The OC Art Blog was created in 2004 as a way to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene.
Embroidered With Desire: The Unruly Art Of Carole Caroompas
By Tyler StallingsFor 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...
Artist/Curator Profile: Dakota Noot
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...
Unearthing the Sky: Materiality and Transformation in OCMA’s Dual Exhibitions
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...
Video: My Favorite Artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago
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...
A Slow Process of Erasure: Rachel Hakimian Emenaker at Grand Central Art Center
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...
Earth’s Rhythms at SCAPE: A Dynamic Exploration of Water, Sound, and Structure
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...
Seeing the Unseen: “Inner Vision” at CSULB Explores the Limits of Perception
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...
Frieze LA & Post-Fair: Exploring Two Sides of the Art World
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...
Book Review: Poor Artists by The White Pube
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...
The Future for Artists: Uncertainty, Precarity, and Possibility
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...