The OC Art Blog

Preview, R. Crumb's Undergroud @ GCAC

On Saturday, July 11, Grand Central Art Center honors a lifetime of talent, wit, and carnal fantasies with the opening of R. Crumb’s Underground.  Extending beyond Crumb’s comics, this exhibit includes the debut of his spool drawings and highlights collaborations with other comic artists including his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb.  GCAC is the only Southern California venue to showcase this exhibit, organized by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and is the final stop after two years of touring this show.

 

• R. Crumb's Underground, Organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, S.F. 
• Curated by Todd Hignite, founder of Comic Art Magazine
• Opening Reception: Saturday, July 11, 7-10 pm
• Special Screening of the Terry Zwigoff documentary Crumb, July 11, 7:30 in the GCAC Theatre

sneak peek

 

 

 

show runs until August 16

Now Showing, Irvine Fine Arts Center

Arthur Taussig: Postcards from the Edges of America is a sampling from more than 15,000 photographs taken by the artist as part of a documentary exploring mid and low culture museums.  What could be considered detours and road side attractions are presented as destinations valued for their preservation of culture and history.  Some of the treasures highlighted in the exhibition include: The Yo-Yo Museum, Chico, California; The Mary Kay Museum, Houston, Texas;  The Spam Museum, Austin, Minnessota; The Cockroach Hall of Fame, Plano, Texas; The Pez Museum, Burlington, California; and The Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia, where Cabbage Patch Kids are exhibited in  incubators like newborn babies.

 Also showing at Irvine Fine Arts Center is Mark Mothersbaugh: Postcard Diaries.  For the last 30 years Mothersbaugh has had an uncontrollable urge to illustrate postcards, resulting in as many as 25 a day.  These images, not originally intended for the public, are presented as original postcards, paintings, and prints.  While this collection was originally meant to be the diary of Mothersbaugh's life, titles like Held Captive by his Passion for the Freedom of Technology, Air Marshal Turbulence, and With Malice Towards Penguins sound like only the beginnings of greater stories from this quirky and multi-talented artist.

Both exhibits close July 25, 2009.

Mark Mothersbaugh: Postcard Diaries

United C.A.T in Fullerton

United C.A.T. will be at Chuckwa this Saturday...right in Cal State Fullerton's backyard.  There are sure to be some CSUF art alum in the show as well as other OC favorites. 

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Finishing School and Coagula

Congrats to OC based collective Finishing School for making the cover of the most recent issue of Coagula Art Journal. You can get a copy at all the finer galleries in LA.

Issue #98 features a cover story interview with FINISHING SCHOOL, and artist’s collective that takes activism and aesthetics to new territory… this time it is the food you eat that is being scrutinized and deconstructed. ALSO… commentary by publisher MAT GLEASON, Art Carer Advice by ALAN BAMBERGER, Prose by columnist GORDY GRUNDY, Poetry by GERALD LOCKLIN and cartoons by JIM CARON… PLUS a report card for recent Bergamot Station Art Exhibits.

Forever Fullerton at Fullerton Museum Center

If you like the mid-century style that inspires SHAG, just think, people used to live in homes like that.  Ultra-hip lamps and couches, now the holy grail of flea market fans, were once the hallmark of suburban living.  This forever cool, mid-century standard is on display at the Fullerton Museum Center, captured in black and white images by architectural photographer Julius Shulman.  In Forever Fullerton: Julius Shulman photographs of backyards, schools, living rooms, and kitchens from the 1950s and 1960s hang in the gallery.  Not quite postcards, but not too intimate every photo makes me wish I was there.  Beyond the Bauhaus influences, boomerang patterns, flagstone patios and Eames furniture that appear throughout the images I can imagine Schwinn bicycles, Hula Hoops and “Avon Calling.”  While the photographs successfully capture a nostalgic charm the highlight of the exhibit is a mid-century living room assembled in the middle of the exhibit.  Part Sears showroom, part prize package from Let’s Make a Deal, part Shag painting the living room set includes furniture, paintings, architecture and accessories from the era. The only thing missing is Buddy Holly on his Fender Guitar.

Forever Fullerton: Julius Shulman closes July 19, 2009

Soundwalk 2009 Deadline Approaching

Two weeks remain to submit to the sixth Annual SoundWalk event to be held in Long Beach CA on Saturday, October 3, 2009. Please visit www.soundwalk.org for submission requirements and further information. Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, July 1st, 2009. Get on it folks.

