Paris: A Living Fantasy – a photography exhibit featuring the works of Hannah Wilson

Event: Paris: A Living Fantasy – a photography exhibit featuring the works of Hannah Wilson

Location: Sagebrush Cafe | Opening Reception: Saturday April 30

Hannah Wilson is showing photographic works at Sagebrush Cafe in Quartz Hill. Those of you with keen eyes and extended attention spans will remember that Wilson has been featured on the AV Arts Blog in the past under a different name – Darla Dear.

Back in 2012, we caught up with Wilson for a little interview and we thought we’d dust it off now to celebrate her new show of photos. In the intervening few years, Wilson took her camera and moved to France.

If you would like to meet-and-greet and pick the brain of this Parisian-American, Sagebrush Cafe will be hosting an opening reception for the new show on Saturday, April 30th at 5 p.m.

 

A Few Questions for Darla Dear

Hannah Wilson is an Antelope Valley native who has taken her camera, her sensibilities and her computer to Long Beach where she studies and produces a blog on fashion and fine art. Her blog and Etsy page go under the name Darla Dear and you can find a link to her page on our side-bar here at AV Arts Blog.

 I had a chance to interview Wilson about her new blog and her inspirations. 

Darla Dear Fine Art Photography & Design  |  Interview

 

What films, if any, have inspired or informed your photography (your aesthetic)?

The french film Amelie is not only one of my favorite films, it has inspired my photography greatly.  Aside from being really entertaining and quirky, every single shot in the film is art.

What inspires me most directly is the use of color.  I’m pretty sure that every single frame in the entire film contains the same distinct shades of deep red, green, and golden yellow. Seriously, the next time you watch that movie, look for the colors!  I very rarely take photographs in black and white, I love color too much.

 

Are there any favorite…objects, places, people, types of people, landscapes, cities, times of day…to photograph?  

My favorite time of day to photograph is when the sun is beginning to set, when the light turns golden.  The warmth and the indirectness of the sunlight at this time of day make everything look more beautiful.  My preferred subjects are nature or inanimate objects.

I tend to shy away from portraiture, probably because photography is more of a personal creative outlet for me, and interacting with another person takes away that element.

Where does the name Darla Dear come from?

In a small way, I chose Darla Dear because I used to know an amazing woman named Darla who influenced my life in a positive way.  I also chose it because I thought it would make a very whimsical pseudonym for me, as the photographer.

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Jasmine Delgado: Mapping Los Angeles @ Antelope Valley College Gallery

Showing at the Antelope Valley College Gallery: Mapping Los Angeles

Jasmine Delgado: Mapping Los Angeles

February 24 – March 25, 2016

Reception:  Wednesday, March 9, 2016 7–8:30 P.M.

Describing herself as “a printmaker, educator, consumer and self proclaimed visual historian living and working in Los Angeles,” Jasmine Delgado is now showing work from a new project at the Antelope Valley College Gallery in Lancaster.

Her Mapping Los Angeles project is a brightly colored, sometimes psychedelic, sometimes decoratively styled, sometimes graffiti- and graphic arts-influenced collection of perspectives on the LA region, its landmarks and its neighborhoods. The grit and the history of Los Angeles are focal to the project as Delgado captures old hotels and local fast-food restaurants in ways that show how lasting the impact of the 1950s SoCal heyday is in LA.

The past is alive in the city of shadows. In this series, that past is presented in all its contradictory vibrance and decay as part of the contemporary landscape.

From the AVC Gallery page:

Los Angeles is a complicated network of neighborhoods, streets, alleys and freeways. Enthralled by the vibrant sights and sounds of the Los Angeles signage, architecture and iconography, Jasmine Delgado acts as a visual historian to document the strip malls, liquor stores, carnicería and machine shops that fill the landscape and provide colorful components of a complex metropolis constantly in flux. Ever since Delgado pulled her first print at a local community college in 1993, she’s been a diehard printmaker. Inspired by the generosity of working in multiples, her work evolved to include the language of spray paint, stencil and fabric to illustrate the impermanence of the LA urban landscape.

