Orange County Art Tag

By Tyler Stallings Carole Caroompas, Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour: Dead or Alive, 2001, acrylic on found embroidery on canvas over panel, 30 x 30 inches. Collection of Mary Anna Pomonis. Photo: Eric Stoner For decades, Carole Caroompas relentlessly pursued a vision that fused punk aesthetics, feminist critique, and literary excavation. With her passing in 2022, the full extent of her artistic reach is only beginning to be reckoned with. Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour, now on view at Laguna Art Museum,...

01 April, 2025 /

In this edition of the artist interview, the OC Art Blog had the pleasure of asking Dakota Noot some questions about both his art and curatorial practices. Dakota Noot’s work vibrates with radiant contradiction, rural and queer, grotesque and playful, mythic and autobiographical. Growing up in Bismarck, North Dakota, and now working between Los Angeles and Orange County, Noot draws on a childhood shaped by farm life and hunting culture to conjure vibrant animal-human hybrids that subvert and celebrate identity. Whether through crayon-sketched “Human Paper...

30 March, 2025 /

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 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 /

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 /

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 /

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 /

Martin Creed: Work No. 3868 Half the air in a given space Orange County Museum of Art Newport Beach, CA By Chris Hoff Recently I was listening to the Art Angle podcast interview of Joshua Citarella, facilitator of the burgeoning online platform Do Not Research. In this wide-ranging conversation Citarella forecasts a total atomization of the art world where everything resembles Tik Tok and predicts the fall of institutions and museums. He argues that this fall of institutions will be brought about by the move to produce more and...

16 August, 2024 /

Prior to his upcoming show opening at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles, titled My Little Narrative, at the Jose Drudis-Biada Art Gallery from October 3rd to November 11th. The OC Art Blog had the opportunity to meet with Walpa D'Mark who's self-reflective paintings use figuration and abstraction, historical and popular references that intersect between Nicaraguan and American history and politics. D'Mark has exhibited throughout L.A., including at Track 16, Mark Moore Gallery, Coagula Curatorial, and Torrance Art Museum. Internationally, he has exhibited...

17 September, 2023 /

Through January 15, 2024 By Liz Goldner Magnificent screen prints, many infused with electric color and Chicano symbolism, are featured in Laguna Art Museum’s Self-Help Graphics exhibition. All 78 prints by 78 artists in the show are owned by the museum. Looking back, 50 years ago, Franciscan nun Sister Karen Boccalero, along with Mexican-born, local artists Carlos Bueno, Antonio Ibáñez and others, recognized that  U.S. born Latinos, especially L.A. based Chicano artists were not being sufficiently recognized by the local and national art worlds. They collaborated with artists...

10 September, 2023 /

The OC Art Blog sat down with some of the leadership of Orange County based nonprofit Community Engagement to discuss their programming and support of local artists. In this wide ranging interview we discuss their new pop-up gallery, The Art Space OC, on Third Street in Downtown Santa Ana. Their grants program that includes grants for local artists who have been historically excluded from the mainstream art world. And their next show featuring William Camargo, a local photographer telling stories about his Anaheim neighborhood and...

28 August, 2023 /

By Chris Hoff In his new book Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come T.J. Demos draws on radical futurisms and visions of justice-to-come emerging from the traditions of the oppressed as materialized in experimental visual cultural, new media, aesthetic practices, and social movements. His new book poses speculative questions about what comes after end-of-world narratives. Recently I had the opportunity to meet with T.J., who is the Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History in the Department of the History of Art and Visual...

19 July, 2023 /

By Liz Goldner Kudos to OCMA for mounting an exhibition of Alice Neel’s artwork. The painter has been described by art critic Roberta Smith as, “equal if not superior to artists like Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon and destined for icon status on the order of Vincent van Gogh and David Hockney.” Residing most of her life in New York City, Neel (1900-1984), a feminist and bohemian, painted and socialized with people of color, gays, radicals, civil rights and political leaders, Warhol superstars, musicians, artists, women...

09 July, 2023 /

This Saturday night at 205 N. Broadway in Santa Ana, longtime painter and OC resident Ryan Callis will open a show of new paintings. Oh No, I Seem Very Happy!!!” opens from 6-9 Saturday Sept 3rd, and will consist of new paintings, 100 posters for sale, and an accompanying zine for the first 50+ people in attendance. The OC Art Blog caught up with Ryan to ask a few questions about the show and his work. Enjoy! Painter Ryan Callis Can you start by telling us...

02 September, 2022 /

By Chris Hoff The skin found on the tips of our fingers, is known as friction skin. Left behind fingerprints are not visible to the naked eye so they must be made visible in some way. This is the utility of fingerprint powder, it makes the invisible, visible. In the new show at CREAR Studio titled Detain & Displace. The powerful work of Alberto Lule makes use of the medium used against him, fingerprint powder, and makes the invisible, visible as well. To great effect. Alberto Lule at...

30 August, 2022 /

By Chris Hoff Nothing is true and everything is possible. – Peter Pomerantsev At this juncture, I don’t think there are many artists now that haven’t heard about a Beeple NFT going for $69 million, or a large series of arguably mediocre illustrations of a bored ape having a price of entry of 52 ether, or $210,000. I imagine this sort of news has many an artist, isolated away in their studios, wondering how they get a piece of the action and what this might mean for...

17 February, 2022 /