Art Highlights Magazine by Art Highlights Magazine

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PUBLISHER Ludo Leideritz Ludo@ART-Highlights.com 949 350.9370

EDITOR Eric Marchese Eric@ART-Highlights.com 714 836.1104

ASSISTANT EDITOR Daniella B. Walsh Daniella@ART-Highlights.com

CREATIVE & MARKETING DIRECTOR Charles Michael Murray Charles@ART-Highlights.com 949 306.9640

ILLUSTRATOR Francis Bade Francis@ART-Highlights.com

PHOTOGRAPHERS Ludo Leideritz Charles Michael Murray

CONTRIBUTORS Francis Bade Laura Bleiberg Barbara Gothard Eric Marchese Chris Clemens Martello Pam Price Judy Sklar Jean Stern Daniella B. Walsh

ADVERTISING DIRECTORS Ludo Leideritz Ludo@ART-Highlights.com 949 350.9370 — Charles Michael Murray Charles@ART-Highlights.com 949 306.9640

ADVERTISING sales@ART-Highlights.com

EDITORIAL editorial@ART-Highlights.com

ART HIGHLIGHTS MAGAZINE 333 Broadway, Suite 104-144, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 info@ART-Highlights.com Art Highlights Magazine and website serve Southern California with a focus on Laguna Beach, Palm Springs and neighbor cities. The opinions expressed by writers and contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher or team. Content herein provided has been credited and proofed to the best of our abilities. Art Highlights Magazine is published four times a year by Art Highlights, Laguna Beach, CA. ©2019 ART HIGHLIGHTS

Promoting the Arts, Artists and Culture

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Highlights The Magic of Tony DeLap Endures Over Time 6 Letter from the Publisher 8 Four Coastal Theaters Not to Be Missed 10 Dale Schierholt Captures the Spirit of Artists, Art and the Places They Dwell 15 A Candid Interview With Malcolm Warner 19 Curator of Education Bringing Art Appreciation to the Next Generations 22 Janine Salzman: A Painter for All Seasons 24 Laguna Canyon Winery: Worth a Visit! 28 Artivism THE TELL, Art of Activism THE WALK 30 Lita Albuquerque, Artist & Citizen of Worlds – All of Them 32 Dance, Dance Dance! 42 A Who’s Who of Orange County Playwrights 46 House of Landers 54 Hidden gem: Southern California Philharmonic 62 “What Is Plein Air?,” You Ask 68 Victory Tischler-Blue: Embracing Drama in All Forms 72 Artist Directory 78 Art Highlights Team 96

Francis Bade is a Laguna Beach-based artist who explores mediums as varied as paint, pastels, ink and, yes, wire. Digital works include graphics, animations, prototyping and creations of websites. “Creating the illusion of motion has been the foundation of most of my works," he says. "I am inspired by the great masters, Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo but also Edgar Degas. Android Jones and M.C. Escher. Their beautiful and dynamic work has helped me learn and hone my own creativity.”

Sculptor, painter and prolific innovator

The Magic of Tony DeLap Endures Over Time by Daniella B. Walsh

uring the late 1960s and early 70s, a cadre of young artists migrated from their accustomed urban warrens into bucolic Orange County to help launch the studio art department of a fledgling UC Irvine. This was a time when citrus trees still outnumbered students. Among those nouveau pioneers was San Francisco artist Tony DeLap, a sculptor, painter and prolific innovator who fell in love with the place, and its possibilities, stayed. Since about 1975, DeLap evolved into one of Orange County’s most renowned and enduring artists and educators. He has been nationally and internationally exhibited, his resumé has become a tome, and accolades continue even after his passing on May 29, 2019.

Lompoc In 2000, the Orange County Museum of Art staged a major retrospective exhibit showcasing DeLap’s work including drawings, a few paintings, sculptures and varied examples of commissioned public art. In 2011, the Laguna Art Museum staged “Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development in Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971,” curated by then LAM curator Grace Kook-Anderson. The show illuminated DeLap’s pivotal role in the bourgeoning, albeit hidden amongst Orange groves and right-wing crackpots, fantastic art scene. All that thanks to art critic John Coplans, the first director of UCI’s fledgling art department. It was Coplans who first discovered DeLap in San Francisco and who recruited him to teach at UCI. From then on, DeLap was at the forefront of creative change, along with John McCracken, Robert Irvin, Frank Stella and David Hockney (a member of the “British New Wave”). By DeLap’s account, Coplans staged cutting edge shows on a par with anything seen in L.A or New York.

The Specialist “The school was an active and exciting environment considering how

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few students we had back then,” he pointed out. “There was a high level of intellectual energy due to the department being founded by some dynamic newcomers – UCLA was a hotbed of old fogies by comparison. There was no other school then that was as open and free as we were.” Tom Dowling, a local painter and art gallery designer, took post-graduate classes from DeLap. “Tony is one of the main reasons why I came to UCI,” he said in an interview. Dowling thinks of DeLap as a Minimalist but also one of the seminal Post – Modernists. “His hybrids of painting and sculpture represent a very eccentric Minimalism. Yet Tony is also an exemplary colorist and his references to magic and illusion give his work outstanding depth.” He echoed other artists and critics when he likened DeLap’s work to poetry. “When you look at Tony’s work it’s like passages of poetry – they sing to you.” Painter Gary Szymanski studied with DeLap in the late 80s and credits his mentor for his own success as a teacher. “Tony did not tell us what to paint or what colors to use. When we got into a rut, he told us to change our lives,” he recalled.

Esoterist DeLap was born in 1927 in Oakland. He began to draw at age nine when he copied characters and vignettes from comic books but was an otherwise indifferent student. “Drawing, model-making, magic – everything I was interested in had no future,” he laughingly recalled to this writer. His higher was correspondingly spotty. He studied at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco where he earned an associate degree and skipped further undergraduate work to attend Claremont graduate school for 18 months without graduating. He also spent a summer studying at Pomona College with Millard Sheets, a California Regionalist whom DeLap described as a zippy Winslow Homer. Ultimately, his first alma mater awarded him an honorary doctorate. “I felt very flattered. I’m probably the only one who went from no degree to a bachelor’s to a master’s and Ph.D in 20 minutes,” he quipped. Returning to Oakland he supported himself as a freelance commercial artists and painted after hours. But, in his

words, painting never took and commercial art even less so. It turned out that teaching at the California Collage of Arts and Crafts in Oakland offered both creative and financial freedom. “I could give up scrounging around for commercial work and could apply elements of my knowledge of design more ruthlessly,” he recalled. His lack of academic credentials notwithstanding, he was invited to teach graduate classes at UC Davis before coming to UCI.

Triple Trouble II DeLap embraced Minimalism at a time when Abstract Expressionism, a movement of little appeal to him, still held sway. But, by his description, he did not meet all the requirements of a hard-core minimalist at first. “I came to Minimalism through the back door – rather as a free-agent in a minimalist tradition,” he explained. He flirted briefly with assemblage, and his starkly geometric paintings owing more to Op and Pop art than Minimalism received lukewarm notices at the time. He also studied architecture and model making, two disciplines that shaped his unique creative vision. Consequently, he added an architecture appreciation course to the UCI curriculum. He describes himself as an “inclusivist,” someone who resents the compartmentalization of art, architecture, two and three-dimensional design and craft. “My aim has always been to bridge the great divide between disciplines. Compartmentalization works only to a certain extent.”

Tango Tangles II Intrinsically, DeLap’s aesthetic was rooted in the unfettered lines of Russian Constructivist painting and sculpture and Modernist architecture. Russian painter/designer El Lissitzky’s quasi-architectural forms which he dubbed “Prouns” profoundly inspired him. For example, “Esoterist” and “Red Daub,” relief sculptures crafted from wood, aluminum and acrylic echo Lissitzky’s esoteric forms to some extent. DeLap also found spiritual appeal in Modernist/Minimalist architecture. He particularly admires architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Whitney Smith and Quincy Jones. “They opened my eyes to what architecture could be.” Be it his earliest pieces or the most recent work, the confluence between painting and sculpture, art and architecture and magic

is apparent. The enduring appeal of his work lies in a now you see it, now you don’t framework. Canvas stretched over asymmetrical armatures or combinations of wood, metal and acrylic materials cast shadows on the walls behind them. These shadows, cast as single elongated forms or gradated multiples, change with the vagaries of light. Just as if trying to find the crux of a magic trick, one has to look at DeLap’s work again and again. The secret lies behind the armatures and the edge – always the edge. “The edge is the content of the work. The picture plane is merely a vehicle so I can have an edge,” he explained. “My work has a space-time relationship – it is in constant flux. One has to look across the work to see it correctly.” DeLap worked and lived in Corona del Mar with his wife Kathy in a rare, modernist-style structure a block from the ocean. The house once belonged to Laguna Beach artist Paul Darrow, a close friend from the Claremont days. Apparently unaffected by decades of accomplishments and acclaim, DeLap remained articulate and outgoing without even a trace of selfaggrandizement. The boyish artist seen in early photographs transformed into a white- bearded sage who cheerfully shared his fascination with magic (any kind – sleight-of-hand, magic shows, Tarot cards, mind-reading, extra-sensory perception) with his interviewers. “Tony was forever trying out his latest magic tricks on us,” recalled Darrow a long while back, while also extolling their common passion for British roadsters. His kitchen evidenced another avocation – that of a chef. For a different perspective, he spent summers on family property outside of Vancouver boating and fly-fishing and drawing. “I become a penciland-paper man in the summer,” he quipped. Surveying DeLap’s life and art, it becomes evident that labels and declaratory statements are not what defines the man and his work. As the eye takes in the play of form against light and shadow, passages of Oscar Wilde’s preface to his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” come to mind: “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim...” Delving further into the meaning of art and its use in a framework of morality and, arguably, spirituality Wilde continued: “The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium…”

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Letter from the Publisher

s this year winds down, we are winding up with a new, improved publication, built on the long history of Art Patron Magazine, but with new voices, a new look, and a new name: Art Highlights.

This has been a very swift transformation; my wonderful team of â&#x20AC;&#x153;the best-of-the-bestâ&#x20AC;? experts in art direction, writing and editing have enabled a fluid transition from what was to be a last edition of Art Patron to a new and exciting publication that will fill a much-needed role in the presentation and celebration of the Arts. We will not only enlighten but inspire you, our reader, with meaningful articles that now include coverage of the performing arts: dance, music and theater. The readability of the magazine is also improved, with better pagination, fewer but better-placed advertisements, and text that flows in ways to make your reading a pleasure. As you now see, the improved quality is not only in the content, it is also in the materials and printing. We have teamed up with one of the finest printers in Southern California, Southwest Offset Printing, to print all our editions. Their team of excellent practitioners of the craft is also producing many of the finest publications around, including Locale Magazine and Filmmaker, in addition to the West Coast edition of the New York Times. I feel it is important that you understand what goes into the printing of this publication and what does not. Our articles are curated for relevance and meaningful content. We go through great lengths to scrutinize, edit and fact-check. Our photography is of high caliber. All this is skillfully laid out and arranged to make the best possible presentation, as you turn each page. After the publication is transmitted to the printer, each page group is set onto aluminum printing plates which are carefully checked for any defects. The plates are then transferred to a double-web press, where the printing is carried out onto heavy 70-pound gloss book paper and 100-pound cover stock. We use only the best possible materials to make your reading experience more enjoyable. After printing, the pages are transferred to the bindery for perfectly bound assembly, trimming and packing. All excess materials such as aluminum and paper are recycled. Southwest prides itself on its state-of-the-art recycling program; environmental responsibility is taken very seriously. The end-result is now in your hands, its content is now in your mind, and, if we did it right, in your hearts. Thank you and Enjoy!

Ludo Leideritz

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Four Coastal Theaters you should drop in on

Costa Mesa Playhouse shares its home city and year of inception with SCR Photo courtesy Costa Mesa Playhouse

by Eric Marchese

Theater companies large and small boast some of the best productions around The Southern California coastline isn’t just dotted with beautiful, breathtaking beaches – it’s also got its share of outstanding theater companies of every shape, size and variety. While the roster is estimable, we draw your attention to four theaters well worth visiting. These include a regional powerhouse whose ’60s beginnings were incredibly humble, a storied local treasure coming up on its centennial, and two small venues offering considerable variety as well as aesthetically prized intimacy within their modest confines.

South Coast Repertory has grown from a modest storefront to a regional theater powerhouse. Its first production was in 1965. Photo courtesy Tim Chapman Photography

1. Costa Mesa Playhouse 661 Hamilton Drive, Costa Mesa Box office and website: 949-650-5269

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Spawned in 1965 as Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, CMP is a 73-seat not-for-

profit community theater whose September-through-June season features five productions – typically a mix of vintage and contemporary musicals, dramas and comedies. The theater company’s 55th season kicks off with “Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,” a Monty Python-ish spoof of the Master of Suspense’s immortal 1935 thriller (through Sept. 15). Next up is “Violet” (Oct. 18 to Nov. 17), a contemporary musical by Brian Crawley and Jeannine Tesori set in the Deep South during the civil rights movement and the early days of the Vietnam War. “Lost in Yonkers,” Neil Simon’s bittersweet, now-beloved coming-ofage memory play, runs Jan. 24 to Feb. 16. On its heels is “Silent Sky” (March 20 to April 12). Lauren Gunderson’s drama details the life and career of Henrietta Leavitt, an obscure astronomer whose work in the early 20th century paved the way for crucial scientific theories and discoveries. The season concludes May 15 to June 7 with “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Tennessee Williams’ sizzling, now-classic drama.

Costa Mesa Playhouse stages contemporary plays like the satiric dramedy “Red Scare on Sunset,” produced in 2016, along with musicals, comedies, dramas and classics. Photo by Joel D. Castro

2. Laguna Playhouse

606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach Box office and website: 949-497-2787 lagunaplayhouse.com

A now-historic Equity theater and one of the oldest continuously operating not-for-profit theaters on the West Coast, Laguna Playhouse was founded in 1920, when a group of local citizens met in a living room to establish a non-profit regional theater specializing in producing high-quality theatrical performances in downtown Laguna Beach. Laguna Playhouse, though, has long since outgrown the limitations of its community theater roots to become a major resident theater powerhouse sought out by both artists and patrons. A member of LORT (the League of Resident Theaters), the Playhouse’s history is dotted with appearances by major stars of stage and screen – for example, Harrison Ford, Julie Harris and Charles Durning. The venue’s year-round season encompasses comedies, dramas,

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Laguna Playhouse has had more than its share of world premieres. In 2017, “King of the Road: The Roger Miller Story” delivered the country singer’s fascinating life to audiences, along with exciting renditions of his music. Photo by Ed Krieger

musicals and family fare, with a concerted emphasis on presenting new works on the Moulton Stage. Professional productions are complemented by the Playhouse’s Youth Theatre, which provides children and teens their first taste of a life in the theater while delivering high-quality stagings to audiencers of all age groups. While receiving a facelift in preparation for its highly anticipated centennial, the historic venue’s 2019-2020 season features a roster of appealing original productions interspersed with guest productions by longtime audience favorites. These include “Yoga Play” (Sept. 25-Oct. 13), “The Lion in Winter” (Nov. 6-24) and “To Sir, With Love” (Jan. 29-Feb. 23) plus the annual holiday show by Lythgoe Family Panto: “Peter Pan and Tinker Bell: A Pirate’s Christmas” (Dec. 4-29).

3. Newport Theatre Arts Center

2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach Box office and website: 949-631-0288 ntaconline.com

At age 40, NTAC is the youngest theater company featured here. Opening in 1979, this community theater is on a bluff overlooking Pacific Coast Highway, offering a beautiful view of the ocean. NTAC’s 2019-2020 season offers a typical smorgasbord of comedies, dramas, thrillers and musicals. Kicking things off is the rom-com “Enchanted April,” running Sept. 13Oct. 13. Stephen Dietz’s 2007 thriller “Sherlock Holmes – The Final Adventure,” which won the prized Edgar Award, runs Nov. 15-Dec. 15, followed by Ronald Harwood’s gripping World War II drama “Taking Sides” (Jan. 24-Feb. 23). Neil Simon’s autobiographical seriocomedy “Chapter Two” runs March 27-April 26, detailing the playwright’s emotional turmoil following his wife’s death. The musical “Working” closes the season, running May 19June 28. This is Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s ’70s musicalization of Studs Terkel’s absorbing, exhaustively thorough bestseller about Americans’ regard for their work. The show now features a new song penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Hamilton”).

