Full Circle – Paintings by Stevie Chun @ Sagebrush Cafe

Does it sound paranoid to say that we’re seeing circles everywhere? No matter where we look – circles, and circles within circles.

They are in our eyes, double circles of pupil and lens. They are in the sky, one blazing sphere burning down at us by day as another struggles through the night, grasping always to be complete. There are circles made by man down here. There are children swiveling the hoola hoop until they let it fall at their feet. And it all repeats. Cycles. Circles within circles.

It’s all connected. It’s all about connection.

As Stevie Chun writes in her artist statement for the show:

The circles in “Full Circle” signify events in life. These life events are monumental in shaping who we are as individuals while connecting us to one another, all of them, big and small.

For this series, Chun is painting with ink and watercolor and attaching the paintings to wood. Each piece features a multitude of circles, which Chun describes as a “modest shape” but one that also “has many symbolic meanings across cultures. Circles represent the complexity and completeness of life. In this circular form we can all be connected – able to find common ground.”

An ancient symbol of unity, the circle also evokes notions of the cycle of life, tying it to the most fundamental mythologies of origins – life emerging, cresting, blazing a fullness of being, and returning from whence it came.

The images here recall the feeling of first seeing deep space telescope images from the Hubble – bright galaxies wheeling reaching back toward beginnings too dim to recall.

But the brightness is what we see in those telescopic images. The fecundity of the cosmos…shining like a party in the distant corners of the sky. Each image, like each piece in Chun’s “Full Circle,” is a celebration of this well-spring, this energy.

Showing Now:

Full Circle

Paintings by Stevie Chun

at Sagebrush Cafe

42104 50th Street West

Quartz Hill, CA 93536

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Masquerade: Art Auction & Fundraiser

The Lakes and Valleys Art Guild is putting on a Masquerade Art Auction and Fundraiser on September 8 at the Graphic Experience Gallery in downtown Lancaster.

The Lakes & Valleys Art Guild is one of the most active arts groups in the Antelope Valley and this event promises to be one to get up and get out for.

Llano Art Project Set for Release

Special notice contributed by Larissa Nickel:

The rural Los Angeles County high desert region of Llano, California has historically been defined by innovative people willing to explore and define a new sense of place. “Yestermorrow Llano: An Artist’s Field Guide to Llano, California” introduces the past, present, and future narratives of Llano including its relationship to the local, regional, and global contexts of place—and their own yestermorrows.

Yestermorrow Llano: An Artist’s Field Guide to Llano, CA

Date: Saturday, July 7, 2018

Time: 10 am-12 pm (noon)

Location: Blue Sky’s Bistro

12822 Pearblossom Hwy,

Pearblossom, CA 93553

Throughout the feminist geography field guide are cultural references, historical clippings, an artist’s archive, educational prompts, and collaborative activities to activate your sensory and artistic experiences of Llano. Create perfume, form a book club, make a recipe, or discover, map, architect, and construct your looking glass connection to the high desert by envisioning a geographic imagination and aesthetic experience of place through Llano’s cultural memory, collective present, and social futures.

Visitors at this release event can stop by the courtyard at Blue Sky’s Bistro to receive a free contemporary wallpaper design of Aldous Huxley’s “Crows of Pearblossom,” discover more about Llano, including its sights, sounds, tastes, and smells, and play a speculative design game of New Llano utopography to reveal the futures of your own experimental utopian communities.

“Yestermorrow Llano” is supported by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Antelope Valley Arts Outpost creative placemaking initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council with support from Metabolic Studio.

Outpost partners include: the Otis College of Art and Design MFA Public Practice program (Otis), the Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH), the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance (GAVEA), the Department of Regional Planning, and the Office of 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

Yestermorrow is a platform for cultural innovation and collective public engagement designed by Larissa Nickel to present new museological and archival perspectives to our past, present, heterotopian, and future experiences of place. Her work can be found at larissanickel.com

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This article was contributed by the artist behind the project, who has been involved in a number of projects highlighting the art and ecology of our desert region: DEHSART & Hinterculture and others.  Take a look!

