I have been a fan of Maggie Taylor’s surreal dream-like images for almost a decade, ever since a friend used her digital collages as cover artwork for his homemade CDs. Taylor combines 19th century daguerreotypes, original photographs, scanned objects and old etchings, to produce fantastic, imaginative, and mysterious images. I first described her work while covering the Digital Darkroom exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in 2011, and was excited to meet Taylor in person and...
Surreal, dream-like images inhabited by the solemn countenances of people from a bygone era, set in fantastical landscapes and surrounded by a strange assortment of animals, an arc of bees or random objects; these are the magical images of Maggie Taylor. Taylor creates astonishingly complex digital collages combining original photographs, 19th century daguerreotypes, scanned objects and vintage etchings, to produce imaginative and mysterious photographs. Walking through the Joanne Artman...
Orange County has solid museums, vibrant artists and several local art scenes, yet the cultural footprint of art in the community remains pretty shallow. Residents don’t venture too far from their neighborhood and the idea of a gallery event as part of an interesting night out doesn’t resonate with younger generations. So what’s missing? How can we break through suburban inertia and make the OC art scene something bigger? Alex Amador, owner of the new 4,500 square foot DAX Gallery, thinks he...
For November's Art Walk we feature three galleries that are elevating the Laguna Beach gallery scene (and one honorable mention) by exhibiting art and artists that stand out amongst the typical Orange County fare. Since the galleries are spread out along the coast we chose one to represent North, Central, and South Laguna (maps and gallery descriptions below). The current theme in Laguna Beach is Art & Nature though the artists we saw fused nature with industry or technology by using...
It’s that time again! The OC Art Walks are happening the first week of November. To help you celebrate after Halloween check out our OC Art Blog guide to the Orange County Art Walks (since October 31st falls on a Thursday Laguna Beach art walk is next week). Street maps for each of the walks with our highlights are below, let us know where you went and tell us some of your favorites. OC ART BLOG ART WALK GUIDE More information and our photos from the October art walks: THE GREAT ART...
Get a room together of the most prominent photojournalists working today and you’ll hear a discussion about whether they perceive and document their subjects as “the Other,” or stated more bluntly, is there legitimacy to the question “who is the white person holding the camera?” The latest photography exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston strongly underscores that in documentary photography it is very important who holds the camera. She Who Tells A Story: Women Photographers from Iran...
Concentrated on the pedestrian Second Street Promenade, Santa Ana had the liveliest street scene with DJs, street performers and multiple bands. The Santora Building has beautiful architecture but the galleries inside can be hit or miss. Get there anytime: from 6 to 10ish p.m. The Crowd: 20’s+, eclectic, families, and students The Art: Large scale installations, artists-in-residence, student art, performance art, video and everything in between What you won’t find: Established commercial...
Laguna Beach is the most extensive of the art walks stretching from North Laguna Beach, through “downtown” to South Laguna (see map). Being a weeknight we only covered the north and select downtown galleries, as well as the Laguna Beach Art Museum (free admission the night of art walk). The art carries a higher price tag than the other art walks, but we enjoyed the free admission to the Laguna Beach Art Museum and free wine in the galleries. We recommend getting there early: the walk starts at...
The 50+ photographs in Courtney Conlon's new show at Cal State Fullerton's Pollack Library are at first glance reminiscent of Ryan McGinley's embrace of nature as a site of freedom, or Wolfgang Tillman's intimate documentation of his friends in real-life situations. However, Conlon is not interested in these kinds of comparisons or definitions, this is made clear by Conlon's stark truisms found spread throughout the opposite side of the gallery from where the majority of the works are hung....
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 environment, whether it be the concrete containers and electrical wires of the city or the low and sprawling manicured grid of suburbia, the magic of nature is everywhere no matter how unlikely. “I can never keep a house plant...
New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz once said that the alchemy of good curating amounts to placing one work of art near another, leaving each intact, and in the process creating a third thing. This third thing and the two original things then trigger cascades of thought and reaction. I was reminded of this idea after viewing the wonderful exhibition Gerit Grimm: Beyond the Figurine now running at the Long Beach Museum of Art through July 8th. In this enjoyable exhibit the Long Beach...
Emulex Corporation is usually a computer parts manufacturer based in Orange County, but this year Emulex has taken an interest in spreading their wealth-- with their never-ending supply of creative materials, otherwise known as e-waste, and their passion for Orange County art, this computer parts company has partnered up with Cal State Fullerton to create The Art of Convergence, a sculpture competition featuring Emulex parts and products and CSUF sculpture students. The Art of...
The concepts of war and fashion are seemingly disparate but in Andriy Halashyn’s oil paintings at SALT Fine Art in Laguna Beach soldiers and fashion models seamlessly co-exist on one canvas. In the aptly named War and Fashion series Halashyn cleverly fuses the imagery of combat and vogue into a single scene. The two are merged so naturally the deceptively cheery paintings create tension as the viewer tries to reconcile how the two can exist together. And yet, they do. Living in the United...
A "Before and After" picture of Mat Gleason's hair cut. Say hello to reality tv show! Mat Gleason arrived at Cal State Fullerton for a guest talk Thursday, March 3. He founded Coagula Art Journal (Coagula.com) in 1992, and since then has written for other journals, including breaking the record for traffic in the art section of the Huffington Post (just check the amount of angry comments in articles). Cougular Art Journal, issues available online...
Santa Ana-Recently, I attended the much-anticipated opening of Suggestivism at the Grand Central Art Center in downtown Santa Ana. Beautiful ladies in hooded onesies (I did not know they existed either) paraded around the galleries serving chocolates and energy drinks throughout the night. Many of the artists attended and Academy award-nominated actress Amy Adams also made an appearance. Grand Central always knows how to throw a party!...
If you have the chance, I recommend the journey from Orange County to our L.A. County neighbor, Long Beach, for the show Constructions and Excavations featuring the work of Southern California artists Jonathan Anderson and Nathan Huff. Curated by Jeffrey Rau of Sixpack Projects, a new curating collective. Anderson's body of work entitled "Constructions" and "Impasse" establishes a consistent conceptual framework that uses the flat surfaces of...
GHOST//Images of You I have Found in Everything//January 15th through March 4th, 2011Opening reception, January 15th from 7 - 10 PMThe Box Gallery in Costa Mesa, California, in conjunction with Ashes In Orange Peels Fine Art is proud to present, GHOST, an exhibition exploring the idea that in every work of art there resides a "ghost." Whether it occurs in the subject matter or just the lingering presence of the artist's hand, art contains a life...
Even as I write this, I have six windows open on my laptop, my cell phone just inches away, and my earphones blasting music. Me? Addicted to technology? No way! At California State University Fullerton’s Begovich Art Gallery, curators Jennifer Frias and Lilia Lamas present a timely exhibition examining our social constructs created by new media and digital technology. Metadataphile: The Collapse of Visual Information suggests that over-communication through technology has lead...
Mike Stilkey, Untitled Installation of 4,400 books and paint (photos by Alyssa Cordova )Artist Mike Stilkey, far rightSo-cal artist judges books by their covers Good news! In case you missed Costa Mesa’s )( Space Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Reminiscent: Mike Stilkey, it has been reinstalled in the Hurley creative retail space in Laguna Beach just in time for their one year...
The OC Art Blog was created in 2004 as a way to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene.
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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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