Roaming in Highland Park

During Fall Break, I,and my class mate Nelson, took a trip through the Highland Park contemporary art scene and was surprised to find the level of artistic output present in the area where I live. First on the trip was the studio of Susan Moss, who is a self-cured Breast cancer survivor and owned a studio across the street from my apartment building. Her work is one of the many that I encountered that opted for more abstract forms of expression over figurative works. I asked her who, if any, artists served as her inspirations and she mentioned Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. It was immediately apparent where their works figured into her work. Rothko’s influence can be felt in the experimentation with color. She layers color and places them on top of one another in a way that might be seen as an evolution of Rothko’s work. Rather than have blocks of color on top of one another, she has these “swooshes” of color that imbue the work with a sense of abstract movement very reminiscent of her other inspiration, Jackson Pollock.

Example of Susan Moss' work

After a job offer and a story involving a shot gun, we continued into Highland Park and discovered Outpost for Contemporary Art. From their website:

Outpost for Contemporary Art promotes cross-cultural exchange by developing international artistic projects that stimulate social interaction and emphasize process over end result.

Devoted to bridging the local and the global, Outpost creates networks of art, artists and art audiences that span continents while connecting local communities.

From the description above and the pieces of information we received from the receptionist, this was less a gallery than a medium for artistic expression. She mentioned how they have a project that is ongoing at the location where artists could use the shop front of the outpost to create works of art that have a message. Currently, there are five pictures and each of them contain the buttons of a vcr or dvd player (play, fast forward, rewind, pause, and stop).

Storefront art of the Outpost for Contemporary Art

I did not really understand how this work was supposed to speak for itself and impart a message onto the viewer and thought of this as an example of improper context being provided for this artwork. However, I did receive information about an exhibition, of sorts, taking place on November 8th at the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock. It seemed to me that this exhibition was a perfect example of what the Outpost does. It is to have about one hundred artists all drawing (and perhaps painting) continuously in one hour shifts for the duration of the exhibition. Afterwards, the works of art are to be sold to the public at large. From what I understood, not only would the artists be working but it would have some sort of interactive section for the public. Another interesting piece was a Highland Park flag with two Chihuahuas, a taco truck and some strange chicken-headed man. This was perhaps an attempt to connect some of the local community’s flavor with the artistic practice of the area.

Highland Park Flag

Entrance to the Hummingbird Collective

From here, we travelled to a place that one would not immediately travel to for artwork: the Hummingbird Collective. This place is first and foremost a medical marijuana dispensary, but houses a surprising amount of artwork. Unfortunately, we did not get the names of most of the amateur artwork in the collective but there was one series of artwork by an artist identified only as ‘Drew’. The first in the series is called ‘A celebrity’s diet’ and is an image of a woman making herself vomit. The pop-cultural implication of this work should be apparent to those of us alive during the age where celebrity is worshipped as a religion. In an age where TMZ, Perez, Oh no they didn’t, US, People, and others are obsessed over by millions daily, everyone takes for granted that the cost of celebrity is one’s health. Drew presents the viewer with an image that most avoid and forces one to come to grips with one’s role in the culture of thinness. Two other of his works—‘The surgeon general’s wife’ and ‘I am still beautiful’—continue to force the viewer to look at things that we ignore or, in the worst case, believe never happen. For example, the image of a pregnant woman smoking is something that we hope never happens in real life, but, in reality, it happens all the time and has disastrous consequences. In addition, we know that amputees are alive and well in the world but the times are few and far between when we actually have to deal with them face to face and force ourselves to move past any possible disgust and acknowledge them as human beings.

A celebrity’s diet

The surgeon general’s wife

I am still beautiful

Claremont MFA Exhibition

Of Looking by Jessamyn Lynn

Along with my fellow classmates, I made a trip to Claremont for an exhibition of the works of MFA students and found an assortment of work—painting, sculpture, video and live art in the form of haircutting—that seem to indicate that the path of contemporary art seems to be moving back to the past in its forms and ideas. I would argue that these artworks signal a return to the work of the abstract expressionists because of the imprint of the artist that is found in the work. It seems that much of the work in painting and sculpture of the 1970s and 1980s was conceived with a specific emphasis on distancing oneself from one’s work so that it stood on its own. Video art is an example where the artist’s hand seems to be more evident because of the actual presence of the artist himself in the work. However, movements such as minimalism—by making the art look almost machine made—stood in direct contrast to abstract expressionism. There was a effort to distance art from this period of celebrity artists such as Pollock who could not be separated from the works that they created. In fact, it was their very personality as brooding, cigarette smoking, blue-jean wearing artists that caused their works to achieve the levels of popularity that they did. The art of the 80s and 90s did exhibit a return towards exhibiting the hand of the artist, acknowledging their role in their own works and returning to familiar forms such as the human body, but—as far as I observed—they don’t have the same emotion visible in the works of these MFA students. They seem to harness the ability to tie their brushwork to their feelings at the time of the creation.

Blue Boy by Justin Bower

One of my favorite paintings in the exhibition was the work Blue Boy by Justin Bower. There seems to be an almost emotional quality in his brushwork. Every stroke is on display and as a result, it seems like we are looking at the very matter that comprises a face—i.e. the muscle tissue. He seems to be dealing with questions of identity in his work. The multiple faces that are to be found in his single face seem to suggest an identity composed of many different facets, yet this work does not get mired in what could be a decidedly more depressing emotional themes. It is difficult to situate oneself in the middle of the work because of the calculated, frenzied quality of the work. There are eyes here and there and suggestions of mouths and noses but there seems to be no anchor outside of the recognizable shape of the face. This work almost seems to revel in its multi-faced existence, which seems to be best conveyed through the bright, vibrant color scheme that is used throughout the work.

Printing Mom by Steve Kim

Mark Rothko, Subway Scene

Steve Kim’s Printing Mom is another work that seems to be influence by the Abstract expressionists, specifically Mark Rothko. In this work, we see some recognizable shapes such as two heads and some arms, but the viewer is left struggling to find some place to situate these figures because of the lack of any discernable place markers. It almost looks like an old computer model that doesn’t have the textures filled in. Of importance in this painting is the coloring. Rather than call attention to the work through the use of intricate and detailed figure work, Kim highlights the importance segments of his painting through the use of color in his painting. There is the placement of a block of red that seems to contrast against everything else in the painting. Red is the dominant shape, so to counter that most aspects of the rest of the painting seem to have some kind of blue/green tint to it that further calls attention to this block red. Rothko’s Subway Scene(1938) is an example of what Kim seems to be doing. There are figures in the painting and there is a scene going on in the painting but—perhaps foreshadowing his later work—the most important section of the painting are the four blue columns and everything seems be subordinate to that despite the fact that the columns are stationary and the rest of the painting’s figures are in motion of some sort.

Ren by Mark H. Wagner

Unfortunately, some of the more interesting pieces will not be featured in this entry because of the problem I had with a lack of charged battery for my camera, but perhaps more interesting than the actual exhibition was the tour we received of the studios on the upper level. It was here that the creative process was on display and it was interesting to see the various creative processes on display because of the variety of approaches to creating art. Also, I have to say that the beer selection was quite exquisite with Fat Tire, Dos Equis and Red Stripe as options. Class like that has to be admired.

Source of Subway Scene: http://getdagoss.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/subway-scene-1938-mark-rothko.jpg