The granddaddy of all Orange County theaters, Laguna Playhouse celebrates its centennial next year and is considered a resident theater powerhouse. Photo courtesy Laguna Playhouse

Newport Theatre Arts Center, which opened its doors in 1979 atop a bluff in a residential neighborhood overlooking Coast Highway and Lido Marina Village, fits the classic definition of “community theater” in the best sense of the term. Photo courtesy Newport Theatre Arts Center

4. South Coast Repertory Theater 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa Box office and website: 714-708-5555

scr.org

South Coast Repertory, known far and wide as “SCR,” is the crown jewel in Orange County’s impressive theater scene. This world-renowned theater company’s roots lie in the revolution that occurred in the American theater arts in the mid-20th century, when young, up-and-coming artists began creating their own independent professional companies to make both the classics and all-new works more accessible to the public. David Emmes and Martin Benson took their cue from San Francisco State College’s Actor’s Workshop, which served as a model for resident theater advocates. Going their separate ways upon graduation, the duo reunited in Long Beach in the summer of 1963 to stage a production of “La Ronde.” The duo and their friends were invited back for three more productions a year later. The experience convinced them to launch their own company, born of a fourstep plan that encompassed the creation of the name “South Coast Repertory” and the selection of Orange County as its home. With its first production on Balboa Peninsula in spring, 1965, SCR became one of O.C.’s first major arts institutions. What came next were the makings of theater history, two subsequent moves to Costa Mesa and the forging of a major regional company housed within a two-theater (the 507-seat Segerstrom Stage and the more intimate 336-seat Julianne Argyros Stage) complex owned and operated by the company itself. The multi-tentacled SCR offers a wide and broad variety of classics, modern masterpieces and brand-new works. The 2019-2020 season features three world premieres – Adam Bock’s “The Canadians” (Sept. 29-Oct. 20), Kate Hamill’s new adaptation of “The Scarlet Letter” (March

28-April 25), and Caroline V. McGraw’s “I Get Restless” (April 12-May 3) – and includes Julia Cho’s “Aubergine” (Oct. 19-Nov. 16), John Patrick Shanley’s “Outside Mullingar” (March 8-29) as well as two shows familiar to theatergoers: the romantic musical “She Loves Me” (Jan. 25-Feb. 22) and Tom Stoppard’s mind-bending “Arcadia” (May 9-June 6).

South Coast Rep has commissioned many new plays, then staged them as world premieres, such as Lauren Yee’s “Cambodian Rock Band,” which opened at SCR in March, 2018. Photo by Tania Thompson

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El Paseo Sculpture Exhibition Carefully Curated. Artfully Designed. Walk along El Paseo and be inspired by a captivating display of 18 sculptures placed in the median of El Paseo, Palm Desert’s celebrated shopping district. Created by emerging and renowned artists from around the globe, these sculptural works of art will surely intrigue the most discerning eye.

Guided tours are available on select Saturdays, as part of the City’s First Weekend programing. For information contact publicart@cityofpalmdesert.org or 760.837.1664.

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A Documentary Filmmaker of Distinction

Dale Schierholt Captures the Spirit of Artists, Art and the Places They Dwell by Daniella B. Walsh

Laguna Art Museum to commission Schierholt to produce “Laguna Art Museum: 100 years of Artistic Legacy,” a film about the museum’s history in honor of its 100th birthday.

Eschewing laborious research before filming, he allows narratives to unfold naturally. “I listen and learn and might find something that no one knows,” he said.

Interspersing archival photographs and film footage with his own videography, he structures the film into narrative thirds. “Films evolve organically. I have a general idea what the story is, the way the story emerges is organic,” said Schierholt. “Discovery in the editing room is also important and part of the creative process.”

ony DeLap, Billy Al Bengston, Charles Arnoldi, Will Barnet, Louise Nevelson, Cabot Lyford, photographer Joyce Tenneson and Chinese artist/activist Ai WeiWei have opened their studios as well as their minds and hearts to docu-mentary filmmaker Dale Schierholt.

He works alone and avoids the trappings of traditional film making – lights, action, large crews and accompanying egos – deploying instead his unique knack for bringing out the raconteur in his subjects. He says that his approach to filmmaking is organic and does not employ story-boarding. “I don’t do interviews, I engage people in conversation,” says Schierholt. “I get a certain intimacy with my subjects if there are no crews.” In a different vein, he documented the rich history of Grace Church, a Jamaica, NY-based spiritual community dating back to 1702 and has led viewers through a sleepy morning Greenwich Village bereft of tourists and revelers. A former resident of Maine, he has documented the iconic Farnsworth Museum, located in Rockland, Maine. A showcase of American art, it also houses the Wyeth Center dedicated to Andrew, M.C. and Jamie Wyeth. It is here in Rockland that he also filmed Nevelson, a native of the city. It’s perhaps the Farnsworth project that prompted the

In the first segment, he traces the museum’s histor y from its beginnings as the Laguna Beach Art Association founded in 1818 and presided over by, among others, Edgar Payne and Anna Hills, who distinguished herself as a driving force in the nascent Laguna Beach community. Here, Anna gets her full due; “It was an exciting time to show her as a centerpiece of the film,” said Schierholt. The second part focuses on LAM’s role in the community of Laguna Beach. Through conversations with past and present members of the board of trustees including Robert Hayden III and current president Louis Rohl, former museum director G. Ray Kerciu, local historian Eric Jessen and art educator Mike McGee among others, viewers learn about the museum’s growth and growing pains – most notably the ill-conceived

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Schierholt 1996

merger with the Newport Harbor Art Museum, now the Orange County Museum of Art. Recalling countless meetings at his home with concerned community members, Kerciu said: “We decided to do anything to get the museum back. We made so much noise in the community and we were so organized against losing our museum, we were able to rethink what they had done and able to get the museum back.” The third part deals with the museum’s relationship with artists such as DeLap, collectors and, significantly, its growing program led by educa-tion curator Marinta Skupin. Warner offers a glimpse behind the scenes and the museum’s inner workings while rummaging happily through the museum vaults and its permanent collection. How, then, did Schierholt morph from, by his own description, not very good illustrator to documentary filmmaker? He received a degree in fine art but found himself ill-equipped for the “real world.” Born and raised in Hamilton, OH, one of his first gigs was as art director at a local newspaper, the Journal-News. His job description also involved reviewing films and consequently sharpened his appreciation of good filmmaking. He recalls making his first 8mm film around 1978, and teaching himself black-and-white still photography. Eventually, he started his own graphic design business and bought his first digital video camera. “I found creative outlet as a video editor and made a living making short films,” he said.

2001

Around , he moved to Maine, where he went into full-time filmmaking. Now based in Dana Point, he is still a one-man band. “Here in California I also had to take on fundraising responsibilities,” he explained. Currently he is trying to raise funds for his as-of-yet unfinished documentary on Light and Space artist Peter Alexander. “The challenge here is getting people’s heads around how I work. I work more like an artist who makes digital films; I was trained as an artist rather than a traditional filmmaker,” he said. Schierholt deftly sums up his artistic philosophy and the ensuing success of his films thus: “I don’t present a point of view of my own; there’s enough propaganda out there. My role is to create an environment that allows my subjects to communicate directly with the viewer, to present his or her ideas, and then to let the audience decide how they feel about it. I work alone for several reasons; first and foremost is the creation of that intimacy. “Additionally,” he noted, “my personal creative history has followed several paths, from designer to director, photographer to writer, and creating these films allows me to draw from it all.”

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Director of Laguna Art Museum

A Candid Interview With Malcolm Warner

by Daniella B. Walsh

ith the Laguna Art Museum celebrating its 100th birthday this year, di-rector Malcolm Warner shared a few thoughts with Art Highlights reporter Daniella Walsh about his role in shaping the museum for the last seven years, as well as offering insight into the passion for art that inspires him. DW: What special events, exhibitions, celebrations is the museum plan-ning to celebrate its centennial? MW: We have a full slate of celebratory events planned. It’s one every month for the next six months – a documentary film on the history and present activities of the museum (premiere screening April 19); a new, lavishly illustrated book by me, Laguna Art Museum: A Centennial History, 1918-2018, to be launched with a talk and book-signing (May 31); a major exhibition on the early years of the Laguna Beach Art Association (opens June 24); a centennial documentary exhibition at John Wayne Airport (opens July 19); a 100th birthday party for the LBAA with family activities and more (August 25); and our big Centennial Ball on the grounds of the Festival of Arts (September 29). There will also be tributes to the LBAA and the early artists of Laguna Beach in this summer’s Pageant of the Masters. DW: How did you and museum staff come up with ideas? Where there any special challenges? MH: When we started to plan the program, we brainstormed among Malcolm Warner during exhibition installation ourselves and with our wonderful Centennial Executive Committee who have been a godsend in helping us prepare for all these special events. You asked about challenges: Well, in a year when we’re also remodeling the whole lower level of the museum building – thanks to a grant from the City – there’s certainly a considerable amount of added strain on the staff. It’s a challenge we can meet, but we’ve been aware of the danger of biting off more than we can chew. That’s one of the reasons why we carefully spaced out the various events through the year.

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Warner

Malcolm Warner by James Cant

DW: What inspired you to come to Laguna Beach besides its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the surrounding beauty? MW: The position of director of the museum appealed to me for a number of reasons. I’d been a museum curator for my whole career, and I wanted to try my hand at directing without entirely giving up curating which is more possible in a fairly small institution like Laguna Art Museum. I liked not only the scale of the museum but also the great layout and variety of the gallery spaces. It’s half the battle if you have spaces that lend themselves well to what you want to do. The museum was also blessed with an excellent board of trustees and an outstanding board chair in Robert Hayden III. The director-board relationship is a key element in a successfully run museum, and most directors would kill to work with a board chair of Robert’s level of sophistication and judgment. DW: Your credentials are such that you could have gone anywhere in the nation. I heard somewhere that even the National Gallery in DC had its nets out for you. Any truth to that? MW: I’d been a curator and deputy director at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth for 10 years. I was looking for a change, and discussed possibilities at a number of museums across the country before getting serious about coming to Laguna. DW: Now that you are settled at the museum and your new home in our city, what is your favorite aspect of museum leadership? Outreach, curation, education? MW: There’s nothing about it that I really dislike. But if pressed, I’d have to admit that my favorite thing is putting on exhibitions – the challenge of choosing good ones, the creativity involved in shaping and presenting them well, the excitement of opening them and waiting hopefully for a good public response and good reviews. DW: What are your favorite things to do in the city? MW: One of my favorite things is spending time with the friends that Sara (my wife) and I have made here, most of whom are in the arts in one way or another. The everyday closeness to nature is another wonderful thing about La-guna.

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Within five minutes from our house, we can be running, walking, and enjoying spectacular views in the hills. Even my bus ride to work and back would be regarded in most places as a fabulous scenic tour. DW: What are your favorite places in Southern California and beyond, places, museums, art venues, even galleries, and why? MW: We lived in San Diego for a few years when I was working at the San Diego Museum of Art and I’m still fond of Balboa Park particularly. As you might expect, we visit the art museums in Los Angeles pretty regularly. My next favorite places to visit lately are the cemeteries – Forest Lawn, Hollywood Forever, etc. Maybe it’s the influence of some very funny books about American cemeteries and funerals that I read long before moving here – Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One and Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death. The art and architecture you find in these places are fascinating – one way or another – and who could resist the thrill of coming across the final resting place of a beloved movie star? DW: What are your favorite works of art at LAM? MW: I began my career as a curator of prints and drawings, and prints have remained a particular interest of mine. So our fantastic Wayne Thiebaud prints are certainly among my favorites. The painting that I’ve been hanging in my office when we’re not showing it in the galleries is a large aerial nighttime view near LAX by Peter Alexander. That’s a favor-ite too. DW: What have been your favorite LAM shows? MW: Among the shows we’ve done in recent years, the ones I regard most fondly have all been retrospectives of highly original California art-ists who ought to be better known nationally than they are. It’s a pleasure to feel that we’re fulfilling our mission to raise awareness of the achievements of California artists. For that reason I’m especially proud of our Helen Lundeberg and Peter Krasnow exhibitions, as well as our current Tony DeLap retrospective. DW: How do you see LAM’s role in the future? Will its current quarters suffice for its (presumably) expanding role? MH: The museum is a showcase for California art and at the same time a cultural center for the Laguna Beach community. Into the future I hope it keeps that same balance while presenting exhibitions and programs on a higher and higher level of quality. Thanks to our grant from the City,

we’re already making big improvements to the building and I hope that process will continue – the look and feel of a museum building is such an important part of the experience for visitors. I’m pretty sure that we’ll re-main a relatively small, “boutique” museum, prioritizing quality over size, and that we won’t need to expand physically. If someone offers us $100 million to build a brand new, state-of-the-art facility, however, I’m sure we’d be happy to talk. DW: What is your vision for the museum’s cooperation/collaboration with other local arts organizations? MW: We thrive on collaboration, and benefit enormously from working with Laguna Beach Live!, with the Laguna College of Art + Design, and with the Laguna Dance Festival, among others. We’re also doing more and more with UC Irvine, a relationship that took on special importance for us recently when UCI acquired the important Buck Collection of Cali-fornia art. DW: What characteristic of your favorite museum/places would you like to see transferred or find a resemblance to in Laguna Beach? MW: Each of my previous museums – the Yale Center for British Art and the Kimbell Art Museum – was part of a much larger cultural and aca-demic community. There were any number of professionals from other museums to meet and exchange ideas with, as well as art history pro-fessors doing interesting research. No one could reasonably expect all that in a small town like Laguna Beach, but I miss it all the same.

DW: What book(s) are you currently reading? MW: Usually I get Sara to read the books and tell me what they are about. I’m so slow. The books I’m reading right now have been by my bedside for weeks. They’re both about math – How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg, and a study of statistics applied to soccer, The Numbers Game.

Malcolm Warner by COBA Images

DW: Given your choices, are you comfortable in the ever expandable digital realm? What is the museum’s role in a digital age?

MW: The more people attune themselves to getting information and entertainment from images, the more they ought to appreciate the visual arts, right? We just have to get them off their screens and make them aware of the pleasure and feeling you get in the presence of actual, unique objects that were hand-made by great artists. DW: And, finally, if you were not at the helm of LAM, what else would you like to do? MW: It would be a dream come true to be involved in some way in making films. On a more pedestrian level, I really ought to finish a book that I’ve been writing for more years than I care to mention. It’s on the British artist John Everett Millais, who was the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation.

DW: I understand that you play the guitar. What kind of music do you fa-vor and who are your favorite composers? MW: My role model as a guitarist is Django Reinhardt’s less talented brother, Joseph, who did the basic strumming while Django did the pyro-technics. Though not even nearly on Joseph’s level, I can strum my way through jazz standards and pop music. That’s my limit, but I still love it –and it greatly enhances your enjoyment of music if you at least try to play something. I get pleasure out of almost every kind of music, although my son, Char-lie, would say I have an unfortunate blind spot (or deaf spot) when it comes to hip-hop. Lately I’ve listened to Schubert symphonies, the Sons of the Pioneers, the Meters, and David Byrne. Is that eclectic enough for you? When we did our California Mexicana exhibition at the museum I discov-ered the music of Elisabeth Waldo, whose Land of Golden Dreams is a delightful musical history of California. My favorite composers? It’s not too original a choice, but it would be the great ones – Bach, Mozart, Bee-thoven. If only to be a bit less obvious, I might throw in Berlioz too. DW: How do you feel about dance? Theater? London is a, if not the, theater capital of the world. Do you have favorite plays, authors? MW: I enjoy dance, although it has never been a great passion. The plays I enjoy most are the classics, especially Shakespeare. With great theaters like A Noise Within in Pasadena, the New Swan at UCI, and the Old Globe in San Diego, we have access to terrific Shakespeare produc-tions. Recently Sara and I saw Henry V at A Noise Within, for instance.

Sarah Warner and Malcolm Warner

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Curator of Education

Bringing Art Appreciation to the Next Generations by Daniella B. Walsh

s the Laguna Art Museum celebrated its 100th year, let’s examine its success in bringing art to the community, particularly local children through its comprehensive goals. Those include docent programs and hands-on events allowing children, their families and their teachers to learn by observing, listening and, above all, doing, all under the leadership of Marinta Skupin, the museum’s curator of . Hired in 2012, Skupin had been tasked with further widening artistic horizons among Laguna Beach educators and the community at large.

Laguna Art Museum

She came well prepared: Her resumé includes coordinating programs at the New Orleans Museum of Art, management of the K-12 and family programs at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, and directing al programs at the San Diego History Center. At LAM she oversees all school and public programs, including the widely acclaimed annual Art&Nature festival. Skupin was born in South Africa, where she became immersed in the arts by studying piano at the University of Stellenbosch. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts and a master’s degree in arts administration at the University of New Orleans. Recently, she illuminated for “Art Highlights” writer Daniella Walsh her goals for LAM and the journey that brought her here: DW: You have been the Laguna Art Museum’s curator of now for six years. What attracted you to our community after exciting, culturally diverse places like New Orleans? MS: The combination of its spectacular setting, its deep-seated identification with visual art and its intimate scale while being within easy reach of Los Angeles were some of the things that made Laguna Beach very attractive to me from the outside.

Marinta Skupin

Once I got to know more about the museum and the then-new director, Malcolm Warner, I realized what a tremendously exciting time this was for the museum. With its focus on California art, Dr. Warner’s vision for excellence and its important role as an al and cultural resource for the community, I could not think of a more worthy star to which to hitch my wagon. DW: When you first started your new job, what was your first impression of LAM and the community? What was your greatest challenge and how did you master it? MS: I was impressed by how receptive to art the community was; there was no need for me to convince people of the value of visual arts. There was so much potential everywhere I looked that first challenge was to remain patient and not try to do it all at once. I’m not always sure I mastered it but, I have been very fortunate to have colleagues who share my passion and have been expertly catching the balls that I drop - I work with a truly remarkable team in the department.

