The OC Art Blog was created in 2004 as a way to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Kyoto, Japan during peak fall season. As I understand it the last two weeks of November are the prime time in Kyoto to visit temples, explore zen gardens, and take in the sight's and sounds of this unique city, while the local foliage burns red, yellow and orange. In between visits to the many breathtaking temples and gardens, we found some time to take an art break and check out the fairly new contemporary art museum in...

03 December, 2018 /

Saturday night I made it to the opening of Re:Balance at the Irvine Arts Center. All around a great show but the stand out in the show was the work of Ching Ching Chen. I wanted to write something more detailed here but for the sake of transparency, I bought a piece from the show. That's how much I liked the work. As I was standing in front of one of the pieces from the Letting Go series, I overheard a couple behind me discussing...

18 November, 2018 /

As I was watching the Price of Everything last night on HBO, the latest documentary to examine the white hot contemporary art market, I found myself one more time, in fascination with the art world. I love these sorts of documentaries, probably not for the reason the producers would hope for, because I imagine they would want me to walk away from this sort of project with a bit of amused skepticism, or exuberant cynicism. However, after this show was over, I was once again...

15 November, 2018 /

This Saturday night a special show, curated by Jim Ellsberry and Suzanne Walsh, opens at the HB Art Center. Color Vision brings together scientifically and culturally engaging aspects of how we perceive and utilize color. Featuring a group of contemporary artists who use color not only as a medium, but as an element of their message. Presented in three dynamic groupings: The Architecture of Color, Color Theory, and The Practical Applications of Color.​ Don't miss it! ...

03 May, 2018 /

Typographic street artist and designer Peter Greco has spent his entire adult life learning the mastery of communication through language and lettering. His artwork celebrates the centuries old tradition of the art of calligraphy and the fascinating world of typography while paying homage to the many different cultures that have kept this tradition alive. He has shown all over the country, but based out of Los Angeles and teaching at Art Center College of Design, his artwork rarely makes it past the orange curtain. His...

10 March, 2017 /

[caption id="attachment_6776" align="aligncenter" width="650"] Matt Maust, Dum Vacation, 2016, detail images[/caption] The worlds of rock music and fine art have long traded personnel back and forth, from John Lennon dropping out of art school to make music as one of the Beatles to Captain Beefheart dropping out of music to make paintings as Don Van Vliet. Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, whose solo show at the Akron Museum of Art just ended, is a more recent exemplar of the creative spirit who is able to walk in both...

05 September, 2016 /

[caption id="attachment_6756" align="aligncenter" width="545"] Rainbow Watercolor by Bumblebeelovesyou[/caption]   When I first visited DAX gallery for its opening in 2013 owner Alex Amador had big plans for the Costa Mesa space that would bring fine urban art to Orange County. Over the past few years, in part due to how hard it can be to maintain a gallery, DAX has shuffled around some of its original aspirations. I was curious to see what the gallery was up to when I met with  curator Alec Van Sealund for the August...

17 August, 2016 /

Hello OC Art Blog Friends- OC Art Blog founder Dr. Chris Hoff has teamed up with Dr. Cassidy Freitas for a day of inspiration and conversation. This interactive workshop is designed to expand your creative voice and provide a framework for jumpstarting the creative life you've always wanted. Register online at www.creativelivingworkshop.bigcartel.com. It's going to be so good folks! ...

07 August, 2016 /

Mark Zuckerberg by Ray Turner 6:45 p.m., Costa Mesa Mark Zuckerberg, having done as much as anyone who isn’t Steve Jobs to push us all headlong into the digital age (whether we wanted it or not) now tastes the revenge of the analog world in a show of paintings at Coastline Gallery. Curated by David Michael Lee, Like MARK features the Facebook founder’s face as portrayed by the likes of F. Scott Hess, Julio Labra and Bradford J. Salamon. [caption id="attachment_6715" align="alignright" width="150"]Marinus Welman, Harnessing the Energy (detail)[/caption] “Revenge”...

01 August, 2016 /

4:30 p.m., Venice Los de Abajo is a Southern California printmaking collective whose members strive to keep alive the Latin American tradition of printmaking while also experimenting with new techniques and individual expression. Their show "Division: Reflections and Shadows" at SPARC in Venice, Calif., an Art Deco former police station, is socially-engaged in a way uniquely appropriate to the coming Trumpocalypse, as in Yvette Mangual's Flight, inspired by the Caltrans immigrant crossing signs on the I-5, or Daniel González's Unidos o Morimos, which plays off of...

26 June, 2016 /

Local artists Alyssa Arney and Liz Flynn are very aware of the superficial nature of Southern California, where beauty is valued over health, and the constant presence of advertising is louder, brighter, and more attractive than honesty. Finding their way, separately, toward fiber arts, was an important journey for each artist, but finding their way toward each other, and creating an open dialogue with their community, other women, and internally, has fueled their artwork and their collaboration with meaning, purpose, and passion. Their collaborative exhibit, “Pleasure Objects,” curated...

11 May, 2016 /

The Orange Coast Review is Orange Coast College's literary journal. The current issue (which I art directed) contains sixteen pages of art from mostly local artists working in various media, including works by Bradford Salamon, Lindsay Buchman, Pamela Diaz Martinez, Nguyen Ly and Riley Waite, who is represented by two pieces from his Playing With Fire series of portraits of young heroin addicts drawn with candle soot on paper. The cover painting by Fatima Jamil combines traditional realism with contemporary abstraction. A reading from the journal...

26 April, 2016 /

“SUCCESSIONS” OPENING: April 2, 2016 Jamie Brooks Fine Art 2967 Randolph Avenue Unit C, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 949-929-4143 What is better than an artist’s fresh, brand new, and stimulating paintings? It is seeing David Michael Lee’s 15 year retrospective “Successions”. In this expanse of time, Lee, through his daring and personal exploration of accepted painterly elements, broadens our understanding of artistic possibilities. From graduate school to the present, the groupings of work encompass the artist’s thought processes and perseverance, and how he tackles each problem with zest. Yet, noteworthy...

12 April, 2016 /

Red, by John Logan, is a play about the business of being an artist — the commissions, the professional jealousies, the rivalries between generations and the physical and mental act of putting paint to canvas. Originally staged in London in 2009 and now at South Coast Repertory through February 21, the play features Mark Harelik as the painter Mark Rothko — at the height of his success in 1958, newly commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant at Manhattan's Seagram Building...

10 February, 2016 /

Lindsay Buchman is an interdisciplinary artist working between Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Her practice explores positions of instability and disintegration through works on paper, installation, artist books, and photo-based approaches. Captivated by shared experience, she investigates interpersonal relationships while pivoting between text and image. Buchman is primarily focused on the implication of memory, and the dissonance between language and communication. Recent projects include: the role of the archive, public memory, and private history. Buchman's new exhibition, Y(OURS), will be on view at the Irvine Fine Arts Center from February 13 – April 16, 2016. The opening reception will...

31 January, 2016 /