Violent Delights, Timeless Consequences: New Swan’s Romeo and Juliet

by | September 19, 2026 | ALL, Features, Reviews | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy Fists striked. Rusted boots pounded. Voices erupted.  In the intimate space of the New Swan Shakespeare Festival, there was nowhere to look away as the chaos of Verona unfolded close enough to feel. The New Swan Shakespeare Festival’s production of...
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Daisy Chain Fields Sets Bigger ‘Expectations’

by | September 6, 2026 | ALL, Art Events, Features | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy Paper decor fluttered overhead as baby doll dresses and flower crowns filled the crowd. Women-owned vendors lined the walkways as festivalgoers moved through the sunlight, surrounded by bursts of color and music.  That vibrant atmosphere captured...
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The Tipping Point: Einar and Jamex de la Torre at the Laguna Art Museum

by | August 26, 2026 | ALL | 0 Comments

By Mason Fujikawa The Tipping Point is a two-story installation at the Laguna Art Museum by Einar and Jamex de la Torre. The de la Torre brothers, glassblowers by trade, are prolific mixed-media artists who have exhibited internationally for over thirty years. Born in...
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42nd Irvine Annual Takes a Closer Look

by | August 10, 2026 | ALL | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy Take another step and lean in. Ordinary objects reveal deeper stories than they first appear to hold.  From delicate threads woven into a portrait to bold images capturing moments of social change, the 42nd Irvine Annual transforms familiar...
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Nothing But Net: From Hoop Dreams to Art Scenes at Great Park Gallery

by | July 14, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy Where does the game end, and the art begin? A basketball court is usually defined by rules and competition. In “GAME! Basketball and Contemporary Art,” that definition expands as the court becomes a surface for design and intervention.  The...
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The Machine in the Studio: OC Artists and Gallerists Reckon with AI

by | June 12, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Chris Hoff There’s a particular kind of vertigo that comes with watching a technology arrive faster than the culture can metabolize it. Photographers felt it in the 1840s. Painters felt it again when Photoshop showed up. Now it’s AI’s turn, and the stakes feel...
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Awakening: Moncho at Gallery Sonder

by | June 2, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Mason Fujikawa Awakening at Gallery Sonder is the first exhibition in the United States by Mexican artist Moncho. Moncho takes an instinctive approach to his practice. He doesn’t sketch or even plan before painting. Instead, he draws from his subconscious, working...
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Low and Slow at Danger Gallery

by | May 28, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Alisa Ochoa Low and Slow is on view at House of Danger Gallery, nestled in an unassuming shopping center just off the 55, beside a Circle K and below the Attic Skateshop. The space is operated by Jackie Danger, a visual artist and brand strategist who opened the...
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On Creativity, Constraints, and Staying Alive to the World

by | May 24, 2026 | ALL | 0 Comments

By Chris Hoff I’ve been messing around with learning to play guitar for as long as I can remember. It’s been a story of starts and stops for years. In a more recent start I picked up the book How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy. I thought it might provide some...
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Art Confronts Infrastructure in UC Irvine Langson OCMA

by | May 24, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy What shifts when the ground beneath everyday life begins to move? Infrastructure is usually what disappears first. In “Breakdown/Breakthrough: Art and Infrastructure," it stayed exposed. The exhibition, on view at UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum...
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Legacies Come Alive, Spring Blooms at Irvine Fine Arts Center

by | April 8, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy What does it mean to be remembered, and who gets to be seen? Through textured brushwork and carved forms, Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma honors labor and ancestry. That legacy continues in Edgar Fabián Frías’s layered digital collages and psychedelic video...
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What Does a Curator Actually Do?

by | March 13, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

Rachel Adams at OCCCA/GCAC The first talk in a new curatorial lecture series brought the Chief Curator of the Bemis Center to Santa Ana and she had a lot to say about art, empathy, and saying yes. On Thursday evening, March 12th, a small crowd gathered at the Orange...
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From Tradition to Comics: Great Park Gallery Presents New Show

by | March 9, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Maggie Luy What do we keep, and what do we let sink? Kristina Rose Baker Installation Shot Daniela García Hamilton approaches it through hand-embroidered cultural objects set afloat in painted water. Suspended between air and a spirit realm below, Kristina Rose...
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Interstitial: Sheng Lor at Gallery Sonder 

by | February 14, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

By Mason Fujikawa | Feb 13, 2026  Interstitial at Gallery Sonder is the first solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Sheng Lor. Lor, a Hmong American, learned to embroider at a young age and began her career as a weaver. She has since shifted to a conceptual...
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Doing It Anyway: What the 2026 Creative Futures Survey Reveals About Artists (and What It Means for OC)

by | February 13, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

Metalabel's second annual Anonymous Creative Futures survey just dropped, and it reads like a dispatch from the creative frontlines. Over 300 artists and creative workers across disciplines and geographies were promised anonymity and asked to be brutally honest about...
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Do the OC Board of Supervisors Care About the Arts?

