So things are starting to settle in a bit and I will finally be able to show my art here in LA. I've been invited to be part of a group show at HANGAR GALLERY in Santa Monica. The gallery is connected to the Santa Monica Art Studios near the small airport there. The opening is on Saturday, July 8th, 6-9pm.
More details are on my show page with a map and all.
Below that map are more details about an upcoming group show in Brooklyn, NY, called duality, that I'm a part of. I'm excited to be part of such a cool evening... SATURDAY, AUGUST 12th, 7pm-12am. Many details on that night are also on my show page. I plan on being in NY for it.
Thirdly, I will be part of another LA-based group show... details on that later. It's one that calls for a month of daily working on a single project to be displayed at the group show. The statement I submitted for this show goes as follows:
Shortly after an extremely stressful double-move from Chicago to LA (home and large art studio), I was hit with some very heavy family health crises, as well as my own struggle with health issues of my own. I felt like I made the wrong move, literally. But when I go walking in my strange surrounds, I see beauty everywhere... whether in a plant, flower or tree, or on sidings of dilapidated homes, patterns in broken sidewalks, industrial barbed wire holding back adolescent pomegranates, or concrete walls against the mountaintop sunsets when standing by the LA River. To say it in fewer words, these small paintings, mixed with poems, are about my turbulent first few months here and how my new surroundings created both a concurrent fear and calm in me.
How this project will come out, I have no idea. Today is day two. I'm working on digital collages from photos and hope to incorporate it into my paintings. I'll have to see how the poetry fits in all of this, as I am writing a good deal. I'm banking on this project leading me to bigger works of art based on my work here. The move to LA, California... with her desert plants with their exotic fruits and small Spanish-style homes surrounding me, making a deep new groove in my decades-old urban-developed brain. LA is such a strange place after NYC and Chicago. This strangeness is what this next project is all about. The landscape here, by the LA River in particular, will inspire my next series.
The inclusion in these shows has given me a spring in my step and hope for my new beginnings here.
