Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor, “No Name (Blue Arm),” 2008, blankets, knit afghans, pillows, mattress covers, couch cushions, thread, twine, 64 x 32 x 29".

In “Stitches” curator Sinead Finnerty-Pyne has gathered a remarkably diverse group of artists who crochet, embroider, knit, and weave in ways that challenge textile traditions and speak forcibly to our technologically-obsessed world. In front of a wall covered with sewn objects cast in bronze, Jane Brucker unravels hand-knit clothing in a meditative performance that comments on the temporality of textile work. Beyond that totter Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor’s gangly, appealing creatures composed of blankets and bath towels, plastic tarps and twine. Around the corner are Titus Kaphar’s riffs on historic paintings — which are, after all, arrangements of pigment on fabric. Kaphar reproduces 18th- and 19th-century portraits, then cuts and reconfigures them in wily statements about both race and gender. Maria E. Pineres creates immense ink jet prints of the controlled front and chaotic back of her needlepoint compositions. Finnerty-Pyne installs them on the front and back on a gallery wall, in a humorous and insightful play with the work. Perhaps the most engaging encounter is with Nicola Vrumink’s installation: a room full of dark, dangling forms composed of crocheted cassette tapes that are evocatively floral and distressingly alien (The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena).

Betty Ann Brown

Rosalie Friis-Ross, “Kyoto,” paper, cord, acrylic.

Not many seven year olds today perfect their sewing skills embroidering tea towels, as Rosalie Fris-Ross did when she was a child. Today Fris-Ross fabricates works in materials as diverse as horse hair, bamboo and antique beads. Thread and needle work has changed drastically in purpose, production and the look of final products since feminist practices exploded the range of materials sanctioned for art-making. Each of the seven artists exhibiting in “Uncommon Threads” has something to add in the way of diversity of materials and range of inspiration or reference. Lois Brooks’ respect for ancient biblical texts adds substance to her expression of personal sensibilities. Merrill Morrison’s exquisitely designed sculptural objects, from “Well Heeled” to “Cleavage,” are dramatized by her remarkable sense of color and the play of beads that add the optimum balance of surface embellishment to her work. Norman Sherfield shows his appreciation for biological forms with knotted sculptures that pull away from the ordinary by honoring his inclination towards fantasy. Cathy Breslaw deals in transparencies, while Deborah Weir is grounded in shapes, texture and earthy colors. Leah Danberg invites viewers to approach the work in the exhibition from their own individual perspective while intimating that, “Some of us are blind to our own beauty” (American Jewish University, West Los Angeles).

Diane Calder

Elizabeth (Buff) Elting, “Where the Sea Used to Be,” 2004, painting.

“Seeing Women in History Makes History Look Different” is a magnanimous exhibition, co-curated by Carolyn Brucken and Virginia Scharff. The show centers on three Western locations, the Rio Arriba of New Mexico, the Puget Sound of the Pacific Northwest, and Denver, Colorado. It describes the lives of women over the centuries to the present through artworks, photography, crafts, textiles, clothing, book excerpts (by Willa Cather and others), cooking vessels, elements of popular culture as the automobile, graphic design and narratives/didactics. Narratives are of daily activities, livelihoods, ambitions, struggles and especially the spirit to never give up. As compelling as individual works and the narrative they relate may be, the installation by design veterans Christopher Muntz and Tim McNeil adds an i mportant dimension. Exam ples of their artistry are: Puget Sound displays within 10-foot diameter pipe fittings (used to transport water through the Sound); and a 1950’s car, as symbol of female freedom in Denver, spliced with interactive narratives between two car halves. The exhibition range s from popular culture to high art works by Georgia O’Keefe, photographer Laura Gilpin and others. Subtitled, “Home Lands: How Women Made the West,” its over-arching theme is the strength and resilience of the women who contributed to the shaping the West by keeping the proverbial home-fires burning, and urging the region to grow and flourish. The narrative on Fabiola Cabeza de Baca is especially compelling. The New Mexican used her home economics degree to write, help feed and teach natives. In the course of her 97 years, De Baca worked for the government and the Peace Corps, and traveled widely in spite of an amputated leg (Autry National Center, Northeast Los Angeles).

Liz Goldner

Laurie Hassold, “Bone Hut,” 2010, sketch.

