FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TarFest 2004
Juried Art Show
Reception: Friday, October 22, 5 – 9 p.m.
5820 and 5828 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Contact: Angela L. Jones
323-317-0186
(Photos are available by contacting 323-964-7100 x225)
E-mail, <angela@tarfest.com>
Web site, <http://www.tarfest.com>
The Miracle Mile Players present TarFest Art Show 2004 artists’ reception on Friday, October 22nd, 2004 from 5 – 9p.m. This spectacular collection of new art by a unique group of early and mid-career artists is juried by Peter Frank (LA Weekly) and Holly Myers (Los Angeles Times) and produced by the Miracle Mile Players, Inc. This show will be the first exhibition at the new Lawrence Asher Gallery, 5820 Wilshire Blvd., located in the heart of the Miracle Mile directly across the street from the LaBrea Tar Pits. Subud House, right next door at 5828 Wilshire Blvd., will also present the work in its beautiful gallery space and offer wine and hors d’ouvres. The show ends Sunday, November 6th with a closing reception from 12p.m. – 5p.m at Lawrence Asher. TarFest Art Show is part of the Miracle Mile Players’ Festival of Film, Music and Art held on Friday October 21st through Sunday October 24th. More information can be found at <http://www.tarfest.com>.
TarFest Art 2004 offers these diverse artists’ works in an exciting collage of space, light, color and texture. Rhea Carmi displays powerful recent abstract paintings with precious mixed media. York Chang presents conceptualist photo-based paintings on canvas. Jennifer Faist utilizes resin, oil, alkyd and acrylic on wood in a magical manner to exude vibrant precision and power. Israel Gutierrez shows a playful, effective combination of cross-cultural, mixed media images. Miracle Mile resident and Portland native Jason Macaya exposes his colorful, other-worldly scenes while demonstrating control of pen and paintbrush with panache. Joy Mallari has effectively combined memories of her youth in the Philippines with the realities of a western adulthood with paint on canvas. Sonia Romero finds her stride with a superb collection of mixed media works utilizing drawing, painting and print-making skills. And finally, Stephanie Han Windham demonstrates effective use of color and skillful drawing to present contemporary jewels.
The Artists
Rhea Carmi was born in Jerusalem, a land that is spiritual and passionate, searing and volatile. These words very well describe the artist as well as her works. Rhea, over the last twenty-five years produced a body of work that celebrates with antiquity the everlasting human spirit, which survives the brutality and insanity of war, the aridity and harshness of human nature as it endures.
Rhea utilizes a variety of media: oils, sand, water, treated paper, canvas and wood; which she layers, smooths and sculpts to create abstract impressions, that demand tactile as well as visual interplay. Her works (over 250 paintings) are perceived as the topography of intimate landscapes, as well as the mapping of emotions and sensations devoid of familiar forms. The paintings are a personal diary of the artist as she chronicles the events that had an impact on humanity and nature.
York Chang's most recent works are called throwaway paintings, an exploration of the relationship between the disposable mass media culture of our modern visual environment and the anachronistic but uniquely enduring expressive characteristics of painting. These paintings are based on everyday images that have been visually marginalized: the accidental blurs and overexposed flash of amateur snapshots; family photos oxidized by time and memory; digital images with their idiosyncratic pixelated colors. By painting these images with oil on canvas, the context of the image is transformed, and the meaning of the image is elevated. Making these paintings is a redemptive process for York, challenging viewers to see things they might not have noticed before, encouraging them to view a part of their world in a different light and unearthing the hidden loveliness of an image that might otherwise be trashed for its flaws. Not every throwaway photo makes a throwaway painting, of course. York looks for spontaneity in images, particular visual cues from which we implicitly read a certain unchoreographed and genuine quality that is at the heart of what is most beautiful in life and art.
