Visitors to Variations of Place might think they are attending an exhibition at the former Irvine Museum (the predecessor of the Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, IMCA, on Von Karman Avenue, where the show is currently mounted).

Indeed, Variations of Place is IMCA’s first exhibition to display paintings exclusively from the California Impressionist genre from the late 19^th to early 20^th century. Janet  Blake, the curator of the show, previously Curator of Collections, Laguna Art Museum, explains in the didactics that the exhibition addresses California Impressionism as it evolved through artistic dialogue. She adds that the 22 artists in the show “shared a passion for Southern California with its Mediterranean climate and its geography – from ocean shores to valleys, the High Sierra to the deserts. With highly individualized styles informed by their education and experiences, these artists created a multifaceted genre rich with variation.”

Colin Campbell Cooper, “The Rustic Gate”, circa 1927. UC Irvine Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of The Irvine Museum.

Looking back, the Irvine Museum, founded in 1992, was devoted to “this beautiful and important regional variant of American Impressionism [that] has come to be associated with California and its remarkable landscape,” according to its mission statement. Following the 2016 museum closing, IMCA – with its recently acquired Irvine Museum collection of over 1,300 pieces, and the Gerald E. Buck collection of 3,000 plus artworks – was established at UC Irvine.

Variations of Place, with paintings from the Irvine Museum and Buck collections, contains three dozen pieces by 22 artists who settled in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach and San Diego. These painters – including Franz Bischoff, Maurice Braun, Alson Skinner Clark, Colin Campbell Cooper, Anna Althea Hills, Joseph Kleitsch, Edgar Payne, Granville Redmond, Guy Rose, George Gardner Symons and William Wendt – used the light, broad brush strokes and pure, bright colors of their earlier French Impressionist counterparts. Yet they concentrated on the magic Southland light, along with nocturnal settings, to depict landscapes, seascapes and people.

Several paintings in the exhibition have been displayed in previous Irvine Museum shows. Nocturne by Granville Redmond (circa 1920) was featured in the museum’s Masters of Light, California Plein-Air Paintings 2002-03 show, which traveled to three cities in Europe. The dark blue painting of ocean, mountains and sky illustrates a dreamy moonlit night. His California Poppies and Lupine (circa 1926) is more recognizable, as it features the artist’s signature golden-hued poppies in a field of lavender, with trees and mountains in the background. Another well-known painting in the show, this one previously owned by the Irvine Museum and often exhibited there, is The Idle Hour (1917) by John Hubbard Rich. It portrays a young woman, exotically adorned, a large, flowered fan framing her profile.

Maurice Braun, “California Hills”, 1914. UC Irvine Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of The Irvine Museum.

Conversely, Maurice Braun’s Bay and City of San Diego, or San Diego from Point Loma (circa 1910), from a private collection, is a rarely seen illustration of Point Loma, then devoid of most buildings and people that inhabit the area today. The painting reveals the hilly Point Loma peninsula, ringed by blue water with large puffy clouds imparting an ethereal aspect. Another rarely seen painting, Enchantment by Joseph Kleitsch (1922) from a private collection contains the artist’s detailed figuration of a brightly clad woman seated next to a stream and surrounded by stones and cliffs. Kleitsch’s Laguna Beach (circa 1923) is an overview of small buildings and trees, with canyons and sky in the background, before the city was built up as it is today.

Three paintings depict scenes from our beloved San Juan Capistrano Mission. Arthur Grover Rider’s From the Doorway, San Juan Capistrano (circa 1929) is a moody rendition of the mission, as seen from inside an arched doorway while looking out to a bucolic garden. Colin Campbell Cooper’s Mission Corridor, San Juan Capistrano (circa 1920) is also a scene looking out from within, yet with a longer view, revealing multiple arched passageways. Alson Skinner Clark’s San Diego Mission (circa 1922) presents a long outdoor view of the mission’s façade and porticoes.

Frank Cuprien, “Reflections of Evening”, 1940. The Buck Collection

Variations of Place features several seascapes and landscapes. Frank Cuprien’s An Evening Symphony (circa 1929) reveals a greenish-bluish tide rolling in on a misty day. His Reflections of Evening (1940) illuminates the afternoon sun glinting on the low tides as they lap at the shore. Guy Rose’s Incoming Tide (1917) illustrates the tide pools of Laguna Beach, a place that the artist often visited.

Autumn Glory (circa 1920) by Benjamin Brown is a magnificent autumn-hued landscape. Also displayed is California Hills (1914) by Maurice Braun, a classic look at our state before its extensive development. William Wendt (known as the dean of Southern California artists) is represented by two paintings. The House that Jack Built (1929) depicts several small homes against a hillside, possibly in Laguna Beach. His An Echo of the Past (1917) illustrates the side of an old, weathered mission-style building.

Charles Reiffel, “Spring”, circa 1928. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art.

Other classic SoCal landscapes in the exhibition include Franz Bischoff’s Alpenglow, High Sierra (circa 1918) of the snow-laced mountains; Edgar Payne’s Temple Crag  (circa 1920) of mountains above a High Sierra lake; and the magnificent Spring (circa 1928) by Charles Reiffel, of a farmer and horse amidst the desolate Southern California countryside.

Variations of Place: Southern California Impressionism in the Early 20th Century is on view through September 3, 2022. Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, 18881 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 100, Irvine. Tue.–Sat., 10 am–4 pm. 949-476-0294. Free. imca@uci.edu.

Edgar Payne, “Temple Crag”, circa 1920. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art.

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Phillip K. Smith III’s light-based public sculptures draw on elements of the Light and Space art movement, and on aspects of reflection, color, light and shadow, environment and change. They are installed throughout this country and beyond in outdoor landscapes, site-specific conditions, and as part of urban architecture. These groundbreaking works are inspired in part by Smith’s Light and Space predecessors, including Robert Irwin and James Turrell. Three of Smith’s recent sculptures can be viewed as maquettes at the Great Park Gallery.

The Light and Space movement, which originated in the 1960s, is Southern California’s response to the minimalist art movement, popular at that time on the East Coast. But it is much more, as it focuses on depicting sensory phenomena, especially light. Materials include glass, neon, fluorescent lights, resin and cast acrylic. Fabrication methods include technologies of the engineering and aerospace industries.