Fractured Landscapes & Joshua Trees at Palmdale Playhouse

The “Fractured Landscapes & Joshua Trees” exhibit  is now showing at Palmdale Playhouse, featuring the work of Antelope Valley artists Rose Gonella and Kris Holladay-Fregoso. In addition to this gallery show, which is the first of two scheduled for the spring, the Playhouse has a full schedule of upcoming events beginning in March with The Wizard of Oz.

Recently inviting the community in to watch screenings of classic films like On the Waterfront, Psycho and Double Indemnity, Palmdale’s city art establishment has been staying active.

With its current gallery show, Palmdale Playhouse brings together two formally trained local artists for a show exploring ideas of color, composition and imagination. Both artists may inspire us to see the local landscape a bit differently.

The text below is from the Palmdale Playhouse page.

Fractured Landscapes & Joshua Trees
Artists Rose Gonella and Kris Holladay-Fregoso
Thursday, February 18 through Sunday, April 17
Reception: Thursday, February 18, 6:30-8:30 pm

Kris Holladay-Fregoso

Rose Gonella began making collages in her early 20s, inspired by her aunt’s collage work. She creates her pieces using pictures clipped from calendars and magazines. Some are inspired by a story or song lyrics, others are color studies or simply constructed with a particular theme in mind.

After receiving her Master’s in Art for Assemblage at CSUN, Kris Holladay-Fregoso decided it was time to start working on a series of Joshua trees that had been on her mind for quite some time. Largely influenced by Expressionist Franz Marc, Kris appreciates his fantastic use of color. Joshua trees are amazing and a challenge to paint, but having fun with color is what brings her joy.

 

Tres Amigas – Gallery Show Opening on November 15th at Sagebrush Cafe

When you hear the words “random eclectic art” you probably envision a certain level of vibrancy and energy. That is entirely appropriate for the upcoming group show at Sagebrush Cafe bringing together the work of three of the Antelope Valley’s most established and accomplished artists – Donna Weil, Liz Cotten and Joanne McCubrey.

The trio will show a mix of styles and media that demonstrate a deep creativity, a willingness to experiment and wide range of influences. Some of the influences are recognizably local, with landscape paintings inspired by regional landmarks like Vasquez Rocks. Some influences are more personal and perhaps inflected by distinctly individual histories and motifs.

The show opens on November 15th with a reception from 2-5 p.m. at Sagebrush Cafe (42014 50th Street West, Quartz Hill, Ca 93536).

Pavlina Nichole – Extraordinary Day at Sagebrush Cafe

There are a number of themes at work in the collage art of Pavlina Nichole on display now under the name, Extraordinary Day in the gallery space at Sagebrush Café. Playfulness and fun are the most striking features of many of the pieces in the show.

Bright colors and witty juxtapositions create a sense of almost revelatory innocence – or at least, Pavlina Nichole seems to revel in an ironic innocence with these collage works. The irony comes in the fact that the work on display in this show often uses a consistent and recognizable set of visual codes and cues relating to ideas of gender, body image, sex and sexuality, and, yes, innocence itself.

The art in Extraordinary Day is sometimes about how the world sees us and sometimes about how we see ourselves. It is also about how the imagination stands at the center of each of these directionalities/points of view and how, if a person wants to instill a change in perspectives, the imagination is a necessary part of any self-creation, self-shaping or new world view.

Using images cut from vintage advertisements and fashion magazines from the 1950s (and some from as far back as the 1930s), Nichole’s collages draw a subtle comment on the various sources of our contemporary views of beauty and sexuality – without breaking from the metaphorical and playful codes that characterize the style of each piece.

In her own words, Pavlina Nichole thinks of her art as exploring “the drama of everyday life” in ways that utilize vintage images from a shared history as “a groundwork where I can create a NEW story or moment.”

To risk stretching just an iota, it is tempting to say that Extraordinary Day treats the landscape of 1950s commercial imagery as a pseudo-Garden-of-Eden, offering, maybe, a glimpse of where our ideas have come from and how far (or how little) they have traveled since being ejected from that well-known paradise where everyone had a new car in the driveway, a slim-waisted home-cooking wife and a work-ethic matched only by a great, blustery sense of humor.

That may be taking the metaphor at the heart of these collages past its intended reach, but the iconography here is undeniably blissful, frankly ironic and consistent with a quiet, artistic re-imagining of the ideas of sexual identity and self-image.

