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The landscape-painting industry has had a hold on Laguna Beach for so long that the very idea of landscape in the resort town by the sea is inevitably fraught with cliché, but Thursday night's art walk provided some fresh perspectives on the genre with the work of two master painters at the Laguna Art Museum and the photography of Tom Lamb at Forest & Ocean Gallery. [caption id="attachment_5729" align="alignleft" width="254"] Wayne Thiebaud's Waterland, 1996, oil on canvas[/caption] Wayne Thiebaud, raised in Long Beach and still painting at...

09 March, 2014 /

Friday, MARCH 7 is the big annual Art Walk anniversary event taking place at the Fullerton Museum Plaza. Fullerton Art venues come together this one night to celebrate local life and art! Fullerton has been voted one of the top 3 best downtown areas in Orange County, and understandably so! With new boutiques, restaurants, bars, galleries and artist dens popping up around every corner, this small downtown area has become one of the best artistic communities in Orange County. Over the past few years, Fullerton has...

28 February, 2014 /

[caption id="attachment_5667" align="alignleft" width="229"] Carlotta Corpon, Space Composition with Chambered Nautilus[/caption] California’s identity is inextricably tied to its landscape, and has one of the most varied geographies in the Union. Attempting to capture California landscape art and its evolution for over a century is already ambitious in scope. However, California Landscape Into Abstraction: Works from the Orange County Museum of Art, OCMA's current exhibit, goes beyond an examination of 19th and 20th century California landscape and - as a result of thematic organization, a broad definition of...

26 February, 2014 /

An MFA exhibit currently on view at Cal State Fullerton installs a fantastical world of imagination in the campus' West Gallery, but like a wonderland apparition it's only up for a few days, so if you'd like to see it in person you'll have to visit soon! Tiffany Ma, who over the past few years has been involved with feminist collective performance art as part of the "Guerrila Gowns" project and was in the recent "Rage Bear" show at downtown Santa Ana's GCAC, studied photography...

23 February, 2014 /

By Jared Millar This weekend saw the opening of “STOCK | California” at Coastline College’s Costa Mesa-adjacent gallery which overlooks the (as yet) undeveloped coastal wetlands of the Lower Santa Ana River. Much of the work in the show consists of collage or mixed media, playing with the definition of “stock” that relates to paper stock or card stock. Standout images include Elena Mary Siff’s playful collages and unique book objects and Julie Easton’s striking construction of burned cigarette papers with iridescent paint. Also on exhibit is...

06 February, 2014 /

What do you do if you are a respected gallery owner and a highly anticipated show looks like it won’t come to fruition just one week before the opening? If you're Peter Blake you somehow pull together three solo shows of leading LA-based contemporary artists, within days of the opening event. On Saturday night at the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach ­­it appeared as if this was the plan all along: the shows were as flawlessly put together as we have come to expect...

30 January, 2014 /

Tis’ the Season for the December OC Art Walks! This month we highlight some of the special events at each location including openings, receptions, books signings and parties (Fullerton is looking pretty lively this month). Get out there, have some fun, see some art and tell us where the best eggnog is: Text by Natasha Shah, graphic by Jared Millar...

05 December, 2013 /

I have been a fan of Maggie Taylor’s surreal dream-like images for almost a decade, ever since a friend used her digital collages as cover artwork for his homemade CDs. Taylor combines 19th century daguerreotypes, original photographs, scanned objects and old etchings, to produce fantastic, imaginative, and mysterious images. I first described her work while covering the Digital Darkroom exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2011, and was excited to meet Taylor in person and discuss her art work during the signing of her latest...

22 November, 2013 /

Surreal, dream-like images inhabited by the solemn countenances of people from a bygone era, set in fantastical landscapes and surrounded by a strange assortment of animals, an arc of bees or random objects; these are the magical images of Maggie Taylor. Taylor creates astonishingly complex digital collages combining original photographs, 19th century daguerreotypes, scanned objects and vintage etchings, to produce imaginative and mysterious photographs. [caption id="attachment_5429" align="aligncenter" width="436"] The Nest[/caption] Walking through the Joanne Artman Gallery in Laguna Beach where her work is currently on display, the...

22 November, 2013 /

Orange County has solid museums, vibrant artists and several local art scenes, yet the cultural footprint of art in the community remains pretty shallow. Residents don’t venture too far from their neighborhood and the idea of a gallery event as part of an interesting night out doesn’t resonate with younger generations. So what’s missing? How can we break through suburban inertia and make the OC art scene something bigger?  Alex Amador, owner of the new 4,500 square foot DAX Gallery, thinks he has the answer. Amador believes...