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DW: Do you have any specific anecdotes from the job that you would like to share? Teachable moments? MS: One thing our docents frequently comment on is how much they learn about the art on view from our visitors’ observations. I cherish the idea of the museum as a learning community where we constantly exchange ideas and learn from each other. DW: Meanwhile you have instituted innovations and new programs for the museum. Please tell us about those. MS: Even though the credit for these programs certainly does not belong to me alone, here are some of the programs we have instituted: The monthly Family Art Studio at the museum and also at the Boys&Girls Club in Santa Ana; the annual Art&Nature Festival; a newly piloted STEAM program in collaboration with the Ocean Institute; special exhibition openings for teachers (“Evening for Educators”); monthly film screenings and music concerts in

partnership with Laguna Beach Live; and also monthly art-related talks, including a series called “Inside the Museum” in which Dr. Warner interviews other museum directors or prominent museum professionals. DW: What is the museum’s yearly budget for? MS: The total operating budget for is approximately $300,000. DW: Please tell us about community reactions; are there any groups or individuals that have been particularly helpful? MS: We had fruitful collaborations with so many local organizations, both artsrelated like Laguna Beach Live, the Laguna Dance Festival, the Pacific Symphony and numerous galleries in town, and nature-oriented ones like the Laguna Ocean Foundation, the Laguna Canyon Foundation, the Laguna Bluebelt Coalition and the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. We have also collaborated closely with the city government of Laguna Beach, the Laguna Beach Unified School District, UC Irvine, the Laguna College of Art and Design and the Boys and Girls Club both here and in Santa Ana. Members of the Arts Council have been a great support for the department by underwriting free admission to our annual Imagination Celebration, assisting in presentation of art studios and family festivals and, supplying the front desk with fresh orchids. DW: Does the museum’s docent program function independently or does it dovetail into the department? MS: Yes, the docent program is an integral part of our department. We have 31 excellent docents, and they are the ones who enhance our visitors’ experience on a daily basis by engaging all ages - from preschoolers to retirees - through interactive tours through the museum. I am always humbled and inspired by the quality of work that our docents do on a strictly voluntary basis.

DW: What do you consider obstacles to bringing the arts to the next generations? MS: The multitude of offerings and platforms with which we have to compete. That and school budgets. When those are cut, usually the first thing to go are the arts. DW: Can you offer an example of how art can be effectively incorporated into school curricula? MS: For example, we started a new collaboration with the Ocean Institute where kids meet sea creatures by putting their hands into tanks and feel the texture of, say, a starfish. Then they learn about the texture of starfish, how to recreate it in their minds and how an artist would create an illusion of that texture. Or, in the jellyfish project, they learn how artists create translucency and, by drawing their own picture of a jellyfish, understand biology better. Such field trips are a great way to get art into school curriculums. DW: What are your future plans for expanding al programs at LAM? MS: In addition to strengthening and growing programs, I’d like to involve teenagers and have them help us develop exciting programs for them and their peers. I also think there is tremendous potential in continuing to explore programs combining art and nature. DW: Last but not least: You studied music in South Africa. What brought you to the visual arts and what parallels do you see between the disciplines? MS: Visual art has always been my first love and, even though I started off in music, I think I always knew I’d end up working in the visual arts. All the arts have a transcendent quality that puts life in a broader perspective and that speaks to us in a way that cannot always be explained rationally. I believe that this transcendent perspective is not a luxury but is a necessary component of the human condition.

DW: What do you think should be done in this community (and greater Orange County) to improve arts in schools and in the home? MS: One way would be to foster a community of museum visitors! To create a museum environment that is welcoming and that offers enriching experiences to visitors of all ages and backgrounds and to keep reaching new audiences: Perhaps a child who comes as part of a school visit will bring family back here or, perhaps a music lover might come for a concert and become intrigued by the art of view…

Freelance writer Lori Basheda contributed reporting to this article.

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A Painter for all Seasons

Janine Salzman by Daniella B. Walsh

s the summer crowds have once again receded from Laguna Beach, so have memories of yet another Festival of Arts.

But, this year as before, there have been exhibitors who have made a lasting impression, artists whose work we visited more than once – the standouts. Janine Salzman is such an artist. A prolific painter, she was a first-timer at the festival this summer, drawing appreciative crowds and enough eager buyers to buoy her already effervescent presence. Vivacious and erudite, she expresses her joie de vivre in paintings of people and occasionally of animals but also landscapes and still lifes. “Search inside what you want to say from within yourself,” she says. “I am in my paintings.” Her most noteworthy current work, as seen at the festival, delves into realms that many take for granted – the controlled chaos of bustling restaurant kitchens. Depictions of chefs, food preparers and dishwashers are so full of life and color that viewers might feel they are in the middle of the action. One can almost hear knives clacking, meat sizzling and sous-chefs shouting, delegating tasks.

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“I try to catch movement; that is the main aspect that has to work,” she explains. So, does Salzman plant herself in the middle of the action to sketch? She says that she begins by sliding behind the swinging doors, discreetly taking photographs in the hope that nobody minds. And, she says, mostly they don’t. Besides, Salzman knows her way around those environs. Her daughter Chelsea is a pastry chef. Gale Kohl, proprietor of Gale’s Restaurant, located in Pasadena, says that Salzman painted her restaurant numerous times. “Her depiction of our kitchen staff has always been stunning and uncannily real,” she says. “It’s amazing. She does capture every nuance of the behind-the-scenes action.” She went on to say that she owns several of Salzman’s paintings and, whenever her paintings were exhibited at the restaurant, they sold almost immediately. Situated in an art-filled house in San Juan Capistrano, Salzman’s studio reflects a consummate artist devoted to continuously honing her craft with paints and brushes arranged in a haphazard semblance of order, paintings, some finished, some in progress,

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Salzman art books and, more often than not, a shy golden doodle named Wilson.

escribing herself as a “Contemporary Impressionist,” she emphasizes that she is a passionate storyteller. Stylistically, her oil paintings are inspired by Russian Impressionists. Those differ from their French counterparts since they tend to delve deeper into the mood of their subject than solely aiming for visual beauty. “They paint the soul,” she says. She cites Nicolai Feshin (1881-1955), but Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939) and Valentin Serov (1865-1911) also come to mind. The Austrian-American painter Franz Bischoff also counts among favorites. “There are so many painters I am crazy about,” she says, adding that when she began delving into what she calls “representational Impressionism,” she knew that that was the direction her own painting would take. “It’s the brushstrokes that make it exciting. It’s not slavish representation.” Salzman was born and spent her early years in Tunisia. Surrounded by the rich French, Arabic and Sephardic cultures of North Africa, she knew by age nine that she wanted to somehow learn to reflect what she observed. The answer came in her mother’s gift of a book about Vincent Van Gogh: She would become an artist as well.

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hen, over the span of the 1950s, Tunisia became an increasingly difficult habitat for Jews, her family moved to Paris. There she became enamored of the French Impressionists and, voilà, Van Gogh. During the mid-sixties her family emigrated to the United States. They settled and thrived in Southern California, a place that mirrors some of the Mediterranean environs she loved and where she later continued to study art. (Influential teachers over time include Jove Wang, Corinne Harley and Joseph Mendez, among others.) After Salzman married her husband, Jack, she painted while raising their two daughters and helping him run his business, which involved selling wedding gowns. “I sold wedding gowns six months of the year and painted during the other six,” she recalled. “Between 1984 and 1988, I drove around in 11 Western states with no cellphones and just maps.” Now, her younger daughter Julia also works for a designer of wedding gowns.

“I never have a shortage of what to paint,” she notes. “There is never a lack of subjects.” Now Salzman is looking forward to 2020 since she has been juried into the next summer’s Festival of Arts.

alzman’s work resides in numerous other private collections, in the permanent collection of the Pelican Hill Resort in Newport Beach, and in several local galleries. www.janinesalzman.com

Salzman calls present times the best years of her life. “I am painting full-time and I’ve achieved proficiency and technical ability,” she says. She credits teaching painting for helping her work evolve. “Teaching is the best way to learn. Students teach me what I know,” she says. Salzman strongly stresses craftmanship and technique. “Abstract, edgy, bright and colorful or soft and subdued, once you have basics like composition, values and light, you can do anything,” she explains. As far as subject matter goes, anything and everything triggers new ideas. “Whatever reason you may have to take a picture of an object—that is what you want to paint.” Aida Ganddini, former proprietor of the Villas&Verandas gallery, exhibited and collects Salzman’s paintings and is especially fond of her depictions of children and beaches. “Her work reflects her joy for life – that’s what the beauty of art is, after all, the emotion it makes one feel,” she wrote via email.

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The Art of Wine

Laguna Canyon Winery Worth a Visit!

by Ludo Leideritz, publisher and wine-connoisseur-in-chief

aving started a small winemaking operation in British Columbia, the Canadian brothers Darren and Marlowe Huber had their sights on a fullfledged winemaking operation in, of all places, Laguna Beach, California! Their reasons were many and logical: Canada did not allow winemaking unless you owned the vineyard. The maximum amount a person could produce was a paltry five gallons. Licensing was difficult, and the climate did not support the varietals they wanted to produce. Lastly, Laguna Beach seemed like a very nice place to move to. While starting this enterprise, they learned winemaking from one of the masters, Gianni Seminari, of the University of Milan. He spent three years with them, instructing the brothers in the complex and detailed methods of perfecting not just good, but great wines. Moving forward in 2003, they made preparations to start their business in the Laguna Canyon, naming their winery after the picturesque divide that separated Laguna Beach from the inland sprawl of Orange County. With the help of their father, Norman “Norm” Huber, they built the facility that stands today. Norm built all the wood cabinets in Canada and had them moved to Laguna. With Gianni spending more time on the premises to further coach them, they opened for business in 2004. What sets this winery apart from all other operations is their unique process in making excellent, awardwinning wines. Laguna Canyon Winery purchases only the best grapes from Napa and Sonoma County vineyards. Since they can be so selective in the grapes’ terroir (location, soil and facing direction where they were grown) and the quality of the fruit, there are never any “bad years” or vintages to contend with. The grapes are shipped to the winery frozen in large food-grade containers, with the must (skins and seeds) in the mix, then are thawed, crushed, fermented, aged and bottled at the winery. Another advantage of this process is that in the freezing of the grapes, which takes seven days, and the thawing, which takes

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another eight days, the skins come into better contact with the juices, allowing for a richer mix than the traditional picking, stemming and crushing, which takes just one or two days at other wineries. Moreover, the freezing process purifies the fruit, killing off bacteria, unwanted yeasts and other microbes from affecting or infecting the fruit. The grapes are fermented for eight to 10 days before pressing; whites and rosés take a shorter turn. The juices are then stabilized in large tanks, where the fermentation is carefully controlled. Darren claims it’s the “best part of the job,” as their methods produce wines that are truly exceptional. White wines get little aging before bottling, with the exception of Chardonnay, which may receive further oak barrel aging. Reds are aged in oak barrels from two to three years prior to bottling. French, American and Hungarian oak barrels are selected to yield the best flavor-aging components to any particular wine. All operations are performed at the winery. Visitors are welcome to see the action when they come in and taste. Often wines are “racked” (moved from barrel to barrel) in the aging process, softening the tannins and creating each unique masterpiece. Now, the fun part; the winery offers 12-15 wines to taste, serving in elegant German crystal glasses (which are available for purchase). From the brightest, liveliest whites to the most seductive reds, the array of wines is impressive. In the collection are two blends called “Purple Paws.” Proceeds from this one white and one red varietal benefit the Animal Shelter. Both are excellent wines...a woofing win-win for all involved! Laguna Canyon Winery has earned scores of medals, including rare double-gold medals from many competitions. Their Wine Club concept is unique: For a modest $40 per month, you open a wine “savings account” where you can save or spend as you wish on any wines available. Other clubs pick wines for you (often not the best or your first choice.) Further discounts apply when you purchase more bottles–up to 35%. The winery hosts private parties and corporate events. One of the fun gatherings is a “barrel tasting” where people can blend their own personal red wines and create their own bottle labels. Fun, indeed! The winery is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 to 6; closed major holidays. The winery is located at 2133 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, CA, 92651 and can be called at (949) 715-9463.

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Artivism

theTELL

aguna Canyon was originally inhabited by the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nati on , or i g i n a l artisans whose presence made the land sacred ground. Throughout the 1800s, the majestic place attracted homesteaders Panoramic left - Lida Lenny / Harry Huggins | THE TELL / Volunteers applying photos to the wall / Jerry Burchfield • Mark Chamberlain and paint-on-canvas type artists; by the 1960s, of more than 100,000 photographs affixed by awareness, a philosophy encapsulated by Mark the canyon was embraced by many, sparking a locals and passersby. As conceived by Mark and Chamberlain when he coined the term “Artivism.” concerted effort to preserve it in its natural form. Jerry (who have both since passed away), the The art of THE TELL was a call from the wild goal of this powerful yet passive wall of art was to to save Laguna Canyon, a call that was seen and Developers, though, had different ideas, as they raise awareness to the plight of the land and the heard far and wide… did throughout Orange County, prompting James proposed siege upon it by bulldozers, tract homes, uring that fateful summer, three key Dilley to begin the movement to protect and cement and a deluge of parking lots and traffic. figures worked together at CMM Studio preserve. in Tustin, CA: Advertising photographer The vision and artistic efforts of this collective Laguna began as an artist colony, a community attracted many moved to picket along the canyon and designer Charles Michael Murray, his photoof people who created art of the wonderment road, including Toni Iseman (later to become stylist girlfriend Jeanette, and their close friend, of the canyon greeting the ocean. The natural Mayor of Laguna Beach, CA) placing Burma artist agent Harry Huggins, formerly with the pulse of an artist is capturing, interpreting and Shave-type signs in the canyon to raise awareness. American Red Cross. expressing through their art the essence of nature. These joint efforts inspired motorists to honk their When Charles attended the EIR presentation The 1980s saw the commercial counterpoint to horns and attracted cheering picketers, but time in the summer of 1989, he knew the natural this ethos and a radically different vision: The was not on their side. canyon was doomed if a serious ’60s-type protest/ Irvine Company designed the Laguna Laurel project, which would have overtaken the canyon During the summer of 1989, an Environmental sit-in effort to save the canyon did not occur with a six-lane highway, golf course and more Impact Report (EIR) presented at El Morrow immediately. Charles, as an expressive artist, School, Laguna Beach, epitomized the rescue drove the concept producing and capturing such than 3,200 homes. effort’s plight, functioning as the final nail about an event on film, which would serve to engage a The David-and-Goliath future would find respect to go into the coffin of the pristine canyon. The united voice of protest. The photographic image from artists and environmentalists. Passionate protesters and a massive yet passive immense art would go out in a press release to all media. photographers Mark Chamberlain and Jerry collaboration that created THE TELL had met Burchfield set out with their skill sets and their match: Developers continued planning the Quickly realizing that the scope must be large designed and collaborated with many like-minded details of their lucrative project, remapping the and proactive, Harry and Charles brainstormed supporters, constructing a 636-foot-long and up to canyon with their footprint of overdevelopment to develop a strategy and approach that would 34-foot-high wall called “THE TELL,” a majestic – moves that would have destroyed the natural engage locals – and, crucially, the other county shape mirroring and embracing the hillside. canyon. Art in its true form, as from the canyon canyon organizations. Harry presented the The ambitious project was made of a collection natives, inspires and raises emotions and concept to the Laguna Canyon Conservancy

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The Photographic Art of Activism

theWALK

11.11.1989

by Charles Michael Murray guest speakers were powerful, including attorney Mike Wilson, a keynote environmental speaker flown in from Hawaii by Charles’ brother Mark. Also present as a key speaker was David Belardes, a native American from the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, whose Panoramic right - Mike Wilson / David Belardes | Nix Nature Center - Harry Huggins • Charles Michael Murray / Mayor Pro Tem - Lida Lenny speech Nov. 11, 1989 (LCC), which was initially skeptical – but Harry action took a full day to write, using a thermofax included these stirring words: persisted, then was requested by LCC to become machine. While Harry drove to that night’s city “This sacred place, as all places in the executive director of what came to be known as council meeting in Laguna Beach, Charles met Universe are sacred, there is a word in THE WALK. with Jose and Susan at Jose’s sound studio in my nation, the Lacota Nation which says, Villa Park and the three listened to the PSA, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, which means we are all Harry’s drive and engaging skill-set convinced marveling at Jose’s amazing delivery of it. Charles related, and in that relationship is for us a defeated mindset into a proactive wave of then drove directly to Laguna Beach, passed a to share the understanding that harmony “Together We Can Save Laguna Canyon.” People and balance is the spiritual essence of our yellow Sony boombox to Harry, and instructed of all ages, lifestyles and status united, as if the creation, and that we are not separated by him to “hit ‘play’.” Santa Ana Winds ignited a threaded spirit of color, or politics, or economics, or religion, or forward momentum and strength. Residents, arry walked the boombox up to the open social status, but we are all members of the retailers, artists of all ages and the entire City mic and hit the “play” button – and the same tribe, the tribe of humanity...” Council of Laguna Beach took on roles as if to 60-second spot aired live throughout the raise the Titanic. The director of Earth First (EF) city on local cable TV. It ignited the activist spirit. he canyon was saved when developer secretly met with Harry and Charles, who were Charles then worked for five days buying radio Donald Bren had a change of heart – advised to focus on radio. Though many EF spots and seeking free radio airtime of the PSA. motivated in no small part by the power group methods were far too radical to engage, of THE WALK – and negotiated the sale of the The results of the radio campaign were simply a radio campaign was entirely viable and would canyon to several agencies, including the City empowering: On Nov. 11, 1989, more than 10,000 prove effective. As the word went out among the of Laguna Beach. supporters trekked over the hills and up and environmental community members, money down the canyon. It was a run, walk, hike, and The feat of saving Laguna Canyon was ignited and started flowing in. As this was long before the bike into the center of the canyon. The stage for then propelled by pure social activism, fueled by Internet, supporters would help by delivering cash THE WALK was directly in front of THE TELL. art created by photographers. The united efforts of and checks in person to CMM Studio in Tustin. Driven by his marketing background, Charles this disparate band of those who loved – and still Musician Jose Feliciano was asked and then co- captured this image of unity from a cherry picker, love – the canyon, inspired by the spirit of a native wrote – with Harry, Charles and Jose’s wife Susan – documenting the art of activism on both his tongue, beat back the tide of overdevelopment a 60-second Public Service Announcement (PSA). Hasselblad and Fuji Panoramic film cameras. and changed the course of the canyon’s history. The four then engaged John Denver, Bette Midler His design and photography in the 3’x16’ banner “Together We Saved Laguna Canyon – and many others to lend their names in support. above listed all known volunteers – and the image Nov. 11, 1989” Long before cellphones, the statement of a call to is still on display at the Nix Nature Center. The

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Artist and Citizen of Worlds – All of Them

Lita Albuquerque by Daniella B. Walsh

n September 21 of this year, the Laguna Art Museum honored multi-faceted artist Lita Albuquerque with the 2019 Wendt Award at a well-attended gala that netted the museum $600,000 to help propel it into its next century.

