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 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 /

By Chris Hoff Recently I had a chance to speak with Berlin based artist Cassie Thornton about the hologram a feminist peer-to-peer health for a post pandemic future. In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, how can we take health and care back into our hands? Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care, a viral peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple, three people, a triangle, meet on a regular basis to focus on the physical,...

07 July, 2023 /

Barbara Berk, 2000 Revolutions, 2000. Graphite on wall, tape player and recorder, slides, projector. 84” diameter. Performed at Riverside Art Museum. Barbara Berk is a curious, quiet maker who has been an active participant in the Southern California art scene for over forty years. Since 1983, she has consistently shown or performed her work in solo and group exhibitions at many of the distinguished university and college art galleries as well as numerous institutions like the Laguna Art Museum, Torrance Museum, Angels Gate Cultural Center,...

18 March, 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 Meg Linton Daniel Porras, Distraction and Diversion with Direction, 2020, oil on canvas, 44”x33.5” As things are opening back up, yet again, I’ve been venturing out to look at art. I wound up in San Pedro and discovered Cornelius Projects, a contemporary art space run by artist and curator Laurie Steelink who shines a light on artists living and/or working in this seaside community located on Tongva Territory. The current exhibition on view through March 26, 2022 is called DUST & WISPS and features watercolors by...

23 February, 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 /

Q: I'm an introverted artist and it seems that the art world awards extroversion. Meaning people that are out all the time at openings and artist talks networking are more successful. How can I move from being introverted to extroverted? My career depends on it! Dear Fellow Traveler, Want to know a secret?  I’m terrified of public speaking.  The pounding heart, the drunk-dizzy-sweating-profusely kind of afraid that grips me in a vice and paralyzes me. Eventually, I somehow pull from the deepest places of belief in myself,...

06 February, 2022 /

©Amir Zaki. On Being Here: Built in 1927. Renovated in 1936, 2021. Ultrachrome Archival Photographed. 60” x 48” Framed. by Meg Linton “Photography is so much about cultivating a skill of sustained observation.” – Amir Zaki Recently, a colleague, Edward Cella, recommended I go visit the studio of Amir Zaki, a photographer he has worked with over the years located in Huntington Beach. The studio is hidden in a nondescript business complex amongst wood finishers, commercial printers, and a jet ski repair shop. Zaki met me at the...

25 January, 2022 /

By Walpa D'Mark I attended Albert Lopez Jr’s show at Crear Studio on September 4, 2021. It might seem like it’s a little too late to be talking about it, but the exhibition had many layers, and eventually it led me to think about Albert’s creative process. Full disclosure, I know Albert, we both attended Cal State Long Beach in the late 90’s, and I worked for him at OCMA in the 2010’s. Albert’s show at Crear Studio, titled “The Dollar Dance I Never Had!” featured works...

21 January, 2022 /

By Meg Linton On December 9, 2021, with some trepidation about whether to mask or not because of the new Omicron variant, I ventured out with a few friends to The Wayfarer: A House of Social Provisions in Costa Mesa to see one of my favorite young guitar-strumming song-writer poets and NPR/KCRW-described folk-punk phenom Sunny War. Opening for her was the energized Orange County band Delving, who said it was their first time playing together on stage in this iteration, and the solo artist Caitlyn Jemma...

20 December, 2021 /

By Walpa D'Mark Sarah Rafael Garcia has been advocating for the Santa Ana BIPOC community for 13 years. She’s the founder of Barrio Writers (2009), LibroMobile (2016), and Crear Studio (2017).  I had an opportunity to meet her during Crear Studio’s Meet and Greet opening held this summer. The opening was a celebration of the new Crear Studio space and its supporters. It was also an invitation for the rest of us to learn about the history and hard work that made it possible. Sarah Rafael...

17 September, 2021 /

By Liz Goldner Gilbert “Magu” Luján was a visionary artist who helped define and promote Chicano art. The founder of the art collective, “Los Four”—which first exhibited Chicano artwork in 1973 at UC Irvine—wrote in 1969, “I believe there is a Chicano Art form and that it has been around for many years without formalization and recognition…Most Chicanos are aware of our current new breed renaissance which has flowered many investigations, probes and introspection in most areas of our life patterns…As we affirm broad-based awareness of...

06 September, 2021 /

      When I first started taking art seriously and began to learn how to paint, I heretically thought of photography simply as source material for paintings. I tried making figurative paintings based off the work of Herb Ritts, Imogen Cunningham, and others. All those years ago I could not have appreciated the depth and complexity of the relationship between photography and painting that Jacques Garnier has presented in his latest exhibition Hymns to The Silence.            On display at Laguna Art Museum since this past Spring, I’ve walked through it many times....

13 August, 2021 /

I recently had the opportunity to visit another exciting new space in Orange County, S/A Exhibitions. S/A Exhibitions is a nonprofit space headed up by curator Maurizzio Hector Pineda. Mr. Pineda background includes receiving his undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000. From 2001-2005 he was the owner and director of SWYS Gallery in Long Beach, CA, and has worked at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and for Regen Project in Beverly Hills. His most recent curatorial post...

14 July, 2021 /