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By Liz Goldner Gina Herrera’s artwork is a reflection of her journey into self-knowledge and realization about the world around her. She aspires to help save our planet; and she does so by employing in her work natural materials, including branches, rocks, cocoons and nests. These elements, along with colorful cast-off fabric scraps, plastics, buttons, ribbons, jewelry, domestic tools and military medallions, are affixed to frameworks, made of rebar or reinforced steel, which mirror human forms. Herrera also incorporates into her work barbed wire, sticks, straw, skulls...

Prior to his upcoming show opening at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles, titled My Little Narrative, at the Jose Drudis-Biada Art Gallery from October 3rd to November 11th. The OC Art Blog had the opportunity to meet with Walpa D'Mark who's self-reflective paintings use figuration and abstraction, historical and popular references that intersect between Nicaraguan and American history and politics. D'Mark has exhibited throughout L.A., including at Track 16, Mark Moore Gallery, Coagula Curatorial, and Torrance Art Museum. Internationally, he has exhibited...

Through January 15, 2024 By Liz Goldner Magnificent screen prints, many infused with electric color and Chicano symbolism, are featured in Laguna Art Museum’s Self-Help Graphics exhibition. All 78 prints by 78 artists in the show are owned by the museum. Looking back, 50 years ago, Franciscan nun Sister Karen Boccalero, along with Mexican-born, local artists Carlos Bueno, Antonio Ibáñez and others, recognized that  U.S. born Latinos, especially L.A. based Chicano artists were not being sufficiently recognized by the local and national art worlds. They collaborated with artists...

The OC Art Blog sat down with some of the leadership of Orange County based nonprofit Community Engagement to discuss their programming and support of local artists. In this wide ranging interview we discuss their new pop-up gallery, The Art Space OC, on Third Street in Downtown Santa Ana. Their grants program that includes grants for local artists who have been historically excluded from the mainstream art world. And their next show featuring William Camargo, a local photographer telling stories about his Anaheim neighborhood and...

By Chris Hoff In his new book Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come T.J. Demos draws on radical futurisms and visions of justice-to-come emerging from the traditions of the oppressed as materialized in experimental visual cultural, new media, aesthetic practices, and social movements. His new book poses speculative questions about what comes after end-of-world narratives. Recently I had the opportunity to meet with T.J., who is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Visual...

By Liz Goldner Kudos to OCMA for mounting an exhibition of Alice Neel’s artwork. The painter has been described by art critic Roberta Smith as, “equal if not superior to artists like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon and destined for icon status on the order of Vincent van Gogh and David Hockney.” Residing most of her life in New York City, Neel (1900-1984), a feminist and bohemian, painted and socialized with people of color, gays, radicals, civil rights and political leaders, Warhol superstars, musicians, artists, women...

By Chris Hoff Recently I had a chance to speak with Berlin based artist Cassie Thornton about the hologram a feminist peer-to-peer health for a post pandemic future. In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, how can we take health and care back into our hands? Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care, a viral peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple, three people, a triangle, meet on a regular basis to focus on the physical,...

Barbara Berk, 2000 Revolutions, 2000. Graphite on wall, tape player and recorder, slides, projector. 84” diameter. Performed at Riverside Art Museum. Barbara Berk is a curious, quiet maker who has been an active participant in the Southern California art scene for over forty years. Since 1983, she has consistently shown or performed her work in solo and group exhibitions at many of the distinguished university and college art galleries as well as numerous institutions like the Laguna Art Museum, Torrance Museum, Angels Gate Cultural Center,...

This Saturday night at 205 N. Broadway in Santa Ana, longtime painter and OC resident Ryan Callis will open a show of new paintings. Oh No, I Seem Very Happy!!!” opens from 6-9 Saturday Sept 3rd, and will consist of new paintings, 100 posters for sale, and an accompanying zine for the first 50+ people in attendance. The OC Art Blog caught up with Ryan to ask a few questions about the show and his work. Enjoy! Painter Ryan Callis Can you start by telling us...

By Chris Hoff The skin found on the tips of our fingers, is known as friction skin. Left behind fingerprints are not visible to the naked eye so they must be made visible in some way. This is the utility of fingerprint powder, it makes the invisible, visible. In the new show at CREAR Studio titled Detain & Displace. The powerful work of Alberto Lule makes use of the medium used against him, fingerprint powder, and makes the invisible, visible as well. To great effect. Alberto Lule at...