Named after William Wendt, the great California landscape painter and a founder of the Laguna Beach Art Association, The Wendt Award was established by LAM to honor artists as well as art professionals, supporters and proponents for their contribution to California art. Past recipients have included writer and museum supporter Ruth Westphal (2012), painter Wayne Thiebaud (2013), Light and Space artist Peter Alexander (2014), art collector and museum supporter Yvonne Boseker (2016), and Tony DeLap (2017). A sculpture installation by Lita and a dance performance by Jasmine Albuquerque enthralled 270 attendees. A mother-daughter collaboration titled “Ash,” the creation is based on the loss of the Albuquerque home/ studio and its artifacts and the power of positivity creating this dialogue between visual art and dance and a future for all arts.

piques my curiosity and gives me sustenance as well as experiences of the sublime, of beauty and terror, and what motivates me to make art. I am interested in creating art that makes us aware of our environment and also to create experiences through my performances that make viewers notice their response to it. I believe that in order to survive it is crucial to understand what our environment is, as well as our relationship to it. My art is the expression of those questions. It is about the trajectory of our time here on Earth, and yes, I do feel a connection to past artists who have glorified nature, and especially to those who probe deeper to express that sublimity.

DW: You have worked in concert with many environments the world over – beaches, deserts, R e c e nt l y M S : mountains, and Albuquerque monuments. What spoke with message regarding Art Highlights the environment, Magazine writer and its state when Daniella Walsh you m a d e t he about her life works, do you and continuously want to impart? evolving art, the Briefly tell us what artist’s spiritual your work does to and intellectual enhance and help connection to the environment the universe as a and environmental whole and, most causes. importantly, her firm belief in the LA: I want people future, manifested to look around and in her devotion to see how connected her family and in they are. I want her determination them to see their to rebuild after the uniqueness and that “Particle Horizon” at the Laguna Art Museum, October 12, 2014–January 18, 2015, featuring the work devastating loss this uniqueness has “Pigment Figure No. 1” (2012) of her home and a subjectivity which needs to be expressed. Through their uniqueness studio during the recent Woolsey fire. and subjectivity in response to, let’s say, my art or to any other art, they DW: Lita, a part of the reason for this story is that you are receiving the become aware of our interconnectedness. My work is about extending that Wendt Award from the Laguna Art Museum. Do you see the award as connectedness not only to our environment here on planet earth but to recognition for your enormous body of work involving the environment? our solar system, our galaxy and beyond. My main interest is always about Do you feel a connection to past artists who, albeit dissimilarly, glorified being conscious of where the planet and the body are in space-time…We all know that we are related to the stars, but to be fluent in that language is nature? to understand our connectivity and to open up the body to the sublime. I LA: My first impetus as an artist comes from nature and my response to want my viewer to come away from my work with a bit more insight into it. It begs me to question my relationship to it and, as S. Giedion, the great where they are within the cosmos. architectural historian, says, “Man’s (our) desire to understand his (our) relationship to the environment is the beginning of Art.” That relationship DW: What inspired you to become an artist? What inspired you to the

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“Transparent Earth Part I,” Land Art Installation for the “Horizontal-Vertical” Biennale Safiental Valley, Switzerland, July 7–October 21, 2018

work that you did in the beginning of your career? LA: It was not an inspiration that came from the outside, it was an internal knowing from a very young age that I had to express myself. I originally fell in love with the theater when I lived in Paris at the age of five. I begged my mother at the time to leave me with a theater company so I could study theater and dance. When we moved to this country from Tunisia, I thought I would be a philosopher and a poet. By the time I was 19, studying at UCLA, all my friends were artists and filmmakers, and painting and acting became my passion. I was part of a small theater company and one day as I was rehearsing on stage, playing the role of a 13-year-old, I left in the middle of the rehearsal. I wanted to express my own words, not enact someone else’s. Action of a girl in her twenties of course, but nevertheless… In the beginning of my career, I was drawing, and made large charcoal drawings on paper, gestural marks that expressed in an abstract manner what I was seeing in nature. When I became aware of Conceptual Art and Performance Art and Land Art and

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Albuquerque saw Robert Irwin’s work, my whole perspective on what art is shifted. It was no longer about making marks on a two-dimensional surface but about making marks out in space and in relationship to the environment. The world became my canvas. DW: What inspires you now? Is there a leitmotif, so to speak, between then and now? LA: I am inspired by declaration. I remember when I read about Arman and (Yves) Klein who claimed “Plenitude” and “The Sky,” it made me ask myself, what is it that I claim? I realized that I claim the relationship between the earth and the heavens. That declaration is the leitmotif between then and now. I am still expressing that relationship as I did from the very beginning, as in Malibu Line (1978), but it now is expressed in multimedia and performative works. What had remained in text form became part of an installation as in Particle Horizon shown at the Laguna Art Museum and 2020 Accelerando at the USC Fisher Museum. I am also inspired by our time. The 21st century is the century of artists. There are many more artists now than there have ever been who are doing significant and inspiring works in response to it. We are coming in as spiritual warriors by the thousands, giving visions and expressions of who we are and who we can be. DW: Do you feel a special consciousness as a woman artist? Does gender even come into play? LA: Of course, I feel a special consciousness as a woman artist, but I do not create work from that place. I create from vision, which happens to be a feminine one. It is not something I consciously do, but look around at what is happening on the social level, and I am not afraid to express it. Many of my recent works are generated from a narrative I wrote in 2003 about a 25th-century female astronaut sent to 6000 BC to seed interstellar consciousness on earth. It is no accident that this character is female; it could not be otherwise. She speaks to the new model of the cosmos. We are birthing a new world. DW: The wealth and variety of your ideas appear boundless. How does an idea, a concept first take root in your mind? Is it a concrete process, do you see shapes, ready-made images or do ideas evolve in segments? Experiences? Conversations? Dreams (for example)? LA: That is possibly the hardest question to answer, as ideas stem from a variety of avenues and come in many forMS: Sometimes (often), an image appears whole in my mind and I chase it, figuring out how to make it into a visual piece. Sometimes, it is a phrase that I have written that starts the whole process. Other times (often), it comes in conversations, and it is a gift. At other times, it is a struggle while trying to figure it out by thinking or drawing and grinding it through until my head hurts. I tend to use the biological model for creativity, setting up the right conditions and then letting it happen. Those conditions can be a lot of research: I read a lot about whatever interests me, which tends to be astronomy, or architecture, or philosophy, or pull from ancient traditions and imagine future ones. For instance, when I was asked to participate in The Art and Nature Conference for the Laguna Art Museum in 2014, the process of getting to the idea of what I wanted to do started with looking at a lot of sites around the city and figuring out which one to use so that I could come up with an idea that would be in context with the environment. Once I zeroed in on Main Beach, the idea became whole in my mind. The arc and sweep of the beach were a natural, and I wanted to emphasize the arc of Main Beach.

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had started to use people instead of pigment in my work with Spine of the Earth 2012, done for the Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time Public Art and Performance Festival. For the Laguna piece, I wanted participants to be like an echo of the arc of the beach. I decided to use 300 people positioned at the edge of the water to form a human arc, echoing the white waters of the cresting of the waves. The original idea was to have each person stand and watch the sunrise, the noontime sun, and the setting sun. I titled it “An Elongated Now.” As people had to stand there looking at the sun for an entire day, the idea was twofold: One was a visual that could be seen from the air, and the other was to have people experience that kind of relationship to the sun, and hence to the rotation of the planet. What also motivated me was the desire to set up a condition for participants to experience wonder of our existence on planet earth and for each of them to be the art. It is important to me that it be not just a singular experience but that it be a collective one as well. That shifts the playing field for me. There are so many parts to a work like “An Elongated Now”: The experience for the participants, the visual impact of the image of a drawing created by human bodies to show the two-dimensional, the three-dimensional and the fourth dimension (time) element. DW: Much of your work is informed by specific scientific knowledge. How did/do you acquire it?

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Albuquerque Astronomy comes to mind. Do you work with scientists, consultants, and teams? You have collaborated with several architects. Have you studied architecture? LA: A lot of my interest is in science and architecture. I have also built a library full of references to art, history, spirituality, architecture, philosophy, and astronomy. I continually refer to the notes and ideas I’ve learned from these fields of study. I have worked with scientists, consultants and teams, and it was mainly because the work itself asked for other fields of expertise. The work itself asked questions that needed to be answered by other fields of knowledge. I have not studied architecture, but my best friend is an architect and there was a point in time where every single person in my life was an architect. In the mid-seventies, when I was doing the pigment work in the desert, my friend Pamela Burton, a landscape architect, introduced me to the entire UCLA architecture department, and their work made me think a lot about space. Actually, what they taught me the most is about context, that a project, whether it is a building or a work of art, is always in a context and therefore should speak to that context. That revolutionized my way of working.

t the other end of the spectrum, I have also collaborated with singers, composers, dancers, and filmmakers toward whatever it takes to make a particular project work. DW: What would you consider pivotal projects, events, and journeys in your career? How would you describe the impetuses for your enormous growth and depth? LA: Representing the United States in the Cairo Biennale for Sol Star; receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation for Stellar Axis: Antarctica, the largest environment work in the continent of Antarctica; participating with The Washington Monument Project in the International Sculptural Conference in Washington DC; being part of the Biennial in Desert X with hEARTH; and at the Hirshhorn Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and being a founding member and member of the Artist Advisory committee for Museum of Contemporary Art were all important events in my career. Then there are projects on the horizon I cannot talk about yet, that feel pivotal as well; it keeps on coming and it seems like a natural course for the development of the 25thcentury Female Astronaut to establish and complete her mission. She needs time and space, and I am there creating projects for her and enabling her to make it happen. In terms of journey, certainly the impetuses for my work are

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Lita Albuquerque 2018 solo exhibition at Peter Blake Gallery (Laguna Beach) featuring paintings from Albuquerque’s “Auric Field” series

based on the extraordinary support I get from my husband Carey Peck, who is by my side and involved in all aspects of our lives at all times, and a very strong family bond with all of my children and their spouses as well as my brother Fred, who is based in Laguna Beach. It is also based on the consistent team of people and friends I have around me who help me produce and create the work as well as the various teams of people for the different projects. DW: What propelled you from drawing and painting into installations and performance art? LA: I came of age as an artist in the seventies, at the time when Conceptual, Minimal, Installation, Performance and Land Art were flourishing. Even though my background was painting and drawing, I soon became fascinated with the works of Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Jim Turrell, Richard Serra. There was a permission to expand the field to explode the idea of painting into the environment and to take into consideration the context in which the works were seen. The most powerful propeller was seeing Robert Irwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exhibit at the Riko Mizuno Gallery in 1976 in which he had placed a band of black tape on the walls of the gallery at mid-point of the wall or at a horizon line. That black line at the horizon turned the entire space into two cubes; it was no longer a line as a drawing, but a line as a marker that determines space and dimension; the work was the negative space itself. He had simply identified it with one gesture, which propelled me to go into the environment and simply make a mark. What I became interested in was not the context of architecture, but of nature, and of the earth and beyond. My first works were all simple marks in relation to the horizon line of the ocean, or to the setting moon, or to the sky. I took Irwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea a bit further by making the context nature. I also owe my working outdoors to the Land Artists of the sixties, and was curious about and questioned what it would be like to use color against the neutral background of the desert. Again, in the beginning I always thought as a painter, but since I was working directly on the earth, the inquiry multiplied into a complexity of questions that, in order to resolve, took in other disciplines, like sacred geometry, astronomy, philosophy, and especially ideas of space and time. DW: What nourishes your soul in all your work? LA: Nature, family and love, allowing the ancient to move within me. DW: Do you work on several projects simultaneously or do you finish each individual one first? Do you shift between installations and paintings, for example?

LA: We have a lot of work coming in the studio, which requires working on multiple projects at once. Between painting commissions, gallery exhibitions which require the creation of completely new work, public projects, performances and films I am working on, and performative work, I do them simultaneously, and they inform one another. For instance, right now I am working on a proposal for a large ephemeral artwork in the desert; an installation for a biennial; a commissioned piece for the Huntington Gardens; two gallery exhibitions; and shows in Paris, China and Brussels. So yes, I shift from the one to the other the work informs other works. The work I create requires my focus be directed in multiple directions. So, I do shift between making, researching, and writing on a daily basis since each project has its own timeline. This workflow keeps me inspired to continually create and activate the ideas of my work so that I truly embody them. DW: For some larger projects such as An Elongated Now and others of that kind, how large a team do you require, and what do such teams consist of? LA: Most of my work is rather large and does require the participation of a team. I have my regular team at the studio that consists of an administrative team as well as assistants in the studio. Of course, it varies project by project. For An Elongated Now I had 300 participants, which required a production team of six and a team on the ground of 15. The participants were not performers and had to be instructed in the movement and choreography of the piece and in the intentionality of the performance. We had an overall meeting in which both myself and the choreographer, my daughter Jasmine Albuquerque, spoke about what the participants should expect. We had 10 team leaders (dancers) who would take 25 people at a time and instruct them in the movement. Then there was the team of assistants about five who kept people off the shore. And in the conceptualization and administration and producing of the project there were another six in the studio. The six production team members also coordinated costumes, also making sure all 300 people were taken care of (transportation, water, food, etc.).

y studio is essential for creating a work of that scale. I usually have a smaller team of talented artists and art thinkers who assist me to build the parameters around a piece, and then we begin to put it out into the world. DW: You are also an educator. What do you find most rewarding in teaching? LA: I have been teaching since 1975 and been a member of the Core Faculty in the Graduate Art Program at Art Center College for the last 32 years. There are many rewards including seeing the new crop of talent that comes up with every new class and over the years has given me a very special perspective on artists coming up. Graduate school is very special in that we work very closely with each individual artist and witness each creative process on the ground level. Added to that is the close proximity of my colleagues, which puts us all as witness to many different perspectives on art and which is very inspiring.