Costa Mesa Day of Art

The City of Costa Mesa’s Cultural Arts Committee’s 1st annual “Day of Art” event will be held today, June 13, from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. This event is designed to make the public aware of the Costa Mesa’s galleries and the artists they exhibit. The event will be free to the public and held at different galleries and spaces around the entire city

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The OC Art Blog Welcomes New Writers

It our effort to expand and increase coverage of the dynamic Orange County/Long Beach art scenes, the OC Art Blog has convinced a few local folks to work for free bringing you the latest and greatest of the happenings in our great county. Without further ado here are the new members of the A team, if you see them on the street be sure to say hello:

Krystal Glasman graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a B.A. in Art Education.  She's currently completing her M.A. in Exhibition Design and working at Grand Central Art Center. She eats a lot of cereal and shop's at Ross.

Director and Curator at The Box gallery in Costa Mesa, Johnny Sampson has been working in the arts for over 10 years. Having spent time as an independent children’s book writer, art model, curatorial researcher, exhibition designer, preparator, and curator, he has worked with many galleries, artists, and collectors and still calls OC home.

Joanna Grasso joins the team in July as soon as she gets back from one of her many international trips. Joanna wears many hats including writer, curator, artist and studio director.

The Tim Burton/CSU Fullerton Connection

The LA Times Art Blog has a story about the Tim Burton retrospective that MoMA will be hosting beginning in November. What the post failed to mention is that one of the pieces in the show will be fabricated at CSU Fullerton by Fullerton students, and it's my understanding that after the piece finishes it's run in NYC it will find it's way back to CSU Fullerton and will be displayed as a public art piece on campus. Way to go CSU Fullerton!

Golden Hands @ Hibbleton Gallery Opens Friday Night

Hibbleton Gallery is pleased to announce an art exhibit entitled "Golden Hands" featuring four artists and illustrators from the United Kingdom: Reena Makwana, Chloe Bonfield, Jennifer Matignas Pitchers, and Millie Easton. The opening reception is Friday, June 12, from 7-11pm. Refreshments will be provided by The Cellar Restaurant.

WoW @ Laguna Art Museum

This is going to be a gamers wet dream. This weekend the Laguna Art Museum opens WoW Emergent Media Phenomenon. The members opening is Saturday night but the show will be open to the public on Sunday. Some info:

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon explores various forms of cultural production based on World of Warcraft in particular and on gaming in general. While surveying Warcraft's Fifteen-year history, the exhibition looks at artistic practices that have been influenced by game culture. The actual works by the producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment (headquartered in Irvine, California), provide a starting point and reference. 

Fourteen international artists were selected to consider this movement with the following themes in mind: elements of desire, the collapse of fantasy, medievalism, creative critiques, and public intervention.  Artists in this exhibition take on the visual marker of World of Warcraft to consider, implications of gaming, and their greater impact on our culture.  In addition to the works of these artists, fan art and the growing culture of machinima (computer animation that uses the graphic engines from video games) will be explored in this exhibition. 

Gaming is a movement that encompasses a large population and holds the potential to greatly impact society. Jane McGonigal, a game designer and researcher, states, "This is a new generation of hard-core gamers, and what they're doing is generating unprecedented participation bandwidth. They are donating more cognitive cycles, more heart share to game worlds and virtual worlds than we've seen dedicated to any project before." The artists in this exhibition have extended these concerns. 

The exhibition is curated by Grace Kook-Anderson and is accompanied by a booklet published by Laguna Art Museum. As part of the exhibition, you'll receive a booklet featuring essays by the curator; participating artist, Eddo Stern; and the curator at Blizzard Entertainment, Tim Campbell. This booklet is published by Laguna Art Museum.

Participating artists: selected artists from Blizzard Entertainment, including Chris Metzen, Sam Didier (a.k.a., Samwise), Chris Robinson, Justin Thavirat, and Roman Kenney (all from Irvine); Aram Bartholl (Berlin); Jorg Dubin (Laguna Beach); Alexander Galloway (New York); Jacqueline Goss (New York); Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Tale of Tales (Ghent, Belgium); John Klima (Lisbon, Portugal); Cyril Kuhn (Los Angeles); Antoinette LaFarge (Irvine); Mashallah Design and Linda Kostowski (Berlin); Robert Nideffer and Alex Szeto (Irvine); Airyka Rockefeller (San Francisco); Eddo Stern (Los Angeles); The Third Faction (Azeroth); and Zeng Han (Guangzhou)

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