Ellen C. Caldwell
January 25, 2017, 9:00am
The Art of Resistance
In the last few weeks, artists have gotten involved in creating signs, banners, and other creative march accoutrements for the Women’s March on Washington, as well as at least 240 other domestic and international cities. Artists such as Shepard Fairey, Jessica Sabogal, and Ernesto Yerena Montejano, donated their time and creativity, offering free poster downloads like these. These ten prints were seen in many shapes, sizes, and iterations at marches worldwide. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
"Women’s March 2017" featuring one of Shepard Fairey’s “We the People” downloadable prints as a sign at the Women’s March in San Diego, CA | by Bonzo McGrue is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
December 12, 2016, 8:58am
American Arts Writer Abroad: William Kentridge’s “Triumphs and Laments”
On a recent trip to Rome, Italy, I had the great fortune of seeing and experiencing William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments: A Project for Rome, a vanishing frieze along the banks of the Tiber river. Kentridge is a well-established South African multimedia artist best known not only for his beautiful drawings and animated shorts such as Felix in Exile (1994), but also for his keen humor and stunning ability to shed light upon the darkest of human nature, while ultimately highlighting our human capacity to reconcile, love, and laugh. - Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles (Reporting From Rome)
Detail of William Kentridge | “Triumphs and Laments: A Project for Rome” | 2016, Tevereterno, Rome | Photo by Ellen C. Caldwell.
November 26, 2016, 10:41am
Rebecca Farr's “Out of Nothing” is Everything
Multimedia artist Rebecca Farr’s fourth solo show Out of Nothing welcomes viewers into a personal journey and emotional recovery as she uses monumental oil paintings and sculptural installations to explore the process and aftermath of losing her father.
This deeply intimate work is touching, moving, and beautifully real. During the weeks following a divisive election, many Americans are left lost, angry, and vulnerable, in need of soul searching and nurturing — and Farr’s exhibit offers a safe space for both. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Rebecca Farr | Out of Nothing, installation view | 2016 | Courtesy of Klowden Mann.
September 07, 2016, 3:55pm
Museum Admission: “Vitality & Verve” and Pow! Wow! Long Beach
Pow! Wow! Long Beach, a contemporary art festival, recently took over Long Beach, California — both in and off the streets. Pow! Wow!’s distinct gatherings take place internationally throughout the year with events expanding to Taiwan, Israel, Jamaica, Washington D.C., Singapore, Germany, and Guam — to name a few.
Founded by Jasper Wong, the festival’s inception and inaugural Pow! Wow! gathering began as a week long festival in Hawai’i. During these events, muralists take over the city, where they can be seen working on the murals from start to finish throughout the week. Additionally in July, the Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA) featured an accompanying exhibit Vitality & Verve in the Third Dimension. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Andrew Hem, Edwin Ushiro, and Yoskay Yamamoto Mural for Pow! Wow! Long Beach, Steelhead Coffee, Photographed by Brandon Shigeta, 2016.
September 06, 2016, 9:02am
Light, Letting Go, and the LA River with Debra Scacco
Debra Scacco creates rich, multimedia pieces that play with light, reflections, shadows, walls, and borders. Her 2015-2016 solo show The Letting Go at Klowden Mann was full of works on paper, paintings, and more sculptural installation pieces that reference and play off of nature and geography in aesthetically pleasing and deeply profound ways. – Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Debra Scacco, Installation view of “The Letting Go” at Klowden Mann, 2015.
April 26, 2016, 10:16am
The Slippery Space of Grace Ndiritu’s “Bright Young Things”
Grace Ndiritu’s solo show A Quest for Meaning Vol. 7: Bright Young Things opened at Klowden Mann last week. Ndiritu’s work offers viewers a refreshing mix of definitive push and pulls to the viewer experience.
In a piece called “African Textiles,” for instance, Ndiritu presents viewers with a detailed photograph of textiles, printed on a fibrous paper, thus blurring the line between both textile and photography, representation and imitation. Similarly, in her “Abstract Expressionism” series, Ndiritu paints small works on felt using industrial paint, then she photographs the work, then blows it up, and finally prints it on canvas. This results in a work that then serves as both a painting and a photograph on canvas. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Grace Ndiritu’s installation view of “Bright Young Things” at Klowden Mann, 2016.
April 19, 2016, 9:01pm
Camille Page’s Underwater Wonder
Camille Page’s underwater paintings blend a perfect amount of the figurative with the abstract. Painting with a palette knife in a kind of push-pull-combination of heavy applications of paint and fierce scrapings, Page creates large paintings that feel familiar and momentous.
In this series, Page captures her friends and daughter swimming and enveloped with water in order to paint from the images. With an underpainting below and the palette magic on the surface, she captures action, form, color, and light in a way that invokes a sort of contradictory feeling of both timelessness and yearning for time’s past.
On a recent trip to Kaua’i, I was able to visit her gallery and meet with Page, speaking to her about her underwater series, process, and inspirations. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Camille Page | Dip, 24 x 30
January 06, 2016, 9:42am
In The Studio: Process of a Painting with Dyani White Hawk
Dyani White Hawk’s (NAP #113) acrylic on canvas paintings are bold, delicate, and deeply intricate. Their brightly saturated hues and geometric shapes create repetitious patterns that draw in the eye and compel viewers to want to see more. Upon further inspection, White Hawk’s paintings reveal a trick of the eye in that her brushstrokes mimic and simulate a beaded and quilted aesthetic, all in layer upon layer of fine details and repetitive brushes.
In the Process of a Painting, White Hawk walks us through her step-by-step process from the very beginning in building the stretcher bars for the canvas to showcasing the finished piece, Wičháȟpi Wakíŋyaŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Thunder Star Woman), along with its companion piece, Čhokáta Nážiŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Stands in the Center Woman). - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Dyani White Hawk, Wičháȟpi Wakíŋyaŋ Wíŋyaŋ (Thunder Star Woman), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in., 2015. Courtesy of the artist.
September 25, 2015, 10:32am
The Cost of War with Emily L. R. Adams
Emily L. R. Adams (NAP #117) uses motor oil to create beautiful and evocative monoprints. Featuring prints from U.S. newspapers that quite physically depict the faces of the casualties of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, she ties in the medium of the motor oil as an underlying commentary on both the human cost of and monetary investment in war.
Emily L. R. Adams | Cost of Oil [US Casualties - Afghanistan and Iraq Wars], motor oil and ink on panel, 40 x 40 inches, 2014.
Her work is familiar in that viewers get the sense that they have seen the images before, though it is hard to put your finger on how and why. The recast newspaper images are at once haunting, tragic, and moving, challenging us to consider our role in the war and how we remember both the war and those we have lost in it. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
July 30, 2015, 1:02pm
Small Things with Loud Noise: The Fabulously Sardonic World of Alex Gingrow
Alex Gingrow’s (NAP #116) work is some of my favorite I have seen recently. It is intelligent, sarcastic, relevant, humorous, and resonant. I saw it months ago and haven’t stopped thinking about it.
Taking items as mundane as daily desktop calendar pages, museum wall labels, and stickers, Gingrow transforms them all into powerful agents with important social messages. She addresses the passage of time with unexpected juxtapositions of quotes in the “Disposable Day Desk Calendar” (as the series is titled) with her daily notes in the form a completed sentence “Today I ____”. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor
Alex Gingrow | Calendar Page: part of the This Disposable Day Desk Calendar series. "01.11.13" graphite, ink, and acrylic on paper, 15 x 15 inches, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
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