaganza in El Segundo

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Curated by Dulce Stein and Tricia Banh, Dulcepalloza features the work of over thirty artists, and includes some incredible installations along with sculpture, found object art, pottery, paintings, and more. At the opening April 30th, live music and painting were also a part of the mix, in a truly engaging exhibition that transforms an El Segundo warehouse space into an exciting temporary museum.

Participating artists include:

Debi Cable
Amy Kaps
Mark Tovar
Skye Amber Sweet
Nikolai Molecules
Billy Pacak
The Night Owl Players
Vicky Barkley
Gabriela Zapata
Reidar Schopp
Arlene Mead
Mondo Bobadilla
Kellie Cracker
Sheri Neva
Sybil McMiller
Scott A. Trimble
Sheila Cameron
Jim Caron
Dulcinea Circelli
Shalla Javid
Achille Morie
Cie Gumucio
Bethann Shannon
Marianne Magne
Julian Hernandez
Robyn Hardy-Alatorre
Helena Gullstrom
JonMarc Edwards
Kristine Augustyn
Moe Betta

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The curators included a wide mix of artists from throughout Los Angeles, including a number who call the South Bay home.

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Artist Dulcinea Circelli’s mixed media – above and below – includes objects she found in the streets. “I try to up-cycle materials. I hand grow the crystals using a crystal growing kit. My artwork is an expression of Zen Buddhism.” Titled Indra’s Net Number 3 of 10, this piece represents the “totality of the universe and everything within it.” It’s a fascinating piece.

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Below, artist Amy Kaps in her incredible black and white striped installation. “I’m primarily a performance artist. I was doing living sculpture with striped cloth, and I was approached by photographer Eric Schwabel. We made the first striped room, and the photos hung within this room came from that time. Curators started asking for this installation. My works have a lot to do with perception. I’m interested in you asking what you’re looking at, and what you see.”

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Below, Hermosa Beach artist Scott Trimble with one of three pieces he exhibited in the show. “Is this Propaganda,” the title of this piece, refers to social issues regarding women. “I have a strong feminist background. The title really refers to the idea that while I find women attractive, I do not want to be exploitative.” Trimble paints up to sixteen works a week.  “I never approach with a thought clear in my head. I let my hand and my eye paint. It’s a process that’s so freeing, to turn my mind off and engage in emptying myself into the canvas as I work.”

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Below, co-curator Tricia Banh. This is her first curated show, and she hit it out of the ballpark.

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Below, artist Vicki Barkley with a piece that she originally created at Coagula Curatorial. “It came from my heart. People respond to the emotional content here. It came out of a transitional phase as I was going through a divorce.” The panels are plastic but flow as if they were cloth. “There are eight panels hung in sequence, and they correspond to a little bit of numerology and metaphysical tradition. Water represents the heartbreak goddess, so I made them blue for that reason.”

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Above, Robin Hardy-Alatorre provides an interpretation of the history of art itself that she says parodies perception.

 

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Below, curator Dulce Stein. She designed the event to be “a celebration of art through the eyes of the artist.” She adds that taking over the warehouse space gave her “the opportunity to explore the many ways one can display art and still be fun and innovative.”

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Below, inside the true “3-D Wonderland” of Debi Cable’s installation.

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Below, JonMarc Edwards with his installation, Debriti. His “shop” sells text by the ounce: letters, sentences, words, poems. “Choose your words carefully,” he suggests. The installation texts are made of natural, bio-degradable tag board. “You can take it and throw it in the air, and the letters will decompose over time,” he says. “The excess and meaningfulness of words are both everywhere.”

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Achille Morio, below, created another portion of the “Wonderland” installation, working in vibrant 3D. “I try to make visible a continuity between the visible and invisible, fluorescent and phosphorescent, to create a surprise,” he says.

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Below, artist Cie Gumucio with one of several very diverse pieces in the exhibition. The striking red and white mixed media piece below is called “A Million Tiny No’s and I Said Yes, Yes, Yes.” Gumucio notes “The stitching was important, I think what’s so beautiful is that one object, the zipper, can be imbued with so much meaning, whether open or closed, it can be communicated across languages.”

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Below, Shelly Heffler with a variety of ceramic works. “They’re very organic. Like my paintings, they come out of movement. They start with a lump of clay that I just start forming, it’s a sensuous movement of positive and negative space.”

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Outside the exhibition, The Night Owl Players performed exciting live music, created and performed to inspire live painting.

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Missed the opening? Head to 140 Center Street in El Segundo all the same – the exhibit runs through May 20th, hours are 7 to 9 weekdays and 2-5 Sunday, by appointment only. Call or text Dulce Stein at (424) 789-1788; the closing reception and an artist panel will be open to the public from 6-11 pm on Thursday, May 19th. Artist’s panel will run from 7 to 8 p.m.

  • Genie Davis;  photos: Jack Burke

 

 

Leavened with Humor: Dough

Posted on by Diversions LA

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Dough is a lighthearted take on the relationship between Nat, an aging, widowed Jewish baker (Jonathan Pryce) and Ayyash, a young Muslim immigrant (Jerome Holder) he takes on as his apprentice.  Directed by John Goldschmidt, this sweet relationship forms the – pun intended – leavening of the film, and with stellar acting from both leads, creates a compelling feel-good story.

Yes, there’s a nasty developer who seeks to take over and tear down Nat’s Kosher bakery, a hard-nosed drug dealer who proves to be Ayyash’s nemesis, a love-hungry widow, and some fortunately obtuse policemen involved, but it’s the appealing father/son connection between the baker and his new assistant that makes this kindhearted, gentle comedy/drama a charmer.

