OC Art Blog

Artscene Awards

Artscene just announced that tickets are now available for the Artscene: 25, Los Angeles Art Awards dinner. The event will be held April 18th at LACMA and the evening will consist of an awards dinner and various panel discussions. You will also have a chance to vote for who you think is the most important artist in LA during the last 25 years and who you think is a rising star in LA. Should be a great night.

LAM Auction Sat. Night

The big art event this weekend is the annual Laguna Art Museum Auction. The auction will run from 6-10pm and tickets are $125. You can go to the website to view some of the works available and get tickets. I don't plan on leaving empty handed. Hope to see you there.

Chuck Close Interview

Jit Fong Chin over at SqueezeOC got some time with Chuck Close and you can read about it Here.

Sat. Night in Santa Ana

On Saturday night I met up with Chloe Flores and Autumn Beck the dynamic duo of enView Gallery for dinner at Memphis and to hit a few of the openings that were going on that night. It had been a while since I'd done the first Saturday in Santa Ana and I have to say there was a real good energy all night. There were a lot of people out and about and there was a great variety of art to see. Fun was had by all. Keep up the good work people of Santa Ana. As usual, some bad photos follow:

Autumn & Chloe in front of Memphis

The Line to get in to see Lone Gone John's collection @ GCAC

A peak. Will go back at a later date for photos of Bill Burns, etc.

David Michael Lee at the Memphis Gallery

David Michael Lee

Ran into Carrie Yury at OCCCA

Carrie's work

Julie Easton

Andrea Patrie

Joanne Artman (r) of spaceonspurgeon with her sister Julie

Dominic Dettore @ spaceonspurgeon

Chrystal Romero

Chrystal Romero in action

Liza Coggins in action

Performance @ UNIONartspace

The End

Artists Diana Markessinis & Joanna Grasso

Chloe with Jocelyn and Jeff Foye

Michale Maas, Chela Banuelos & Joseph Banuelos at Amorviejo Art Gallery

Hearts @ Amorviejo Gallery

Collecting as Art

Tonight I had the great pleasure to visit the home of LA based legendary collector Diana Zlotnick. In this day and age when actually having an experience with art is getting trumped by the stampede to keep up with the joneses and make sure the right names are in the collection, it's very refreshing to meet a collector who still values artist relationships and the actual experience that a viewer can have with art. I won't go into all the details about Diana's background (check out the LA Weekly link) but it was a wonderful experience to sit with Diana and hear first hand accounts of LA's art history. It was also great to see a collection that obviously has some very famous artists but also spotlights artists Diana really liked but who never became famous. Oh, and she's still a very active collector. It's days like today that make it all worthwhile. Very inspiring. Some photos follow:

That Marilyn was bought at Ferus Gallery for $50 bucks in 1967. Notice the Ruscha, Wallace Berman's, Chris Burden's, etc.

Diana in front of her Mark Dutcher wall.

Dutcher Flowers, Kaz Oshiro Washer/Dryer, Warhol Race Riot

Ed Ruscha (L) with Ed Giardina wall piece.

I could go on....

OC Weekend

Lots of art to see in OC this Saturday night. I'll be loitering in Santa Ana. Hope to see you out and about. First up:

Untitled Love Project Opens at J. Flynn Gallery

Bill Burns & Long Gone John's living room opens @ GCAC

Feng Shui opens @ Union Art Space

RAW opens @ spaceonspurgeon

Self Perceptions opens @ OCCCA

Made in California opens @ the Brea Gallery

Richard Chang On Chuck Close

The OC Register's Richard Chang Visited OCMA's new Chuck Close print show and writes about it Here.

OC Weekly in Turmoil? Commie Girl Gone!

Last week Will Swaim editor of the OC Weekly since it's inception in 1995 resigned and now I just discovered that Rebecca Schoenkopf aka Commie Girl has resigned effective immediately. This is quite a blow to the local art community. Say what you will about the Weekly, they were the only local paper that consistently visited and wrote about local art exhibits (on a weekly basis). I'm especially bummed because the Weekly, via Rebecca has always shown support (even when she didn't like the shows) of what we were doing at the Office, starting with sending a writer out to the space during our first show. In this age of drastically decreasing visual arts writing this is quite a blow. Good luck in your new endeavors Rebecca. We will miss you.