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Albuquerque

“Untitled (Auric Field Series),” 2019, Pigment on Panel and Gold Leaf on Resin, 60 x 60 inches

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DW: What advice do you have for young artists? Do you see yourself as a role model? LA: I feel that the main objective in graduate school is to direct each artist in examining how they think and how to think through the creative process. The advice that I have is twofold: To keep to their vision while simultaneously understanding art history and where they fit into that lineage, to keep pushing boundaries, and to always remember that art is revolutionary and has the capacity to shift paradigms, which is what culture is all about. DW: What in your opinion, briefly, is the importance of art in our schools in this age? LA: Art is usually the first to be underfunded and overlooked, but I tend to believe that a society that honors and embraces the art made in its time is one which is thriving and prosperous. Therefore, studying art is non-negotiable in order to enable a healthy world. DW: About you: When you do not make art or think up new projects what else do you like to do? Dance appears to have an influence on your performance pieces; does music inspire you and if yes, what kind? LA: I have a daily ritual of writing and meditating and running on the beach and doing what I call Energetic Meditation and then swimming in the ocean. In terms of what I love is being with my family and traveling. Reading and yes, music and dance, are a big part of my life. One of my favorite things to do is watching dancers rehearse. I also love spending time with friends, running on the beach, looking at art, traveling, listening to Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and studying other cultures. DW: You are married with four grown children. Are all of them artists as well? Is your husband an artist? LA: All my children are creative, my eldest, Isabelle, is a sculptor and actor and has an innovative design company, Osk, with her husband, Jon Beasley. Marisa has a communication company Hello Human, and Jasmine is a dancer and choreographer and has been my muse and collaborator. She embodies the character of the Twenty-Fifth Century Female Astronaut. Her partner, Emeka Simmons, is a dancer and musician as well. My son Christopher is an educator in social justice and literature and is right now traveling the world. My husband writes poetry and is a skydiver. DW: What books do you enjoy? Do you have a favorite? LA: I had an extensive library and currently mainly read non-fiction but love Murakami and all the magical realists. A couple of my favorite books are 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; also (work by) Italo Calvino. I was bred on all the French writers and poets – Chateaubriand, Andre Gide, Marguerite Duras, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Laurence Durrell; The Alexandria Quartet remains one of my favorites. Of course I try and get my hands on as many artists’ writings as I can, and Robert Irwin is one of my bibles. I frequently return to a book by Thomas Berry called The Great Work. It was published in 2000, and he speaks to our being at the end of a story and that what we need is a new story of us in the cosmos. I have been saying for a long time now that we are experiencing a revolution in perspective as major as the revolution in perspective of the Renaissance. Now that we have landed on the moon and are able to see ourselves from outside ourselves, what we about and how the time

we are in has created a major revolution in perspective. I think this began for us during the 1969 moon landing. It was the first time we saw ourselves from outer space, and it totally changed the way we collectively see our relationship to the cosmos. DW: You were born in Santa Monica. How did you wind up in Tunisia and in France? What influence did that sojourn have on your formative years? Adult thinking? LA: Even though I was born here my mother went back to her country when I was five months old, and I was raised in Tunisia until the age of 12. We moved between Tunisia and Paris, and I had a French . It was not a sojourn as it was my grounding in my foundational years; being raised in a Catholic convent in Carthage, in an Islamic country, and of Jewish origin had a profound effect on my impressionable mind. I have written extensively about how the sense of freedom I had living at home in the summers in a fishing village by the sea, and in the convent in historic Carthage during the school years affected me very much. Having experienced the sense of history that exists in Carthage and in the earth itself, the ceaseless proximity to nature, to the African wind and to the cross-cultural, it was a shock to move to the United States. It took many years for me to adjust. A lot of my work stems from that dislocation and a desire to locate myself in the world and the cosmos and find a sense of identity. It wasn’t until I came to the United States that the qualities which formed my

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Albuquerque cultural identity started to make themselves known to me. I had to learn English, and settle in an unknown place, and that experience left a great impression on me. It may also be why I have a strong urge to control my navigation through the cosmos. DW: Last but not least, the fire. Now that some time has passed, how do you still process the experience? Were you able to salvage any of your work/materials? What about the famous, lovely Lita Blue? What are your plans for the immediate future? Further down the line? LA: The fire has been hard and a second big shock in my life. I had reconstructed a sense of Tunisia there and had raised all four of my children wanting them to have that sense of freedom away from consensus reality and proximity to nature and to the stars at night. We had bought the property especially for the dark skies and observation of the stars, as well as its panoramic view of the ocean and the nooks and crannies of trees and cabins all over the property. It was a refuge, and a sanctuary, not only to us but to the many friends who came and lived here occasionally, as well as to the creative teams of my children’s friends who created numerous music videos. There were weddings that were held there, the many parties (we had two parties annually New Year’s Eve as well as my husband Carey Peck’s famous Pasta and Poetry event every summer where our friends shared and read poetry under the Chinese Elm tree) and the accumulation of the history of my family. My creative life was embedded there, the germination of many ideas and the accumulation of ideas and memories. The memories do stay inside, and we have them, my family is intact, and I am very grateful. It was a firestorm that took our neighborhood, and nothing remained, nothing was salvageable. My friend Ami Sioux and her partner Dai Sakai did spend 11 days digging in the

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rubble and came up with an incredible array of artifacts that they have displayed at the Barn where we live. It is very comforting to have found those even though they are now artifacts but nevertheless part of our history. I have to say that I would not have been able to be here standing without the extraordinary angels that came to our side: Lauren Bon, Ami Sioux and Dai Sakai, Ellen Grinstein, Jack Hoffman, Chuck Arnoldi, David Hertz and Lauren Doss; the entire Metabolic Studio team, Homeira Goldstein, Linda Wolfe, my dealers, Peter Blake and Michael Kohn; my entire studio team, Kyomi Matsuura, Fabia Panjarian, Ami Sioux, Sarah Miska; and all the beautiful people who contributed to GoFundMe and to the fundraiser Homeira Goldstein organized. We are planning to rebuild and are working with an architect. What has happened makes me believe in the power of art. Beside all the support I receive, it is also the work that pulls me through and is propelling me forward. DW: Many artists inspire us from all periods of art history. Could you tell us what artists you admire(d) and who inspired/inspires you? L A : T h e a n c i e nt Egyptians, the Mayans, the Islamic world of the 9th,10th and 11th centuries, Giotto. I have been moved by Malevich, Kandinsky, the Russian Constructivists. I studied with Robert Irwin, and the work of Susan Kaiser Vogel has been really important to me, as well as James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, Richard Serra, James Turrell, the Light and Space artists as well as John Cage and Laurie Anderson. I draw huge inspiration from the works of theater director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass. Q: We see you as the proverbial Phoenix rising from the ashes. What direction do you think your future art will take? LA: That has yet to be determined. I feel like I have a new sense of freedom that will allow me to make whatever work I need to.

The Art of Dance isn’t as Mysterious as You Might Think

Dance, Dance Dance! by Laura Bleiberg

And that was just the beginning of what promises to be yet another season of plenty. I cannot help but thank my lucky stars I have access to this explosion of talent and creativity. For so many years in Southern California, dance was treated like a performing arts step-child. Now, there is ballet, modern and contemporary dance, but also tap, hip-hop and a smorgasbord of international dance, from Mexico to India, Africa to Ireland. Those who are, like me, big fans of the art form have excitedly watched the growth. But there are those who suffer from what we might call “dance-avoidance.” These folks are afraid of dance, believing it is too difficult to understand. They say they don’t “get” dance. But I’m here to tell you that dance is much easier to appreciate and to enjoy than it might appear. And now is the time to try because of the variety and amount of dance that’s here. There’s nothing really to decode. You don’t have to be trained in classical ballet to follow what’s taking place onstage. All it takes is being receptive to the experience and to open your senses. It is possible to enhance the experience, so here are some clubes to help you along the journey. Dancers with the Mariinsky Ballet in the Diamonds section of George Balanchine’s neoclassical masterpiece, “Jewels.” Photo by Svetlana Avvakum

he dance season is well underway and in a theater not-so-far-from-you some special dance company is ready to take the stage.

Look back at September. Multiple outstanding dance concerts competed for attention. Laguna Dance Festival presented three different groups at the Irvine Barclay Theatre: Ballet West from Utah; the contemporary troupe Parsons Dance from New York City; and Montreal-based RUBBERBAND Dance Group, a mashup of street dance and concert dance styles. That same weekend, you could have driven to Los Angeles to see either the exciting BodyTraffic in Beverly Hills or Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project at its downtown studio. In October, there was the Mariinsky Ballet, St. Petersburg’s extraordinary classical company, performing the 19th-century ballet “La Bayadere” at Segerstrom Hall and then the next week, George Balanchine’s neo-classical full-length masterpiece “Jewels” at the Los Angeles Music Center.

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It’s all in the body First, a dancer’s instrument is the human body, and we all have one of those. We might not be able to do what a professional does, leaping halfway across the stage in a grand jete – a big arcing leap with one leg kicking forward and the other lifted behind – but we probably all know or remember what it feels like to jump. Dance isn’t the same as mime, but it is a communication medium and it tells stories through body language. Think about it: We all understand that a hand raised in greeting conveys warmth and welcome, and that a back turned to us suggests rejection. Even ballet, which began and evolved in Europe’s royal courts, uses natural gestures anyone can comprehend. Plus, choreographers craft their ballets to evoke a response from the viewer. They are trying to reach their audience. Most want to touch the audience through your intellect or emotions, to make you think and feel.

In Matthew Bourne’s reimagining of “Swan Lake,” the swans are all danced by men, instead of women. Photo by Johan Persson

ike a painting, dance can be abstract, too, purely about the movement unfolding through the space in a specific time frame (which is another way to define all dance). Twisting or pulling the body into amazing shapes creates ever-shifting sculpture. The sheer physicality of a person spinning through five or six revolutions or soaring through the air is thrilling. You can feel it in your chest. Dance has become highly acrobatic over the years, and you are likely to see astonishing feats. The best dancers are trained athletes – but also artists.

Partake of the theatrical experience Costumes, lighting and scenery help to complete the moving picture, and the imagery can be quite luxurious. Music, too, comes in the full range of genres. Ballet is not performed to Tchaikovsky only; Dwight Rhoden, co-artistic director of popular group called Complexions, made a ballet to David Bowie favorites. The late experimental choreographer Merce Cunningham pushed dance in another direction entirely when he rejected the notion that dance and music had to be married. He declared that music and dance were separate artistic entities that could be enjoyed together, but didn’t necessarily have to relate to one another. His dances were performed to experimental music that had no discernable connection to the dancers’ moves, either rhythmically or in emotional quality. Cunningham composed his abstract ballets in silence, and his dancers kept time by counting silently so they knew when to move and interact with one another. The dancers often heard the music for the first time when they performed it onstage. ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM

C Los Angeles-based Jacob Jonas The Company is named for its young choreographer and is known for the dancers’ high energy and physicality. Photo by Matthew Murphy

u n n i n g h a m’s philosophy was an extreme example of a choreographer’s relationship with musical accompaniment. More often, dance-makers choose to create a dance to music that they love or one that helps them to make a point, among other reasons. Richard Siegal’s “o2Joy,” for BodyTraffic, is a joyous romp and pure expression of his love for the jazz standards. (BodyTraffic performs at the Irvine Barclay Theatre Jan. 30)

More than one version Just as filmmakers love to remake popular older hits – think “A Star is Born” – choreographers will revisit some of the classic ballets and put their own spin on them. British choreographer Matthew Bourne took Peter Tchaikovksy’s music for the iconic ballet “Swan Lake” and turned the story into a contemporary drama about a man’s internal conflicts with his homosexuality. Instead of symmetrical rows of demure young women portraying enchanted swans (as in Lev Ivanov and Marius Petipa’s 1895 Russian production), Bourne’s “Swan Lake” casts men in the swan corps de ballet and turned them into ominous and dangerous creatures. Those who know the original version can’t help but see it in a new light after viewing it, while a new generation of dance-goers was introduced to ballet thanks to Bourne’s radical reimagining. Winner of more than 30 awards, the production returns to the Ahmanson Theatre in December.

Dance, all day any day And then there is the Internet, which overflows with all manner of dancing. YouTube officials report that dance videos have been big since the platform’s start. Videos with dance had more than 80 billion views – yes, that’s billion with a b – in 2018. You can watch your favorite Russian ballet star or learn how to do any of the latest styles. You can prepare for a first-time live performance by watching videos about it either on the theater’s website or the dance company’s website. They often include snippets of the ballet and sometimes include interviews with choreographers or dancers about the piece, which helps to expand your understanding of what the piece is all about.

A scene from “o2Joy,” Richard Siegal’s joyful expression of jazz music for the company BodyTraffic. Photo by Christopher Duggan

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Parsons Dance company performed at the Laguna Dance Festival the last weekend in September. Photo by Lois Greenfield

ltimately, what appeals to us is a matter of taste. I’m not an opera fan, because I mostly don’t enjoy the particular style of singing used in opera.

I get it that dance might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But don’t write off the whole art form. It’s staggering in its diversity and it’s a natural part of the human experience. Yes, I’m willing to bet that sometime in your life, you had a awesome time rocking out to a favorite song. That experience is stored somewhere in your muscles and bones and brain, waiting to be felt again when you’re sitting in the dark, watching a live performance.

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Orange County has its own ‘Who’s Who’ of top-shelf playwrights by Eric Marchese

O.C. theater companies help boost the visibility and name recognition of local playwrights whose work fuels their seasons

very play ever presented on stage began as an idea. Without the spark of imagination created by playwrights, the art of theater would be a shaky structure without a firm foundation.

The playwright as the cornerstone of theater has been continually recognized in Orange County for almost as long as theater companies have existed here – and in fact, the writing, development and staging of new original works has proliferated over the past two to three decades as an increasing number of playwrights continues to come to the fore. “There are more new plays circulating throughout Orange County now than in a decade,” says Eric Eberwein, director of the 35-member Orange County Playwrights Alliance (OCPA) and a prolific playwright in his own right. Eberwein says a “great renaissance of new work is percolating within the county now” that now serves as “the wellspring of new plays being done for first time.” Fueling this phenomenon are entire organizations like OCPA and New Voices Playwrights Theatre, whose sole purpose is to invite existing and new playwrights to submit their scripts – works that are then provided a showcase via public performances of either staged readings or full-fledged productions.

Earlier this year, Orange County Playwrights Alliance presented “Getting Another Chance” at Newport Theatre Arts Center, written by prolific playwright John Franceschini. Photo by Geoffrey Gread

Groups like these help facilitate the process of creating new theater, functioning as a midwife to the birth of new plays and creating a fertile stomping grounds for anyone whose visions might otherwise go unheralded. While running OCPA, Eberwein is also co-producer and associate artistic director of the new play festival OC-centric. Now in its sixth year, the Chapman University-based event requires that those who submit their scripts are either Orange County natives or now reside here, further establishing Orange County as geographically crucial to the art of writing plays. Ever on the rise are newer groups similar to OCPA and New Voices: For years now, the Orange County-based Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble has served as a workshop for up-and-coming Latina playwrights, and this past Labor Day weekend, the Curtis Theatre in Brea hosted Orange County’s newest festival showcasing new or obscure playwrights: the first-ever Page to Stage playwrights festival. Called “That’s What She Said,” the inaugural event was co-produced by Project LaFemme and featured unpublished plays celebrating the female voice.

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Director turned playwright Brian Newell directs his cast in the Maverick Theater world premiere of his “The Killer Angels: Soldiers of Gettysburg,” based on Michael Shaara’s 1974 historical novel. Photo by Kyle Hawkins.

An Embarrassment of Riches Eberwein notes that the task of selecting plays for a festival is now much more of a challenge than in the past because “there are more people writing good plays now than there ever have been.” “There are a lot of really good plays out there – more good plays, much more, than you anticipate, and it becomes a difficult process to say no to some and yes to others.” The process, he said, is “not like finding three diamonds out of hundred. It’s more like 12 or 15 that you could do, and it’s damned hard trying to pick three or four out of those 12.” MFA programs dedicated to playwriting, he said, are on the rise, as is “a general sense of the teaching of playwriting, which has gotten better. More playwrights know their craft than ever before.” Playwright David Rusiecki, New Voices’ president and artistic director, says that as a playwright, he finds such organizations of immense benefit, providing “the opportunity to see my work produced and published in a supportive environment. Attending the monthly workshops on a regular basis for myself has broadened my awareness of the theater scene for not just full-length works but also for short plays.” Rusiecki notes a “shared link” among most New Voices members: “Most, myself included, are former students of Cecilia Fannon in her Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Playwriting classes at South Coast Repertory.” For years, Fannon has been instrumental in driving SCR’s Playwrights

Conservatory, coaching and coaxing new playwrights regardless of their skill level. Publishing new works has also been on the rise: Rusiecki said New Voices is among “the only playwriting groups in the nation that has been producing their work for more than 20 years on a regular basis” and has branched out into self-publishing: Biannual anthologies of short plays and holiday plays written by members have been published since 2015, with longtime member John Bolen serving as editor. The hardcover and paperback editions are available via Lulu and Amazon.

The Who’s Who Here, for your enjoyment and edification, is Art Highlights Magazine’s “Who’s Who” of playwrights who either call Orange County home or whose work has been the beneficiary of the many venues and collectives dedicated to fostering new theater by nurturing the person whose thoughts and emotions form the basis of great theater – the playwright.

ohnna Adams grew up in West Texas but for a time made Orange County her home, finding success with O.C. and Los Angeles stagings of plays like “Cockfighters,” “Sans Merci,” “Rattlers” and “Gidion’s Knot” – the latter published in American Theater magazine and receiving some 40 to 50 productions per year. Since moving to New York she has enjoyed productions of newer plays like “World Builders” and “Nurture.”

oel Beers is the best-known playwright working closely with Stages Theatre from among a group that includes Terry

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Who’s Who’ of top-shelf playwrights McNichol, Todd Langwell and Jim Breslin. The professional journalist and educator has written a dozen plays over the past 25 years, including “A Dolt’s Only Xma$ Pageant,” “Prophets, Profits and William Blake,” “Rube!” and “Goin’ to Greenland” and has adapted plays by Moliere and Ibsen – the bulk produced at Stages Theatre and, earlier, Tribune Theatre in Fullerton, with “Rube!” receiving a staging at Brea’s Curtis Theatre in September, 2019.

