OC Weekly Review's "Made in California"
Special thanks to Dave Barton from the OC Weekly for stopping by our 34th Annual Made in California Juried Exhibition. See the excerpt below for his review.
In Brea Art Gallery’s 34th annual “Made in California,” gallery director Heather Bowling and her jury have gathered 60+ artists into a cohesive embarrassment of riches. Top pick is the humanity of Daniela Garcia’s painting Ofrenda de Fronteras, its image of two boys asleep at a detention center amid an overflow of marigold, a delicate Dia de los Muertos symbol of hope that the boys find their way home. There’s also hope in Michael Roman’s intricate charcoal over pen and ink B-Boy as Pantokrator #HipHopCanSaveMyLife, its iconography transforming the young black subject into a Christian saint. Stacie Jaye Meyer captivatingly deconstructs her 2017 charcoal and pastel on paper Fire Study (Point Dune), by isolating it into soot, a burnt stick of wood, and orange paper painted an inferno orange (Fire Study, Assemblage). Entomologists will be pinned and mounted by Mike Yokotake’s unnervingly realistic, oversized carved wooden Rhino Beetle. Stephen Anderson’s 4 Drones of the Apocalypse (Work, Conform, Obey, Die) takes those dreary lemons and makes them colorful neon lemonade. The commodification of art gets a backhand in Molly Schulman’s LACMA Quick Shop Painting (Magritte), with its computer icon clicking on a purchase button superimposed over the French artist’s The Treachery of Images. Near the front of the gallery, Made in California Solo Show winner Zara Monet Feeney’s oil on canvas Curtain After Intermission rises on her blue mood version of Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, a feminist acknowledgement that being naked and female may be the only way to get noticed in the art world. It also works as an optimistic indicator of future possibilities, a nod of the head to the other great work Bowling and Company have waiting inside for you.
“Made in California” at Brea Gallery, 1 Civic Center Circle, Ste. 1, Brea, (714) 990-7730; www.breagallery.com. Open Thurs.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Through Fri. $3.
See full review on the OC Weekly website here.
Want to be a part of the 35th annual exhibition? Artwork submissions will be open October 1st 2019. Check back here.