Conjuring Marz

If you grow up in a family of artists, it’s not always easy to be an artist yourself. Instead of being “the creative one” and standing out, your creativity is given automatic comparison. Any artistic freedom and open-ended exploration of ideas can be dampened by a sense of a pressure to compete or to perform at a certain level. It can drive you away from art entirely.

With an artist for a mother and two artistically talented older sisters, Maggie SanFilippo was not always sure that she wanted to enter the fray. She followed her own path. But – and here’s the thing – that path seems to have always pointed back to art.

Doing costume design in the film industry and working for years as an entrepreneur in the area of vintage and hand-made furniture, SanFilippo never strayed far from art, even if she didn’t think of herself as an artist. She works in fields where design and aesthetics are central. Her furniture work in particular had her hustling to rescue and refurbish furniture, applying some imagination to give life back to thrift store finds and in that way bring new ideas to life.

She found herself naturally drawn to musicians and photographers. Maybe she tricked herself in a very quiet way into becoming an artist despite the fact that she wouldn’t have given herself that title. Or maybe she was just waiting for the right encouragement.

When her boyfriend and business partner, musician Ainsley Hubbard encouraged SanFilippo to take her occasional sketches and run with them, the moment seemed right and she did.

In Conjuring Marz, SanFilippo’s show at Sagebrush Café and her first solo show – you can see the process of “running with it” at work in a collection of pieces combining sketching and water color that become a sort of jazz-couture style: firm lines and inventive improvisations of color, gesture and attitude that bring to mind both Ella Fitzgerald and Coco Channel.

And there is a very deliberate harkening back to the past in Conjuring Marz. SanFilippo was inspired to create some pieces for the show while she was watching Feud, the television series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, figures of glamour and great emotion – and a scrappy determination to insist on themselves and on their own success.

The style that is at work in Conjuring Marz calls on a certain understatement that hides in plain sight. Many of the pieces contrast vivid splashes of color with images of composure and self-possession. There is something in the drawn figures that the color points to, but the faces aren’t giving anything away.

So the joy that seems to shout itself from the bright and quite direct works in the show becomes at least a little bit complicated. There is something else here too.

Many of the figures in the drawings are wearing sunglasses, holding something back, maintaining a cool secret. That, in a way, is what elegance is – flair that is at the same time somehow restraint.

In Conjuring Marz, SanFilippo gives us a set of pieces that seem like the result of a meditation on this dance between the said and the unsaid. There is a sense that the stage sees what the actress wants to show but those inevitable off-stage incidents, those episodes in the wings are what stand behind the knowing smile when the actress takes her bow.

Conjuring Marz

Showing @ Sagebrush Cafe

42104 50th Street West

Lancaster, CA 93536

 

 

Graphic Experience & Lakes and Valleys Art Guild present “Riding Coat Tails”

Graphic Experience & Lakes and Valleys Art Guild present “Riding Coat Tails”

A Spontaneous Art Show Showcasing Local Talent

 in the High Desert Communities.

Lancaster, California June 17th, 2017 – Graphic Experience and Lakes and Valleys Art Guild invites the surrounding community of Antelope Valley to attend “Riding Coat Tails” art gallery opening reception, on Saturday June 17th, 2017 from 4-8 pm.

This art event will be held at the Graphic Experience Gallery located at 622 West Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster, CA 93534.  This event is free to the public.

The opening reception will include music, hors d’oeuvres, and the opportunity to meet some incredibly talented artists.

Within the High Desert communities, opportunities for local artists are growing with each year that passes.  Graphic Experience and Lakes and Valleys Art Guild are excited to be a part of it.

