ocma

Desperate, Scared, But Social OCMA’s Biennial 2025: Subculture, Sponsored

Jun 29, 2025 | 0 Comments

By Bela Chauhan Titled Desperate, Scared, But Social, OCMA’s 2025 Biennial exhibition sets out to center the emotional, cultural, and inherently political richness of late adolescence—specifically through the lens of teenage girlhood and the many that connect to it. There is a concrete intention within the rhetoric of the exhibition that hinges importance on the idea of community cultivation being a priority in our globally tumultuous times, and that is explored through the networks branching...

Mirror, Mirror: Amy Adler’s Portraits and the Selfie’s Seductive Gaze

Jun 16, 2025 | 0 Comments

By Tyler Stallings Walking into Amy Adler’s exhibition Nice Girl at the Orange County Museum of Art, curated by Heidi Zuckerman, OCMA’s CEO and Director, you immediately notice the cinematic arrangement of twenty-one identically sized paintings. They line the curved wall, evenly spaced, like frames from an analog film strip. Adler first came to prominence in the 1990s through a distinct process. She drew intricate representations from photographs, photographed these drawings, then...

Is Contemporary Art in Orange County Threatened by the New UCI-OCMA Merger?

Jun 11, 2025 | 0 Comments

By Chris Hoff, OC Art Blog The recent announcement that UC Irvine will take over operations of the Orange County Museum of Art marks a major shift in the region’s cultural landscape. According to the Orange County Business Journal, this move is being framed as a strategic partnership but for those of us who have followed the local art scene closely, the news raises as many questions as it answers. On the surface, it’s a significant step: a major university assuming control of the county’s only...

Martin Creed and the Museum of Ice Creamification

Aug 16, 2024 | 0 Comments

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...

Alice Neel: Feels Like Home at the Orange County Museum of Art

Jul 9, 2023 | 0 Comments

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,...

Artist Interview: Ryan Callis

Sep 2, 2022 | 0 Comments

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 about your connection to the OC/Long...

Friction Skin: Alberto Lule at CREAR Studio

Aug 30, 2022 | 0 Comments

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 CREAR...

DON’T DITCH THE O.C.

Feb 19, 2021 | 0 Comments

By Mat Gleason Growing up on the county line revealed little difference between Orange County and Los Angeles County but illustrated the frisson of borders nonetheless. There was a place called “The Ditch” which was an open sewage channel that stunk but had great dirt hills to ride bikes. Located just beyond the fence in the back of Buena Park’s Big Tee Golf Course, was it in Orange County or Los Angeles County? When La Mirada residents rose up to complain of the stench, L.A. County said,...

Ask a therapist: I’m Stuck!

Feb 16, 2021 | 0 Comments

Q: With COVID and all, I have felt stuck for a year now. What can I do to get unstuck? Dear Fellow Traveler, The word stuck typically brings images to my mind of being five years old, venturing out into a deliciously dirty, mostly dried-up creek behind my house—and in my quest for fun not noticing nighttime raindrops had created a form of muck, which snatched a flip flop from my foot, swallowing it whole. Ah, well I’ll abandon it there, I’ll be barefoot and free! What’s the point in...

Getting Your OC Art Fix During the COVID-19 Pandemic

May 18, 2020 | 0 Comments

With the art world on lockdown, and with many of us desiring, even needing, to feed our art addictions, many visual and performing arts organizations throughout the OC are getting creative with how they remain relevant to the larger OC art scene. Luckily, many art organizations are offering opportunities for the public to still engage and enjoy art digitally, whether it be through live streaming, virtual tours, social media engagement, online art collection browsing, film screenings, videos of...

Minimalism, You’re Doing It Wrong

Apr 9, 2020 | 0 Comments

I am in quarantine. Not sure how long this will last. And like many others, in an effort to find something to do that isn’t staring into one of the several glass screens in my home, I am thinking this would be a good time to clean my office. I mean really clean my office. According to Kyle Chayka’s recent release, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, a new survey of the minimalism of the moment, I may be suffering from an abstract desire for a different and simpler world that will...

OCMA pays tribute to the California landscape

Feb 26, 2014 | 0 Comments

California’s identity is inextricably tied to its landscape, and has one of the most varied geographies in the Union. Attempting to capture California landscape art and its evolution for over a century is already ambitious in scope. However, California Landscape Into Abstraction: Works from the Orange County Museum of Art, OCMA's current exhibit, goes beyond an examination of 19th and 20th century California landscape and - as a result of thematic organization, a broad definition of landscape,...

This Week In The OC

Mar 1, 2011 | 0 Comments

Thursday, 03/03: The Plains of Id: Mapping Urban Intervention In Los Angeles On view: March 3 – April 17, 2011 Opening Reception: March 3, 5-8 PM WHERE: UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM (UAM) College of the Arts California State University, Long Beach 1250 Bellflower Boulevard Long Beach, CA 90840-0004 //An exhibition that focuses on contemporary artists who intervene within a specific area of Los Angeles’ sprawling topography. Artists include: Sandra de la Loza, Patrick “Pato” Hebert, Joel...

This Week In The OC

Jan 30, 2011 | 0 Comments

It is another eventful week! This week we have a lot of art openings in colleges and universities; Irvine Valley College (IVC), University of California, Irvine (UCI), California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and Chapman University. Check out this calendar for more events! Don't forget Art Walk in Santa Ana is this Saturday! Thursday, February 3rd: Irvine Valley College (IVC) Art Gallery Presents: Digital World On view: February 3rd - March 3rd Location: IVC Art...

This Week In The OC

Jan 25, 2011 | 0 Comments

Thursday, January 27: Euan Macdonald: KIMBALL 1901 - January 27 - March 25, 2011Opening Reception: January 27, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.Nichols Gallery, Pitzer Art Galleries - Pitzer College Pitzer College1050 North Mills Avenue · Claremont, CA Note: Thursday, February 24, 3:30 p.m.Nichols Gallery, Broad Center, Pitzer CollegeDiscussion and exhibition walkthrough with artist Euan Macdonald and director/curator Ciara Ennis More information on the exhibit. ---------- Emerging Artist Series #5:...

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

Daisy Chain Fields Sets Bigger ‘Expectations’

Sep 6, 2026

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...

The Tipping Point: Einar and Jamex de la Torre at the Laguna Art Museum

Aug 26, 2026

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...

42nd Irvine Annual Takes a Closer Look

Aug 10, 2026

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...

Nothing But Net: From Hoop Dreams to Art Scenes at Great Park Gallery

Jul 14, 2026

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...

The Machine in the Studio: OC Artists and Gallerists Reckon with AI

Jun 12, 2026

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...