Adam Sabolick, co-curator of the “Phillip K. Smith III: Shared Light” exhibition and gallery assistant, adds that the nearby UC Irvine art department hosted Light and Space artists as faculty and students in the 1960s and 70s. In addition to Irwin and Turrell, Larry Bell, Ron Davis, Tony De Lap, Joe Goode, John McCracken and others taught there, while several UCI students and teachers crafted artworks from that genre while studying and working there.

Smith explains, “I think that the Light and Space artists were all in search of a deeper understanding of perception, a more real experience. There was a search for truth through light, perception, site, material, manufactured product, paint, and composition.”

He adds, “My ‘Shared Light’ exhibition focuses on the notion of art sited in the public realm. The greatest cities of the world have embraced the arts as emblems of their identity. Art in the public realm creates iconic visual experiences that positively bond people together around shared memories and shared spaces. The Great Park and Irvine is fertile ground for the siting of these kinds of influential, unifying art projects.”

To create his many public art projects, Smith employs his artistic and architectural training, along with his understanding of technology, and his inquisitiveness about new processes and materials. Before building each installation, such as a large window display, he constructs a maquette – a smaller scale model of the piece. Three of his maquettes are displayed throughout the gallery.

Each maquette in the exhibition is accompanied by several photographs of the original installation by photographer Lance Gerber. These photos document the light-based works, along with their interplay with the surrounding environment. Two installations in the show are depicted only through the photos.

“I’ve been working with Lance since 2013,” Smith explains. “He has photographed every single piece I’ve made. In my opinion, 99.99% of the world will view my work through photography and video. So the documentation of my work has to be as good as the real thing. Working with Lance has been a fun, rewarding, ongoing conversation. He understands my intent as a light-based artist and knows precisely how I want to visually share my work with the world.”

“Three Half Lozenges” (Photo courtesy of the City of Irvine)

The first maquette you will see at the Great Park is of the installation, Three Half Lozenges (2017-21) at the Newark (New Jersey) Museum of Art. The original piece with its multi-colored full-spectrum lighting is installed onto three historic double-height windows on the museum’s façade. It is constructed with LED lighting, electronic components and unique color choreography. Exhibition didactics explain, “Shifting from linear to rectangular to lozenge within gradating and full fields of color, the three half lozenge-shaped windows operate as a monumental light-based triptych at the scale of architecture.”

“Parallel Perpendicular” maquette (Photo courtesy of the City of Irvine)

Across the country in West Hollywood, Parallel Perpendicular (2022), made of steel, glass, LED lighting, electronic components and unique color choreography, is composed of five freestanding parallel and perpendicular planes. They reflect the movement of the sun during the day; at night they become floating fields of color creating a constantly changing composition. The installation also reflects the surrounding trees, bushes, buildings and sky, often bathing them with colored lights. Walking around the magnificent maquette of this piece at the gallery enables viewers to become part of it, to see themselves and others in it through various permutations and colors.

“The Circle of Land and Sky” (Photo courtesy of the City of Irvine)

Also in the Southland, The Circle of Land and Sky as part of the 2017 exhibition, “Desert X,” near Palm Desert, was composed of 300 mirror-polished upright reflectors. Emerging from the ground, angled at 10 degrees, the reflectors were placed in a large circle. They engaged and tracked the light, sky, mountains and atmosphere of the Sonoran surroundings as the light changed. This process was complemented by the viewers as they moved along and throughout the installation.

“Skybridge” by Lance Gerber

One of the more adventurous Smith installations is the Detroit Skybridge (2018), made of an existing skybridge, along with acrylic, aluminum, LED lighting, electronic components and unique color choreography. Connecting two important office buildings in downtown Detroit, Michigan, the 100-foot-long, 16^th floor bridge is at night a scintillating multicolored work, composed of shifting gradients and moving planes of light, merging art with architecture, and available for all viewers to see.

“Open Sky” (Photo courtesy of the City of Irvine)

In Milan, Italy, in the courtyard of the centuries-old Palazzo Isimbardi, Open Sky (2018) greets visitors. The multi-faceted semi-circular ring dominates the courtyard, mirroring the building’s intricate floor, its 16^th century architecture and the sky, while providing multiple reflections of visitors. Made of polished stainless steel, aluminum and concrete composite panels, it combines an abstract design with circular construction. It is in a constant state of flux, propelled by continual changes of light, day and evening, and by the viewers as they move along it. This installation’s maquette reveals how majestic the original sculpture is.

Smith explains, “There are moments of universal beauty, of shared experience, of discovering experiences that bond all of us together as human beings. Light is most often at the root of these experiences. It is these moments of beauty, purity, and universality that I am seeking to create.”

“Phillip K. Smith III: Shared Light” is on view through August 28. Great Park Gallery, Palm Court Art Complex, Great Park, Irvine; Thu. & Fri., noon-4 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; free. cityofirvine.org/orange-county-great-park/arts-exhibitions.

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The Earl Gordon Quartet is a gift to Orange County Jazz lovers, and a representation of UC Irvine’s superlative music department.

Comprised of four undergraduate students in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, the group was formed by Earl Gordon, a drummer/percussionist, formerly from the Philippines. He is joined by bass player Tyler Dukes from Paso Robles, saxophonist Mathew Nelson from Hawthorne, California, and by keyboard player Hime Ikehara from Kobe, Japan. While all the musicians are in their 20s, their playing is so well executed and sophisticated, that they sound as though they have been together for decades.

Each player brings to the group her/his unique background in music and life, as well as a strong perspective on the jazz pieces they perform. Yet together, they play the renditions seamlessly, choosing selections from classical jazz of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, to recent pieces from the 1980s and 90s.

Earl Gordon on drums (@VinceNealePhotography)

Drummer Earl Gordon, born and raised in the Philippines, grew up enjoying music, but as he explained, “recently got into jazz,” as he loves the artistic freedom and opportunities for improvisation that the genre affords. His creative aspects of playing were on display during the band’s recent performance of Paul Desmond’s Take Five (originally performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet), known in part for its extensive, toe-tapping drum solo. Earl practices the drums two hours every day.

