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

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 where negativism...

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 precarious as creative work...

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 /

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 /

By Liz Goldner Gina Herrera’s artwork is a reflection of her journey into self-knowledge and realization about the world around her. She aspires to help save our planet; and she does so by employing in her work natural materials, including branches, rocks, cocoons and nests. These elements, along with colorful cast-off fabric scraps, plastics, buttons, ribbons, jewelry, domestic tools and military medallions, are affixed to frameworks, made of rebar or reinforced steel, which mirror human forms. Herrera also incorporates into her work barbed wire, sticks, straw, skulls...

03 February, 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 /