Silver Lake annual exhibit

My newest painting, “Wind Wolves Triptych,” is going to be on public view in Los Angeles for a few weeks. Members of my mailing list got a sneak preview, but no one else gets to see it until the exhibit opens. (Want to join my mailing list? Easy! Sign up here.)

The exhibit in question is the annual group show by the Silver Lake Art Collective (SLAC), of which I am a member. This annual exhibit is usually held in the autumn, and is always in the enormous warehouse-sized gallery space generously provided by Citibank of Silver Lake. This year the show, aptly titled “SPECTRUM 2011,” includes a wide spectrum of work, including painting (realism to abstraction), photography, collage, and sculpture. The sculpture alone is worth a visit if you’re in the area. Location and hours below.

I was involved in the setup, so here are some snapshots I took during the hanging:

Sculpture by George Lafayette, paintings by Donna Angers, and framed photos by Jerry de Wilde.

Paintings by David Crocker and Siri France, sculpture by Peter Bodlaender. The ladder is not part of the exhibit, heh.

Paintings by David Dies, mosaic art by Mel Weiner, and a painting by SLAC’s most famous artist member, Don Bachardy (who is represented by Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica; we’re supposed to put that in whenever we mention Don).

So, are you coming to the show? I’ll be at the opening reception this Saturday, you should stop by and say hi! (And get a chance to see my mysterious new painting that I’m not showing you.)

SPECTRUM 2011
Silver Lake Art Collective annual exhibit
October 22 – November 19, 2011
Open to the public Thursdays through Sundays, 12-8pm (12-5pm Sundays).

Opening Reception Saturday October 22, 2011, 6-10pm. Free and open to the public.
Closing Reception Saturday November 19, 2011, 6-10pm. Free and open to the public.

Citibank Art Space Gallery
2450 Glendale Blvd
(Around the side of the Citibank main building)
Silver Lake (Los Angeles), California 90039

Meet me at Kings Mountain

On Labor Day Weekend, all 3 days, I’ll be showing my art in one of the best outdoor art shows in California, the Kings Mountain Art Fair.

Held in a magical redwood forest about halfway between Palo Alto and Half Moon Bay (south of San Francisco), this is a real gem of a show. If you’re anywhere in the area, I highly recommend that you go. Not just because I’ll be there (though of course that’s reason enough!) but because it’s frankly the coolest outdoor art show I’ve ever seen.

Don’t just take my word for it. NBC says it’s “worth the drive.”

Last year was my first time exhibiting at Kings Mountain, and I’m thrilled to be coming back again this year. It’s going to be a great show!

Kings Mountain Art Fair
September 3 – 5, 2011
10am – 5pm
13889 Skyline Boulevard, Woodside, CA
Free admission, free on-street parking, free parking shuttle.

I’ll be in booth 134, same as last year. See you there!

New painting: “Two Trees”

I am scrambling like mad to get several new paintings finished in time to show them at the upcoming art show in Northern California, Kings Mountain Art Fair, Labor Day Weekend. (See all my upcoming shows here.)

This is the latest.

“Two Trees” by Barbara J Carter, acrylic on canvas, 40×30 inches.

“Two Trees” depicts an iconic Californian scene, a pair of scraggly oak trees atop a golden-hued hill. I like to emphasize the honey-amber tones of the dry grass that covers so much of California throughout the dry season. For this painting, I also pulled those yellow-gold tones into the sky to make the silhouetted trees just that much more dramatic. Who says the sky always has to be blue?

A few days ago I thought this painting was finished, so I set it aside and turned my attention to another. But something was niggling at me, so I put it back on my easel and worked a little more on it. I shifted the colors in the hill more emphatically to yellow-orange tones, and downplayed the cooler colors like blue and green. (How do I do this? You’ll have to ask me in person!) That really integrated the painting into a unified whole. So now it’s really finished, and ready for the big art show. See you there!

Kings Mountain Art Fair September 3-5, 2011.

New abstract dot painting: “Straightening”

Presenting my latest piece, 3 feet by 3 feet, “Straightening” (more about the title later):

“Straightening” by Barbara J Carter, mixed media on canvas, 36×36″, 2011.

Up until now, the biggest abstract dot painting I’d done was 2 feet square. This is MUCH bigger. The area is more than double. It was a real challenge.

Here’s a closer look at the dots:

The background of the painting is collaged newsprint, a new medium for me. By introducing something other than paint into this painting, it magically becomes a “mixed media” piece instead of my usual “acrylic on canvas.” (There’s a little art-world lingo for ya.) I personally find “mixed media” annoyingly unspecific as a descriptor, but that’s the accepted usage.

