Higher Branches, Deeper Roots – South Bay’s Twigs art group shows in L.A.

They lightheartedly called themselves the Twigs after branching off from a larger art group, but in the 15 years since then this sextet of South Bay artists continues to push forward and break new ground. They’re not youngsters, but they have the passion of youth and each one works daily at his or her craft. Their most recent work goes on view January 2 at the Artcore Brewery Annex, with an opening reception on Sunday, January 4.

Who are the Twigs? Marianne Scolinos (Hermosa Beach), Allen Bollinger (Hawthorne), Frank Matranga (Manhattan Beach), Winston Marshall (Lomita, formerly Hermosa Beach), Michael Rich (Hermosa Beach), and Bob Witte (Redondo Beach). Like the Rolling Stones, they’ve been making artistic noise since the early 1960s.

We met – minus masters Bollinger and Witte – at the Scolinos palacio in Hermosa Beach.

Come together
Originally, the members of the Twigs were associated with the Hermosa Beach Art Group.

“After a period of time,” Scolinos says, “we realized this art group wasn’t for us.” One evening Marshall asked the other five to come over, but apparently he didn’t explain his motive until after they’d eaten.

“I invited them for dinner,” Marshall says. “I understood that we really had a larger idea of art than the Hermosa Art Group, and we were much more interested in promoting ourselves and going way beyond the South Bay as artists. Nobody, except for a couple of us, was really going to galleries [or other art shows]. And so we just sort of joined together as a support network. We’re not a club or a group as much as just friends. We’ve been friends for 15 years now, and we go to museums and art galleries in L.A. to try to broaden our knowledge and keep up with other people, and promote ourselves.

“We meet once a month in one of our studios,” Marshall continues, “and just talk about art and where we are. And bitch.” Everyone laughs. “We talk about aesthetics, the art world at large, what we’ve seen, the artists that we know…” And although they show as a group, each one hopes to be seen as a creative individual in his or her own right.

“We’re not a group of Sunday painters,” Rich points out. “Every one of us has been trained” – and, indeed, most if not all of them have degrees and even advanced degrees from noted institutions.

“Furthermore,” Rich adds, “it’s all contemporary art; there’s no traditional art amongst any of us: It’s not ocean scenes or waves crashing and that stuff. In most cases it’s very abstract, and we hope pushing some boundaries within the modern art world. If I can comment on the South Bay scene as a whole, it’s not part of the contemporary art world; it’s more based on what’s happened in the past and doing these things over and over again.”

Rich himself began as “a hard-edged painter” and then 15 years ago switched to digital art, with some encouragement at the time from fellow Twig Bob Witte.

“We’re not imitators of natural things,” Marshall says. He spent all of last summer in Italy, above Cortona, painting and filling in a large sketchbook. “Before I went I said, I can’t keep doing the same thing, something’s got to give. There was a pushing of new aesthetics (and) I realized that I had to go beyond where I was.”

Marshall’s an abstract artist, he says, “but I’m not an abstract expressionist. I was doing mostly colorfield for a long time, but now I’ve generated – or degenerated – into shapes that are kind of floating shapes, and now they’re turning into almost bird’s-eye landscapes.”

“We got together at Winston’s house and we realized that we very much agreed with our individual approaches to the art world,” Matranga says. “We all like each other’s artwork, and we like each other personally.”

“What kind of makes us unique about our friendship and our work is that we’re different,” Marshall says. “Therefore we can talk freely about our work, and criticize freely, because we’re not competing against each other.” Proof that it’s been working out, he notes, is that “we haven’t killed each other in the last 15 years.”

Putting in the hours
If we were to delve into their individual timelines we’d seen that each Twig artist has truly come down a long and winding road. Take Frank Matranga, for example: “I opened up my own studio in 1961, and I’ve been on my own ever since. Then in the late ‘70s I was invited to go to Japan – and I was very influenced by the Japanese ceramic arts there.” Even now, years later, he’s receptive to new ideas and influences: “I keep myself totally open to what’s going on in the ceramic art world, and try to keep up with it – but keep a little ahead of people.”