Her play “Opaline” has garnered awards and received stagings throughout the U.S., including a production at Long Beach’s Garage Theatre. “Devil Dog Six” won the Craig Noel Award and “The Draper’s Eye” received Manhattan Theatre Works’ Excellend in Playwriting award. Companies near (SCR) and far (New Jersey Repertory) have commissioned her to write new plays for them. Gael’s home is New York City, where plays like “Cyber Queen of Qamara” and “The House on Poe Street” have been produced – but she makes frequent trips back to Orange County.

rica Bennett has, said OCPA’s Eberwein, penned “myriad full-length and one-act plays” he described as “very powerful, very intelligent, and strongly feminist.” Her play “Bender” was produced ichard Hellesen grew up in Orange, by OC-centric and “Love, Divine” by New launching his career in the early ’90s Voices. The 2017 short film “I Only Cried with plays at SCR. Eberwein notes that Twice” is based on Bennett’s play of the Hellesen read Margaret Edson’s “Wit” same name. when it was submitted to SCR, singling “A Waffle it out for its 1995 world premiere, with a Doesn’t Cure A THUMBNAIL HISTORY “prominent” national playwriting career OF WESTERN WORLD Insomnia” throughout the 1990s that included PLAYWRITING w a s Denver Center Theatre Company’s 1999 The ancient Greeks selected for production of “Kingdom.” His two-dozen provided the publication produced one-acts include five finalists for combination of in the Best “Hate” is one of a dozen plays by Orange County playwright, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman factors upon which A me r i c an journalist and educator Joel Beers. It was most recently produced contemporary Western Award. The prolific playwright’s hefty at Stages Theatre in Fullerton in 2012. Photo by Kirk Schenck Huff theater is derived, Short Plays roster of plays includes “Necessary and has been taught in classrooms at DePaul including elements 2011-2012 and Sacrifices,” “One Destiny,” “The Road from like plotlines, stock and U.C. Davis. In 2012, OC-centric produced her monologue Appomattox” and “You’re Getting Warmer.” He characters and themes, her “The Dirt and Its Harp in Her Mouth,” a “ M a r c h” w a s the meaning and usage co-wrote the adaptation of Frank Wildhorn’s Cain-and-Abel story set to the blues. Other published by Protest of technical terminology, musical “Freedom’s Song” and has adapted plays include the sexy desert noir “Serpentine and numerous theatrical Plays Project in literary works by Kafka, Rostand, Dickens, and sub-genres that are Pink” and “Lecherous Honey,” a contemporary 2018. Bennett’s the Brothers Grimm. universally recognized. adaptation of Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” death in May, 2019, The theater of ancient an LeFranc grew up in O.C.’s Saddleback prematurely cut ecilia Fannon “started at the top,” Eberwein Greece showed that Valley and has had numerous plays short her life and proclaims. While working as a freelance great theater sprung produced on Broadway. His “Sixty Miles to writing career and from the mind of the technical writer in the late 1980s, she read British Silver Lake” won the 2010 New York Times playwright, spawning a stellar roster of playwright Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls” and now-immortal Outstanding Playwright award. “The Big Meal” plays, screenplays turned her attention to playwriting. Her play dramatists like world premiered in Chicago in 2011 and was and teleplays. “Green Icebergs” snagged the $5,000 top prize in Aeschylus, Sophocles staged locally at Anaheim’s Chance Theater, and and Euripides. Ancient SCR’s 1993 California Playwrights Competition, eghan Breen his playwriting output includes “Bruise Easy,” Rome gave us the works then got its world premiere on SCR’s Main Stage grew up in “Catgut,” “In the Labyrinth” and “Origin Story.” of Plautus and Seneca. the following year. A lengthy roster of plays Tustin, earned her From there, entire ill Mittler has become one of Orange County’s includes “Things That Go Bump in the Night,” BFA in Dramaturgy cultures have been lit by most prolific playwrights, having penned 24 “Wowee Maui,” “They Live Upstairs” and “Bounds the stirring words and at The Theatre School original plays and adaptations since 1992, with of Normal. ” As a teacher with SCR’s Playwrights compelling stories and at DePaul University, characters created by Conservatory, Fannon has had immeasurable full productions and staged readings at Stages then returned to playwrights. impact upon other Orange County playwrights, Theatre, Curtis Theatre, Chance Theater, UCLA Southern California, and therefore upon the area’s theater community, and Fullerton College. Notable plays include “So earning her MFA in teaching and mentoring countless would-be Alone,” “Nipping at Your Nose,” and “Tales of the Dramatic Writing playwrights – and thus giving them access to Canyons: The Olinda Story,” commissioned by at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts. “My First, theater companies and audiences they would the city of Brea in 2007. My Fist, My Bleeding Seeded Spirit,” Breen’s most likely never achieve. arrett H. Omata grew up in La Palma, contemporary sequel to Lorca’s “House of receiving prominence in 1995 when “S.A.M. Bernarda Alba,” was showcased at the Kennedy engar Gael started her playwriting career while living in Irvine, joining New Voices. I Am” became his first produced play. Staged Center in 2010, premiered in Miami in 2013

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in Los Angeles by East West Players, the play’s Los Angeles Times review praised Omata’s “promising flair for irony and comic situations.” Omata, a seminary student, committed suicide just as his drama “Mystery Play,” an examination of religious faith, was about to receive its world premiere in Long Beach in December, 1998, cutting short a potentially promising career in theater.

been published by, among others, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, Independent Play(w) rights, and “The Write Place at the Write Time.”

ynne Bolen is a playwright, director, producer, and actor. Her play “Assumptions” was included in Best American Short Plays 2011-2012, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” in Best American Short Plays 2013-2014, and “Baggage Game” in Best 5-Minute Plays, all published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. Since 2014, six of her plays have been published in the New Voices Annual Anthology.

harr White lived and worked in Irvine, gaining At Chance Theater, OCPA’s 2018 staged reading of Erica Bennett’s “Through Tears prominence with the 1996 Civil Come I” starred, from left, Taylor Preminger, Joseph McKinney, David Edward Reyes, War drama “Iris Fields” during its Talia Goodman, Lisa Renee, Margarita Delia, Martinez Florez and Zoe Gavina. Photo by Geoffrey Gread development by Lincoln Center ark Bowen is an actor, teacher, and playwright whose first Theatre Directors Lab. “Six Years” world-premiered at Humana play, “Not Something Else,” was produced at Long Beach City Festival in 2006, with 2010’s “Sunlight” and 2011’s “Annapurna” College. His one-acts “Rations” and “Mr. Sam’s Place” have been premiering in Northern California. His 2012 Broadway debut, “The produced by New Voices in its annual Summer Voices Festival, and Other Place,” was nominated for two Outer Critics Circle awards, his first full-length play, “Weeds of Sloth,” opened in San Diego “The Snow Geese” premiered on Broadway in 2013, and his plays in 2016. have been produced at prominent regional venues and events such

as SCR, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Key West Theatre Festival. Desiree York came to Orange County from Pittsburgh and is now based in Los Angeles as a playwright and director, with a lengthy list of plays that includes “One Second Chance,” “Undone,” “Break Time,” “Human(e),” “Hiding Out Loud” and the one-woman show “Fractured.” “The Puppeteer” was named Best New Work of the 2017-2018 season by Dayton Most Metro, and her plays have been developed and produced throughout the U.S. and at Southern California venues like The Garry Marshall Theatre, Rogue MachineTheatre and Theatricum Botanicum. This past year, Orange County-based The Wayward Artist staged her dance collaborative “Next of Kin.”

Eberwein regards himself, Rusiecki, and a handful of their peers as noteworthy playwrights poised to emerge into greater prominence:

ric Eberwein is, as one might expect, an Orange County native. His plays include “Great Western Wanderlust” and “Peace Be With You.” The latter was part of the Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival in 2019, and his short play “The Return Engagement” was a finalist in Actors Theatre of Louisville’s National Ten-Minute Play contest. Theater companies as near as STAGEStheatre and Hunger Artists in Orange County and as far as the Coastal Empire New Plays Festival in Georgia have produced his plays.

avid Rusiecki has been involved with New Voices Playwrights Theatre since 2009 in numerous capacities, including as a writer, director, actor, co-producer and, currently, as its president, and is also a member of the Playwrights’ Center and the Orange County Theatre Guild. Between 2012 and 2015 his one-act plays “Kid Gloves” and “Long Time Coming” were published in The Best American Short Plays, and Rusiecki one-acts like “Mistle-in-Tow” and “$ecret $anta” and full-length plays like “The Wrecking Ball” have been staged or gotten readings throughout O.C.

ohn Bolen is a novelist, playwright and actor and New Voices’ current producing artistic director. His plays have been produced throughout Southern California and nationally, in theaters in Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and North Carolina, and have

iana Burbano is a playwright and Equity actor and a teaching artist at the Orange County theater companies South Coast Repertory and Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble. “Libertadores,” “Vamping” and “Linda” have been performed throughout the world, “Linda” having been featured in more than 20 festivals this past year. “Policarpa,” “Fabulous Monsters,” “Picture Me Rollin’,” “Silueta” and “Caliban’s Island” are among her many award winners. A member of The Dramatists Guild and The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, she’s an original member of the Latino Theatre Association/Los Angeles’ writers circle.

ichael Buss studied with Cecilia Fannon at SCR, then joined New Voices in 1997, its inaugural year. He has since contributed regularly to NV’s full productions in theaters all over Orange County and has had his works published in its published anthologies.

THE NATION'S TOP MFA PLAYWRITING PROGRAMS Often referred to in the theater world as “The Sacred Six” are a half-dozen colleges and universities where playwright Eric Eberwein says “people fight to get into” playwriting programs that yield a Master of Fine Arts. These are The Juilliard School, Columbia University, Brown University, Yale University, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Texas at Austin. Eberwein said if you wanted to add a seventh, it would be the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Many of the playwrights listed in this article have earned their MFAs at these institutions – and “the roster of those who come out” of these programs is, Eberwein notes, “very impressive.”

rank Farmer, nephew of the late film star Frances Farmer, is a professional actor and awardwinning playwright. Full-length plays like “Aging With Grace,” “Old Flames” and “Lady on Fire” have been produced throughout Los Angeles alongside such one-acts as “And Baby Makes Fourm” “George and Bella” and “Roxanne and Red Dog” and the 10-minute plays “Closing Time,” “Felons-at-Large” and “Dreamkiller.” ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM

Who’s Who’ of top-shelf playwrights J

ohn Franceschini started out in life as a pharmacist but retired from that profession to become a playwright since, as Eberwein notes, “theater is a passion of his.” The prolific playwright’s one-acts can be seen in one-act festivals throughout the U.S. “It’s Only a Minute a Guy,” “Angel at My Door,” “This Life or the Next” and “Trapped in Limbo” are among his numerous plays published by, among others, New Voices and OCPA.

oanne Freeman has had multiple plays – including “Detour to Déjà vu Café,” “Spiritual Entitlement,” “Night Visitor,” “Peace on Earth” and “Get me to the Church on Time” – produced in Southern California venues like STAGEStheatre, the Gallery, Stage Door Repertory and Cabrillo Playhouse. “Detour” and “Church” were produced Off-Broadway, at the Beckman Theatre, in 2009.

nne Grob has been a member of New Voices since 2014, having learned her craft studying with Cecilia Fannon Scott Horstein and others at SCR’s Playwriting Conservatory and, since 2013, seeing her plays produced in New York City in the Greenwich Village Players Theatre’s short play festivals.

ohn Lane is a founding member and past president of New Voices and a member of both New Voices and OCPA. During the past 20 years, about Michael Dale Brown has penned several original plays for Costa Mesa Playhouse, where he’s artistic 40 of his short plays have been director, including the 2018 sci-fi spoof “Vampire Queen of Mars.” Photo by Michael Dale Brown produced in various venues in California and nationally, including in New York City, Maryland, Michigan and throughout California. His long one-act drama “Isosceles” was produced in the OC-centric festival in summer, 2019.

rian Newell is known primarily as a producer, director and designer, he has come into his own as a playwright over the past 20 years as the founder and proprietor of Maverick Theater, having written a total of 20 plays. While the bulk are adaptations of novels (“The Frankenstein Diaries,” “A Christmas Carol”) and movies (“The Magnificent Seven”), he has penned several outstanding originals, including “The Killer Angels: Soldiers of Gettysburg” and two Elvis-centric plays, “The King” and “Elvis ’68.” He specializes in creating “Staged Cinema Productions” of films like “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and early in 2019, “King Kong.”

oni Ravenna is a playwright and journalist and writes and produces work for television. Her fulllength plays include “A Brush With Fate,” “For Pete’s Sake” and the commissioned work “Beethoven and Misfortune Cookies,” which was extended twice at Odyssey Theatre in Hollywood in 2013. The prolific playwright’s plays include “Sex, Love and The Premature Evacuation,” “The Green Grocer,” “Jack of Hearts,” “Tucked Away” and “Blinded.” Her newest play, “Asylum,” was produced in 2019 as part of New Voices’ Summer Voices.

inda Whitmore is a founding member of New Voices Playwrights Theatre and a member of its board of directors. Her five full-length plays, two one-acts and some two-dozen 10-minute plays have won numerous playwriting contests, including the Fullerton College Playwriting Festival and Panndora

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Productions New Works Festival, and her works have been read and staged throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. Orange County audiences are also certainly familiar with playwrights like Coleen Bevacqua, Michael Dale Brown, Leonard Dunham, Arthur Kraft, Ken LaSalle, Dave Macaray, Andrew Sloan Pink, Elaine Romero, Christopher Trela, Pattric Walker, Cameron Young, and Jordan Young.

“Elvis ’68” is one of two Newell originals about Elvis Presley. The 2018 play’s focus is a 1968 television special that helped resurrect the star’s flailing career. Photo by Brian Newell

Lovers of new plays should also keep an eye on new young playwrights like Nicholas Pilapil, who lives in Santa Ana, and Sanaz Toosi, who emerged in recent years from the SCR Youth Conservatory and is now garnering recognition in New York.

Why Playwriting, and Playwrights, Matter Rusiecki said that the value of teaching and encouraging new and existing playwrights by inviting them to submit their works and staging them is selfevident: “It’s important to nurture playwrights and the works they create because it helps them to develop a sense of identity as well as feel incorporated with the community of writers who share in the same goal of some day seeing their work come to life on stage.” He notes that the “solitary process the playwright must endure” is validated “once the process begins: First, finding a home for your work within a theater company; then, bringing in directors and actors, witnessing the preparation and rehearsals; and, eventually, sharing the experience live with audience members.” When asked if the art of playwriting is worth the sacrifice, Rusiecki answered in the affirmative: “The expectation and realization of knowing your work has become a shared vision with others hopefully makes the arduous journey of long hours writing alone pay off into a beneficial learning and growing experience.” Eberwein explains that the process, and the continuing flow of new playwrights into the theater community, are integral parts of the life’s blood of the art form of theater: “New plays are contemporary,” he said. “They speak to our time even if they’re set in the past. They’re written with the sensibility of our time and, as such, can engage audiences in a way that classics can’t.” “They can awaken audiences in a special way that the classics can’t. If you shut the door on new plays, then theater ossifies it becomes a museum – something we can’t allow to happen.”

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Icons of History, Art and Beauty and Evidence of the Innumerable Facets and Quirks of Our Western Civilization

The House of Landers Auquerque by Daniella B. Walsh

Lineage Equals History and a Quest for Beauty – The More the Better

hen talking about art collectors in a place like Laguna Beach, eyebrows will hardly twitch. After all, this town has been an art colony for more than 100 years. Artists have made and are continuing to make art here in astounding numbers in order for people to collect it – to empty their wallets and fill their homes. But then, what else is there to collect besides art? Isn’t everything, in its pure essence, art? Stay with me here: In that realm, there are collectors, and there are Collectors, and then there is Lord Ricki – a COLLECTOR of art and artifacts and everything else he can lay his hands on that somehow evidences that, yes, there is such a thing as Western Civilization.

In the hall, a life-size crocodile stands guard over young Prince Albert, later to be Queen Victoria’s husband.

He’s a multifaceted and wildly successful entrepreneur in the world of music and fashion, poised to have his (and his family’s) own Reality TV show, and who has the will plus the means to acquire objects most of us might not stop to even imagine – a silver chalice that Henry VIII drank from. The hair ornament his ill-fated wife Anne Boleyn wore to her execution. Countless perfume bottles dating back to Napoleon. A clock that once kept time for Marie Antoinette. Lord Ricki comes from correspondingly noble lineage: He is a 14th-generation-removed greatgrandson of Louis XIV of France – The Sun King, and the longestreigning monarch in European history. Coincidentally, or not, Lord Ricki sports an elaborate silver-gray coiffure, somewhat reminiscent of that of his illustrious forebear, and a glowing tan. Then there is the jewelry: Rings that the likes of Wallis Simpson and Elizabeth Taylor once wore. Pearls and diamonds that belonged to royalty. Let’s not forget the peerless Patek Phillipe watch bestowed upon him by Liberace, and more often than not, a huge golden alligator encircles his neck.

A 19th-century hand painted chaise lounge has disappeared beneath Indian beaded textiles and antique green glass with gold encrusted appliqué. Designed to catch morning light, small antique mirrors bounce rays through the glass, creating an ever -changing dazzling display in the bedroom.

In fact, somewhat incongruously (to those not in the know), alligators in several sizes and forms figure In the living room, a French antique silver leaf mirror reflects a room of treasures. Sitting on the French wood parquet and marble top commode, a fabulous Sévres Marie Antoinette mantel clock and torchieres and an 1886 Louis Comfort Tiffany gold-laden Tiffany blue cup and saucer.

Lord Ricki has been collecting bespoke alligator shoes and bags for a lifetime.

prominently in the collection. Lord Ricki recalls how, as a boy, he was bitten by his brother’s miniature pet alligator: While at first traumatized, over time he became fascinated with the beasts. How fascinated? To wit, a large stuffed gator holds sway over his office. The head of a smaller relative graces a low stool. Alligator skins, shoes and accessories – including an unforgettable attaché case – abound. Lord Ricki’s clothes are bespoke – one of a kind and, to say the least, colorful. Entire rooms are devoted to jackets – think Liberace, Elvis and Elton styles – and the above, mostly Hermès and other elite designers. A polo helmet, given to him by Ralph Lauren, hangs in a hallway. There is more. So much more. Cole Porter’s piano. Ringo Starr’s drum set. Jimi Hendrix’s and Paul McCartney’s guitars. Beatles memorabilia abounds, mostly in the form of cartoonish artifacts engendering their mass appeal, suggesting fun icons – not necessarily the musical geniuses they, each in his own right, really were. The collection of sports, mostly baseball, memorabilia is memorable, to say the least. One display holds a signed Mickey Mantle photo and a life-sized bust of Lou Gehrig, and a 1920s store mannequin displays a child’s baseball uniform and bat.