This painting will be on display at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery from July 24 to September 25, 2011 in the Open Call 2011 show. (Along with about 1000 pieces by other artists. Yikes.)

This is a continuation of my abstract dot series of paintings, which includes “Square, Red,” “Yellow Square,” and the recently completed “Multi-Colored Dots.” Besides being much bigger, this new one breaks out of the concentric-square motif for a more linear approach. I’m looking to blur boundaries, such as the distinction between geometric and organic shapes. The lines of dots are straight-ish, but not really straight. Most of the lines, but not all, are continuous. The colors form a pattern that repeats, but the pattern is not strictly adhered to. The vertical columns of newsprint text (also not perfectly straight) provide a subtle vertical counterpoint to the horizontality of the lines of dots.

The title of the piece, “Straightening,” is an homage to the famous “Straightening Spears” paintings by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, one of the more famous Pintupi Aboriginal artists from Australia. My composition in this piece owes greatly to his work, so I thought I should honor him with the title.

New studio lights

The one thing I hated about my studio:

The lights. These ridiculously dim lights allowed you to walk around without stubbing your toe, but that was about all they were good for. For painting, or reading, or pretty much anything else, more light was desperately needed.

I set up a couple of workshop lights, those bright-yellow halogen-lamp things, aimed at the ceiling. The bounced light allowed me to work in the studio, but they were very hot. Not to mention inconvenient to turn each one on and off manually. Plus they took up valuable floorspace. It allowed me to work, but it was clearly a temporary solution.

This week I finally had some REAL lights installed. Ta da!

Daylight-balanced fluorescent lights. LOTS of them!

Light now floods every square inch of my studio. The space looks bigger with all this light. Even the corners are well-lit, which had previously faded away in the dim shadows.

With a flip of a single switch I am ready to work. Ahh, lovely.

New Painting: “Multi-Colored Dots”

Here’s my latest dot painting, “Multi-Colored Dots:”

“Multi-Colored Dots” painting by Barbara J Carter, acrylic on canvas, 10×10 inches, framed to 11.5 x 11.5 in.

For this one, I tried something new. The background (the soft swirl of colors behind the dots) I made by pouring thinned paint onto the canvas. I poured several colors and allowed them to merge and blend together, with some encouragement on my part. I was inspired to try this after seeing the amazing (and huge) paintings done this way by a fellow Los Angeles artist named Suzan Woodruff. I was so intrigued I just had to give it a try. It’s messy: all that runny paint runs off the sides of the canvas and gets all over. You don’t have a lot of control over the final result, either, so it’s sort of like controlled chaos. It’s good fun! I’m definitely going to do more. Thanks for the inspiration Suzan!

You can see my other dot paintings on my website.

The Beverly Hills Art Show – May 21-22, 2011

Don’t miss it! And don’t miss me… I’ll be in booth 403. Come see my newest paintings!

Rambling through Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2011

At long last, my promised second post about the two big commercial art fairs held in Los Angeles each year.

In my previous post, I talked about the more traditional art fair. Here we’ll turn to Art Los Angeles Contemporary, the more contemporary of the two. (In other words, most of the artists in this one are still alive.)

Actually, there are more than two fairs now. The big contemporary art fair in Los Angeles in January used to be ArtLA, but at some point it moved both its location and time (it is now held downtown in the fall). I attended ArtLA back in January of 2008 and found it quite lacking. The work was crude and sophomoric and the crowd full of annoying posers. Not surprisingly I didn’t return until this year. Or so I thought.

In January 2011 when I attended a big contemporary art show being held in ArtLA’s old location at ArtLA’s old time, you can imagine my confusion. I thought it was the same show. But boy did it look different! Sophisticated, edgy, interesting, and polished. The work shone, and the crowds were grownups. I was amazed. Could this really be the same show? It was so much improved! (It turns out: no, it’s not the same show. Ha.)

Right, we’ve cleared that up. Whew!

This was Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2011:

Per my usual MO, I attended during the week to avoid the big weekend crowds.

To lay claim to the title of “contemporary,” incomprehensible live performances in the halls are de rigueur:

A male and female performer, faces obscured, rolled around silently on the floor. Had the crowds been thicker it might have obstructed traffic, but we were hardly inconvenienced. At one point, the male rubbed an iron up and down the female’s legs while she jumped up and down and waved her hands over her head (photo below). It’s all very deep and meaningful, I’m sure.

