WOMEN AROUND TOWN, MAY 2025
I visited the “Art Alive” event at the San Diego Museum of Art last weekend. This is a huge fundraiser for the museum and a much anticipated event where floral designers are invited to interpret works of art in the galleries. This is an interesting approach and I don’t have insight on which artworks and which floral designers are selected, however I do have strong opinions. An artwork by Nick Cave titled Rescue caught my eye and below is the floral interpretation of such. Perhaps you see what I mean when I say that most of these were lackluster at the very least. One floral arrangement that I did find outstanding was in response to a lithograph by Luis Arenal titled Woman of Taxco. I will continue familiarizing myself with the museum’s permanent collection and look forward to its upcoming architectural renewal by renowned architect, Norman Foster.
Nick Cave
Floral interpretation of Nick Cave’s work
Luis Arenal, Woman of Taxco and its floral interpretation
This last week, I also had the great pleasure of visiting the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman College in Orange County. I was fortunate to be toured around by Mr. Hilbert who shared his experience of massing a personal collection of over 5,000 works of art. Of course, only a portion can be on display at the museum. In addition to the permanent collection, there are several outstanding exhibits, all beautifully curated. Among those are Sunlight and Shadows: Emil Kosa Jr. Kosa was a prominent California fine art painter and a key figure in the development of special effects art for the Hollywood motion picture industry during the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. His unique special effects paintings, created while he headed the art department at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios, earned him an Oscar for the movie Cleopatra. The Los Angeles River: An Unexpected Beauty, Paintings by John Kosta is a stand-out exhibition. “Amidst this backdrop, California artist John Kosta embarked on a mission to rediscover and reimagine the Los Angeles River through his art. His “Los Angeles River Series” is a multi-year project that captures the river’s essence, portraying its beauty and resilience. Kosta’s paintings delve into the interplay of light and shadow, the juxtaposition of nature and urban infrastructure, and the river’s evolving relationship with the city. Through his work, he invites viewers to see this “forgotten river” not just as a concrete channel but as a living entity with a unique beauty and rich history…and with potential for renewal.” (Hilbert) Hilbert’s collection of vintage radios, Navajo rugs, pottery, Disney illustrations and cells enhance the offerings at this local treasure. 
IN THE GALLERIES
David Kordansky Gallery presents Mary Weatherford: The Surrealist. Over the course of her career, Weatherford has created feminist revisions of large-scale Color Field painting, posited new directions for the landscape genre, and explored the social histories of California. She has a fearless and physically embodied approach to painterly gesture.
May 16 – June 28, 2025.
Enchantment is an exhibition of works by Hillary Gruenberg that opens later this month at Lois Lambert Gallery. Gruenberg is a local artist who studied at Otis Art Institute. Many of Gruenberg’s pieces in this exhibition have been created by altering and reworking projects that she had previously discarded.Her focus is primarily on the process, not the final outcome.Her work is characterized by a unique assemblage of tactile materials, including paper, leather, fabric, paint, metal leaf, and sewing. In addition to her many works on paper, Gruenberg is exhibiting a series of weavings, constructed with repurposed fabric scraps, ribbon, and even men’s ties. Each piece is intricately handwoven through a meditative and time-consuming process. While intertwining the strands of mismatched fabric on the loom, Gruenberg had no way of knowing how each piece would turn out. Relinquishing control over the outcome is vital to Gruenberg’sprocess. She holds no formal expectations when creating each piece, choosing solely to focus on finding beauty and enchantment
in the unexpected. (LL) May 17 thru July 5, 2025.
Track 16 Gallery’s downtown location has a timely exhibition curated by Camilla Taylor. “My House Burned Down brings together artists who have experienced the destruction of their home by fire. The exhibition includes those affected by the recent Los Angeles fires of 2025, as well as others who have endured individual, isolated blazes. It asks: how does fire shape artmaking in the days that follow catastrophe? And how does it continue to burn years—or decades—later? The artists who have participated in this exhibit in truly fascinating ways include: Christina Bothwell, (see sculpture below) Jacy Catlin, Jamison Carter, Margaret Griffith, John Knuth, linn meyers, Catherine Ruane, and Camilla Taylor.
Track 16’s East Los Angeles location is featuring Eve Wood: Ravenology. This is a series of works on paper that explores Wood’s surreal fascination with the black bird. In some works the raven acts as a sidekick – equal parts protector, companion, and tormenter. In others, the ravens take on human-like form, preening in couture gowns. Thru May 17, 2025.
Laura Karetzy: Liar, Liar continues at Luis de Jesus Gallery. Karetzty’s approach is hybrid of oil painting, clay sculpture, woodcut, and sgraffito, her compositions carve paint into relief surfaces, apply ceramic glazes to render illusionistic space, and push the boundaries of the rectangular canvas to challenge traditional narrative structures. Thru May 31, 2025.
IN THE MUSEUMS
The Laguna Beach Museum of Art currently has 2 exhibitions of work by women artists. An Independent Brush is a celebration of the work of Donna Norine Schuster (1883-1953), a California artist who hasn’t had a solo museum exhibition in over 40 years. Schuster was one of the founders of the Group of Eight, one of the first organizations for the exhibition and sale of Modernist works in Southern California. Born into a privileged family, Schuster had the resources to continually experiment. This led to her working in a large variety of subject matter and styles unlike other artists of the time who depended on marriage and commercial art gallery representation for success and stability. The exhibition endeavors to bring light to Schuster’s artistic talent and the impressive scope of her body of work. Thru September 7, 2025.
Also on view is Carole Caroompas: Heathcliff and the Femme Fatale Go on Tour, a series of works created between 1997-2001. Here, feminist artist Carole Caroompas took inspiration from the lead character in Emily Bronte’s 19th-century novel Wuthering Heights, turned him into a rockstar, joined him with the self-inspired, dangerous sexual presence, the “Femme Fatale,” and sent them on a journey of desire and destruction. Throughout her career, Caroompas (1949-2022) drew from a diverse array of sources, including art history, rock music, zines and magazines, literature, film and advertisements to both reflect and subvert gender roles, power dynamics and the construction of identity. These works are dynamic in their hybrid forms and color, involving periods of intense research, sketching, drawing, painting, collage, embroidery and other approaches with found materials and on canvas. Thru July 13, 2025.
Continuing at the Getty Research Center is What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999. It is actually a pop-up reading room surveys a global history of photobooks by women photographers from the Getty Library. As part of an international series showcasing the 10×10 Photobooks’ catalog What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999, it offers an inclusive revision and remapping of the photobook canon. It is complemented by notable photobooks by Southern California women artists after 2000. Thru May 11, 2025.
Diary of Flowers: Artists and their Worlds brings together over 80 artworks from MOCA’s renowned collection, demonstrating how artists create their own worlds through their art–building networks, circles, and mythologies. The exhibition features work in all media across different geographies, cultures, and periods, by artists including Belkis Ayón, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mona Hatoum, Candice Lin, Annette Messeger, Wangechi Mutu, Lucas Samaras, Mohammed Sami, Tunga, and Haegue Yang, as well as a gallery dedicated to Nan Goldin. Continues Thru January 4, 2026.
Also continuing is Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe at the California African American Museum. “During the last fifteen years of her life, artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1900–1982) lived on Paces Ferry Road, a major thoroughfare in Vinings, Georgia, and welcomed visitors to her “Playhouse,” which she decorated with found-object installations, handmade dolls, chewing-gum sculptures, and hundreds of drawings.” (CAAM).
Thru August 17, 2025.
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