Jennifer Faist combines the sense of minimal forms and material processes with the sensibility of personal poetics, sensuous appearance, and the depth of lived experience in these recent works. Her paintings are usually grouped combining panels equal in size, yet unjoined and placed apart from each other--juxtaposed, yet still separate. She uses these groupings of related panels and colors to derive meaning through metaphor and memory. The colors of the paintings, which elicit personal associations like sounds and smells, trigger memories, specific incidents or events, vestigial images that can be deeply and emotionally evocative.
Israel Gutierrez is the 4th child of a large family originally from Jalisco, México. Israel grew up in a neighborhood ruled by gang activity with the only positive outcome to the environment being the artwork that surrounded him. With so many creative influences to inspire him like street art, pop culture, toy design and children’s books, along with the academic training he has acquired in various colleges (Otis, Art Center, PCC, ELAC), Israel has found his own style and technique.
Jason Macaya spent much of his youth surrounded by abundant natural beauty-- summers spent at Chilean lakes, workdays passed amongst the mountains and glaciers of Alaska, hiking and biking while living in the pervasive, comforting greenery of the Pacific Northwest. The colors, shapes, light, and lines of these environments are burned into his memory and, utilizing acrylics, inks, and the occasional photograph, he improvises works of balance to maintain connection with his past while acknowledging his current existence as a citizen of an expansive, enigmatic city.
Joy Mallari continues her exploration of language in the various mediums that she utilizes. Her work lays bare the process of seeing, and as a result, extends towards the parameters of verbal language. Her "lip reader" series engages the viewer in an act of looking and following the shape of the model's lips, from left to right, similar to the process of reading text. It also invites the viewer to see and listen as they travel through the whole canvas. These oil paintings approximate the film clip, moving and animating and summing up the segmented parts.
Joy has represented the Philippines in several art exhibitions in Asia and Europe and the US. She won the Philip Morris Group of Companies National Painting Competition and was chosen as one of the finalists in the ASEAN Art Awards and the Osaka Triennial in 2001. She has traveled internationally as an individual artist and as part of the Sanggawa art collective in various survey and invitational shows in museums and galleries locally and abroad.
Sonia Romero draws inspiration from all the stories and pictures that she has experienced in her childhood and throughout her life. The nostalgia created by the passage of time gives objects, ideas, and images a heightened pleasurable feeling. Sonia looks for this feeling when she chooses the imagery that goes into her art pieces. This gives her a strong connection and belief in the work, and hopefully inspires the recollection of memories in others.
When Sonia reaches a level of completion in a piece she begins to consider the meanings behind the composition and juxtapositions. It’s as if the animals, foliage, objects, figures, etc. are a vessel for the everyday relationships and happenings in her life. When her life moves on, so do the meanings she thrusts upon the artwork. In this way anybody can find meaning, or create their own stories, by looking at her pictures.
Stephanie Han Windham - A friend had given her an orchid plant as a thank you gift, a magnificent purply-fuschia specimen that dominated its little corner in her studio. Its voluptuously rounded petals, housing an intricately shaped center, compelled her to draw it. After several simple line drawings, she realized that they would look quite nice on top of the abstract fields. The very balanced horizontal and vertical fields were served well by the flowing organic forms, and she loved the serene, quiet results with their hint of mystery.
The series started with just orchids, but when she began to use blues and greens on a particular canvas, it reminded her of water, and she knew she had to draw water flowers—hence the water lilies and lotuses. Although quite unintentional at the start, Stephanie now recognizes the very Asian sensibilities of these paintings, and she has now started to consciously emphasize that quality. Stephanie intends to let this work bloom and flourish…to see what will grow.
TarFest is the production of the Miracle Mile Players, Inc., a California 501c(3) not-for–profit corporation that provides quality venues to emerging artists while giving the citizens of Los Angeles innovative productions of emerging film, music and art works. The Players seek to further enhance the identity of the Miracle Mile and the quality of life of all of Los Angeles’ citizens by providing opportunities for businesses, institutions, artists, residents and visitors to cooperate, collaborate and thrive.
