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

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 /

By Natasha Shah  Orange County has a reputation for being detached from its surroundings, tucked away in an invisible bubble. Whether or not this is a fair characterization, Orange County Museum of Art’s current Triennial pulls back the Orange Curtain by bringing part of the world to us. Surprisingly, the California-Pacific Triennial is the first exhibit in the western hemisphere devoted to contemporary artists from around the Pacific Rim. Under the direction of curator Dan Cameron, the Triennial includes 23 artists from 15 countries, and places...

14 September, 2013 /

[caption id="attachment_4921" align="alignleft" width="150"] Courtney Conlon[/caption] The 50+ photographs in Courtney Conlon's new show at Cal State Fullerton's Pollack Library are at first glance reminiscent of Ryan McGinley's embrace of nature as a site of freedom, or Wolfgang Tillman's intimate documentation of his friends in real-life situations. However, Conlon is not interested in these kinds of comparisons or definitions, this is made clear by Conlon's stark truisms found spread throughout the opposite side of the gallery from where the majority of the works are hung. Conlon instead...

21 August, 2013 /

During the early part of my childhood growing up in Orange County, I can remember countless rides in the backseat of my parents’ Datsun from downtown Orange where we lived to my great-grandmother’s apartment in what is now considered Laguna Hills.  The air would turn pink during certain sunsets, mixing with the leaves of the massive eucalyptus trees that lined long stretches of farm fields in Irvine. Mystery crops would be coming up, clinging to sticks for support and I would stare at the rows...

30 July, 2013 /

When I first came across Brandon Spiegel's art, it reminded me of the stones outside of the ancient burial site of Newgrange, Ireland, densely carved with interlocking spirals. What Spiegel's work captures, that one can feel in that ancient work, is that essential urge and joyfulness in creation. Spiegel's mesmerizing work is especially influenced by the patterns and shapes found within Native American cultural designs. Yet, there is also something decidedly modern about the work, as its psychedelic patterns harken a sense of nostalgia for...

23 July, 2013 /

If the ancient goddess Athena- goddess of wisdom whose sidekick was an owl- was alive today, her favorite artist would be the Australian painter Rodrigo Luff. Luff's work is characterized by his goddess-esque women in mystical landscapes, often filled with whimsically rendered creatures like owls. In attempts to blend the inner spiritual and emotional world with the outer physical world, Luff creates imaginative and beautiful work that is truly unique.   Currently on display at Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City until August 3, Luff's work truly captures...

18 July, 2013 /

When I was little I used to spend hours in my family's garden, studying the intricacies of the landscape. Deeply influenced by my love of Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge illustrations, I was looking for mice homes amongst the trees and bushes. What I discovered under rocks and in what seemed like quiet little corners of our yard, was a surprising amount of activity amongst the insects and the birds. Those formative, imaginative years were the first time I began to be in awe of nature...

29 May, 2013 /

It's rare that LA can offer me something that makes me feel right at home in Ireland again… Owen Dara's delightful comedy show "Two Pint Wonder," showing every Sunday in April at the Renegade Theatre in Hollywood, does just that. Dara crafted an extremely charming and, simply put, very funny show about the in and outs of growing up Irish and coming to America. For myself, as a child of immigrants from Ireland, Dara's comedy possesses a particular type of self-deprecating Irish wit that feels...

13 April, 2013 /