Reconciling the Horizon – June Marie Milham

There is a school of thought that says we can only know the world through the senses. What we see and hear and feel is not just an impression of a more objective world – what we see and hear and feel is the world.

But what happens when the senses are confronted by contradiction? What happens when we aren’t sure what we’re seeing or hearing or feeling? How do we reconcile the facts that seem to say that the world is not one thing, but several things at once?

June Marie Milham’s current gallery show at Sagebrush Café wades into questions like these, using vibrant colors, mixed media, and complex geometries to approach the concept at the heart of her show – “Reconciling the Horizon.”

The work in “Reconciling the Horizon” brings to life a line from Allen Ginsberg:

Detach yrself from Matter, & look about

At the bright snowy show of Iowa

Earth & Heaven mirroring

eachother’s light

This isn’t Iowa, but Milham’s art evokes Ginsberg’s very intentionally as a means of exploring the ways that the horizon is a location of collapsed concepts, a place where earth and heaven are no longer distinct but instead become blended into one sensory experience.

There is an emphasis here on elements of composition. There are tricks of colors, weighted one against another. There are layers of paint (and language too) that play like memories within the moment of each piece, just like memories inhabit each moment of our own waking lives.

In her statement for the show, Milham talks about how the horizon is a site where things that we usually see as opposites actually meet, pushing us to reconsider the relationship between present and past and between emotion and intellect.

At the horizon, we see that these notions really do mirror one another. Opposites, yet somehow complicit in the very essence of that which exists on the other side of the line.

But there is a high and a low. There is a sky and an earth. These opposites cannot stand together. They must stand apart. Our senses tell us this is our reality. But the theory that our world is only what our senses tell us won’t suffice as a full explanation of what happens along the line of the horizon, that site where opposites collapse into one another.

Milham’s new work takes up this idea as a focus and offers a fluid set of responses – some joyous, some calm, some challenging and wild – and she invites us to reflect with her on this strange place of division that, by some magic, is also a place of reconciliation.

 

Showing at Sagebrush Cafe

42104 50th Street West

Quartz Hill, CA 93536

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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

 

 

Women and Nature: Collages by Ulrica Bell

Energy is a difficult element to pin down. But you know it when you see it. And you feel it right away when you see Ulrica Bell’s collage work.

The energy jumps right out at you.

Bold colors and innovative patterns highlight Bell’s collages, which are being showcased in a new show at Sagebrush Café in Quartz Hill this summer. “Women and Nature” is a collection of new work that promises a fusion not only of mixed media components but also of ideas.

As an artist, Ulrica Bell seems to call on a variety of influences in her work as she knits together a body of ideas, sometimes taking chances, often asserting a palpable confidence, which may be borne from years of teaching. Bell went to college on the east coast, at Bryn Mawr, and built a career in the classroom.

Today, in person, she cuts a striking figure with a balance of deep sympathy and no-nonsense honesty. She clearly sees past the first layer of things – and people – and her artwork invites us to do the same.

If we are going to dance, then let’s dance. If we’re going to speak, then let’s say what must be said. Take the straight path, she seems to say, and we will be where we are going.

What form will this message take in “Women and Nature”?

As an aside: These observations are based on conversations, on encounters with Bell’s work in person and online, and on her social media persona. In sharing a few thoughts there is much left to tell – and to figure out. The art of Ulrica Bell is something to conjure with, to quote a phrase. Something to see for yourself.

Bell is an active and award-winning Antelope Valley artist. At MOAH’s Cedarfest, Bell won a prize for her mixed media work. But she also shows paintings and plans to bring original poetry into “Women and Nature.” These things point to a certain diversity of character that makes Bell difficult to summarize (if one were to try).

This little speech is not a summary. It’s more of an invitation.

“Women and Nature” will be showing from late June at Sagebrush Café.

Bravery Brewing Art Show – November 23, 2014

Bravery Brewing – Supporting the Arts

Antelope Valley College Gallery: PhotoVoice: Look at Me – Disregard the Labels

Current Exhibition

PhotoVoice: Look at Me – Disregard the Labels

Exhibition dates:  August 25 – September 12, 2014
Artist Reception:  Wednesday, August 27, 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Gallery Talk with the Artists at 7:15 p.m.

PhotoVoice pairs photographs and narratives to express the stigma, prejudice and discrimination personally experienced by those who live with mental illness.  Organized by Mental Health America and created by its participants, this grassroots movement is both expressive and educational, granting a voice to those not typically heard in public discourse or debate

The 2013 inaugural PhotoVoice project, “Look at Me – Disregard the Labels” materializes these efforts with a series of elegant posters combining image and text.  The display groups works by artists to emphasize the rich variety threading through each individual’s work.  Photographs range from stark symbolism to whimsy, from the literal to the poetic, spanning the emotional a gamut between hope and isolation. 

A crucial component of PhotoVoice is the communal support and discussion participants engaged in while finalizing these creations.  Having worked closely with the artists, project coordinator Chris Buchanan describes the collection as “a creative gift designed to give the community an inside look and better understanding of what it’s like to live with mental illness while helping our participants move through their individual recovery process.”

PhotoVoice has enjoyed a wildly successful opening year and toured multiple venues, including AVC.  The Art Gallery has the privilege of hosting the works for the first time in a gallery setting.  We hope this new context will extend the discussion generated by these works to pose challenging questions about why art is created, who makes it, and how it functions as part of society.

For additional information about exhibits, please visit our information page.