Tyler Dukes began playing the bass at age 14, after being inspired by a Red Hot Chili Peppers piece, and has pursued the instrument ever since. As a bass player, he is trained to use his instrument to support the other quartet members, he explains, to help move the music forward. His musical heroes include Charlie Hayden, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, and especially UCI Music Department faculty member and veteran bass player Darek Oles.

Matthew Nelson grew up in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles. His music-loving parents – his father is a gospel organ player – encouraged him to study the piano. Yet as a teenager, he became interested in the saxophone, and began practicing several hours a day. His heroes on the instrument include Dexter Gordon and Joshua Redmond.

Mathew Nelson on the saxophone (@VinceNealePhotography)

Hime Ikehara began studying the piano at age six in Japan, concentrating on classical pieces with private teachers… until she moved to Southern California to attend college. Before UCI, she attended Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa where she auditioned for a big band. She enjoyed playing with the band so much, especially its sense of freedom, the interaction with the other musicians and the opportunities to improvise, that she began exploring the jazz musical genre.

The four Earl Gordon Quartet performers describe the exhilarating experience of playing and performing with each other. They talk about the importance of observing each other’s body language, of cuing eye movements, of having musical conversations, and of being in the zone while playing. The players add that they don’t enjoy playing with musicians who have big egos and try to dominate the group.

Along with several local concerts, the quartet recently played three gigs at the Great Park Gallery to complement the exhibition there, “52nd Street, Jazz and the Photography of William Gottlieb.” The concerts were so well attended that at one event, many audience members were sitting outside on the Palm Court Arts Complex grounds. For their first concert, they concentrated on the Swing Era, performing Take the A Train, made famous by Duke Ellington, recorded in 1941 (regarded as one of the most important American musical works of the 20th century), and April in Paris (1955) by Count Basie. Their second show featured bebop selections, honoring the music of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, including his legendary Round Midnight (1943), among other renowned performers of that period. For their final concert, they played Take Five (at the request of a little boy who attended their previous performances), and recent selections by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The quartet members agreed that the concerts were demanding, requiring a lot of practice, but were exhilarating and well worth the effort.

Tyler Dukes on the bass (@VinceNealePhotography)

As the Earl Gordon Quarter members will soon graduate from UC Irvine, the group will break up. Gordon plans to return to the Philippines for a year where he will explore the music scenes. Nelson, who has been teaching music at a Santa Ana High School, will continue this endeavor, while working in a music library. Ikehara plans to obtain an international student internship and teach piano. And Dukes will move to the East Harlem area of New York City to live with friends. He plans to get a day job – perhaps working from home in the IT field – while immersing himself in the Big Apple music scene and hopefully picking up gigs.

While Irvine and the larger Orange County will miss the Earl Gordon Quartet, the members are planning to spread their good will and the expertise they have gleaned from their musical mentors to disparate places in this country and abroad.

To contact Earl Gordon, please write to earlgordondrums@gmail.com. Hime Ikehara can be emailed at himeikehara398@gmail.com. And Matthew Nelson can be contacted at matthew.nelson.music@gmail.com.

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Laguna Beach’s reputation as an art colony can be traced back to the early 20^th century when talented landscape painters moved here from disparate parts of our country and from Europe. Yet the city of Irvine is today lapping at Laguna’s artistic heels with significant art venues including the Great Park Gallery, the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and the burgeoning Institute and Museum of California Art. While UC Irvine’s visual art department within the Claire Trevor School of the Arts has been making waves since its founding in 1965. And many working artists who live in Irvine exhibit their work throughout Orange County and beyond. With the start of summer, four of these artists are emerging from their studios and scenic environs to display their various art forms and creative approaches at Laguna Beach’s summerlong Festival of Arts (FOA), opening on July 5.

Working in photography, ceramics and oil paint, they embrace a variety of artistic approaches. Photographer Breck Rothage, a 20-year Irvine resident, specializes in images of the California coastline and its waves. He explains, “Irvine allows access to everything Orange County has to offer an artist, including the inspirational natural beauty of our beaches. And let’s not forget all of the wonderful art galleries nearby.” The 11-year Festival of Arts exhibitor adds, “It is an honor every time I exhibit there. I can still remember the excitement of my very first year. As we got our booths prepped, and everyone was unveiling their new works for the show, you had a deep sense of the community that FOA has created. Everyone there is incredibly supportive, and the wish is for everyone to really do well, and for our work to wow the public that comes out to experience it.

Photo by Baldemar Fierro

“I create my artwork purely in-camera, exclusively using artistic motion and light. For this technique to work, the ambient light and motion of the wave must come together with precision to bring out all the true colors of the seawater, the powerful motion of the wave, and the eloquent beauty of the sea spray as it wisps across the crest of the barrel. One of my new pieces for the Festival of the Arts focuses on a very specific color of aquamarine found in the top barrel of the California wave.”

Ceramicist and lifelong Californian Gary Monji has lived in Irvine for 20 years and exhibited at the FOA since 2009. “I have served my apprenticeship in teaching and been a practicing ceramicist for 56 years, starting in 1966 during the heyday of the ceramic era in California. And I have taught the craft for 40 years. After devoting my career teaching ceramics and design classes, I feel qualified to participate with the best artists. And ‘crystallization’ is a rare category in the world of art and its uniqueness is a great contribution to the FOA. (The crystals, which are planted and grown in the kiln during the final firing stages, produce iridescent and unpredictably radiant patterns.) I devote 100 percent of my artistic efforts during the year toward my exhibitions at the Festival of Arts.”

Painter Peggy Chang, born in Taipei, Taiwan and living in Irvine, creates dramatically expressive, colorful landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, portraits and her “Café Series.” Her landscapes and seascapes, drawing inspiration from traditional California landscape artists in locations, subject matter and technique, illustrate scenes from disparate places in our state and beyond. These include Laguna’s Heisler Park, the San Gabriel mountains and valleys, Monterey and the Grand Canyon. Her portraits of pensive girls and women recall the work of American artist Robert Henri. Her still lifes, most including flowers, burst with color and life. And her Café Scenes, depicting local and foreign cafés, evoke some of the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

Photo by Baldemar Fierro

Photographer Hugh Foster specializes in portraiture, including close-ups of individuals and group scenes, with a strong emphasis on musicians, dancers, models and acrobats performing. Having lived and studied in the Pacific Northwest, in Los Angeles in the OC, his poignant depictions of mostly urban dwellers exploring the vicissitudes of life, depict as he explains “darkness and light, sadness and joy, sugar and salt.” His images further express the adage that art is a metaphor for life, that photos can explore humanity’s creative energy, along with our search for meaning and identity.

