Women Around Town: March 2017

“We Choose Art: A Feminist Perspective” curated by Baha Danes is for one night only on Friday, 3/10/17 from 7-11 pm at the Montalban Mezzanine Space in Hollywood. Also for one night only, viewers can experience the Feminist SAFE ZONE Installation, which includes protest signs and photographs from the historic Women’s March in Los Angeles.

 

IN THE STUDIO WITH: Joanne Julian 

A visit the studio/beach house of Joanne Julian in Mandalay Beach gives you an immediate sense of this amazing woman’s art practice and yield.  Asian influences abound in this peaceful, organized studio space.  Julian has been creating acrylic, graphite and sumi ink works on Arches paper for decades demonstrating her apt ability to absorb the Japanese brush work tradition. She occasionally works with watercolor and Prismacolor pencils as well.  With nature as her primary muse, she offers simplistic, exquisitely crafted forms, be it a leaf, a snake, a feather, or Zen circle. She harmoniously balances a disciplined and controlled style with a vigorous and spontaneous East Asian aesthetic through Zen brush painting. Meticulous is the keyword to how each line and form comes to be. Julian’s images are mostly black on white paper with some hints of gold and silver at times, additional colors are added occasionally.  Large white areas of void are characteristic in many of her works.  Her blacks are very black and often worked on for hours to achieve just the right texture. She collects insects, lizards, snakes, leaves, etc. in an effort to study their every surface so she can duplicate their essence with precision. Julian’s current exhibition at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard “Defying Darkness” will feature over 30 examples of her work representing 3 decades of her career. This adds to an extensive exhibition history in Southern California over the past 3 decades. Her work is in the collection of several major museums and collector’s homes as well. There is no end in sight to the oeuvre of this remarkable, gifted creator. Don’t miss “Joanne Julian: Defying Darkness” 3/12-5/21/17. Opening reception: Sat. 3/11/17, 4-6 p.m.

“Cock in the Box” is the current exhibition at Box Gallery in the Arts District. This is a solo exhibition of Judith Bernstein. Here the works are rather small scale images of screw drawings conflated with the exploration of male-to-female forms. Runs thru 3/18/17.

Charles James Gallery presents Jennifer Dalton’s “Participation Trophy.” The exhibition includes video, sculpture and interactive works that confront and aim at overcoming the fears that stand in the way of succeeding in or even pursuing our life goals. Dalton uses her own lifelong phobia of public speaking as inspiration for this body of work. Runs thru 4/1/17.

A site-specific installation titled “Anna Craycroft: Tuning the Room” fills the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis Art Institute. Runs thru 4/28/17.

 

“Holly Coulis: Days and Nights, Lemons”  is the current exhibition at Cherry and Martin Gallery. Coulis’ paintings of the still-life genre reference 16th European paintings with the vanitas theme. These oil on canvas paintings use bold color, line, and shape in an exploration of the genre. 3/11-4/22/17.

Walter Maciel Gallery presents “Señales de Humo (Smoke Signals)” by Brooklyn based artist, Pepa Prieto. Prieto’s work focuses on themes about migration and a sense of space. Her abstract works reveal layers of shapes, lines and marks that conjure up the emotions and feelings of acclimating to a new culture and homeland.  3/11-4/29/17.

David Kordansky Gallery presents new work by abstract painter Mary Weatherford. “Like the Land Loves the Sea” features some of Weatherford’s largest paintings to date, including three mural-sized canvases installed together in one of the gallery’s two main spaces. In the other, she will present a series of large-scale vertical paintings, each of which is generally defined by a single dominant hue. Both typologies contain gestures, color combinations, paint handling, and compositional moves that constitute advances in the artist’s practice and distinguish the paintings from previous bodies of work. Runs from 3/10/17 thru 5/6/17.  Opening reception on Friday, 3/10/17 from 6 to 8 pm.

The Annenberg Community Beach House Gallery presents “Personal Narrative.” The participating artists with diverse backgrounds share personal narrative of immigrant diaspora and gender identity. These themes are examined in their individual bodies of work. The curator’s intention is “to stimulate conversation, inspire creativity and increase understanding of contemporary art in the context of today’s society and inspire both cultural and social awareness.” Among the artists whose work will be included in this exhibition are Susan Amorde, Terry Arena, Bibi Davidson, Dwora Fried, J.J. L’Heureux, Linda Sue Price and Kristine Schomaker. Runs thru 6/4/17.

Artist Talk on Saturday, 5/6/17 from 1:30 to 3:30 pm.