by | February 11, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

Orange County is home to Pacific Symphony, Segerstrom Center, South Coast Rep, Laguna Art Museum, the Bowers, a thriving gallery scene in Santa Ana, and hundreds of independent arts organizations serving millions of residents. The creative economy here generates...
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The Sound of Silence: Orange County Art Institutions and the ICE Question

by | January 25, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

Where Are Our Museums When Communities Need Them? Last Friday, major art institutions across Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Russian Art, and others, closed their doors in solidarity with a...
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Memory as Resistance: Art Leaders Defend Culture in Authoritarian Times

by | January 24, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

JANM Symposium on Democracy, January 23, 2026 At the Japanese American National Museum's symposium "Echoes of History: Inspiring Civic Action and Building Democracy," a panel of cultural leaders gathered to discuss an increasingly urgent question: What is the role of...
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Grand Central Art Center Awarded Prestigious Warhol Foundation Grant

by | January 14, 2026 | ALL, Features | 0 Comments

Grand Central Art Center Awarded Prestigious Warhol Foundation Grant. As part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Fall 2025 grant cycle, Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana has been selected alongside 56 other arts organizations nationwide to receive...
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What If Orange County Artists Thought Like Corporations (In the Best Possible Way)?

by | November 23, 2025 | ALL, Artist Interviews, Features | 0 Comments

Notes on Yancey Strickler, Metalabel, and the Future of Collective Creative Power There's a quiet but growing subculture of artists, organizers, and creative misfits who are experimenting with a strange question: What if artists borrowed the structure and scale of...
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The OC Art Blog was created in 2004 as a way to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene.

Like a Song: The Art of Rodrigo Luff

Like a Song: The Art of Rodrigo Luff

Jul 18, 2013 | 2 Comments

If the ancient goddess Athena- goddess of wisdom whose sidekick was an owl- was alive today, her favorite artist would be the Australian painter Rodrigo Luff. Luff's work is characterized by his goddess-esque women in mystical landscapes, often filled with whimsically...

Curious Explorers in the World of Jeremy Hush

Curious Explorers in the World of Jeremy Hush

May 29, 2013 | 1 Comment

When I was little I used to spend hours in my family's garden, studying the intricacies of the landscape. Deeply influenced by my love of Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge illustrations, I was looking for mice homes amongst the trees and bushes. What I discovered under...

Two Pint Wonder: The Delightful Owen Dara

Two Pint Wonder: The Delightful Owen Dara

Apr 13, 2013 | 0 Comments

It's rare that LA can offer me something that makes me feel right at home in Ireland again… Owen Dara's delightful comedy show "Two Pint Wonder," showing every Sunday in April at the Renegade Theatre in Hollywood, does just that. Dara crafted an extremely charming...

The Ascetic Mysticism of Deleyaman

The Ascetic Mysticism of Deleyaman

Apr 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

It's rare that a band can invoke a real feeling of mysticism in me upon hearing their music. Perhaps this is because I play music and my brain can go directly to understanding song structure and chords; that is, unless the song is coming from another place entirely....

embrace at occca

embrace at occca

Feb 28, 2013 | 0 Comments

Currently showing at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, the exhibit Embrace is comprised of artwork by Kim Tucker, Michael Giancristiano and Matjames Metson; curated by Katherine Huntoon. This show illustrates the power of a curator's voice to...

Thankful for Toots and the Maytals

Thankful for Toots and the Maytals

Dec 3, 2012 | 0 Comments

The night before Thanksgiving, November 21st, the legendary reggae band Toots and the Maytals played a joyous show at the Coach House. On tour from their home in Jamaica, Toots and the Maytals played some of their most classic songs "Pressure Drop," "54-46 Was My...

Studio Visit: Tony Brown

Studio Visit: Tony Brown

Nov 24, 2012 | 0 Comments

As part of an ongoing series featuring contributors from all over Southern California, below international art dealer Delia Cabral gives an account of her recent visit to the studio of artist Tony Brown. An external view night view of Tony’s Down Town LA installation...

LAGUNA BEACH: Where the Sidewalk Ends

LAGUNA BEACH: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Nov 16, 2012 | 0 Comments

A small plot of grass is a fairy ring, a window box becomes an enchanted forest and the tough brambles of the urban rose growing up through a chain link fence guard a sleeping beauty of the fierce canine variety. For anyone who has grown up in an architecturally dense...