Show Reviewed:

Extraordinary Day

Collage Art

by Pavlina Nichole

Showing at Sagebrush Cafe

42104 50th Street West, Quartz Hill CA 93536

David Babb: Between Place and Memory – at the Antelope Valley College Gallery

From the Antelope Valley College emailed press release:

Please join us at the Antelope Valley College Art Gallery for a special public reception for David Babb: Between Place and Memory including a conversation with artist on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 from 7:00 pm-8:30 pm. Visitors to the exhibition can write their questions between now and March 4th, 2015 inside a notebook in the gallery which will become the basis for our conversation with David Babb.

David Babb: Between Place and Memory
February 16-March 20, 2015

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​Antelope Valley College Art Gallery presents David Babb: Between Place and Memory a solo exhibition of mixed media artwork from Antelope Valley College faculty member David Babb whose recent bodies of work use the changing landscape of nature and place as a metaphor to express how we perceive and project our individual identities, histories, and memories. The works invoke the wavering stripes between the earth and the sky, questioning the roaming nature of our perspectives as we move from childhood into our adult lives to envision the residue between the lines of these horizons as dependent on our experiences, location, history, recollection, and momentary personal identities. 

An avid and successful gardener, David Babb: Between Place and Memory highlights the recently completed series of digital transfer works titled “Secrets,” which feature Babb’s nocturnal photographs of flowers from his elaborate backyard garden. The photographs are compiled into illustrations which reference color, beauty, and transience to investigate the mental constructs and psychological landscapes of childhood as a vehicle for representing experiences of magic, fear, discovery, innocence, imagination and the ambiguity of our personal buried secrets. Together with his “Horizon Line” oil painting series of luminous background skies marred by the visual scars of rendered grey experiences, the vibrant lines in the foreground shadow the fleeting nature of our visual memories, the transience of life, and the perception of each of our individual landscapes.

The exhibition includes a new graphite paper tracing and acrylic drawing installation titled, “Trace Memory/Trace Evidence,” which visually captures the fragile process of remembering the past through the random compilation, orientation, and layering of images in a technique inspired by the transitional learning experience of AVC students. 

Visitors are also invited to participate in the community engagement activity “Kid Fears” by writing or drawing a response to the prompt, “What were you most afraid of growing up?” adding to a growing timeline of past and present memories currently on display in the exhibition, transforming the gallery space into a limitless horizon between place and memory–a collective secret garden.

This event is free and open to the public. 

Antelope Valley College Art Gallery
3041 West Avenue K
Lancaster, CA 93536

The Art Gallery is located in building FA1, the Fine Arts Building, located in the Fine Arts Quad on the West side of the Antelope Valley College Campus, adjacent to the Performing Arts Theater.

http://www.avc.edu/academics/kavapa/artgallery/
Follow us: facebook.com/avcartgallery

Antelope Valley College Gallery Hosts: WRITTEN IN THE STARS: The First in a Series of Exhibitions on Arbitrary Systems

Please join us this Saturday at the AVC Art Gallery for the opening reception of:

 

WRITTEN IN THE STARS:

The First in a Series of Exhibitions on Arbitrary Systems

 

Curated by Kellie Lanham

 

A juried exhibition featuring Sarah Beadle, Jenn Berger, Nicole Capps, Josh Cho, Antoinette De Paiva, Alexandra Pacheco Garcia, Shaun Garren, Dave Ghilarducci, Bruce McAllister, Laurence McNamara, Jessica Minckley, Larissa Nickel, Julie O’Sullivan, Brian Palagallo, Matthew Plaks, Jack Reilly, Deana Romo, Benjy Russell, Edwin Vasquez

 

Opening Reception:  Saturday, October 25, 6 – 8 p.m

​

What kind of discourse can rise from a group of artworks that is brought together, not by one curator’s interests and preferences, but by chance, play, and perhaps a little divine intervention?  The artists who responded to the call for Written in the Stars were chosen based on how their astrological charts aligned with the exhibit’s opening date.  After each artist freely selected a sample of their work, the pieces were installed according to astrological sign, transforming the gallery into a zodiac calendar.  Kellie Lanham describes her experimental approach as a means “to ignite a different way of exhibiting, viewing, writing and thinking about contemporary art.”  Please join us this Saturday to meet the artists, enjoy refreshments, and discuss the surprisingly rich and harmonious dialogues generated by these “chance” pairings.