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The story: business at the bakery booms when the cannabis Ayyash sells to help support his impoverished mom mixes into the challah loaves, and some tense moments of would-be disaster inevitably follow. But not to worry: it’s not giving too much away to say that racial and religious divides fade easily, and by the ending credits you’ll have a smile on your face.

This is a confection, a lighthearted, delicious puff pastry of a tale that will have viewers enjoying every tasty morsel.

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Randi Matushevitz: Artist Profile

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The art of Randi Matushevitz is magical. It has the quality of a fairy or folktale; a narrative brave, loving, and a little bit spooky. There are symbols and signs, figures and landscapes – the impact of viewing her work is immersive and emotional. Enter the world of Matushevitz and become transformed. This is an alternative universe, like our own but unlike it, both delicate and intense.

“My process swings from intuitive to formal and back again. I draw. The work develops over days and weeks or more. I layer. I draw. I spray. I look and repeat.” In short, Matushevitz, working in pastels, deep charcoal, and acrylics, creates works as physically layered as they are emotionally dense.

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In her “Bad Habits By The Pool,” she works in charcoal, pastel, and paint on paper to depict what appear to be two small nymph like creatures – or children – watching a woman smoking a cigarette by the pool. The pool is dark and dense, inky. The smaller figures stare, and near them is a box, which could be Pandora’s, perhaps. The yellow background and the pink of the woman’s skin are both the colors of dreams.

Throughout her recent series, “Mysterious,” the artist uses symbols and figures drawn and stenciled. “I provide the innuendo of space, intentional references and implied mood or location,” she says.

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In “Liberty or Death” burnt sienna patterns dot a piece that also includes the outline of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. A bed, a bus, pipes, hearts, flowers – there is a wildness and an energy, a garden of technology, an infusion of love into our often harsh world. Are those bombs exploding? Fireworks “bursting in air?” Are the hearts floating in space simply symbolic hearts or are they living creatures infused with the ability to create love where none previously exists?

Matushevitz is less interested in explanations than she is in emotion. She says she includes “the power of color, texture, and pattern” to create the perception of love. “What we see has influence over how we perceive, interpret, and absorb information and thus determines what we think and who we become.”

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The artist’s work is based on the idea that what we see has a deep effect on human perception and feeling – and what affects the individual also affects a larger society. She’s exploring all sides of the idea of love and the artifacts of human emotion, using tools of harmonious and disharmonious color, and her own unique combinations of symbols, colors, and patterns.

“I use memory, sentimentality and childlike whimsy to create images that are embellished and decorated to reveal kindness, respect and accountability,” Matushevitz says. “It’s a multi-sensory message that has been metaphysically explored since the beginning of time.”

In short, she believes we are what we think. While earlier works by the artist reflected a brighter tone and more whimsical nature, her more recent series plays with the idea of perception in an edgier tone.

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In “Elephant in the Room,” for example, symbolic depictions of elephants are scattered across the page, a car, a butterfly, a fireplace, and over that fireplace, a painting or a mirror or a window reflects more cars. Is the elephant a metaphor for our lumbering vehicles, creating environmental chaos?

“It is a fight for the sanity of our culture as we know it,” the artist says, “we neglect and take for granted what is so important that it is discounted as if disposable. As if it is something that will always be there, until it is not.”

There is much to see and absorb in Matushevitz’s work. Like life itself, her works dance on an edge between belief and perception, light and dark. We are creations of our own dreams, she seems to be saying. But can we dream better?

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In “Movie Time,” the answer appears to be affirmative, as two children watch a stream of flowers, and a small, fairy-like figure surfs a tangle of water-like roots on a seed pod. The niche in which the children are positioned is in the shape of an eye. Is this all an image taken from the mind’s eye, a moving picture of life?

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Perhaps her “Self-Portrait” holds the answer. This piece is nearly monochromatic, touches of red like fire in her eyes, touches of green like growing things in the foreground. Her hair is wild, what could be fairies, trolls, or dybbuks wait on either shoulder. But her eyes are calm and kind, her lips pressed into a half-smile. Matushevitz seems to be saying what we accept, what we cannot know, what we see, what is unseen – it should all be approached with equanimity.

Whatever the world holds, in its mystery, in its magic, in its folklore and fairytales, the artist believes we need to give expression to that vision.

Matushevitz’s works have been shown both nationally and internationally in New York, LA, Las Vegas, Miami, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Madrid, and Xalapa. Her most recent exhibition was held in March on the UCLA campus.

The Antarctic Dreams of Lily Simonson

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“Beneath the Midnight Sun,” an exhibition of breathtaking works by Lily Simonson is on view at CB1 Gallery through May 29th. The exhibition leads viewers into a world that literally glows, inside and out.

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There’s nothing quite like the colorscape Simonson uses. It vibrates both on and under the surface.

The exhibition’s origin is the artist’s trips to Antarctica. She served as the Awardee for the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Simonson’s art is very much an adventure, for the artist as well as the viewer. Along with her Antarctic expeditions, she served as the Artist in Residence aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus and the Research Vessel Melville.

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“It’s exciting to reveal the life under the sea ice and on land, the crazy geological formations, and to share some of the surprisingly diverse and unexpected beauty, ” Simonson relates.

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She uses acrylics, oil, and fluorescent pigment that glows in black light and creates a translucent appearance in white light. The effect is one of dazzling depth, a multi-layered immersion in surreal, vibrant colors.

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Simonson is an explorer, both literally and through her innovative, experiential art. Dive on in.

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Simonson’s work is on view at CB1 Gallery from April 16 – May 29, 2016. CB1 is located at 1923 S. Santa Fe Ave. in DTLA’s warehouse district.

  • Genie Davis, all photos: Jack Burke