Doomed to Obscurity: 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.