For more information, visit our gallery webpage at:

http://www.avc.edu/academics/vapa/artgallery/exhibitions.html

Collage Art by Eric Martin Showing at Sagebrush Cafe

Collage Art by Eric Martin showing at Sagebrush Cafe

November 1, 2014 through January, 2015

“Making collage art is a bit like dreaming, for me anyway. Even when there is a plan, there is also quite a bit of moment-to-moment decision-making, spontaneity and accident. Pieces develop in fits and starts. You make leaps. Layers of ideas pile one on top of the other. Layers of potential meaning too. Associative thinking runs rampant.

“It’s tempting to wonder why certain images crop up in anyone’s art. And it’s tempting to wonder why certain images crop up in your own art. Why a boat? Why a horse? What do these images mean?

“Carl Jung once said, “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

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“Artists will relate to this notion and think immediately of the creative process – as a way of bringing the inside out, balancing the inner life with outward expression. But is art a way of waking up? Or is it a way of dreaming out loud? Maybe those two things are the same.

“Thinking about Carl Jung and his dream theories I tried to diagnose some of the pieces in this show. That turned out to be a real rabbit hole… They could mean anything. The unconscious mind reads like a horoscope.

“For my part, I think that some dreams do probably mean something, though I couldn’t say what. They may be pedestrian most of the time, just recycling a day’s memories. But sometimes they might be more than that. Discoveries can be made. In a dream, your eyes can be opened. What will you see?”

This is the text of my artist statement. I know it’s weird to put it in quotes since I am the editor of this blog. But that’s what I did, because…I don’t know. I just did.

The UFO SHO is gearing up. Have you sent in your story or your art yet?

Blast off October 11th at Sagebrush Cafe! Do you have a paranormal experience in the Antelope Valley that you’d like to share? Email THEUFOSHO at gmail dot com.

The Antelope Valley is rich with unexplained phenomenon and the goal of this show is to compile these experiences and and have an open discussion about the who/what/when/where/and whys.

We’ll be attempting to achieve this goal (at 6-9pm on October 11th) with:

– Live Space Music
– UFO Stories, Art and Videos
– Alien Autopsy
– Experimentations
– Power Point Presentations
– Alternative Theories
– Ancient Sculptures
– Tribute to Science Fiction Artwork
– Much More!

If you have a local UFO (or any unexplained phenomena) story to share, please send an email to theufosho at gmail dot com and we’ll print it in our UFO SHO ZINE. Thank you!

Call for Artists – AVC Art Gallery – Written in the Stars

This announcement was passed on to us at the AV Arts Blog from AV artist Larissa Nickle.

 

What would an exhibition look like completely divorced from curatorial subjectivity? What kind of discourse can rise from a group of artworks that is brought together, not by one person’s interests and preferences, but by chance, play, and perhaps a little divine intervention? As a way of thinking outside of a traditional relationship of dependency – artist on curator, curator’s discourse upon artwork – I propose a series of exhibitions that are brought together through an application of completely arbitrary systems. From this experiment, my hope is to ignite a different way of exhibiting, viewing, writing and thinking about contemporary art.

The first in this series of exhibitions is Written in the Stars, and will be configured based on the astrological charts of each artist who responds to this call. The collection of birthdates will be given to an astrologer who will select the participants based on each birth charts alignment with the opening date of the exhibition (October 20, 2014). Taking place at Antelope Valley College Art Gallery in Lancaster, CA, the show will be in the epicenter of a desert landscape in which metaphysical energies and practices are said to flourish. If chosen, each artist can contribute any piece of art they wish to show; the work does not have to speak to the astrology theme in any way. If you wish to be considered, please send the following materials to kellie.lanham@gmail.com by Monday, August 18^th:

 

• Your birthdate (month, date, year) and time
• A CV or Resume
• A few images of your work (this does not have to be the piece you wish to contribute)

Kellie Lanham is a writer and curator working in Los Angeles. She is an editor and regular contributor toRECAPS Magazine and Haunt Journal of Art and holds an MFA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of California, Irvine.