STUDIO-ONLINE

Video Interview by Los Angeles filmmaker Veronica Aberham

Diane Holland is an Intermedia artist who uses various studies and media to place her work in context, centered from her own life experiences. Deriving inspiration from her early mentors, as Emilie Conrad from the Continuum dance movement, Faith Wilding from her early art education at Immaculate Heart College and her first exposure to more feminist roots. She lends a unique intellectual wisdom that inspired us to create this 10-minute video presentation. Diane summarizes her work in a few words: “Everything that I’ve done is a statement on the human condition which I will call cultural imprinting and my job breaking it down into basic English is getting the information out there.”

Diane, well beloved in the LA art scene, presents to us a dance demonstration and some key inspirations that showcase her process, thoughts, and visual arts portfolio and her surrealist moves has a genius that gives us a glimpse into her working process as artist, which is raw, natural, and rarely seen.

In this interview for Studio Online you have the opportunity to experience and learn what is probably most important to her, her performance. She states: “As a visual artist, I want my performance to take on the ideas and energy of paintings, sculpture, and collage.”

Diane is an MFA graduate from the Otis Parsons School of Design. She has had a number exhibitions and has received awards for her work and has been featured in various publications.

To learn more about Ms Holland please view her video interview and exhibit.

For additional information please visit the artist’s website.

Video Interview by Los Angeles filmmaker Veronica Aberham

John Paul Thornton was classically trained at the Otis Parsons School of Design and California State University at Northridge, where he received his B.A and further training working with two legendary artists Hans Burkhardt and Saul Bernstein. During his studies, they challenged John to find a true purpose to his art making.

John reflects, “Their message was paint your time and to connect with things that are universal and could appear in any time period historically, but find in your period of time what is vital and real, paint the truth.”

John’s desire to find the “truth,” landed him a job as an art teacher at a school for runaway kids. He looks back, saying, “I got to learn their stories and their stories were so impacting to me. I had come from a middle class family in the San Fernando Valley and I was suddenly meeting kids from the inner city, kids from broken families with histories of abuse. What happened there really changed my life.”

John’s truth started with a series called, The Missing Children – Portraits of Hope, an ongoing body of work for which he still receives international recognition, it led to other opportunities working with underprivileged children around the world.

“I started getting these invitations to work in other countries. I worked in Japan and was teaching projects in China, working in Mexico, Europe, and Haiti with the United Nations and what has been exciting for me is that my art isn’t about my paint, it’s about the people and the experiences that its given me.”

Through his journey, John found an art that heals, a truth, and the real power of art. This Summer he worked in Haiti on Girls United Haiti, together the United Nations Foundation, the Merridan Health Foundation and Full-Circle Learning.

“Imagine a country that has gone through trauma, an earthquake or hurricane and is it possible to go into the ground, impact a group of young people and through art and creativity empower them to become leaders in the community. And can you do this in two weeks?”

It’s this kind of challenge that motivates John and gives him a purpose to his life and to his art. “I keep getting this message, you’re on the right path with your work. Keep going. This is what you are meant to do and art is your tool.”  For more of John’s story and art demonstrations, please watch his video documentary here on Studio Online.

John has taught at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California State University of Los Angeles, Pierce College, the Los Angeles Unified School District Conservatory of the Arts, and the Sophia School of Painting in Tokyo, Japan. He also served as Art Education Coordinator with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs working on projects with MOCA, the Getty Research Institute and on International exchanges with Taxco, Mexico. John Paul’s paintings are in numerous private collections. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter.

For additional information please visit the artist’s website.

Video Interview by Los Angeles filmmaker Veronica Aberham

We are pleased to present Willie Middlebrook, an award winning photographer, whose work, from the 1970s to the present, is a historical record of the American culture.

The 1965 Los Angeles riot ripped apart the progress made thus far by the civil rights movement, causing more problems and poverty in the growing African American community. Just when a seed of hope had emerged, many felt they slipped back into new hardships, reminiscent of the past, plagued with gangs, street drugs and increased racial barriers and tensions.

Willie Middlebrook was challenged by this environment, but somehow managed to rise above it. Instead of allowing the world to close in around him, he found protection in the family unit, taking in their successes, shutting out the background noise that worked so hard to destroy much of his community. Willie chose to follow the good advice from his father, meeting positive role models.

Willie has dedicated his life to the arts and to giving back to the community. Willie reflects, “Artists get involved. You’re either totally self involved or you get involved in everything else and that everything else is the community around you so it’s just an expansion of that.” With each photo and digital creation Willie shaped and molded the true light and essence of people, becoming a well-respected artist in the community. Not only does he gives back with his art, but he also gives back something more precious, hope. “ I wanted to show black people in a true light, as true as I see it.”

From his father’s positive influence on his life, to the training he received at Compton College, to the community services he provided through the Communicative Arts Academy and the Watts Towers Arts Center, Willie’s determination to reach for better has created the artist we now know as MONK, or Willie Middlebrook.