Behind the Festival of Arts’ inviting grounds, the 90-minute Pageant of the Masters is presented nightly under the stars in the Irvine Bowl. This summer’s production, “Wonderful World,” presents a variety of international artwork from disparate lands and cultural celebrations. The dramatic narrator of this summer’s (and of previous summers’) pageant production is Irvine resident Richard Doyle, profiled in the Irvine Weekly in 2019.

The Laguna Beach Festival of Arts hosts more than 100 artists, exhibiting more than 1,000 pieces of fine art, including paintings, sculpture, photography, printmaking, ceramics, glass, furniture and jewelry. The outdoor festival at 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach is open July 5 to September 2, Monday-Thursday, 4pm – 11:30pm, Friday-Sunday, 10am – 11:30pm. The Pageant of the Masters runs from July 7 through September 2, with all productions beginning at 8:30pm. https://www.foapom.com/.

Backstage at the Pageant of the Masters (Photo by Christopher Allwine)

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“52nd Street, Jazz and the Photography of William Gottlieb” features compelling images of mid-20^th century jazz greats, including Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker.

But the exhibition is much more than pictures of jazz celebrities in the 1940s, shot when they were breaking into the mainstream of American culture. It is about depicting the musicians’ charisma and joyful devotion to their art form – while performing and even posing for photographer Gottlieb (1917-2006). While these dozens of photos were taken with bulky analog equipment nearly 80 years ago, they express so much creative energy and vitality today that viewers are naturally drawn into them.

As the show’s wall labels explain, “Manhattan’s 52nd Street formed a hub of musical creativity in the years immediately following World War II. It was here where legacies were created giving recognition to musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and other emerging jazz geniuses of the era.”

Ella and Dizzy (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.)

The didactics further extol the valiant efforts of Gottlieb who haunted New York’s jazz clubs in the 1940s. Working as assistant editor and unpaid photographer at Down Beat magazine, he shot more than one thousand photos of jazz performers, most of them African American, along with club doormen, managers and the mostly white audience members. “Gottlieb’s images are rare glimpses into the New York jazz scene of the 1930s and 40s and helped found a tradition of jazz photography that remains a vital subgenre today,” the show’s didactics explain.

Had Gottlieb not fallen in love with jazz, befriended the musicians, and decided to photograph them, along with their magnetic jazz club scenes, images of many performers of that era might not be preserved for posterity. Exhibition curator Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D. explained that Gottlieb revisited the photos in 1979, and soon after published his book The Golden Age of Jazz, presenting his historic images to the general public for the first time. He donated his jazz photographs – possibly the most widely reproduced images of jazz musicians from the mid-20th century – to the Library of Congress in 1997. Filmmaker Ken Burns used many of the photos for his 2001 PBS documentary, Jazz: The Story of America’s Music.

Cawthra added that the pictures not only displayed stories; they also helped to shape them, as the images often provided publicity for emerging musical artists. He explains in Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz © 2011, that jazz photographers may “seize a moment just as their subjects do in the midst of a performance” (recalling “the decisive moment” quote by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson). As Gottlieb wrote in 1995: “I learned to shoot very carefully. I knew the music, I knew the musicians, I knew in advance when the right moment would arrive. It was purposeful shooting.”

52nd Street at Night Manhattan, New York, 1948 (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.)

Perhaps the most striking picture in the exhibition is 52nd Street at Night: Manhattan, New York. The color shot of jazz’s main passageway displays a row of several jazz clubs’ neon signs, which are simultaneously reflected onto the rain-soaked street. The photo evokes paintings from the Impressionist era, particularly those of Vincent Van Gogh who often created urban scenes at night.

Billie Holiday (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.)

Gottlieb’s portrait of Billie Holiday belting out a song, which Cawthra says may be the most widely reproduced photograph of her, captures her beauty and anguish. The contrasting photo of singer Ella Fitzgerald performing, with Dizzy Gillespie blissfully looking on, reveals the two more sublime and content performers.

A photo of the young, serious Thelonious Monk (composer of the renowned Round Midnight) at his piano in 1947 helped give him much-needed publicity – along with Gottlieb’s articles about him in Down Beat. Cawthra wrote: “Monk’s distinctive voice on his instrument, his gentle and idiosyncratic persona, and his lasting legacy as a jazz composer make him one of the most important American musicians.”

Belgian-Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt playing his guitar while peering intensely at the audience is included in this stunning exhibition. Here also is a photo of an exuberant Lionel Hampton playing percussion, alongside Arnett Cobb on the saxophone, and another of the dapper pianist Duke Ellington preparing for a performance.

Viewing a portrait of Charlie Parker intently playing his saxophone, you can almost hear his “inventiveness, speed, and command of jazz’s harmonic and rhythmic language,” as Cawthra wrote for the exhibition. And the compassionate photo of Louis Armstrong, playing his trumpet with his eyes wide open, portrays the musician when he was young but already confident and successful.

Other photos depict singers Cab Calloway, Mary Lou Williams, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, guitarist Josh White, Harry James on the trumpet, Benny Goodman on the clarinet and several others.

Thelonious Monk (Photo courtesy of William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.)

If this exhibition was displayed in a larger venue, the photos might be accompanied by performance videos. (The Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History contains numerous videos of pioneering black performers.) Yet the images are so powerful that they stand alone in their artistry and excellence, expressing the truism that art, whether it is visually or musically oriented, is a powerful expression of the human spirit.

“52nd Street, Jazz and the Photography of William Gottlieb” is on view through May 1. Great Park Gallery, Palm Court Art Complex, Orange County Great Park, Irvine; Thu. & Fri., noon-4 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; free. cityofirvine.org/orange-county-great-park/arts-exhibitions.

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The founders of Complexions Contemporary Ballet – a 24-year-old dance company based in New York City – believe that our complex world is becoming more like Complexions, as “it is becoming more and more fluid, more changeable, and more culturally interconnected than ever before,” they explain. Dance aficionados and those who enjoy innovative cultural events can attend the company’s performance of STARDUST: From Bach to Bowie on April 29 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, featuring dance pieces set to music by Johann Sebastian and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, with a tribute to rock icon David Bowie.