One of the galleries held a live performance in their booth every hour. It also consisted of a male and female, but these two simply held static poses for several minutes. They were in an elaborate mini-stage evoking the Garden of Eden. Adam groped Eve, while Eve considered whether to pluck fruit or dollar bills from the tree:

The best part of this performance was how big a crowd it drew, and how long everyone stood around looking at the tableau. This performance did interfere with traffic, blocking the row and spilling into the booth opposite.

Said booth happened to belong to Kalfayan Galleries from Athens, Greece (they were very philosophical about the periodic inundations). They were showing work by artist Antonis Donef, who collages pages from antique books and then hand-alters the line illustrations. The results are intricate and intriguing, inviting close study. I indulged for quite some time.

Each piece was quite large, several feet across:

Here’s a detail view:

I especially like the creature popping out of the roof at center, peeking up the lady’s voluminous (and enhanced) skirt. (Click image for a closer view.)

Asya Geisberg Gallery from New York had some work that struck me as pretty interesting:

Untitled (Green Stripes) by Angelina Gualdoni, 50×47 inches, 2010.

Work by Todd Kelly.

After spending thousands of dollars for the booth space at the fair, airfare from New York, meals and hotel, there was apparently very little left for wall tags:

In contrast, some galleries pre-printed their wall tags with all sorts of information (but hardly ever price, unfortunately). The most elaborate were mounted on foamcore:

Now that’s a good wall tag!

But I digress. Back to the art.

Here are some paintings by Gary Lang, shown at ACE Gallery (Beverly Hills). I had seen these pieces at the gallery, but I was thrilled to get a second look. I love his work. The bigger round painting is some 10 feet across or so. Enormous. Just moving that thing around requires some serious engineering. (I had to ask.)

Here’s one of his plaid paintings, which I also greatly admire:

Detail:

Some more huge paintings at ACE (artists unknown, sorry):

More galleries! Here’s “The Company” (Los Angeles) with color-coordinated 2D and 3D art:

I really liked this big orange and green painting shown by Steve Turner Contemporary of Los Angeles, but a quick scour of their website yielded no information about the artist.

Here’s 1301PE (Los Angeles). I particularly liked the big blue and yellow painting on the back wall:

I saw more than one fishnet. That officially makes it a trend. Here are some nets I saw:

Work shown by Honor Fraser of Los Angeles. (Click to see larger version, net is in gold-colored piece on the right.)

Work by Paul Heyer, shown by the Night Gallery. This piece is made from the wooden backside of a painting, sans canvas, filled with hardened resin and overlaid with a fishnet adorned with mussel shells. The wall it hangs on is painted dark purple everywhere except behind the artwork, where it’s white. Tricksy stuff.

A note about the Night Gallery. I couldn’t figure this place out. Speaking with the folks staffing the booth didn’t help. It has some kind of identity crisis, or maybe it’s trying way too hard to be obscure and mysterious. Location? Hours? (Night only? Really?) Is it an art gallery? What’s the relation with Paperchase Press? Why is the website a .ca domain (Canada) when it’s clearly in Los Angeles? I don’t know.

Net-like:

Plucking Up Courage by Soo Kim, hand-cut chromogenic print and acrylic paint, 26×26 inches (framed), 2011. Shown by Angles Gallery, Los Angeles. (If this seems vaguely familiar, that’s because this is the source of the “good” wall tag I showed earlier.)

Also at Angles Gallery, I was highly intrigued by the next piece. I like its rhythmic, organic feeling. I thought it was a painting until I read the wall tag. Thank goodness for good wall tags!

Floating Petals by Ori Gersht, inkjet print (of a photograph), 51×80 inches, 2010.

We’ll finish off with these striking giant cross-stitch pieces by Liz Craft. What an appropriate name!

Mixed-media art by Liz Craft, shown by Patrick Painter, Inc. of Santa Monica. These pieces are 4 feet across each. That’s some thick “thread!”

Good stuff. Definitely gotta go back next year.

A look at the 2011 Los Angeles Art Show

In January, two large commercial* art shows took place in Los Angeles: the LA Art Show and Art Los Angeles Contemporary. I visited both, and will share some of my snapshots and thoughts here. First up: the LA Art Show, the more traditional of the two.

The LA Art Show brings together galleries from all over the world, showing a broad range of visual art from old masters to the work of living artists. This year, Joan Miro was much in evidence, along with Chagall and Picasso (the usual suspects of the “old guard”). There were also plenty of California Impressionists as usual.