By most standards a shack is the lowest form of architecture. Usually knocked together from whatever is handy, without consideration for design or aesthetic, shacks are a one-of-a-kind temporary housing suited to keep out the elements but not much else. About one-sixth of the world’s population lives in shacks. The exhibition “The Art Shack,” curated by Greg Escalante, came about when Museum Director Bolton Colburn noted that over the last ten years of museum exhibitions about popular cultures, many artists chose to introduce shacks into their installations. Far from traditional art, a select group of artists conceive of assorted dwellings as a personal statement. While the theme here is of the shack, the range goes from completely unlivable to really great living. Jeff Gillette studied slums in India for his inspiration; Martin Wittfooth creates a tiny, knocked together wooden structure; Marnie Weber offers a shack to house her Super 8 films; while Craig Stecyk constructs a small building on the museum roof, visible only through the security camera monitor. Marion Peck and Mark Ryden conceive of an elaborate “Sweet Wishes Theater.” Mike Shine creates a detailed surf shack. Shag’s shack, ironically, deals with “Conspicious Consumption,” complete with rug, chairs, table, lamps and art on the walls. And then there’s Jason Maloney’s creation. It appears to be a three-dimensional painting, with a back, bottom, top and sides, where anyone can enter the art, just for the fun of it. The point of this clever show is to allow extremely creative minds to take take a debased form to any level that suits their imagination. This impromptu form of architecture, requiring no foundation, permits, or unions, allows this collection of 29 artists to go beyond both definition and expectations (Laguna Art Museum, Orange County).

Roberta Carasso


Bombarded with daily news from Mexico about drug cartels, kidnappings, and killings, it’s easy to forget about the magic embedded in Mexican culture. “Tesoros Mexicanos: Mexican Treasures from Two Folk Art Collections” properly reminds us of that place where ritual masks, miniatures, Trees-of-Life, and fantastical figures are a part of daily life as well as festive celebrations. The work, from the 1920s and ‘30s through the 1990s, represents artisans from a dozen states. Luis Hidalgo’s wax and cloth “Opera Mask Figures” from the 1930s demand a close look to reveal the tiny, delicate facial features. Not to be missed is Saulo Moreno’s “Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis” (“Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” / Tlalpujahua, Michoacán) from the early ‘90s. The sinewy lines of the papier-mâché forms and the black stripes on the horses’ skeletons are dynamic against the fiery red, orange and yellow, creating a sense of movement in these stationary forms. The most exquisite of the four horses has a dark reddish-black exterior set against a flaming red and orange interior. Compiled from two different collections, the exhibit is neither comprehensive nor thematically focused; rather, it offers range, variety and most crucially, quality (William  D. Cannon Art Gallery, San Diego County).

Judith Christensen

“Yingpan Man,” masked mummy from Tarim Basin, China, ca. 420 AD.

While Egyptian mummies continue to fascinate, the mummies in “China: Secrets of the Silk Road” are far more attractive than other millennia old corpses we have seen. The three mummies in the “China” show are free of the characteristic darkened and shriveled skin (due to chemicals) associated with Egyptian versions. These 2-4,000 year old “Chinese” mummies, discovered in only the last three decades in the Far Western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, were mummified naturally due to the extreme cold and dry climate of the region. “Yingpan Man” arrives with gold foil, white mask and beautiful robes (the preserved body remains back in China). The entire “Beauty of Xiaohe” is here, with her blonde strands of hair showing. Tiny “Baby Blue Bonnet,” an approximately three-month-old child wearing a woven blue and red bonnet, appears almost to be sleeping with its shockingly natural looking skin. Further, contrary to what excavators might expect to find in a remote Asian site, these mummies are light skinned, round eyed, with long noses and red or blonde hair. These racial traits provide evidence that this seemingly isolated site was part of an ancient silk road through which people from Europe, the Middle East and Asia travelled. Accompanying the mummies are more than 150 equally well-preserved artifacts, including clothing, textiles, wood and bone implements, coins, documents, jewel-encrusted gold objects, vessels, masks and jewelry. These discoveries are not only a boon to historians researching ancient China; they are so well preserved that many appear to have been recently crafted (Bowers Museum, Orange County).

LG

Roger Fenton, “Still Life with Fruit and Decanter,” 1860, albument print, 13 15/16 x 17”.