Parental Guidance Bebe says that her husband acquired his fashion sense early from his beauty-queen mom, who during the ’60s took her own “Little Lord Fauntleroy” to elite fashion houses such as Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino. “She loved his individuality and strongly encouraged it, his

freedom to dress as he wanted to be who he was,” wrote Bebe Landers via email. A lithograph of dandy B eau Brummel, along with a signed photograph of designer Karl Lagerfeld, dominates a dressing room devoted to piles of (mostly) Hermès scarves and accessories. Bebe wrote that Lord Ricki’s father was an impresario and owner of the Victory Theatre, a Toronto burlesque establishment that, according to her, also hosted music celebrities like Frank Sinatra.

These photos (top and bottom) depict some of the Yankees memorabilia on display at the couple’s Canadian home.

“He was known as the Ziegfeld of Canada, a friend to Gypsy Rose Lee, Jayne Mansfield and Sammy Davis Jr.” A black-and-white portrait of his parents, surrounded by elegant accessories and the red boxes used by the Cartier fashion houses, creates a focal point in another room. Then there are objects that once belonged to Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Elvis Presley, Coco Chanel, Grace Kelly (Princess Grace of Monaco), Audrey Hepburn and others – too many to speculate upon here. Other houses contain the bulk of his collections; more are kept in storage. And he employs a small army of experts who travel the globe looking for just the right items for Lord Ricki.

In Lord Ricki’s private powder room, 19th-century vanity sets of silver and porcelain mix with antique perfume bottles and the visages of iconic film sirens Brigitte Bardot, Sharon Tate and Rita Hayworth.

Lord Ricki’s mad passion for Hérmes is displayed in a selection of current Hérmes fragrance bottles. ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM

Still crazy (in love) after all those years Lord Ricki and Bebe grew up in Toronto, Canada. They were childhood sweethearts who reconnected after crossing paths again as adults. Together they have raised two children, Louis, 29, and Lilly, 31. Louis shares his father’s zest for living, following his passion for sports journalism. Lilly is an executive in the fashion industry and, as her proud papa recounts, there is no glass ceiling for someone as talented and determined.

Lord Ricki and Bebe Landers enjoy tracking down unique and precious objects together. Their mutual fondness for Hérmes scarves and bags complements the drama of their personal styles.

Bebe shares her husband’s passion for collecting, as a room filled with silver-lidded dressing jars, colorful crystal perfume bottles and boxes attests. Colorful Nippon porcelain objects decorate their bedroom. “Ricki is known in the collector world as the modern William Randolph Hearst,” says Bebe. “He wanted to buy the Hearst house in Los Angeles, but I did not want it.” They are mostly on the same page when it comes to picking new additions. “We pick things out together, going on antique journeys. We compete for things,

Lord Ricki presides over Yankees baseball – and Beatles collectible dolls.

racing each other up and down aisles,” says Bebe. Ricki emphasizes that his collecting and curating every room of their spacious house is a tribute to Bebe, whose paintings, including a variety of portraits of her husband, grace numerous walls. He, meanwhile, keeps nothing under glass, and absolutely nothing shows a speck of dust. His lordship cleans and arranges and rearranges every single item in the house according to his finely-honed eye, his mood and the apparently spot-on dictates of his inner muse. “Lord Ricki does all the set-ups,” says Bebe. “Every day he changes the picture. It’s like a dollhouse for him.” She went on to say that if the light changes, he will move objects accordingly; it’s an ever-morphing display – his art form. “Every object relates to another; every corner has to have a composition/story.” But, trust me here: Moving around the artful arrays, covering nearly any flat surface, requires the instincts and skills of a dancer – no room for klutzes. As for work, the couple runs House of Landers, the parent company behind a variety of films, dance and music productions, among countless enterprises. Lord Ricki specializes in the acquisition of music catalogs from the 1950s through the 1970s. He has also underwritten several films, the most iconic – in terms of returns – of which might well be the 1978 horror flick “Halloween.”

Lord Ricki’s parents peek through a collection of Cartier leather and antique porcelain vanity boxes on an antique octagon table hand-painted by Bebe Landers. Above is Bebe's brush collection; top right is one section of her studio with oils and easel.

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A Room of her Own Bebe spends time in her studio every day, painting or preparing for new work: “Painting is like breathing for me,” she says. Her variety of styles, from abstract to narrative to landscapes to portraiture, suggests that, although meticulously trained in Toronto, she keeps learning by experimenting and through careful study. Right now, for example, she is studying Vermeer’s use of light. She emphasizes that she is a storyteller who loves to infuse her narrative with images and symbols that viewers will recognize instinctively and then intellectually interpret. As her array of carefully arranged, numerous paintbrushes and tools suggests, art and collecting should not be left to chance. Foremost at the root of her art lies a quest for beauty that similarly permeates the couple’s collecting instincts. “Beauty is the aesthetic side of spirituality,” she says. “When Bebe's art complements the collections throughout everything is in harmony, we the House of Landers (above and below). Hand-painted can interpret that with the five Nippon from 1880-1920 exquisitely displayed in a corner senses we have.” of the bedroom.

Lord Ricki prepares for lights, camera, action with producer Michael Bachmann and Soul Pancake.

Her husband continues her thought: “Authentic beauty and glamour come from one’s mindset, not the various masks of our exterior.”

Bebe's oil and acrylic paintings, from abstract to portraiture.

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CALL FOR ARTISTS!

PHYSICAL JURY DAY: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2020 Artists may also jury by mail-in/digital submission no later than January 24, 2020.

BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF LAGUNA BEACH 1085 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, CA 92651 Visit art-a-fair.com/call-for-artists for more information.

For the love of classical music

Lack of public awareness can’t hush the Southern California Philharmonic’s power

by Eric Marchese

t’s the Southern California Philharmonic. Just a minute, now – what’s that?

Not the Pacific Symphony. Not the L.A. Phil. Not South Coast Symphony and not the Orange County Symphony. For a musical organization now entering its 17th season, the Southern California Philharmonic, launched in 2002 as the Yorba Linda Symphony, has an unusually low profile. But patrons, those in the musical community, and those in the know routinely refer to it as “SoCalPhil” – or, even more casually, as SCP. For this article, we’ll adopt those monikers – especially since by the time you finish reading it you’ll be among those in the know. But even then, the SoCalPhil is what many journalistic observers would refer to, not inaccurately, as a hidden gem – the best “little” home-grown symphony orchestra you’ve never heard of.

Playing Not for Pay, but for Love of the Music Perhaps the most striking facet of the SoCalPhil, the aspect that most sets it apart from other similar organizations, is that its core of performers is, for the most part, all-volunteer. Let’s repeat that fact as it soaks in: Practically none of SCP’s musicians are paid a lick. While some are music professionals, any pay they receive is from their other musical endeavors, not as symphony performers. SCP’s conductor and the concertmaster – currently, Branden Muresan and Jessica Haddy – are the only two individuals who on an ongoing basis receive monetary compensation for their work.

f course, when no regular orchestra member or volunteer is available for any specific instrument, professionals are invited to fill the vacuum and are (of course) paid. Board president Beth McCormick clarifies that this is often the case with certain specific instruments – “in particular (with) harp and, at times, bass and percussion.” The orchestra’s dedicated musicians – some 60 in all, including a 36-member string section, 16 woodwinds and seven brass plus several pianists, harpists and percussionists – “come from all walks of life and include individuals from many different generations,” she said. “The board of directors and all of the other musicians support the group generously with time and donations” to make each season possible, notes McCormick, who began playing violin in elementary school, joined SCP’s string section in 2013, and has played in other local community orchestras such as the Chapman University Symphony and Saddleback College Symphony Orchestra. McCormick, referring to herself and her musician peers within SoCal Phil, said “the tie that binds us is our love of music and, in particular, our desire to share this gift of music with family, friends and members of the community – those we wish to call our friends in the future.”

Origins and roots are in Yorba Linda SoCalPhil began in 2002 in Yorba Linda. At that time, a handful of musicians was looking for an orchestral group in which they could play. As they soon discovered, though, none of the other Orange County-based orchestras were looking to add musicians. Fueling the desire to perform was the prospect of a new performing arts center being planned by the city. The community’s musicallyinclined individuals reasoned that the time was therefore perfect for a Yorba Linda-based symphony orchestra.

SoCalPhil has blossomed under the guiding baton of Maestro Branden Muresan.

Growing Pains Their dream, it almost goes without saying, was to occupy the city’s new performing arts center once it was completed.

fficials, McCormick said, encouraged the formation of a city-based symphony “and even kicked in a few bucks in the early years to help this new orchestra achieve its goals.” Thus was born the Yorba Linda Orchestra Association. Known as the YLOA, its first rehearsal was held in March of 2003 and within a couple of months it was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Just weeks later – June 6, 2003 – the Yorba Linda Symphony had its first concert performance, with Larry Lowder at the helm as interim conductor. Shortly thereafter, John Burdett was appointed conductor.

Alas, the creation of a performing arts center in Yorba Linda, the impetus for forming an orchestra, never came to pass. Despite this, the fledgling organization continued to attract more and more performers. Several concerts were performed each season at a variety of venues throughout the city. The musicians, all members of the community, would convene and rehearse once a week between September and June, the regular symphonic season. Up to five concerts were held each season, and in 2007, less than four years in, Dr. Robert Frelly became the orchestra’s new conductor and music director. Ticket sales and donations from musicians and their family members and friends provided for covering operating costs. During its first 10 years, the orchestra continued to attract musicians from

other parts of Orange County outside of Yorba Linda. By the same token, various venues in northern O.C. hosted the concerts.

y 2009, the board decided to change the operating name of the orchestra to Southern California Philharmonic in hopes of drawing audiences from beyond Yorba Linda and its environs. When around the same time frame Dr. Frelly moved on to other opportunities, the search for a new conductor began, sparking an 18-month process. SoCalPhil auditioned five potential candidates for conductor; each prepared for and conducted one apiece of each of the season’s five regularly scheduled concerts. After each concert, the musicians rated each conductor and provided the board of directors with their impressions and feedback. A focus group comprised of principal players and

whichever musicains had performed in all five concerts was then assembled, and it narrowed the choices from five candidates down to two. After both were interviewed by the board, the choice was made to name Branden Muresan as SoCalPhil’s next conductor.

SAVE THE DATES! DON'T MISS SoCalPhil's 20192020 SEASON

SCP opened its current season in early October by celebrating Russian’s Romantic-Era composers, with four performances remaining – one over the upcoming holidays and three more next spring. “A Holiday Celebration” is on Monday night, December 2, at 7:30 p.m.

Finding, and keeping, the right conductor – and getting a spiffy new concert hall That was in 2013, and of course, Muresan has been and isn’t just a steady hand on the till, but an inspiring one.

All three of SoCalPhil’s 2020 concerts are products of the orchestra’s Young Artists Competition and Showcase, now in its 16th year. The March 2020 event’s focus is children, with “Classical Music for Children of All Ages.” The 4 p.m. event on Sunday March 8 will showcase the winners of the Young Artist competition in the Prodigy age group (kids ages three through 12). Audiences will have the chance not only to hear but to meet and greet the young composers and also to partake of a musical petting zoo. Saturday, April 11, is “A Night at the Symphony.” The 7 p.m concert will feature the winners of the Young Artist Competition from the Artiste age group (ages 13 through 17). The season concludes with “A Salute to American Composers Old and New” on Saturday May 30. The 7 p.m. concert features winners from the Virtuoso age group (ages 18 to 24). The schedule offers several entry points for patrons to move from being unfamiliar with Southern California Philharmonic to becoming audience members and supporters on an ongoing basis, thus investing in the lives, talents and musical careers of tomorrow’s symphonic stars.

“Our maestro is, as we’ve learned, many things – teacher, cheerleader, p arent, couns elor, student, friend – and the list goes on” says McCormick in praise of the multitalented, multifaceted Muresan. “Most importantly, he believes that each concert is a gift that we, as musicians, can only enjoy by sharing it with those who come to listen.”

Not only did SCP hit the jackpot in signing Muresan; during the course of the 2013-’14 season, the orchestra found a home at the elegant, 715-seat Alexandra Nechita Center for the Arts

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at Orange Lutheran High School, where most of the next two seasons’ performances were held.

frequently enrolled in noted music programs at various Southern California universities.

Scheduling of concerts and rehearsals was often a sticking point, though, prompting SCP to again seek a new home. As Maestro Muresan began to tap into his network, discussions with friend and colleague Val Jamora, music director of Corona del Mar High School, yielded a partnership between SoCalPhil and the school.

In Muresan, SoCalPhil has an artist born, raised and educated in Southern California – and who began studying violin performance at age six and performing professionally at age 16. Undergrad work at Saddleback College and San Diego State University and a Masters in Music from SDSU led to fame as an orchestral violinist and as concertmaster for the Long Beach Ballet Orchestra.

cCormick praises the “wonderful new theater” on Eastbluff Drive in Newport Beach. Completed in 2015, the $16 million, 29,000-square-foot performing arts complex features a flexible seating configuration that can accommodate more than 350 patrons. The 2016-2017 season was also first year of the orchestra’s Young Artists Showcase, held each March and sponsored by the Tustin Area Fine Arts Council (TACFA). Soloists ages three through 24 are showcased as they compete for the opportunity to perform with SoCalPhil and are also rewarded with a modest monetary award. TACFA’s network helps circulate news about the competition/showcase, whose young soloists are selected from within three age groups: Prodigy, ages 3 to 12; Artiste, ages 13 to 17; and Virtuoso, ages 18 to 24. McCormick points out that the older, college-age kids (the Virtuoso category) are

Sharing Muresan’s violin artistry, Haddy came on board as concertmaster in 2016. She was invited by Krutz Violins to peform at the 2018 NAMM show; that led to her being appointed as the company’s brand ambassador, performing on a 2004 Anton Krutz violin. With their small salon concerts in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, she and her pianist have garnered fame throughout Southern California.

SoCalPhil’s Current Season – and Beyond The 2019-2020 season’s first concert, “Exploring the Music of Russian Romanticism,” was held October 5. The holidays will be celebrated in December, while all three of next spring’s concerts will celebrate and showcase SCP’s Young Artists from its three age

groups – Prodigy, Artiste and Virtuoso. SCP held auditions in early November of this year (as it does each year) to determine which young musicians will perform as soloists in these concerts. It’s the 16th year the orchestra has conducted such a “Young Artist Concerto Competition.” Those young people who win the competition not only perform next spring for an audience under Muresan’s direction; they’re also given a modest scholarship to help them pursue their musical studies and interests. SCP, as its promotional brochure notes, “is committed to keeping classical music alive in our community and fostering the next generation of musicians,” mirrored by Maestro Muresan’s dedication to instilling love of classical music within young people.

o pay it forward, so to speak, he began teaching at age 18, and just around the time SoCalPhil was born, he founded and developed the East San Diego County Civic Youth Orchestra. That ongoing commitment to the region’s youngest musicians further underscores the philosophy of the orchestra, its board and its donors that children, teens and young adults represent the future of classical music. Before you know it, they’ll be the face of the Southern California Philharmonic.

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Oil paints were not generally used outside the studio

“What Is Plein Air?,” You Ask

by Jean Stern

he term “plein-air” comes from the French phrase en plein-air, which is an idiom that does not translate directly but simply means “outdoors” – similarly, in Italian, the phrase is al fresco, and in Spanish, al aire libre. Plein air painting is a specialized approach that landscape painters have utilized for more than 150 years. When followed to its completion, the plein air technique has proven over and over that it is the best approach to paint natural light. The custom of working outdoors has been practiced for several hundred years, but it was mostly suited to drawing and watercolor painting, as oil paints were not generally used outside the studio. Produced in the studio in pot-sized batches, oil paints were largely restricted to the studio as they began to harden and dry when exposed to air. In the traditional studio or atelier, an assistant would constantly grind pigments and mix in the proper oil to make paint. Thus, the master and the apprentices were continually supplied with fresh paint as they worked.