More interesting to me was the work of contemporary, living artists. We got to meet one such artist in person: Tony Abeyta. We enjoyed viewing several of his works on display in Blue Rain Gallery’s booth:

Here he is standing in front of one of his paintings:

The painting is “Animal Tamer,” 68×54 inches, priced $16,500 and offered through the Blue Rain Gallery of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

If that’s too much for you, they do offer more modestly priced works of his, like this one:

Untitled work in charcoal and ink on paper on canvas by Tony Abeyta, 30×30 inches, $4200 from Blue Rain Gallery.

We visited the show on a weekday, which allowed us to enjoy the art without the crowding typical on the weekend. It also allowed me to snap shots of the show without too many bodies in the way. But it was by no means empty.

There’s an interesting gradient in the art on display from one end of the exhibit hall to the other. At the far left side the galleries show old masters and California Impressionists (collectively I call ’em the “dead artists.” It’s a widely acknowledged fact amongst artists that the best way to increase the price of your art is to die.). To the far right you’ll find excruciatingly avant-garde conceptual works, with a heavy emphasis on contemporary works from China and Korea (most of which tend to be heavily political). Somewhere down the middle is where I’m at my happiest, amongst the works that try neither to shock nor soothe excessively, but which I find visually intriguing and offer nuanced messages.

At the more traditional end, I found some Pointillist pieces that I liked, by artists I’d never heard of. I’m rather fond of Pointillism, since my own paintings draw heavily on that tradition. I’m always excited to learn about other artists who painted in the Pointillist style. (Yes, they’re always dead artists. Sigh.)

Sven Birger Sandzen (1871-1954), “Untitled (Moonrise)” c. 1914, oil on canvas, 12×16 inches. Offered by David Cook Galleries of Denver, Colorado. Price not posted.

Millard Sheets (1907-1989), “Wild Horses” c. 1970, watercolor, 22×24 inches, $28,000 offered by The Redfern Gallery, Laguna Beach, California. As my friend said, “Pointillism and ponies,” a combination guaranteed to grab my attention!

Some of the more contemporary work that I found exciting included angular, geometric paintings by Siddharth Parasnis:

Siddharth Parasnis, “Hometown #25,” 2010, oil on canvas, 48×48 inches, $11,000 offered by Sue Greenwood Fine Art of Laguna Beach, California. (The gallery’s website appears to be down.)

And I enjoyed this intriguing construction of thread and paint, which looks suspiciously like curly black hair (but I was told it’s definitely not hair):

Jiang Xin, “Deconstruction,” 2010, mixed media, 59×59 inches, offered by the Proud Gallery of Beijing, China. No price posted.

Next up: Art Los Angeles Contemporary.

*I’m calling these shows “commercial” to distinguish between them and the kinds of art shows I typically do where individual artists represent themselves. The two types of shows occupy very different spheres of the art world. You’d be hard pressed to find someone in one of the big commercial shows who even is aware that our little street shows exist!

New year, new plans, new art

Having said goodbye to 2010, I’m ready to face 2011.

2011 will be a different kind of year for me and my art. A quieter year, to be spent mostly in my studio (my lovely new studio!).

People ask me how many art festivals I do every year, and I always answer “fewer every year!” This year may just be the bottom. I plan to do only a couple of outdoor shows this year. Even though the outdoor shows are my “bread and butter,” every year I weed out the shows that cost too much, take too high an emotional toll (ask me about the time I nearly got run over), or are too physically exhausting. The number of shows left gets smaller and smaller. This year I’m only applying to a couple favorite shows (and maybe one or two fillers just in case). We’ll see how that goes. After all, applying to a show is no guarantee of acceptance. It might end up being VERY few shows if I get rejected from my favorites! But that’s a chance I’m willing to take.

In the studio I have all sorts of ideas about what I want to paint, but first I have to reorganize the place. It’s a mess. I moved my studio in stages, so although it’s fundamentally functional there are still an awful lot of boxes of art stuff that still need a home. I need to bring order to the chaos. Then I can turn to the good stuff: new art.

I mean for this to be a year of creative growth, artistic exploration, and streamlined systems for my art. I have a bunch of ideas for new paintings that I want to explore. (They may or may not work out, but that’s part of the process.) With the big new studio I should be able to make much bigger paintings, which is something I keep saying I want to do. Will this be the year it finally happens? I’ll keep you posted.