With the recent phenomenon of food photography exploding on Internet blogs, “In Focus:  Tasteful Pictures” is a cogent reminder that the genre has an honored past. Food photographs from the 19th century to the present reveal not only technical and aesthetic changes, but food tastes as well. Stylizations changed, but consideration given to composition and lighting remains paramount. Early 19th century photographers sought to elevate photography to a fine art by offering compositions inspired by 17th century Dutch still lifes. Roger Fenton, for instance, echoed the genre with his skillful use of lighting to capture the reflective surface of a decanter and the sensuous textures of exotic fruits. Photographers during the first half of the 20th century followed modernist trends, using new techniques and stylizations. Man Ray, for example, developed photograms, camera-less images that use photosensitive materials. Compositionally, light and shadow continued to be of prime importance, but strong diagonals, tight cropping and dynamic close-ups began to take precedence. Notable is Edward Weston’s carefully intertwined bananas, where sharp focus and strong lighting emphasize curves and intriguing shadows. Painting styles, such as Cubism, inspired artists such as Paul Strand, who manipulated cups, plates and bowls into dynamic abstractions. Documentary photographs, popular from the earliest days of photography to the present, capture changing social customs that revolve around food tastes, advertising and distribution. Walker Evans photograph of early pushcarts and Eugene Atget’s of a modest storefront were efforts to express regard for the daily fare of “common folk.” By the 1970s, however, higher standards of living afforded tastes for the convenience of preprocessed food, as emphasized in William Eggleston’s photograph of an ice-encrusted freezer filled with artificially flavored food. When it comes to more contemporary representations of food, the inclination to blur the line between photojournalism and pop art is evidenced in British artist Martin Parr’s garish, not terribly appetizing series of meals and snacks. The remaining factor in any era is that food must be photographed before spoiling. It is a testament to the relevance of early Dutch Vanitas paintings, which were meant to remind us of the transience of life (The Getty Center, West Los Angeles).

Elenore Welles

Garry Winogrand, “Cheerleaders,” c. 1960-1970, gelatin silver print, ed. 22/80, 11 x 13 3/4”.

By now the phrase “shopping from one’s closet” has become a recession era cliché but it seems to work, as several recent shows attest, for museums. Rather than staging expensive displays of new material museum curators are rummaging through museum storage bins and, in the case of “15 Minutes of Fame,” an exhibition consisting of photographs from the OCMA collection, with notable success. Andy Warhol’s prediction that in the future anyone could be famous for 15 minutes inspired the title and, as a nod to this King of Pop, she had a photo booth set up where visitors can be immortalized on Polaroid film for the length of the show. But it’s not that crowd that makes the show. Rather it’s work like that of Lawrence Shiller’s informal depiction of Hollywood stars, beginning with a beguiling Marilyn Monroe posing by the pool and a still from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that shows how someone did come along (Robert Redford) who gave the incomparable Paul Newman a run for his money. The exhibition leads viewers to classics like Edward Weston’s lovely “Nude” and Weston and Ansel Adams portraits of each other. There are Dorothea Lange’s and Margaret Bourke-White’s fine-tuned photo journalism, Catherine Opie’s trans-gendered portraits and Rineke Dijkstra’s “Stephanie,” which evidences the medium’s appeal across generations. Gary Winograd ably represents so-called street photography by capturing beautiful women in unguarded moments (“Woman With String”). In a different vein, Schiller captured Pat Nixon trying to hold back tears while her husband concedes the election to JFK; priceless. Schiller also portrayed a young and slim James Earl Jones with a sensuality that presages Robert Mapplethorpe. By contrast, John Coplans’ close-ups of faces and body parts are fascinating in their brutal lack of concession to age or physical deterioration. By closing in on wrinkled faces, torsos and hands and making them look like gnarled trees, he leads one to ruminate about the mysterious formal relationships between humans and other living things. Curator Karen Moss deserves kudos for shedding light on this trove; let’s hope that OCMA resists any future temptation to sell off such works whatever economic pressures might arise (OCMA, Orange County).

Daniella Walsh

Charles Long, “100 Pounds of Clay,” installation view with young visitors, 2001/2010.

The ultimate hands on exhibition may be “100 Pounds of Clay,” a show of 100 one-pound works, each made of multi-colored modeling clay, by sculptor Charles Long. As an artist of considerable dexterity, Long’s initial installation was an attractive display of finely wrought, childlike amoebas, animals, cartoon figures, dolls, hearts, monsters, mushrooms, plant life, snowmen, sea creatures, various toys and women with huge breasts – to name a few. Yet an essential part of this show is the participants, both kids and adults, seated at adjacent tables with more clay to work with and things to shape the clay as cookie cutters and corkscrew-like devices. Working to old standard pop music, museum visitors-turned-collaborators were rapidly changing the character and structure of the original template. Returning to the show the next day, Long’s creations were transformed into more abstract, amorphous pieces. The exceptions were the ten pieces on the top row of the installation – they are simply too high for the kids to reach (The Orange County Museum of Art [OCMA], Orange County).