Founded in 1994 by choreographers Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, Complexions reinvents dance through a mix of methods, styles and cultures with roots in classical movements. The founders believe that dance should be about removing boundaries, while including open, evolving forms, reflecting numerous world cultures.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet has performed on five continents, in over 20 countries, and to more than 20 million television viewers. The company has received numerous awards including The New York Times Critics’ Choice Award.

For Complexions company member Candy Tong, performing in the Barclay event will be a homecoming. As a recent student at UC Irvine’s Dance Department in the school’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, she was privileged to have performed on the Barclay stage.

Candy Tong (Photo by Joe Lyman)

In a phone interview from her San Francisco hometown, the 26-year-old dancer discussed her background as a dancer and lover of the arts. “From a very young age, my parents put me into dancing classes. I also drew, sang in a choir and played the piano. I am very grateful to them,” she said.

Tong began taking ballet classes at age three. “Then when I was nine years old, I decided that I wanted to be a dancer,” she said. “I told my mom and she was very supportive.”

She joined the pre-professional class of the San Francisco Ballet company, studying “with some of the best dance students in the city,” she said. Two years after joining the ballet school, Tong was cast in the company’s Nutcracker Ballet as Clara; a young girl who receives a nutcracker as a present and then dreams of helping The Nutcracker defeat the Mouse King in a battle. “I was so excited to see my name on the company’s casting sheet,” she said. “I was beaming from ear to ear. I was not only the youngest girl to play Clara. I was the tallest at five foot six. And we performed in a large, beautiful opera house.”

Tong danced with the San Francisco Ballet company until 2011. “By then at age 15, I was at Level 8, the most serious level.” She left the company, and then lived in various cities, including Seattle and London, England, studying ballet, while auditioning for companies all over Europe and the United States. But a fractured metatarsal caused her to cease leading a peripatetic life.

Candy Tong (Photo by Rachel Neville)

As Tong was recovering from her injury, her family encouraged her to apply to college. She decided on UC Irvine as it has one of the best dance departments in the country, she explained. She attended UCI from 2014 to 2017, studying with two “very supportive instructors” – Diane Diefendrfer, who has performed throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S., who favors George Balanchine roles, and Tong Wang who has performed with major dance companies in China and the United States.

“I spent two and a half years at  UCI,” Tong said, “graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.” From her first day there, her instructors said that she should be out in the professional dance world, and told her that they would help her get back out there.

“In my Freshman year, I attended a weeklong intensive Complexions workshop in Atlanta [a master class for dancers of all levels]. I immediately fell in love with Complexions, as the dancing style, combining classical ballet with hip hop, feels second nature to me. And as I’m five foot 10, curvy and not super skinny, it’s a struggle for me to fit into the norm [of ballet dancers]. But Complexions showcases the beauty of all sorts of dancers. One girl in the company is six foot two. One boy is five foot two.”

Soon after, Tong was invited by Dwight and Desmond to join their programs at New York’s Joyce Theater. They then asked her to join the company after graduation. She became a Complexions company member in January 2018.

Tong has traveled all over the country and the world with Complexions, even performing in Kiev and Odessa. She loves the company’s philosophy about pushing boundaries and addressing political issues such as Black Lives Matter. And she enjoys performing for audience members who have never seen ballet before.

For Candy Tong, becoming a member of Complexions Contemporary Ballet is a dream come true… and a mission to inspire others through the art of dance.

Complexions Contemporary Ballet will perform at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Friday, April 29 at 8 PM. To order tickets for this and other upcoming performances, check out its Get Ready It’s Showtime brochure. Or go to: www.thebarclay.org. Contact the Box Office, 949-854-4646.

4242 Campus Dr, Irvine, CA 92612.   

Complexions Contemporary Ballet (Photo by Sharen Bradford)

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While artwork is often autobiographical, the artists in this exhibition go beyond self-narration to plunge into the depths of their lives. They create work that mirrors their deeper experiences and insights while provoking their viewers to personal reflection as well as admiration for the art pieces.

The largest works in the show by Perin Mahler are self-described as “a series of large, multi-figure paintings illustrating various aspects of my life both personal and professional.” He adds, “I use the format of history painting, normally associated with the heroic and eternal, to depict quotidian subjects.”

Employing the same standards that he imparts to his students at Cal State Long Beach – to engage the fundamentals of design, color and perspectives, along with freedom and spontaneity – he creates narrative paintings that explore many issues encountered in our complicated world today.

“Possessed” (2021) by Perin Mahler

Mahler’s large oil “Possessed” (2021) illustrates a young man seated among tropical foliage – perhaps among cannabis plants – peering into a gift box, while several other empty gift boxes are scattered randomly around him. Is the man obsessed with possessions, with drugs or perhaps with other carnal desires? While the painting demonstrates Mahler’s expertise in visual communication, along with his use of expressive brushstrokes, the subject matter is provocative and open to interpretation by the viewer.

“Dissociated” (2021) by Perin Mahler

His painting “Dissociated” (2021), similar in its expressive style and chaotic ambiance, features the subject’s face as being completely hidden by large books flying around him. To intensify the chaos, the artist depicts a house all in flames behind the subject, along with a few dozen upside-down hooded and masked green faces at the bottom of the canvas. The total effect is of dismay and alarm at living in a world with an unknown future – during the pandemic.

“Satisfied” (2022) by Perin Mahler

Mahler’s paintings “Gifted” (2021) and “Satisfied” (2022) feature wrapped gifts surrounded by disorder. The subject in the former work is hanging from the ceiling, while the androgynous person in the latter painting is besieged by many gifts flying in the air, descending on him. These paintings, while meticulously and figuratively wrought, are darkly narrative, evoking both the surrealistic and more recent lowbrow styles.

Gretchen Batcheller, now living in Los Angeles, grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Yokohama, Japan, as the daughter of a Navy fighter pilot, and as the granddaughter and great-niece of Navy admirals. Rather than embracing this presumably privileged culture, she questions its influence “on entire societies, economies and the natural environments that sustain them,” adding, “This ongoing body of work serves as a fractured, visual correlate for a remembered reality that oscillates between gradients of cultural discovery, family honor and systemic oppression.”