There are multiple community-based art events on June 17^th.  In addition to the “Riding Coat Tails” gallery opening reception, the Museum Of Art & History (aka MOAH) will also be hosting their “32^nd annual Juried Arts Festival” at the MOAH Cedar center, which is on the same city block.  If that’s not enough, afterwards you can walk down Lancaster Blvd to enjoy the twelve murals that are a part of a global public-art event called “Pow!Wow!”

The engagement and support of residents like you; will ensure the successful advancement of community-based art for years to come. Visit us Saturday June 17th, and bring your friends and family to enjoy a Saturday on the BLVD, surrounded by art.

If you’re a local artist and you’re interested in exhibiting or supporting more community-based art events, please contact Kristi Arzola at lakesandvalleysag@gmail.com.

The Lakes and Valleys Art Guild is a member-driven nonprofit organization formed in 2003; dedicated to the artists of the communities within the High Desert in and near the Antelope Valley.  Our members are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds – from professional artists, and teachers, to those who have a strong interest in, and love for art.

Our goals are to provide support and encouragement to our artists and give them a place to meet, attend classes and workshops, and to display their work.

It is the goal of LVAG to positively influence the communities.

The Big Draw @ the AVC Gallery

From the Antelope Valley College Art Gallery:

“The Big Draw-Saturday, October 29, 2016 from 11 am-1 p.m. Free and open to the public.

“Drawing is a universal language, connecting generations, cultures, and communities. Join us at the AVC Art Gallery on Saturday, October 29, 2016 from 11 am to 1 pm for a relaxed and fun collaborative drawing event in collaboration with the Big Draw LA!

“THE BIG DRAW LA is a regional celebration of the act of drawing. The Big Draw creates participatory opportunities for people of all ages to discover that drawing can help us: look more closely, inspire creative thinking, communicate with others, and have fun in the process.

“Ryman Arts launched the inaugural Big Draw LA in October 2010. Organizations of all sizes and kinds, from established institutions to small groups, are invited to sponsor, organize, or host an event during the month of October. Led by the Campaign for Drawing in London, the aim is to raise awareness of drawing’s power as tool for learning, observation, creativity, and social and cultural engagement.

“Let’s draw AV!”

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

Admission to the gallery is free. For additional information, please contact 661-722-6300 extension 6215, visit www.avc.edu/artgallery, email artgallery@avc.edu or follow us at facebook.com/avcartgallery.

Antelope Valley College Art Gallery

3014 West Avenue K

Lancaster, CA  91350

Hours  M-R: 9 am – 9 pm / F: 9 am – 2 pm

Palmdale Playhouse: Charles Phoenix: Retro Southern California Slide Show

Charles Phoenix: Retro Southern California Slide Show

Be prepared for your southern California pride to swell when pop culture humorist and author, Charles Phoenix, super charges the classic living room slide show into laugh-out-loud celebration of car culture, space age suburbia, fast food stands, shopping centers, drive-ins, Hollywood landmarks, theme parks, parades, parties, the people who were there- and much, much more!

Sun Apr 26, 2015 at 2:00pm

Adults – $15
Students / Seniors / Military / 12 and under – $10

Keep an eye out for more art events in the Antelope Valley. If you hear about something coming up or want to promote your own art-related event, drop us a line here at the AV Arts Blog!

Find out more about upcoming events at the Palmdale Playhouse at their website. Learn more about Charles Phoenix at his site.

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

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Sagebrush Cafe Hosts Community Photo Scavenger Hunt

The Quartz Hill Cafe’s creative photo hunt is open to the public. It challenges participants to capture concepts and objects related to community in digital photographs.

The scavenger hunt list includes conceptual items like “conservation” and “winter” as well as objects like “trees”.

The first 20 successful participants will win a prize.

First prize is $25 Sagebrush Cafe Gift Certificate.

Full details of the Sagebrush Cafe Community Photo Scavenger Hunt @ www.sagebrush-cafe.com

Contest runs January 1-31, 2010