LG

Fredrich Kunath, installation view, 2010 at the Hammer Museum.  Photo: Joshua White

Friedrich Kunath’s stained and glowing canvases somehow manage to reconcile expressionism, color field painting and clip art-like cartoons (or silhouettes).  Sound like Richard Prince? Certainly in spirit, but Kunath gets far more painterly, and without sacrificing his devious wit. Paintings in a range of sizes (from roughly 2 feet to 10 ft.) hang salon-style on a black backdrop across the museum’s lobby walls, which logistically favors painting-as-installation to the exclusion and slight subversion of painting as singular object for contemplation. And when such a work is proffered for one-to-one viewing, it’s a free-standing painting - on the floor below the ‘salon’ - of a painter painting himself ‘out.’ The erased character here somehow feels Maurice Sendak-familiar, and further speaks to Kunath’s brilliance in making fresh imagery from thoroughly recycled sources (or, better still, creating his own images that look recycled). Though this German is now a resident Angeleno, his thoroughly-worked canvases are reminiscent of countryman Sigmar Polke, who also includes figures in his grand experiments. The salon-style decision - ascending a staircase that offers limited vantage points - may or may not be suited to the subversive character of the work, but the pseudo-psychedelic color fields, dotted with their anti-hero cast of characters, achieve a muted fever pitch in unison (The Hammer Museum, West Los Angeles).  

Michael Shaw

Uta Barth, “Untitled” 2010, mounted color photographs, 2 panels, 41 1/4 x 46 1/2” and 41 1/4 x 32 1/4”.

Uta Barth’s series of photographs constitute a dialogue about what we see as well as how we see. A set of 16 inkjet print photographs titled “Everyday” (1979-82/2010) are each confined to field of view blocked off with black masking tape. Although the camera remains in the same space, the objects within that space are moved, re-arranged, and manipulated so that each frame presents a different composition. Across from the series are two lone portraits of a woman in profile who is swallowed by darkness and then steps into the light. “Untitled #1” may depict the artist herself, who is manipulated in the same manner, as she played with the effects of shadows and light in the surrounding works. “...to walk without destination and to see only to see” is a pair of diptych panel mounted color photographs that juxtapose Barth’s shadow spilling across concrete streets and crooked trees with the brilliant red, yellow, and orange leaves of fall. Barth handles each photograph with the same composition - on one side her shadow is a literal stand-in for the artist, with a bucolic tree in bloom next to it. The images reflect on personal interaction with nature in the moment and for its own sake (1301PE Gallery, Miracle Mile).

A. Moret

Anne Mudge, “Niche,” wire, 2007.

Nestled in the corner gallery farthest from the entrance to the museum, Anne Mudge’s ethereal creations move ever-so-slightly and cast complex shadows on the walls. Metal is Mudge’s primary media, but her forms are graceful and organic, not industrial. She spins and weaves and winds wire, along with tape, asphaltum and plant parts, into forms that are reminiscent of spiders’ webs, bees’ combs or the body’s systems of bone, muscle, tendons, or nerves. But these are not merely depictions; they are unlike any of what they reference. “Clutch II” is a nonsymmetrical elongated balloon-like shape. Mudge’s obsessive, repeated, labor-intensive acts create a delicate yet strong form, with rows of similar shapes. The patterns remind us of our interconnectedness with nature. They also attest to the significance of a single, minute act and confirm the magnitude of the accumulation of a succession of small acts (California Center for the Arts Escondido, San Diego County).

JC

Linda Christensen, “White Scribble,” oil on canvas, 12 x 12”.

A cursory glance at the paintings of Linda Christensen is all it takes to see the Bay Area influence of Richard Diebenkorn and David Park. However, a longer look reveals deeply personal compositions that draw you in with their abstract yet intimate figures, heavily layered impasto that conveys deep emotions often through body language. The works are so visceral that the figures almost appear to be moving. “Listen Carefully” shows a woman in rapt attention with her back slouching forward and her arm crooked. “White Scribble,” another slouching figure, is the artist, sitting back, staring at what appears to be a canvas. Christensen openly admits that the figures in her works are her.  She says, “I wasn’t willing to let the paintings go out the studio door until they felt absolutely authentic. With each painting I made to find myself, to figure out what I am about, and what I need.” The works of Sherry Karver, another Bay Area artist, are profoundly different in composition and technique. Yet these too reveal strong emotions. The artist starts by photographing crowds of people in urban areas, manipulates and moves the individual characters around in her computer, then paints over them, muting some, rendering others as ghosts. Then Karver invents narratives about individuals - stories about lives, dreams, hopes and frustrations that she imposes on specific characters. The final step is resin, which causing the works to glow and produce a reflective surface. In contrast to Christensen, who paints from her gut, Karver uses a complex technique to produce multiple levels of feeling (Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach).