“Fight Pose #1” by Gretchen Batcheller

Combining airbrush, acrylic and oil painting to create paintings merging figurative realism with abstraction, she employs bold colors, complex patterns and strong rhythms in her work. She also uses unusual iconography, referencing military might by females and males, along with explosions and destruction, while revealing elements of Japanese “Anime” (hand-drawn and computer animation from Japan). Her work also references her memory and reflections of systems of oppression in the militarized Pacific.

Batcheller’s “Repealed and Replaced” (2021) features a dark green hand crashing through red-clothed limbs, a white-gloved hand and a large white bow. “Kawaii” (2021) takes the explosive theme further, with disjointed body parts, swirls, a star and a flower. “Not Yet” (2021) contains several fists in different colors along with an inverted face. “Fight Pose #1” and “#2” (both 2021) include defiant, shapely female torsos, prepared to fight. Yet the artist transcends her dark influences with her bold colors, balanced, fluid forms, expressive images and cartoon-like symbolism, leaving the viewer with hope toward the future of our world.

“Repealed and Replaced” by Gretchen Batcheller

Kaitlynn Redell, also based in Los Angeles, explores how new parenthood intersects with her artistic production and identity. Specifically, she explores the invisibility of new motherhood in three Digital C-prints. “Not Her(e) (Rug)” (2016) is a photo of herself mostly hidden beneath a rug, with only her lower legs and upper arms showing, as her infant daughter lies on top of the rug, holding onto her hands. This harmonious composition reveals the deeper issue of the new mother feeling smothered by caring for the new addition to her family. In “Not Her(e) (Stuffed Animal)” (2017), Redell is presumably dressed (and hidden) as a large Easter bunny, embracing her child. In “Not Her(e) (Walker)” (2017), she is beneath a walker, covered with a large quilt, with only her arms sticking out, as her daughter rides the walker.

“Not Her(e) (Rug)” (2016) by Kaitlynn Redell

While Redell’s photos have humorous aspects, their deeper intention is to artfully draw attention to the plight of motherhood today, to the reality that caretakers are often hidden and rendered as insignificant beneath the people they take care of. Her images, while harmonious in composition and coloration, also have conceptual aspects, as the viewpoints or concepts expressed in them are as important as the materials used and the artistic execution.

“Not Her(e) (Walker)” (2017) by Kaitlynn Redell

Mirrors, around in various forms for millennia, enable us to clearly see our reflections. Yet the concept of the mirror as a reflection of the mind is explored in several Eastern philosophies. The concept of the mirror in some Buddhist philosophies, or the process of looking inward, is said to provide us with a means to perceive the true aspects of our lives. In a similar way, the exhibition, ”Mirror” aptly explores three artists’ proclivity to examine their selves in their work, and to encourage viewers to also see their own deeper and perhaps artistic natures.

“Mirror” is on view through April 16 at Irvine Fine Arts Center; Mon. – Thu., 10 a.m. – 9 p.m., Fri., 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sat., 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Admission is free. www.cityofirvine.org/irvine-fine-arts-center/current-exhibitions.

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The immersive film “Malka Germania” (“Queen Germania” in Hebrew) references our personal and collective trauma about war and subjugation and artfully turns that trauma into manna. The 40-minute three-channel video is created by Israeli native Yael Bartana who moved to Berlin to escape her native country’s political climate and to live near a major European art scene.

The deeply reflective Bartana has spent a lifetime engrossing herself in the history and persecution of the Jewish people. With this background, she uses her talent and expertise in filmmaking, performance art and acting to explore and reveal in “Malka Germania” the world’s deep regrets about the Holocaust. She further investigates the German peoples’ longing for collective redemption of the devastating behavior of their recent and centuries gone ancestors.

On another level, the character Malka in the film morphs into a kind of Messiah. As an elegant androgynous figure, she wears a long, hooded cream-colored robe and moves very slowly and intensely throughout contemporary Berlin. With no dialogue and with new age music, enhanced by sounds from the forest, echoes of people talking, helicopters flying overhead and soldiers marching, Malka roams or rides a donkey through a German forest and along railroad tracks (evoking the time when Jews were taken to concentration camps and murdered).

Film still, Malka Germania, 2022, © Yael Bartana, courtesy of the artist.
@uag_ucirvine

Malka also roams near historic and political landmarks, including the Brandenburg Gate, the Berlin Victory Column, Wannsee, and the Tempelhof Airfield, sometimes accompanied by a gentle camel, whose demeanor and movements echo hers.

Many other characters inhabit this mesmerizing film, which is a fever dream according to Juli Carson, UCI Professor of Art, curator and gallery director. Carson, who has lived in war-torn countries, adds that with Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, “Malka Germania” is relevant and important today.

The film further compels the viewer to look within oneself to the history of fellow humans being persecuted and even becoming predators. It then becomes a Jungian journey for those willing to examine their personal and family histories as metaphors for and reflections of the larger world’s legacy of war and domination. Or as the saying goes, “The personal is political.”

As the catalog for the film explains, “Malka realizes that she has a certain power, and she will use it for Malka was and will remain someone who more than anyone is aware of the injustices of the city, of its history and its people… and because of the passion burning within her, she knows that from now on things will change as a result of her arrival.”

The catalog continues, “In a psychotherapeutic approach, Bartana brings the city’s traumata out of their shadows of the collective subconscious quite literally into the light of the video screen… we as curators together with Yael Bartana propose to engage with art utilizing the dialectic and polyphonic methodology of Talmudic tradition, to ask questions instead of waiting for answers, and to follow in art’s lead of creating nuance, ambiguities, alternatives and complexities.”

Photo by Yubo Dong / ofstudio photography (@ofphotostudio)

“Malka Germania,” which was previously shown as part of Bartana’s 2020 exhibition “Redemption Now” at the Jewish Museum Berlin, is not a violent art piece. With its gentle allegorical aspects and with scenes slowly segueing from one to the other, the film can affect viewers in a more subliminal way, urging us to recall images of persecution depicted in the media over decades, in history courses and perhaps from our own lives.

