CAPTURING A VISION: THE PORTUGUESE BEND TRADITION
Many traditional artists today continue the long tradition of sketching outdoors, en plein air, as a necessary step that leads to an easel painting. Exemplars of this tradition, the Portuguese Bend Art Colony, have captured the Palos Verdes coastline with their oil, watercolor, and pencil sketches at all times of day through the seasons. For the first time, these artists: Stephen Mirich, Daniel W. Pinkham, Vicki Pinkham, Amy Sidrane, Kevin Prince, Thomas Redfield, and Richard Humphrey, have generously agreed to show their oil paintings – each paired with its preparatory sketch.
Capturing a Vision: The Portuguese Bend Tradition gives a glimpse of the creative process; starting with a first plein air sketch to the creation of the final vision – an oil painting, finished in the studio.
A sketch can capture the colors and lighting of a scene, like Tom Redfield’s rich painting of a sunset. Rick Humphey’s pieces focus on pencil drawing as an aid to teaching studio painting, demonstrated in his sketch of Lunada Bay, which poetically captures the detail of the cliff rock formations. You can see the same play expressed in color in the oil sketch, Old Coast Highway, Palos Verdes Drive South, by Daniel W. Pinkham.
Sketches are also an indispensable part of the creative process for artists working in three dimensions. Included in the exhibition are tiny detailed sketches by Portuguese Bend resident Marianne Hunter, used to create her enamel jewelry, as well as mural sketches and maquettes by Steve Shriver (also of Portuguese Bend). And hidden away for almost a hundred years, the beautiful sketchbooks of Clover Cox, sister of Narcissa Cox Vanderlip, for whom Villa Narcissa was named.
On loan by The Explorer’s Club (founded 1904 in New York City) is a rare find – the sketchbook of Albert Operti, made when the artist accompanied arctic explorer Robert E. Peary to document the first expeditions to the North Pole. In addition, we are honored to present Operti’s wall sized painting, recently re-discovered in the Explorer’s Club archives. In spite of the hardships he and other members of Peary’s expedition endured, Operti still managed to record magical moments, like his dynamic depiction of the arctic sunset.
EXENE CERVENKA: LIPSTICK SUNSET
Palos Verdes Art Center / Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education is pleased to announce EXENE CERVENKA: LIPSTICK SUNSET, featuring recent collage art by the acclaimed poet, artist, author, and vocalist of the band X.
The exhibition is on view through December 31, 2017, and was accompanied by a benefit concert for Palos Verdes Art Center held November 4 at Brouwerij West, which featured Exene Cervenka & John Doe of the band X, Mike Watt & The Secondmen and FEELS. More information at onenightonly.live
Exene’s collages mix images and text in a pairing that she has compared to the music and words of songs, creating tableaux that recall Joseph Cornell’s enigmatic boxes, Constructivist design of the Russian revolutionary avant-garde, and the cut-ups of beat artist/writer Brion Gysin – filtered through a lens of punk/folk Americana. Rooted in her practice of art journaling, begun in the mid-1970s, Exene’s collages combine handwork and appropriated images, written words and found text. Similar to her songs, the narrative is not long storytelling, but presents strongly lit windows to a world both perplexing and highly personal.
Justin Favela: Gracias, Gracias, Thank You, Thank You
Following a tradition of social commentary practiced by notable Latino artists such as Coco Fusco, John Jota Leaños, and Alejandro Diaz, Justin Favela’s pinata-shaped sculptures meld memory with humor to reveal difficult to communicate experiences of identity and place. His exhibition at PVAC presents pieces from his current body of work that has recently been exhibited at many venues in his home state of Nevada including Tilting The Basin: Contemporary Art in Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; and is currently on view in Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Place, Denver Art Museum; and the upcoming traveling exhibition in the United Kingdom, Shonky: the Aesthetics of Awkwardness.