For the exhibit we selected works from various projects, including: Early Work Series, 1977-79; Early Influences; Skid Row, 1977-1980; WATTS, 1979-1982; My Father’s Funeral, Our Father’s Funeral, 1979; LA Weekly Early – Middle 80’s; Medical Photography; Portraits Of My People, 1990; The MONK Project; from FREEDOM to slavery to Freedom? and Black Series IN PROGRESS.

For additional information please visit the artist’s website.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 7-10pm

The exhibition features the artist’s newest and most ambitious work to date, showcasing more than twenty canvases and large-scale woodcut sculptures up to fourteen feet high. Supine has transformed the entire gallery into a personal installation space, covering every inch of floor, wall and ceiling with silk-screened wallpaper, his signature fluorescent colors and dreamlike narratives.

LADYBOY references the “genderqueer”. Supine describes the title’s significance as “the marriage of opposites in one person – comparable to the technique of collage, combining seemingly disparate images to reveal something that wasn’t previously apparent”. An intimate encounter by the artist with a ladyboy in Bangkok served as the stimulus for this exhibition.

New Image Art Gallery
7908 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90046
(323) 654-2192
www.newimageartgallery.com

Video Interview by Los Angeles filmmaker Veronica Aberham

Ms. Hernández’s life has been dedicated to the arts, furthering the social causes for both Mexican Americans (Chicanos) and Latin American women for forty years. Her work facilitates feelings of empowerment, undoing the adverse effects of decades of abuse, stigmatization, and racial injustice. Through her motivational murals and artwork, what she refers to as her “image support”, people gain the benefits and appreciation for their culture.

Judithe’s association with Carlos Almaraz, during her graduate studies at Otis Art Institute in 1977, led her into becoming the fifth member of Los Four, a powerful group of artists during the Chicano Power Movement and setting the stage not only for change within the neighborhoods of East Los Angeles, but also establishing a legacy and career deeply ingrained in her roots.  Creative Review, London 2009, published an article about Self Help Graphics (SHG) of East Los Angeles, crediting Los Four for the visual language of the movement. Judithe’s response was quite humble, “My God, I never thought of it that way and I never bumped into anyone who said that to me, but it’s very flattering if that’s true.” By following their hearts and being creative, using education to promote freedom, a visual language was born. Los Four showed that by banding together, youth could make a difference in their community.

After spending 25 years in Chicago, Judithe returned to Los Angeles, to her roots, still determined to affect change. In this interview she talks about her rich history as member of Los Four and her current show at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. The exhibition, La Vida Sobre Papel, is on view until May 1, 2011.

For additional information please visit the artist’s website.

Opening reception: Saturday, April 9, 6 – 8 pm 

Maier-Aichen’s new works take aim at the characters of abstraction while expanding the photography of landscape. Their poetic nature and monumental status represent layers of media and processes, rendered in both the field and the studio. The artist’s practice of image making is a subversive one, fully cognizant that only in the commingling of genres can an original view emerge. 
 
Aichen’s images originate from sources as varied as documentary or textbook photos to escapist landscape paintings. The exhibition is poised at a sea change, with the artist’s hybrid works fully resolved into gestural and handmade pictures. The critical assertion is that the new works function interchangeably as fully readable and representational images. 

Blum and Poe
2727 S La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
www.blumandpoe.com
310-836-2062

Saturday, March 26, 3 to 7pm on THE AVENUES

For event details: www.avenueswh.com

Christopher Landis, Salton Bay Yacht Club, 1990
Digital Print 30 x 40″

Opening Reception: Sunday April 3, 3 -7:00p

Featuring the work of Bill Leigh Brewer, Cristopher Cichocki, Andrew Dickson, Joe Forkan, Mary-Austin Klein, Christopher Landis, Deborah Martin, Eric Merrell, Joan Myers and Kim Stringfellow

For more information visit: www.saltonseamuseum.org

Pablo Rasgado’s Wall to Wall

and

Christopher Michlig’s Concrete

on view.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 18th, 7-9pm

Steve Turner Contemporary
6026 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 931-3721
www.steveturnercontemporary.com

FREE admission.

Artist Tommy Hollenstein is holding a special charity benefit at the closing reception of his current show “Wheels of Hope” at the Encino Terrace Center on Wednesday March 16, 2011, from 4:00-8:00 pm. 40% of art purchases will go to the participating charity of the collector’s choice: Gettlove, benefiting the homeless; Dream Center, benefiting inner-city families; Shane’s Inspiration, benefiting children with disabilities; Canine Companions for Independence, benefiting the disabled; WYNGS, benefiting those with spinal cord injuries; and the Los Angeles Art Association benefiting emerging Los Angeles artists.

Los Angeles Art Association
Gallery 825
Encino Terrace
15821 Ventura Blvd
Encino, CA 91436
(310) 652-8272
www.laaa.org