Watching the film can further plunge viewers into the darker aspects of our collective unconscious if we’re willing to go there. As Jewish Museum Berlin curators Shelley Harten and Gregor H. Lersch remarked, the film flushes Berlin’s “fears, dreams, repressed traumata and memories onto the surface.”

Characters in the film’s scenes include soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces marching, beautiful female dancers from eras gone by with arms reaching for the sky, athletic young men wearing shorts and T-shirts, running through the city and countryside, evoking Hitler Youth, as well as an old-fashioned European organ grinder and a man blowing into a shofar (a ram’s horn trumpet used in Jewish religious services).

There are several scenes of Nordic-looking blonde-haired sunbathers, men and women of all ages and beautiful children relaxing, playing, conversing, building sandcastles and riding in small pleasure boats along the lakes in the Wannsee area of Berlin. As the sunbathers relax, helicopters fly overhead.

Photo by Yubo Dong / ofstudio photography (@ofphotostudio)

Wannsee is further significant as it was the site of the Wannsee Conference of senior Nazi officials, held in 1942, to implement the Final Solution or the deportation to Concentration Camps and ultimate murder of millions of Jews.

Interspersed throughout the film, young yarmulke (Jewish skull caps) clad men, Orthodox Jews, walk through Berlin carrying street signs with Hebrew letters. They stop at German street signs, replacing them with the Hebrew ones. The underlying intention is to rewrite the history of Germany; to provoke “the transfer of the city from the stewardship of Berliner to the Jewish Diaspora,” as curator Carson wrote; and to consider what Berlin would be like today if Israeli soldiers, rather than the Red Army units, liberated the city from the Nazis.

The film’s final scenes include several relics of Nordic Germania – beer steins, plates and sculptural busts – being tossed from apartment windows and shattering on the city streets, as elderly couples survey the devastation from their own windows. These images symbolize the collective German desire to eradicate their barbaric history.

Another concluding scene is of a computer-animated, mirage-like image depicting a Nazi giant “Hall of the People” rising from a Wannsee lake. This structure is based on Nazi architect Albert Speer’s design to be constructed following Germany’s victory in World War II. The model appears like the lost city of Atlantis, created by Plato around 360 B.C. as a fable about the consequences of corruption and arrogance.

Photo by Yubo Dong / ofstudio photography (@ofphotostudio)

The film’s final scene reveals hordes of Berliners, now turned into emigrants, carrying suitcases, walking along the railroad tracks, leaving the city for good, as Malka looks on approvingly. The suggested message is that Malka the Messiah has cleansed Berlin of its horrifying history.

“Malka Germania” is pure fantasy. Yet its execution and cinematography, along with its carefully chosen and edited scenes, including those of “Aryan” young men, transitioning into scenes with Israeli Defense Forces and Orthodox Jews, can reach into our collective unconscious while invoking the depravity of war and conquest. The film is not for the faint of heart or spirit; yet its message is vitally important for the times we live in.

Malka Germania is on view at UCI’s Contemporary Arts Center through April 9; Tue.-Sat., noon-6 p.m.; gallery@uci.edu, uag.arts.uci.edu.

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One of the most unusual musical groups to grace the Irvine Barclay stage is the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (UOGB) performing unusual renditions of rock, folk classical and movie themes. They will spread their special magic at the Barclay on March 27.

UOGB Musical Director/Founder George Hinchiffe provided detailed, often humorous responses to questions, from his home in the UK: “The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is looking forward to bringing its magisterially depraved view of the culture of popular music to the Irvine Barclay Theatre,” he said. “Appearing in Southern California with crowd-pleasing, stomping, poignant, rocking, thought-provoking, swinging music; groovy plucking, heartfelt singing, virtuosic whistling, and an irreverent deflation of pomposity all served up in the Orchestra’s fine-tuned and integrated entertainment will surely be a complete hoot for performers and audiences whatever their ages or individual musical tastes. Can’t wait to be there!”

IRVINE WEEKLY: When was the Ukulele Orchestra first created?

George Hinchiffe (Photo by Graham Hardy)

Hinchiffe: The group first got together in 1985 shortly after the founders moved from Leeds to London. The Orchestra’s roots are in theatre, music, performance, rock, art, soul and punk scenes in Leeds in the 1970s.

Who created the group? 

The idea was George Hinchliffe’s though the initial founders (Kitty Lux, Andy Astle, Jo Brindley and George) spent some time debating whether they should be called the Ukulele Orchestra of Westminster, Bermondsey, London, South London, Kent, England, Britain, Europe, the world, the known universe. Great Britain seemed to strike the right balance between hubris and irony.

What is the concept behind unusual performances? 

The concept was intended as the antidote to existing conventions of popular music, celebrity, genre specialization and business practice. The ukulele was chosen because it was not widely used or easily obtainable in the UK. Early rehearsals established key elements of performance: quasi formal dress, specially designed music stands, and everyone had to sing. Humor or at least a light-hearted approach was preferred, though overt jokes were avoided. Critics have however often opined that the whole darned enterprise is a joke.

What musical groups inspired you? 

The Orchestra was influenced by The Mound City Blue Blowers, The Velvet Underground, Spike Jones, Flanders and Swan, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Victor Borge, Los Lobos, The Quintette du Hot Club de France, Cornelius Cardew, Wild Man Fischer and Skiffle.

Where did your group first perform? 

Our first live appearance was at the Roebuck, Trinity Church Square, London. Within a year, we played several gigs, including in Belgium, were on national radio and TV in the UK. Our first album and concerts in USA and Canada followed quickly.

How was your first performance received?

The venue was crowded and well received, and it was decided that what might have been a “one off” performance should become an ongoing enterprise.

Photo by Dave Suich

Please list a few other venues you have performed in.

The Orchestra has played at major rock festivals, private parties for royal families and in the smallest pub in Britain. Venues include St David’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle, Glastonbury Festival, Carnegie Hall, Sidney Opera House, Buckingham Palace, Filthy McNasty’s Bar, Salisbury Cathedral, Sixpenny Handley Village Hall, The Quattro Club, Hiroshima, Vienna Opera House, Shanghai Symphony Hall and Althorp House. Theatres and rock festivals are some of the most congenial locations for performance, though we have performed at folk, literary, comedy, classical, pop, and beer festivals. All venues have their own magic and constraints. But the key element is engagement with the audience.