Favela spins cultural references—whether pop, family heritage or social—into dynamic, witty sculptural works of intrigue and paper. – Las Vegas Weekly Artist
Justin Favela creates enigmatic works of art through the very DIY medium of piñatas made from just cardboard, paper, and glue. Based in Las Vegas, Favela’s work plays with concepts of Southwestern Chicano culture and the traditional Mexican Catholic interpretation of the piñata … He literally elevates the piñata to a high art context with works like “Donkey Piñata,” which appears to be a reference to Maurizio Catalan’s “The Ballad of Trotsky,” featuring a hanging taxidermied horse. – makezine.com
LANCE GERBER: LINES OF SIGHT (Nāpali Coast)
Architectural section extended through May 27, 2018
Palos Verdes Art Center is pleased to present Lines of Sight (Nāpali Coast), new work by architecture and landscape photographer Lance Gerber. The exhibition juxtaposes studies of a noted Hawaiian Modern house designed by internationally acclaimed architect Gianni Francione, and the tropical forest covering the coastline where it is sited on the Nāpali Coast on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Revealing contrasts of form and pattern, Lines of Sight (Nāpali Coast) speaks to environmental shift, its challenges and blockades, as well as the hopes and efforts to effect change. This body of work is intended to draw the observer in, inspiring closer inspection, discovery, reflection, and wonder.
PALOS VERDES ART CENTER
Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education
5504 West Crestridge Road
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275
pvartcenter.org | 310.541.2479
MINORU OHIRA: MEMORY & NATURE
JANUARY 19 – MARCH 4, 2018
Palos Verdes Art Center
5504 West Crestridge Road
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275
pvartcenter.org | 310.541.2479
Opening Reception, Jan. 19, 6–9pm
Palos Verdes Art Center is pleased to announce Memory & Nature, recent sculpture by Minoru Ohira. Composed of wood, granite, graphite, and resin, his forms are abstracted from the human body as well as vegetal shapes, filtered by the traces of memory in a process of meditative carving. Trained in the classical western art tradition with a studio practice in marble sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts, Ohira furthered his studies with post-graduate work at La Esmeralda, Mexico National Institute of Art in Mexico City, before moving to Los Angeles where he has developed a unique method of constructing large wood sculpture utilizing found objects, including downed branches and construction waste.
Ohira has exhibited extensively at galleries and museums in the US, Mexico and Japan and is in the collections of The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach, California), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Thailand (Bangkok) and the National Museum of Art in Mexico.
In 2013 Ohira was the recipient of the prestigious 26th Denchu Hirakushi Award for the art of wood carving. In 2009 he was awarded the 36th Teijiro Nakagawa Award, the first artist residing outside Japan to be honored with the award.
PLAY: New Work by Silvie Deutsch
June 10 – July 9, 2017
Opening Reception 6 – 9pm, June 10
An instrument. A shape. A structure, a string, a tool, an engine, a lute. A tune, a pitch, a symphony. To chime, to chime in, to tune in, to play, to touch. A sound comes together, lines of resonance spread, and connection becomes possible. A “we” opens in the room.
Play, an installation of interactive sound sculpture, offers the conditions for play and collectivity. All visitors can touch and play the artwork. Accompanying the sculptures is a series of drawings made to blueprint the sculptures’ construction.
As an interdisciplinary and collaborative artist, Silvie Deutsch engages the animate and affective nature of her surroundings, creating interactive, immersive environments with sculpture, moving image, sound, and drawing. Her work investigates the entangled histories of acts of making, often with a particular attention on freeing the potential of string in varied forms, from textile understructures to resonant vessels for sound. Silvie gains intimacy with site and material through historical research, handcrafts, collaboration, and repetitive acts of working. She earned an M.F.A. from UC Irvine and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Deutsch is the recipient of the 2016 Beverly G. Alpay Scholarship, which made this exhibition possible.
2018 Annual Student Art Exhibition
May 4 – May 27
Reception: Friday, May 5, 4-6pm
Palos Verdes Art Center/Beverly G. Alpay Center for Arts Education proudly presents its Annual Student Art Exhibition, an exhibition featuring Palos Verdes Peninsula student work.
This exhibition will highlight this year’s artistic creations from Palos Verdes Art Center school-based outreach program Art At Your Fingertips. Additionally, there will be a showcase of work produced in the PVAC artist residencies held throughout the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, and works from the inaugural Wessel Photography Program, held in Harbor City.
Art At Your Fingertips, a 42-year old outreach program of PVAC, reaches 7,000 students annually on the Palos Verdes Peninsula with additional partnerships in Title 1 Schools throughout Los Angeles County. Run completely by parent volunteers, AAYF’s paramount objective is to help every child feel comfortable using art as a means of communication and expression. The projects on view for this exhibition include: “Forms in Movement,” “Desert Nocturnes,” “Up Close and Personal,” “Harlem Renaissance,” and “Box Trolls.”