“I started off as a potter in the mid-’60s and was a potter for 35 years,” Scolinos says. Then she became enamoured with painting, watercolors in particular, and created mostly realistic work, flowers and landscapes. “From there, meeting up with these fellows, I have gained an appreciation for contemporary and abstract art. Before that it wasn’t in my purview at all.”

In 2001, hoping to make a kimono out of meshed screen, Scolinos began twisting the material this way and that, and suddenly she was off in a new direction. “They’re all kind of three-dimensional wall paintings,” she says of her rather ethereal constructions. “This is where it’s evolved to now,” she adds, pointing to the wall behind us, “but my work is constantly changing depending upon the materials I use.”

What of the two Twigs not present at our discussion?

Using layered transparencies, Bob Witte gives his photographic collage work a certain enigmatic depth (they bear some visual resemblance to daguerreotypes) that cannot be reproduced in print or online. The images seem to glow from within as if one is looking through a shallow pond at something resting on the sand below and glimmering. The best of these are truly enchanting.

In contrast, Allen Bollinger’s painting is more abstract expressionism. “Allen is heavily influenced by Joan Mitchell’s work,” Marshall says, “but it’s not her work. He’s not derivative, he’s just influenced by that kind of thought process (behind) those fast-moving brushstrokes that are multiple-layered and stay brushstrokes, they don’t become solid.”

Fame, or fortune
To be better known, an artist’s work needs to be seen.

“Although we often show as a group,” Rich says, “each of us is showing individually, in smaller groups or different combinations, and all of us have been shown – certainly not nearly as much as we’d like to have been. Within our lives we’d like to be recognized more, and certainly beyond the South Bay.”

Matranga had a nice taste of that a long time ago.

“When I was in Japan,” he says, “I was invited to be a potter in a studio in Yokohama. I had three one-man shows in Tokyo while I was there. I hadn’t had any major one-man shows up to that point, and then I met someone who liked my work and they featured me on Japanese television. There were articles in the Tokyo Times about my work – and I thought, This is wonderful, wow, this is really where it’s at. To be be recognized internationally, at that point anyway.”

Matranga also has a positive can-do attitude, as when he was once asked if he could create seven 20 by 30 foot relief-murals. I can do that, he told them; but to himself, How do I do that? “And I just dove headfirst into this thing not knowing what to do but I solved it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.” Fifty years later, Matranga is still confident he can solve any dilemma that might arise concerning his craft. “Now I’ve got to get the world to find out about me more.”

“That’s a hard thing,” Marshall says, and he recounts how when he was a student at Virginia Commonwealth University he was the only undergraduate to have a piece accepted into an important art show in Richmond.

“And I thought, Oh, this is going to be easy.” He laughs. “The older you get you find out it’s always about the youth, and looking for the next great thing out there. But we all have the great desire to be shown, and I think my work is extremely current and fresh.”

“We each work every day down in our studios,” Scolinos says. “Sometimes it takes a long time to find out what really works in the composition.” And of course there’s no letting up or giving up. “That’s the important nugget that bonds us all together. We’re just not dilettantes.

“If I don’t have anything in mind,” she adds, “I start cleaning my studio so it’ll be clean for the next project I’m working on. By cleaning sometimes it cleans off my mind too, and I kind of erase all these preconceived [notions] of what I’m gonna do, and it’s sort of cathartic as well.”

“Even if you just go to your studio you’re working,” Marshall says.

“I work every day in my studio,” Matranga says, “but I don’t always dig my hands in clay. I’m thinking and I’m drawing and I’m coming up with ideas.”

In short, there’s no uprooting these Twigs; they remain verdant and vibrant.

Recent work by Allen Bollinger, Frank Matranga, Winston Marshall, Michael Rich, Mariann Scolinos and Bob Witte goes on view January 2, with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m. (artist’s talk at 2) on Sunday, January 4, at the Artcore Brewery Annex, 650A South Ave. 21, Los Angeles. Curated by Lydia Takeshita. Hours, Thursday to Sunday, 12 noon to 5 p.m. Closes Jan. 29. Call (323) 276-9320 or go to laartcore.org.