Art shows come and go, artists as well, but the Redondo Beach Art Group (RBAG) has hung in there for a decade with a range of annual exhibitions that showcase some of the best work being done in the South Bay. The venues change, but this year, as last year, the three-day event is being held in the Redondo Beach Main Library.
“The Power of Art” had its beginnings in 2003 when Nina Zak Laddon and Karen Baughman decided that Redondo needed an art group to promote local artists. Three years later the first “Power of Art” was held, in the AES Power Plant.
“Over 5,000 people visited that three-day weekend in October, 2006,” says Georgette Gantner, who has been involved with RBAG from the start, “and it continues to be one of the most-attended events in the city. Every year since, the location of each ‘Power of Art’ has changed, including the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, Alta Vista Community Center, Eagles Lodge, Cannery Row, an abandoned restaurant, and most recently both branches of the Redondo Beach Libraries. Planning a show of this magnitude,” she adds, “takes months.”
Forty-six artists are in this year’s line-up, the majority of them painters, photographers, and sculptors. The current vice president, Trinity Singer, has seven interrelated porcelain works on view. Singer is also a full-time employee of the recently-opened Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, and she’s been giving plenty of thought to contemporary art in all its manifestations; in particular how we, the viewers, can best relate to what we see.
Talking back to art
True engagement with a work of art, or one purporting to be such, is a two-way dialogue, although mainly consisting of lobbing questions back and forth. We can, of course, sniff at something and then dismiss it, but that’s not what engagement is all about. Modern art can be more problematic since we have fewer points of reference and often a minimal sense of context.
“Contemporary art is difficult to assess,” Singer says, because we can’t look at it and judge it the way we would a Rodin or Michelangelo. “It requires a little bit more from people than art that the Old Masters would have done. Contemporary art asks us to think differently, asks us to question, and often times asks questions of itself”
Without the knowledge or understanding of how art has evolved over the years, Singer says, “It might be a little bit more difficult to get to the point.”
So how do we get closer to the point, or at least to our own satisfactory interpretation of it?
Working at The Broad, Singer says, “I invite people to ask themselves questions. If you don’t like (the artwork), why don’t you like it? What don’t you like about it? If you’re drawn to it, why are you drawn to it? It’s that ‘rabbit hole’ question that artists are hoping that people will be willing to go down. And if you go down the rabbit hole questioning yourself, you will find whatever you need to know about that piece of artwork or the artist.”
Pumping porcelain
This isn’t to say that the work on display in Redondo Beach is going to be baffling to the few and confusing to the many. Paul Blieden, for example, is a noted local photographer who traveled this past spring to an area in France just east of Marseilles called the Camargue, famous for its horses both ancient and modern. His images of galloping horses are immediately appealing, beauty in motion that won’t throw anybody for a loop.
Other work, including Singer’s, needs to be looked at differently. Her “Metamorphosis” series, she says, is “really about organic shapes and forms” made from porcelain, with particular attention paid “to the glazes and how they’re interacting with the surface. It’s not what you would think of as ceramics: They’re not vessels, they’re not plates, they’re not dinnerware.” What they are is this, “sculptural elements in their own right.”
The focus, therefore, is not on utility, but rather on the aesthetics of form and color. This writer admires their cephalopodic shapes, their sense of crawling out from under the umbrella of the predictable. In short, let them swim in the aquarium of your mind.
She doesn’t throw cold water on my interpretation.
“It could be something in nature,” Singer says, “some kind of creature or element of nature that we would discover. That’s kind of the thought behind the series’ title of ‘Metamorphosis,’ to see how things transform.” And then, to leave the answer up to each one of us, she remarks that maybe it is or maybe it isn’t. Now we’re back to having to question the work on our own.
Unless you know of one that I don’t, Singer’s porcelain shapes are more fragile than any squid, octopus, or cuttlefish. “You have a lot of potential for breakage or cracking,” she says, referring not to me (I hope) but to her ceramics. “What I was trying to do with these is push porcelain to its limits and make it as thin as possible. When it’s very thin, it’s incredibly fragile.” This is where the color interplay comes in. Also, “If you get porcelain thin enough, light will shine through it. It becomes like glass.”
Presentation is also part of the package; you don’t necessarily want to be caught wearing sneakers with a ballgown. Singer has made her own pedestals for her sculptures to enhance the overall appearance and effect.
Art as an explosive device
We were talking about the need to ask questions, why do I like/not like this, and so on, but, let’s face it, if an artpiece doesn’t elicit a reaction from us then all the questions in the world won’t matter.
“I think it’s really important that art is a communicator,” Singer says. “If you have a reaction to it then you are communicating with that piece of art. If you have no reaction to it, then (as we cue up Led Zeppelin) there’s a ‘communication breakdown’ and nothing’s happening.”
No fire without a spark, in plain English. An artwork needs to stir or stir-fry our curiosity. And if it doesn’t?
“It falls flat and there’s no way to engage with it,” Singer says. “I personally love the things that make me go ‘What?!’ or ‘What is that?’ Or even things that I’m repulsed by I like because I’m having a strong reaction to it, and that strong reaction says something important about me. And that, I think, is when viewing art becomes fun and interesting and exciting.”
But this means that the artist has to do his or her job. If you’re an “artist” and you’re not pushing the envelope then maybe you should be pushing the broom instead. This is the 21st century, and if you prefer to mimic Cezanne or Renoir, fine, just don’t try fobbing it onto a public that’s been down that road so many times before. Challenge us. Seduce us in a way we’ve never been seduced.
Astrid Francis is one of the artists who has work on view, and her pictures draw us in on many levels. They seem to emerge intuitively, or by chance.
“As is the case with most of my art,” Francis says, “it arrives as a surprise to me. After pouring watered-down acrylics and moving the canvas in different directions, I discover the world I want to portray. Like with ‘Safari,’ I first discovered the abstract shape of a giraffe in the center and built around it, making it a collection of participants in a safari, mostly based on a world of fantasy.” And we, as viewers, are tempted to dive headlong into the picture.
This year’s “Power of Art” has so much quality work because what is shown has been carefully selected. If one or two mediocre pieces squeak by the entire show suffers, but I’m guessing we won’t find any mediocre works here.
As for Trinity Singer herself, “Art kind of explodes out of me,” she says. “For a lot of artists, it’s almost a compulsion, it’s almost like your soul needs to create, and I find if I’m too busy in life to create my mood changes and it alters. When I get back to the space of creation I just feel in tune with myself and the universe around me. It’s just like my natural state of being is creation.”
That’s the spirit, the drive, and if most of the artists in “Power of Art” are on the same page then we’re in for quite an adventure beginning tomorrow evening.
The Tenth Anniversary of the Power of Art takes place in the Redondo Beach Main Library, 303 Pacific Coast Hwy., Redondo Beach, with a gala reception on Friday from 6 to 10 p.m., with Saturday hours from 11 to 7 and Sunday hours from 11 to 5 p.m. Free. Related events take place on all three days, with live music by the Phillip Clark Trio on Friday, live opera by Opera Nova on Saturday, a pastel workshop on Sunday, and so on. Check online for details. www.rbag.org. ER
