Keeping up with Kathryn Jaroneski: New Work, New Studio

Kathryn Jaroneski is an abstract painter who lives in Los Angeles. I really enjoyed her solo show "Looking for something and maybe almost finding it" in Silverlake. Since then she's shown some more, and she was accepted into Roland Reiss' Painting's Edge, the advanced painting residency in Idyllwild, California.


Now she's got a new studio, and she's doing new things. Her sharp instinct for color and composition threads through her work as she explores brighter shades and experiments with technique.


:: bogna ::

I have officially been podcast'd...

How cool! It's an audio version of the ArtScene review of my solo show Safari Americana: Scenes of Delight. Here is a link to the whole podcast on ArtScene:

:: bogna ::

Group Show at the Bird Museum

To those who think art is for the birds, artist Michael Giancristiano salutes you! He has recently created the Eli Bird Contemporary Art Center, a miniature museum in which
he curates art shows with accurate miniatures of original fine art pieces. I am happy to say his first show features a wide range of work from many contemporary artists, and it includes a miniature of my abstract color photograph the abyss.

I can usually spot Giancristiano's work right away. He knows how to work with wood and media to create something elegant yet organic. I've mostly seen his 'On Thin Ice' series of paintings on plywood which minimally reveal the deeper layers of his work, showing a process that feels persistent, measured, and natural.

As for the Eli Bird Contemporary Art Center, otherwise known as the EBCAC, part of Michael's concept is to have work that invokes nature, and I believe that the EBCAC shows will also benefit children's foundations.


The inaugural EBCAC show has work by the following artists:
Lori Agostino, Dori Atlantis, Arlene Bogna, Paul Blieden, Richard Bruland, Ellen Cantor, Rebecca Hamm, Yoichi Kawamura, Linda Kunik, Daniel Lara, Lynda Lester, Erika Lizee, Rebecca Lowry, Freyda Miller, Amandine Nabarra-Piomelli, Hung Nguyen, Ana Osgood, Paul Pitsker, Bryan Ricci, Gina Stepaniuk, Elizabeth Tobias, David Eli Vaughn, Valerie Wilcox, Karen Frimkess Wolff, Kyoung Ha Yoo.
It's nice to see how many artists find Giancristiano's concept absolutely irresistible.

:: bogna ::

A shout out to the Stripe Factory

I recently wandered into the gallery in Chinatown known as Sister and ran into 'Stripe Factory' by artist Danica Phelps. Stripe Factory is a series of panels with perhaps thousands of little stripes arranged on them. Meticulous? Yes. Fastidious. Oh yeah. Method to the madness? Absolutely. Apparently the artist really made these panels factory-style with assistants to help make all the stripes in the name of efficiency.
What's nice about these panels is how different they seem when viewed from different distances. From one vantage point, a panel seems to hold purely an abstract texture. If you get a little closer, you can detect a pattern. From one angle there is a slight optical illusion, from another you can really see the detailed work. And if you get a little closer, each little piece of a stripe has its own shape and integrity, which can start to feel maddening when seeing so many of them. And I mean maddening in a good way. It's a nice exercise in seeing the forest, or the trees, or the veins of each leaf, depending on a couple of steps.

:: bogna ::

(Detail of a panel from Stripe Factory)

Getttin' ready for SAFARI AMERICANA

Yes, it's just around the corner. 'It' being SAFARI AMERICANA: Scenes of Delight, my solo show this summer at Gallery 825 in Los Angeles. I'm excited that I get to have the big space that I wanted in the back, and I get to fill it. And I will. With big, fun colorful images taken with toy cameras from my road tripping. And it's analog, baby. Except for the multimedia component of course. But it's mostly large format color photographs dominating the walls with the images that dominated me when I saw them in "real" life. And since I am about to experience a very rewarding process both as a visual artist and as a filmmaker, I am pulling up my sleeves, rubbing my hands together, and giggling on the inside. I cannot wait!

Is it Art? Or is it Real Estate?

There is something amiss this holiday season. News of the strike hasn't gotten any better, the housing sector is the red-headed stepchild of the economy, and arts funding has been cut again after promises of substantial increases. It's pretty blah, blah, blah. And that's just in Los Angeles.

But that feeling of something wrong is not just "the holidays" or "an LA thing." Wrong things happen everyday, around the world, and have been for quite a while now. And you are not the only one to feel that.

A Polish businessman and philanthropist, Daniel Czapiewski, decided to express that notion of dissonance by building an upside-down home, which brings tourists to the tiny Polish village of Szymbark. This isn't just an architectural whim, this is intended to let the visitor get in touch with a deep feeling of dischord, followed by nausea and dizziness, as an emotional metaphor for experiencing inhumanity.

So if you ever thought that a humanist who happens to be president of a wooden home manufacturing firm couldn't possibly be an artist, aren't you glad you get to think again?



:: bogna ::

Looking for Something

If you are looking for an antidote to the kitsch trend in art this summer, then look just a little further, like towards Hyperion and Rowena in Silverlake, CA.
"Looking for something and maybe almost finding it" is the title of Kathy Jaroneski's solo exhibition at the Silverlake Neighborhood Council.
Her paintings have a quality of seeing both through and far into an introspective reality.
The color composition is bold and soothing at the same time, like good design, but the forms, strokes, and drips of paint have a motion which makes the paintings come alive.
There is a tension in her work, a dichotomy where discipline meets emotion. Color logic rules over expressive brushstrokes in "Silvia's Lake", while a light palette serves to offset an aubergine storm in "Aubergine #2". It lulls you in then shakes you up. Definitely a must for anyone seeking some emotional authenticity in a season of empty blockbusters and subprime refinancing.

On another note, let's hear it for seeing something you weren't really looking for in the first place, and would rather not have seen, but now that you have you can't help but grin a little. I found myself grinning at the Claremont Museum of Art when I saw this sculpture. You get the picture. You should see what the artist Amy Maloof did to a shopping cart as well.

Enjoy the heat and keep looking.

:: bogna ::