LG

Bart Exposito, “Bends (Orange),” 2010 acrylic and pastel on canvas, 84 x 72”.

With “Bends” Bart Exposito continues to develop his work in a more nuanced direction, with the inclusion of pastels and softer, gradated backgrounds, evolving from the more aggressively flat, imposingly graphic work of earlier in the decade. It’s a refinement that’s still not without an abundance of hard edges, and the cascades of thick black lines outlining various curving triangles, rectangles and elongated half circles that inevitably conjure stained glass. The stained glass ‘panes’ are in turn set off by flat grey expanses on one side, and relatively atmospheric strokes of pastel on the other (with the exception of  “Yellow,” which has the flat grey on either side of its ‘bend’). More elegant than ever, the resulting panes jut and spike, ascend and descend, and play off of each other along gracefully curving central arcs. Contrary to the likely presumptions, Exposito’s images are not fully mapped out in Illustrator and then simply executed; rather, the images evolve over numerous decisions and alterations, and this process is particularly evident here (Thomas Solomon Gallery, Chinatown).  

MS

Chris Martin, “Sweet Dreams (2nd Pillow Painting),” 2008-09, oil, spray paint & collage on burlap and canvas, 52 x 43 x 10".

An intimate viewing space is well suited for Chris Martin’s multi-media paintings and drawings that are rendered on loosely stretched canvas. They are delicate yet sturdy enough to support items heavily collaged and manipulated onto their surface. Entering the gallery space, the viewer is greeted by “Sweet Dreams (Second Pillow Painting),” casually leaning against the wall and supported by two white levels. A construction of oil, spray paint and collage on burlap and canvas, six pillows are sprayed in electric yellow, pink, and blue paint, all glistening with an artificial sheen. The title “Sweet Dreams” for pillows that are not only rendered useless but do anything but invite sleep, is the first ironic indication of Marin’s humorous intent. “Last Optical Illusion of 2009, 2006-2009” instructs the viewer to “stare at the back dot while moving back and forth.” By fixing one’s eyes on the static black dot in the center of two fragmented circles and moving back and forth as Martin requests, the the inner circle begins to move in a stuttering motion that mirrors the mechanism of seeing. The raw and gritty style of Martin’s work is also engaging, but perhaps the most intriguing component is the artist’s initials that appear on each piece along with a set of two dates indicating the duration Martin endured with each (Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Miracle Mile).

AM

Joseph Beuys, “Schlitten (Sled),” 19069, wooden sled stamped with oil paint, felt, belts, flashlight, fat, rope, 13 3/4 x 35 3/8 x 13 3/4”.  Courtesy of The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica.

In post World War II Germany, when Joseph Beuys began issuing multiples of mundane articles such as felt, fat, tin cans, political posters and postcards at affordable prices, it’s unlikely that the populist German artist ever envisioned the display of nearly all six hundred of his widely circulated multiples in a building that bears the name of the man who amassed this collection, Eli Broad. Although Beuys said, “if you have all my multiples, you have me entirely,” he intended the mass distribution of his inexpensive offerings to be a means to “spread ideas,” beginning with the myths he fabricated around the difficult period of his life following his service in the German Luftwaffe. Viewers older than the current crop of art school grads may be familiar with Beuys’ 1974 performance, “I like America and America likes me.” In that action, the charismatic Beuys swathed himself in felt and interacted with a coyote (who urinated on copies of the Wall Street journal strewn across the gallery floor). Beuys’ three-day performance in the René Block Gallery in New York, addressing the debasement of native Americans, irked those who were already angered by his opposition to American military actions in Vietnam. Of the six thematically organized rooms that comprise this exhibition, those involved with issues of particular concern to Beuys, including political activism, education and the environment, have moved from the margins and into the mainstream (Los Angeles County Museum of Art [LACMA], Miracle Mile).

DC