©Amir Zaki. On Being Here: Built in 1927. Renovated in 1936, 2021. Ultrachrome Archival Photographed. 60” x 48” Framed. by Meg Linton “Photography is so much about cultivating a skill of sustained observation.” – Amir Zaki Recently, a colleague, Edward Cella, recommended I go visit the studio of Amir Zaki, a photographer he has worked with over the years located in Huntington Beach. The studio is hidden in a nondescript business complex amongst wood finishers, commercial printers, and a jet ski repair shop. Zaki met me at the...

By Meg Linton On December 9, 2021, with some trepidation about whether to mask or not because of the new Omicron variant, I ventured out with a few friends to The Wayfarer: A House of Social Provisions in Costa Mesa to see one of my favorite young guitar-strumming song-writer poets and NPR/KCRW-described folk-punk phenom Sunny War. Opening for her was the energized Orange County band Delving, who said it was their first time playing together on stage in this iteration, and the solo artist Caitlyn Jemma...

By Walpa D'Mark Sarah Rafael Garcia has been advocating for the Santa Ana BIPOC community for 13 years. She’s the founder of Barrio Writers (2009), LibroMobile (2016), and Crear Studio (2017).  I had an opportunity to meet her during Crear Studio’s Meet and Greet opening held this summer. The opening was a celebration of the new Crear Studio space and its supporters. It was also an invitation for the rest of us to learn about the history and hard work that made it possible. Sarah Rafael...

By Liz Goldner Gilbert “Magu” Luján was a visionary artist who helped define and promote Chicano art. The founder of the art collective, “Los Four”—which first exhibited Chicano artwork in 1973 at UC Irvine—wrote in 1969, “I believe there is a Chicano Art form and that it has been around for many years without formalization and recognition…Most Chicanos are aware of our current new breed renaissance which has flowered many investigations, probes and introspection in most areas of our life patterns…As we affirm broad-based awareness of...

      When I first started taking art seriously and began to learn how to paint, I heretically thought of photography simply as source material for paintings. I tried making figurative paintings based off the work of Herb Ritts, Imogen Cunningham, and others. All those years ago I could not have appreciated the depth and complexity of the relationship between photography and painting that Jacques Garnier has presented in his latest exhibition Hymns to The Silence.            On display at Laguna Art Museum since this past Spring, I’ve walked through it many times....

There is a new gallery in town. Kennedy Contemporary is based in Newport Beach and showcases emerging and established artists. Headed by Victoria Kennedy, who has strong roots in Orange County, her new gallery intends to break down traditional barriers by focusing on accessibility and connecting collectors with art that will enrich their lives. The Kennedy team also will support the community at large, by hosting educational events, partnering with nonprofits, and offering consultation services. The OC Art Blog had a chance to inquire more...

On July 23rd the first ever D.I.Y. Film Fest will be held in Long Beach. This event will be a drive-in theater film fest celebrating independent filmmakers, community, and spiritual creativity. The films submitted will be produced and directed by mentors, students and professionals. The D.I.Y. Film Fest will also feature live music, a creation station, and food and libations. The OC Art Blog had an opportunity to ask Jocelyn Fee of Jane Free Productions a few questions about the up-coming event. We hope to...

By Joel Woodard Jordan Christian just wrapped up his latest solo exhibition at the F+ Gallery in Santa Ana. F+ has been in business for 9 years at the Santiago Street Art Lofts (one of the few remaining art galleries there). Situated just down the street from the Santa Ana train station, the Lofts also sit just blocks away from Logan Creative, where Jordan Christian and F+ owner Micah Kersh first met. At that time...

“The Walk to Save the Canyon” occurred in Laguna Beach on November 11, 1989. For that happening, 9,000-11,000 people walked four miles from the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts into Laguna Canyon, expressing their desire to preserve that greenbelt. The activities leading to The Walk, the event itself, the subsequent demonstration and the result from these activities — all preventing construction of a massive housing project within the canyon — are legendary tales among long-time Lagunans.  Yet today, while new residents and visitors to Laguna Beach...

If ever there were an exhibition curated with the intention of discovering the visual and unseen splendor of the Golden State, it would be this year’s social-distanced version of “Made in California” (MICA) at the Brea Art Gallery. This annual show, now in its 35thyear, traverses through the minds of several Californian artists, uncloaking the density of California’s current state of mind. MICA’s electrifying display of artworks frames contemporary Californian lifestyles, trends, politics, passions, and dedication to aesthetics. It is an exhibition that mostly invokes ethereal images...