Judith Cameron: Laguna Rocks

Artists tried various methods to carry paint into the field to work outdoors. The most popular method was to put paint into a small container bag made from a pig’s or sheep’s bladder. This worked well, but seldom for more than one-time usage. A pinhole was punctured on the side of the pouch to release the paint, but the contents quickly thickened and hardened after a few hours. In 1841, John Goffe Rand (1801-1873), an American portrait artist living in England, patented the collapsible soft-metal paint tube that we know today. At

Jacobus Baas at Crystal Cove

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first, the opening of the tube was sealed with a cork stopper. This lightweight airtight container offered artists easy portability, and by collapsing part of the tube with each use, the contents stayed fresh and workable. The following year, Winsor & Newton, the British manufacturer of art materials, improved the design by using screwon caps. The tubes were immediately popular with artists who wanted to paint outdoors. A painting revolution had begun. The first painters credited with painting en plein-air in a systematic manner were the artists of the Barbizon School. At first, the School was merely a small group of Parisian artists who associated around Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867). In 1848, Rousseau led the group out of Paris to the Barbizon Forest, where they communed with nature and recorded their experiences by painting en plein air. In addition

to Rousseau, the more notable Barbizon artists included Camille Corot (1796-1875), Narcisse Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), and Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878), who often gets the distinction of being “the first plein air painter.” Perhaps like no other artist, the plein air painter is mesmerized by natural light. The passion for light drives them to seek the genuine experience and paint it, regardless of climate, weather or natural impediments. Hence, it is as a plein-air painter that the landscape painter finds the ultimate reason for being, and at the same time, Randall Sexton: “Pull Up A Chair” confronts their most rigorous challenge: to capture quickly the brilliant and fluid visual sensation of natural light at a specific time and place while facing the formidable constraint of fleeting time. Natural light does not stand still, and after about two hours, the light the artist first endeavored to paint is no longer there. The sun has moved, the shadows have changed and the colors have transmuted. The whole point of painting outdoors is to record that specific and fleeting effect of natural light. Armed Clark G. Mitchell: Red Tide

John Cosby painting with onlookers

with the plein air sketch, the artist can then go into the studio and paint a large work that will accurately exhibit that specific effect of natural light, something they would not have time to do if they attempted to paint the large work outdoors. Jean Stern is executive director of The Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine Institute and Museum for California Art

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A remix for your life Welcome to Novel Park. A neighborhood with its own beat. Full of surprises and delight. No two days, or walks or events, are ever the same. It’s here that you’ll find active places. Relaxing spaces. And friendly faces. Of course you’ll get to enjoy everything else Great Park Neighborhoods has to offer, too. Like multiple pools, parks, community events—and that oh-so-amazing access to the Orange County Great Park. Life will be different here. Homes at Great Park Neighborhoods are priced from the $500,000s to over $1,000,000. Start your tour at one of our information centers. Cadence Park | 703 Benchmark, Irvine Novel Park | 385 Novel, Irvine GreatParkNeighborhoods.com 949.771.7135

©2019 Heritage Fields El Toro, LLC. All rights reserved. Great Park Neighborhoods, the bicycle logo, and “Life Will Be Different Here” are registered trademarks of Heritage Fields El Toro, LLC (“Heritage Fields”) dba Great Park Neighborhoods used for the marketing of new home neighborhoods in Irvine, California. FivePoint Communities Management, Inc. (“FivePoint”) is the development manager of Great Park Neighborhoods. Neither Heritage Fields nor FivePoint is designing, constructing or offering homes for sale in Great Park Neighborhoods. All proposed amenities are subject to change without notice. Lifestyle photography does not reflect any ethnic or racial preference. (9/19)

Continuous Motion

Victory Tischler-Blue: Embracing Drama in All Forms

by Daniella B. Walsh

Wild thing

you make my heart sing You make everything groovy, wild thing Wild thing, I think I love youâ&#x20AC;¦ 72

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hose lines open “Wild Thing,” a song put onto the charts in 1966 by The Troggs, one of the myriad British Beatles offshoots.

A decade or so later, The Runaways, a group of teenage female rockers led by superstar Joan Jett, recorded the same song. Little did Vicki Blue, the group’s last bass player (19771978), know then what a huge part everything wild would play in her adult life, after she embarked on an entirely different mission and purpose as Victory Tischler-Blue. First, she had to cut loose from teen band travails such as touring and divergent, often rudderless bandmates, a predatory impresario and effects of fame that rose like a punker’s scream and descended into a Joplinesque wail.

As it turned out, though, she had put band life behind her at the right time. “With MTV starting up, there came a new genre of music videos,” she recalls. “I immediately pronounced myself as a music director. Anything goes with those music videos.”

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She rapidly morphed into a videographer, director and film producer, first in television, then in independent films. In 2004, she chronicled the rise and fall of The Runaways in “Edgeplay,” a soul-searing but widely acclaimed documentary. “The film became the highest-rated rock doc on Showtime,” she says. Making videos and films revived a childhood dream for Tischler-Blue: She had wanted to be a photographer since age 12, but the prospect had proved daunting. Dyslexia prevented her from grasping the intricacies of the medium and its machinery, but when her father gave her an Instamatic with a film cartridge, it became a constant companion, she recalls. The Instamatic has since given way to sleek Leicas. She began making music as a lark, a cool thing to do for any California teen. “I enjoyed the band,” she recalls, “but photography was my first love. My fave during the band days was going into photographers’ studios.”

Wild Things Tischler-Blue grew up in Newport Beach, California – not exactly a place that evokes the “wild” West that she came to love. “We toured America, Europe, Northern Ireland and, after the Runaways, I lived in London for three years, as a songwriter,” she says. “That made me realize how much I love California and the West. I feel that most real creativity takes place in the West, but I find Los Angeles, and cities in general, suffocating.” Currently, she lives with her partner of 16 years in Palm Springs, on what was the last horse farm in the city. Now, it is also home to three Andalusian, aka Pure Spanish, horses and a photo studio filled with compelling, mostly black-and-white images of women, men and horses. One quickly grasps how intensely Tischler-Blue loves all things wild: The uninhabited West, wild horses and the deserts they roam and untamed people – the latter meaning women and men who follow a self-charted course, who embrace the dark as well as the light, people whom most of the bourgeoisie would dismiss. For Tischler-Blue, photography is all about intimacy and the element of surprise, she says. She finds magic that comes along with things not planned, that leave a lot of space for the unscripted to manifest. “I’m always drawn to the outliers,” she says. What all, human and beast, have in common here is an extraordinary, sometimes haunting beauty.

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Victory Tischler-Blue H

er photographs documenting desert herds of wild horses reflect her empathy with beings at the mercy of humans. Over time, she has rescued 17 wild mustangs which are now housed at the Return to Freedom American Wild Horse Sanctuary. “When the Bureau of Land Management rounded them up, they were starving. To find those horses and have them brought from Nevada to Utah was the biggest accomplishment of my life – more important than gold records,” she says. Their close-up portraits dispel any doubt about animals possessing souls. Every face looks different; the only common element is their eyes – introspective and, yes, soulful. “They would stop and look at you – the wind is blowing, and they look at you, and nothing exists except that moment. It is spiritual, ethereal, humbling, emotional and overwhelming. Photographing the wild horses, there is no more intimate scenario.” On a road trip through Nevada, Tischler-Blue and Pat, her partner, encountered their first herd of wild horses along a roadside. She discovered that they belonged to the Cold Creek herd, and spent the next eight years following and photographing them. “Over time I became familiar with the horses, getting to know the herd and the family bands, up to four generations. I’d park on the side of the road and walk into the desert,” she recalls. “Then, in 2015, a horrible drought

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struck, and the horses starved. The government rounded them up and took them away.” Persistence prevailed: After calling every wild horse sanctuary. including Return to Freedom, and wrangling with the Bureau of Land Management, she found every one of her horses and adopted the ones she’d photographed. They now live in Lompoc, California. “I made it happen,” she says, noting that she supports her equine models by holding photographic workshops.

A Lens on a Different World During another road trip, Tischler-Blue and Pat stopped at Bella’s Restaurant and Expresso in Wells, Nevada. One of Tischler-Blue’s envisioned photo projects had been to photograph the inner workings of a brothel and the women plying their trade in the sex industry. At Bella’s, the opportunity presented itself since the eatery’s proprietor also owned Bella’s Hacienda Ranch, a legal Nevada brothel.

ella wholeheartedly embraced Tischler-Blue’s intent of presenting the self-described courtesans not just as sex workers but as empowered, entrepreneurial women. “The women are good people working in a stigmatized occupation,” Tischler-Blue says. “They come from all walks of life, sometimes from horribly abusive backgrounds.

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THE RUNAWAYS L-R Victory Tischler-Blue, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West

Victory Tischler-Blue T

hen there are others who are there for the adventure, living their own lives and their own fantasies.” Over time she struck up friendships with Bella and her workers. “I was welcome as a woman,” she said. “There was a warmth and welcoming that surprised me. We had a wonderful time together. The ladies contribute their talents to my art project. They are my art models; I am paying them, and they are doing something they are proud of. Their work is not about sex; it’s a form of therapy, filling human need, about empathy and touch.” Photographs taken so far at Bella’s will be featured in an exhibition at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles. Curated by gallery director Paris Chong, the show will open on March 5, 2020. Eventually the “Bella” works will be turned into a book. Chong and Tischler-Blue met accidentally at the gallery. “When I found out that Victory had been in the Runaways,” Chong says, “I asked to see her work and, it was great.” Originally the show was to feature landscapes, but when Chong saw examples of the “Bella Hacienda” project, she chose those photographs instead. “I love Susan Meiselas’ ‘Carnival Strippers,’ and liked that Victory’s pictures reminded me of that book. Her pictures are a bit racy without putting down women. She captured the women with respect and honesty. They are honest photographs,” says Chong. “The show will do well here; it has a lot of rock and roll.”

A Road Not Traveled Asked if she ever thought of becoming a photojournalist, Tischler-Blue answered in the affirmative. “I think about that a lot. If I did not have the career I had as a kid, I would have become a war photographer. I love the drama, the intensity,” she says. She went on to say that she has shot some horrific things in her life, but once behind the viewfinder it’s all about getting that shot. “I wish I could have gone to Vietnam, to Afghanistan,” she says. “That is one of my few regrets.” But then, the Runaways played Northern Ireland in the ’70s. Their hotel was bombed, she recalls. “That’s the closest I’ve been to a war.” Summing up her career thus far, she says: “I really don’t care about having been famous. It opened a lot of doors for me that would not have opened up. By nature, I am a very private person. That’s why I opted for directing films. I am in control.”

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ARTIST DIRECTORY Robert HANSEN Nina ACKMANN Randy MORGAN Judy CROWLEY Bebe LANDERS Bernie ANDERSEN Tricia SKOGLUND James David THOMAS Lesli BONANNI Lynn GERTENBACH Robert LORING April SOLOMON David SOLOMON Rob WILLIAMS Joanne UNGER Jackie BLUE

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RANDY MORGAN

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JUDY CROWLEY paintings

udy Crowley is a contemporary artist who paints in many traditional styles and genres. For example, her still lifes possess a quiet beauty that transforms everyday familiar objects into thought provoking works of art.

Over the years she has studied and continues to study with many accomplished artists. She also loves going to museums, art auctions and shows, and appreciates all styles of painting.

Painting is her passion and a reflection of her love and appreciation of the world as she sees it. For her, inspiration is everywhere and, from the first brushstroke on a blank canvas to the last finishing touch, she strives to create each painting as a unique, beautiful and timeless work of art. “Painting touches my heart and is a way for me to interpret what I see into a lasting image. It is what I love doing.”

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my many years immersed in art and feel fortunate to be part of a supportive community of artists and art enthusiasts from whom I have learned and continue to learn so much,” she says.

Art is a large part of Judy’s life, and she has pursued it in many ways, including photography and interior design. This knowledge and experience add depth to her beautiful paintings.

Exhibitions: The HeART of Orange County, 2018, 2019 | COAL, 2018, Open Juried Award Show | Spring Show SOCALLPAPA, 2018 | Crystal Cove Art in the Park, 2018 | 8th Annual 6” Squared Exhibition and Sale, 2017

Member: California Art Club, LPAPA and SOCALPAPA

JudyCrowley.com • Judy@JudyCrowley.com • 949 922.5112 ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM

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ART HIGHLIGHTS Team Ludo Leideritz – publisher Ludo Leideritz was born in the Netherlands, where his earliest education included an appreciation of the arts. Music played an especially significant role: At age seven, he began learning to play guitar and later explored other musical instruments, including the flute. The visual arts, including drawing and painting, also intrigued him and, over time he evolved into a painter and photographer. He’s also a furniture designer whose designs have been marketed worldwide during his 30-year career in the furniture industry. His education consisted of degrees in medicine and, later, in international business. Since 2006, Ludo has been a gallerist and, since 2012, the owner and director of the Forest & Ocean Gallery in Laguna Beach. The gallery was named “Best Gallery in Laguna” by the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce in 2016 and 2018.

Eric Marchese – editor Eric Marchese came from New England to Orange County, where he attended high school and college, starting his journalism career in 1978 as a freelance arts reporter for The Orange County Register. He continued providing local coverage of the performing arts as a freelancer while fulfilling various editorial pursuits with publishers of national trade magazines and worked as a feature writer and copy editor for The Register’s newsroom and a reporter-at-large for the advertorial department while also covering live theater. He covered theater for the trade paper Back Stage for seven years, has worked as an editor and writer for a wide variety of local publications and businesses, and currently covers the arts for the Voice of Orange County news website and the weekly Times OC.

Charles Michael Murray – creative and marketing director Charles was born in Motown (Detroit), moving to California to obtain BA and MS degrees from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara. His skills include corporate and consumer graphic design, internet services, commercial photography, motion graphics, documentary filmmaking, and the promotion of local and international artists. He has supported a wide variety of industries, including the arts, the environment, food and beverage, commercial and residential real estate and high technology, and clients of his highly sought-after 6,000-square-foot photo design studio in Tustin have always appreciated his professional and creative approach. Charles’ personal artwork evolved into an environmental art gallery showcasing local and international artists and including staging eco-festivals such as one earth / one dream in Laguna Beach. His art is focused on intelligent preservation of land and sea through media communication and collaboration while embracing the arts as the international language of humanity.

Daniella B. Walsh – staff writer and assistant editor Daniella Walsh came to the U.S. from her native Europe, emigrating from Berlin to Washington, D.C. As she was still learning English, she resolved to communicate primarily through drawing and painting. That mode included after-school visits to the National Gallery, Smithsonian Museum and The Phillips Collection as well as explorations of the then-sparse cultural scene. While developing a reverence for Matisse, Kokoschka, O’Keefe and Rothko, she grew passionate about photography and stained glass. By 1994, while studying at Chapman University, she shifted from degrees in art and linguistics to English, with an emphasis on journalism. That led to work as a community reporter and, later, as an art writer and critic for The Orange County Register. She has since written for numerous art-oriented publications, including Art Scene, Art News and Art & Living, as well as a monthly art column for Riviera Magazine.

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Francis Bade Francis Bade is a Laguna Beach-based artist who explores mediums as varied as paint, pastels, ink and, yes, wire. Digital works include graphics, animations, prototyping and the creation of websites. “Creating the illusion of motion has been the foundation of most of my works,” he says. “I am inspired by great masters Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo but also Edgar Degas, Android Jones and M.C. Escher. Their beautiful and dynamic work has helped me learn and hone my own creativity.”

Laura Blieberg Laura Bleiberg is a nationally known journalist and dance critic. She is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Voice of OC, The Orange County Register, and other publications. She was a senior editor at Orange Coast Magazine and was a guest dance critic for public radio station KCRW-89.9 FM.

Barbara Gothard Palm Springs-based artist Barbara Gothard is known for her dynamic mystical realist paintings, which are exhibited nationally and internationally. Her articles in Art Patron Magazine include “Bringing the Past into the Present: Three Contemporary Photographers” and “Four Emerging Artists Intersect at Joshua Tree Highlands Artists Residence.” Gothard has served as curator and editor of Palm Springs Art Museum Artists Council Exhibition Catalogues and is an emeritus member and past president of the council’s board of directors; was on Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency’s advisory board; and was chairman of the board of directors of Space 4 Art in San Diego. Her works can be seen at barbaragothard.com and singulart.com.

Chris Clemens Martello Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Chris is a 20-year resident of the Palm Springs area. As a publicist and writer, she has both promoted and written articles for a wide variety of clients. In the art world, she has done so for Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs International Film Festival, various Coachella Valley art galleries, local area artists, performing arts productions, and music festivals. She has had the honor of managing local media for visiting world leaders and major media personalities for the Desert Town Hall lecture series for more than 10 years. Another of her passions is working to create awareness for many non-profits and their annual events.

Pam Price Pam Price taught art in St. Paul, MN, and Izmir, Turkey, after graduating from the University on Minnesota. She is the author of three editions of 100 Best Spas of the World and co-authored seven editions of Fun with the Family in Southern CA (Globe Pequot Press). Pam served three terms as a commissioner on the Cathedral City Public Arts Commission.

Judy Sklar Judy Nemer Sklar is a professional artist, writer, educator and business owner residing in Palm Desert, California. She received degrees from Chapman University and California State University of Dominquez Hills. Along the way she has exhibited her art in numerous galleries, won regional and national juried art awards, sold her work in the United States and abroad and developed and taught creative art workshops in Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley, titled “Embracing a Creative Life.” Her art and writing have been featured in various magazines, and she’s currently researching a book based on interviews with mid-life successful artists titled “Artists Narratives” that explores the artist’s approach to aging and life’s transitions.

Jean Stern A recognized authority on California Impressionism, art historian Jean Stern has extensive experience in the field as an author, curator, lecturer and teacher. Through a noteworthy international series of books, exhibitions, lectures, articles and video documentaries over a 25-year period, he has established a national presence the fields of California art and history for the Irvine Museum Collection at the University of California, Irvine, where he is executive director. Throughout his career, Mr. Stern has presented more than 250 lectures; judged and juried some 100 art competitions; presented tours/lectures on California art at numerous museums; authored/co-authored numerous books; and written essays for more than 25 books and museum exhibition catalogues.

ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM

CELEBRATE THE LEGACY, BE PART OF THE TRADITION!

LPAPA IN RESIDENCE UPCOMING EXHIBITION

at Forest & Ocean Gallery / 480 Ocean Avenue / Laguna Beach Art & Nature November 4 - November 18, 2019 Artists' Reception Saturday, Nov 9, 2019 / 5pm - 7pm

THE HOLIDAYS ARE COMING! “BEST IN SHOW”

Commemorative book makes a great present! For more information, visit our website: lpapa.org

Laguna Plein Air Painters Association P.O. Box 4109 / Laguna Beach, CA 92652 / 949-376-3635 www.lpapa.org

ART-HIGHLIGHTS.COM