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

By Tyler Stallings At the Orange County Museum of Art, two exhibitions—Su Yu-Xin: Searching the Sky for Gold and Unearthed—create a compelling juxtaposition, a dialogue of materiality, process, and elemental transformation. Both curated by Ziying Duan, OCMA’s assistant curator, the exhibitions open simultaneously, offering an exploration of the earth’s materials, albeit through vastly different yet intertwined approaches. Unearthed grounds us in the ancient and tactile traditions of ceramics, while Searching the Sky for Gold pushes painting toward an ephemeral, alchemical practice. The titles alone suggest an inherent duality—earth and sky, excavation and...

20 March, 2025 /

Exploring My Favorite Artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago! Join me as I take you on a journey to one of the most breathtaking pieces in the Art Institute of Chicago—and my favorite! In this video, I’ll share why this masterpiece resonates with me, its connection to Chicago’s vibrant art scene, and how it invites us into a meditative world of color and light. Let me know in the comments: What’s your favorite artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago? https://youtu.be/4ww1Hq82m7M 🎨✨ Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and...

15 March, 2025 /

By Chris Hoff Rachel Hakimian Emenaker’s Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees at Grand Central Art Center is a show that feels both urgent and elegiac, a visual essay on migration and memory that resists sentimentality while examining the deep, sometimes painful strata of movement and place. It’s the kind of exhibition that lands at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place, Santa Ana, a city shaped by migration, gentrification, and the slow churn of history underfoot. Emenaker, with a keen sense of material...

12 March, 2025 /

By Tyler Stallings At SCAPE, Earth’s Rhythms brings together four artists whose works pulse with the energy of movement, structure, and transformation. The exhibition is anchored by Nancy Mooslin and Carol Saindon, two artists whose shared fascination with waves—both aquatic and sonic—manifests in vibrant, layered compositions that challenge perception. Their works fragment, reassemble, and reimagine water and sound, creating a visual language that is both scientific and poetic. Gail Roberts and Jacques Garnier extend this dialogue, offering contrasting yet complementary explorations of natural rhythms. Nancy Mooslin: Painting the Pulse...

05 March, 2025 /

by Tyler Stallings The use of abstraction to probe the intangible—thought, memory, consciousness—has long fascinated artists. Inner Vision: Abstraction and Cognition, curated by Erin Stout at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach, continues this investigation, building on her earlier exhibition The Resonant Surface: Movement, Image, and Sound in California Painting (2021) at UCI’s Institute and Museum of California Art. Where The Resonant Surface considered historical precedents in early to mid-20th-century California painting, Inner Vision brings the inquiry into the present, showcasing contemporary artists who interrogate...

01 March, 2025 /

In this first episode of the OC Art Blog TV, I visit Frieze Los Angeles, the high-profile international art fair known for showcasing blue-chip galleries and contemporary heavyweights, before heading to Post-Fair in Santa Monica, a new, independent alternative offering a different vision of the art world. I share insights on both events, explore standout works, and reflect on how each fair shapes conversations about contemporary art. Whether you're into the mainstream or the emerging, this video takes you inside two distinct yet connected spaces...

23 February, 2025 /

There’s no shortage of books that take aim at the art world, but few manage to critique it without drowning in cynicism. Poor Artist: A Quest into the Art World by the two writers responsible for the The White Pube, Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente, does just that. It’s sharp and unflinching about the realities of trying to make a life in art without generational wealth, or industry connections, yet it never loses its sense of love for art itself. In an era...

18 February, 2025 /

Insights from the Anonymous Creative Futures Report “What was solid yesterday feels uncertain tomorrow.” This single phrase from the Anonymous Creative Futures Report captures the unease and shifting ground beneath contemporary artists. Seventy-five creators spanning writers, fine artists, filmmakers, musicians, and digital creators were asked to reflect on their futures in 2025. While some concerns were expected financial insecurity, algorithmic anxiety, and the looming presence of AI their collective responses reveal deeper tensions shaping the future of creative work. Despite widespread uncertainty, the report suggests a paradox: as...

11 February, 2025 /

By Tyler Stallings Chris O’Leary’s Gravity Well is a profound and poetic meditation on the unseen forces that shape our universe. Curated by Jennifer Frias, director and senior curator at the Nicholas + Lee Begovich Gallery at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), from November 2, 2024, to May 17, 2025, this multimedia exhibition brings viewers into the realm of gravitational waves—distortions in space-time predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago but only directly observed for the first time in 2015. Through video installations, photographic works, and generative software,...

07 February, 2025 /

The OC Art Blog had a chance to ask Unveil Gallery co-founder Lorraine Han some questions about their space and program. Located in an office park in Irvine. Unveil Gallery is a contemporary art gallery co-founded by Lorraine and Dan Yang. Their mission is a diverse platform that focuses on contemporary art, women, and community culture. Unveil aims to provide a space for young or emerging artists who are bold in their creativity and willing to explore new artistic languages. Committed to fostering cross-cultural dialogue between...

05 February, 2025 /

Desert X announced a return to the Coachella Valley from March 8 to May 11, 2025, once again transforming the desert into a vast, open-air exhibition of contemporary art. This year’s exhibition features eleven international artists, whose works engage with the themes of Indigenous futurism, design activism, colonial power asymmetries, and the impact of humanity on the land Desert X 2025 installation view of Agnes Denes The Living Pyramid at Sunnylands Center &Gardens, photo by Lance Gerber, courtesy Desert X; As in previous years, Desert X positions...

03 February, 2025 /

Marlene' Dusek, Healing your heart and healing sóoval with kúut (Marlene’managing sumac gathering area, an essential plant relative for weaving) Photo by Kim Avalos. In the wake of the devastating wildfires that have ravaged Southern California, the Fowler Museum’s new exhibition, Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art, arrives at a complex cultural and emotional moment. With its focus on Indigenous fire stewardship and cultural burning practices, the exhibition treads a delicate line—addressing fire as a force of renewal while many in the region are...

22 January, 2025 /

The OC Art Blog sat down (virtually) with Orange County based multidisciplinary artist Alisa Ochoa in advance of her show with painter Huang Zhen that opens at Unveil Gallery on September 7th. Ochoa’s rich work of bold colors and poetic language applied to all areas of visual expression, including sculpture, painting, and video has been recognized with residencies at Hunter College Ceramic Department, Penland School of Craft, and Kala Art Institute, and with exhibitions nationwide. Her artwork has been reviewed online and in print, including...

01 September, 2024 /

Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty currently at the Beall Center for Art + Technology By Chris Hoff Since the emergence of cybernetics through people like Norbert Weiner, Gregory Bateson and others from the cold war avant-garde, and with the establishment of the systemic approach that tracked the relations between machine, man, and society. Artists have been interested in incorporating the language, tools, and metaphors of systems, prediction, and cybernetics into their work. These engagements have taken various forms, many of them critically examining the societal impacts...

28 August, 2024 /

Carolyn Saylor Your recent sculptural series, This is Not the End, reflects deep spiritual themes and addresses the anxieties stemming from apocalyptic events. Could you share more about the inspiration behind this series and how your personal experiences shaped these creations? 2020 marked by the COVID-19 pandemic was filled with so much public and private suffering. Right in the middle of it, tragedy hit my own family — a massive heart attack for my dad. I was thrust into a state of turmoil I was not prepared for....

18 August, 2024 /