13 November, 2013 /

For November's Art Walk we feature three galleries that are elevating the Laguna Beach gallery scene (and one honorable mention) by exhibiting art and artists that stand out amongst the typical Orange County fare. Since the galleries are spread out along the coast we chose one  to represent North, Central, and South Laguna (maps and gallery descriptions below). The current theme in Laguna Beach is Art & Nature though the artists we saw fused nature with industry or technology by using found objects, digital manipulation or mixing natural...

11 November, 2013 /

It’s that time again! The OC Art Walks are happening the first week of November. To help you celebrate after Halloween check out our OC Art Blog guide to the Orange County Art Walks (since October 31st falls on a Thursday Laguna Beach art walk is next week). Street maps for each of the walks with our highlights are below, let us know where you went and tell us some of your favorites.   OC ART BLOG ART WALK GUIDE More information and our photos from the October art...

29 October, 2013 /

Walking through Gods & Gifts: The Vatican Ethnological Collection is akin to traversing the globe while simultaneously travelling through time. Through February 9th over 70 objects from the Vatican Ethnological Museum are on display at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the largest collection to ever leave Vatican City. The exhibit spans all six inhabited continents as well as 7,000 years of human civilization, and several of the objects have never been seen outside the Vatican. Collectively the objects in Gods & Gifts convey the incredible breadth,...

21 October, 2013 /

Get a room together of the most prominent photojournalists working today and you’ll hear a discussion about whether they perceive and document their subjects as “the Other,” or stated more bluntly, is there legitimacy to the question “who is the white person holding the camera?” The latest photography exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston strongly underscores that in documentary photography it is very important who holds the camera. She Who Tells A Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World hands over...

15 October, 2013 /

This past weekend the OC Art Blog hit the three major Orange County Art walks: Laguna Beach (First Thursday), Fullerton (First Friday) and Santa Ana (First Saturday) for a compare and contrast. From the red carpets of Laguna Beach to open mike night at the Fullerton Museum Center, it was a crash course on the diversity of the Orange County art scene, patrons and neighborhoods. Check out the following posts for our photos and breakdown on the October art walk scene, galleries, and our picks. [caption...

09 October, 2013 /

Concentrated on the pedestrian Second Street Promenade, Santa Ana had the liveliest street scene with DJs, street performers and multiple bands. The Santora Building has beautiful architecture but the galleries inside can be hit or miss. Get there anytime: from 6 to 10ish p.m. The Crowd: 20’s+, eclectic, families, and students The Art: Large scale installations, artists-in-residence, student art, performance art, video and everything in between What you won’t find: Established commercial artists, street parking Gallery Pick: OCCCA Check out: Cumulus at Grand Central After: Dessert at The Playground on Fourth Street [caption...

09 October, 2013 /

We had the most fun at the Fullerton Art Walk. It’s a little spread out with three distinct areas (see map) VioletHour-PÄS-Hibberton, the Fullerton Museum Center four blocks away and in between the  Carpe Diem Experience, a cluster of small galleries, craft tables and food trucks. You can find affordable art here, and we saw a lot of red dots. We enjoyed the industrial/renovated gallery interiors and blues at the Fullerton Museum Center open mike night. We recommend waiting out traffic: the crowd peaked around 8...

08 October, 2013 /

Laguna Beach is the most extensive of the art walks stretching from North Laguna Beach, through “downtown” to South Laguna (see map). Being a weeknight we only covered the north and select downtown galleries, as well as the Laguna Beach Art Museum (free admission the night of art walk). The art carries a higher price tag than the other art walks, but we enjoyed the free admission to the Laguna Beach Art Museum and free wine in the galleries. We recommend getting there early: the walk...

08 October, 2013 /

“Every flame contains fire, any bone from a dead body contains death, in just the same way as a single hair is thought to contain a man’s life force.” - Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic Hello Reader There are three things that I sense about you in this very moment: you have recently come in contact with the work of the artist collective Finishing School, their provocative social sculpture Psychic Barber, or both. Lucky guess? Perhaps. Crystal ball? Sounds useful but, truth told, I have...

01 October, 2013 /

Sarah Walsh's work is about the rejection of apathy and irony that is so prevalent in our current society, and is interested in finding ground to stand on amid the modern/postmodern dichotomy. Walsh names this elusive space the internal center or centers. When spending time with Walsh and her work one immediately experiences the connection to the spaces she creates. Although not familiar, Walsh's handling of paint creates a sense of emotion and place that leaves viewers with a sense of sentimentality. Walsh's new work...

18 September, 2013 /