In your early years, what kind of music did you play? 

We played music from established genres on what were thought to be the wrong instruments. To take a cue from the title of our latest album, we only play ukuleles, and thus we give the audience “One Plucking Thing After Another.”

How do you choose the popular music, jazz, film tunes and classical music selections?

Musical merit has to be present in the composition, be it an interesting chord sequence, a lovely melody or a relentlessly boring and hypnotic tonal monotony, which can have an appeal all its own. The UOGB avoids comic, parody or kitsch songs; these can sound “over-egged” when given the band’s treatment. Some hit songs are already parodies of certain genres and thus are best avoided. A ukulele reworking could make them too rich, arch, camp, mannered, or knowing. Though sometimes going over the top has its merits.

To what do you attribute your stunning, ongoing success?

When the Orchestra first started performing, the style and choice of repertoire seemed unusual to most audiences. It was deemed thought-provoking, eccentric and surprising. Since then, a number of things have changed, including the fact that it is now something of a trend to play a range of genres, including rock music and classical music on ukuleles, a concept originated by the UOGB.

The more rigid notions of genre distinction and focus on “new” music, prevalent in the pre-Internet era, have given way to a more eclectic acceptance of music, from the history of pop music and a willingness to accept material from what were once more partisan genres. At first, the Orchestra seemed strange, ridiculous, and even noteworthy, and thus attracted some attention as well as criticism. As time went on, the Orchestra became more accepted and known in theatres all over the world. We hold our hands out to the audience and say: “Join us, meet us half-way, let’s have a good time together.”

Please list some of your favored compositions.

Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre,” Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight,” Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magnificent Seven,” Lou Reed’s ”I’m Waiting For My Man,” and Syd Barrett’s “Baby Lemonade.”

Audiences also like us playing “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” theme by Ennio Morricone, “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush, “Heroes” by David Bowie, “Gimme All Your Loving” by ZZ Top, and “Psycho Killer” by David Byrne.

We first prepared “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” years ago. The theme is well known, memorable and has interesting orchestrations, which are amusing with ukulele versions. The peculiar vocal noises and the whistling are challenges.

As musical culture is represented in our repertoire, we include cartoon music, film music, nursery rhymes, cliched rock songs, old country tunes, classical music and examples of “light music.” There is a rich vein of western themes such as the “Bonanza” theme. We also include the “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”

Sometimes there is humor in delivering a successful version of a composition, as laughter comes from joy, not just from satire or slapstick. A good composition, a good melody or a good musical sequence can be revealed in fresh ways via a ukulele orchestration. The economy of instrumental resources and timbres of the instrument throws the quality of the composition into relief, revealing its integrity in ways that a symphonic interpretation might obscure with a richer palette of timbre and sonic color.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain will perform at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Sunday, March 27 at 3 PM. To order tickets for this and other upcoming performances, check out its Get Ready It’s Showtime brochure. Or go to: https://www.thebarclay.org/. Contact the Box Office, 949-854-4646. 4242 Campus Dr, Irvine, CA 92612.  

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Mark Hilbert, co-founder (with his wife Jan) of the Hilbert Museum of California Art on the Chapman University campus in Orange, told me that when he visits a museum, he looks at the visitors there as much as at the art. He observes their reactions to the work on the walls and pedestals, ascertaining how long they spend with individual pieces. Hilbert added that as a museum founder, one of his goals is to encourage visitors to engage deeply with the artwork displayed, to learn about the art movements represented and even about the California history depicted.

“Self-Portrait” – Oil on panel. (William Wray Collection)

It is not surprising that Hilbert, along with curator Gordon McClelland and Hilbert Museum Director Mary Platt, recently installed the exhibition, “Bradford J. Salamon: Forging Ahead,” featuring 47 paintings and drawings. Soon after the exhibition opened in late January, many visitors went there to check it out. Most were so enchanted by the narrative artwork on display, with the vivid, empathetic renderings of people and objects, that they spent long periods gazing at the works.

Salamon uses “expressive lines, colors, shapes, slight exaggerations and focal points to create a statement about the sitters that is more than the sum of its parts and more telling and true than a photograph,” explained Mike McGee, formerly Cal State Fullerton art department chairman.

As a visual storyteller, Salamon revels in creating portraits, scenes and renditions of objects, such as vintage toys and clocks. He explains in the accompanying catalog, “I wanted to do more than just draw everything; along with regular journaling, I was recording my life through drawings and paintings.” He adds, “Staring at a person for several hours a day while painting their portrait gives me an opportunity to really think compassionately about the person and to appreciate another human being on a very deep level. … I also want to give the viewer of the finished work a chance to appreciate the person I have chosen to draw or paint in a more profound way.”

“Animal Style” – Oil on canvas. (The Hilbert Collection)

“R2-D2” – Oil on canvas. (The Donna Vasseghi Collection)

Enhancing Salamon’s work on display are his detailed narratives of his pieces, with many descriptions hearkening back to his childhood – a time that helped form him into a creative, empathetic individual and artist. About his oil, “Betty Boop,” an iconic figure dressed in a hula costume, he wrote, “I find it interesting how our brains select certain experiences to retain as a memory and other experiences we forget. … I don’t know why I painted this of Betty Boop, but I guess it would be because of something I experienced as a child watching cartoons.” About his finely wrought figurative “R2-D2,” he recounted, “’Star Wars’ was such a phenomenon in the late 1970s that it changed the movie industry and our culture in profound and lasting ways.”

Walking through this exhibition becomes a visual and descriptive tour de force, almost like a movie of the artist’s life. The viewer witnesses the work and reads about stories of Salamon’s childhood and teenage years, growing up near the beach, engaging in a variety of adventures, many of which affect his art practice today. His narrative accompanying the expressive, detailed oil, “Notes from a Memory” of three teenagers relaxing against a pool on a summer day reads, “All of us kids back then were free-range kids, largely on our own in the wild. Nicole’s house had this above-ground pool and for a couple of summers it was one of the best spots for us to hang out.”

“Dude Descending a Staircase” – Oil on canvas (Private Collection)

Several paintings have lighter, humorous aspects, the most notable being “Dude Descending a Staircase.” This hilarious, realistic portrayal of Jeff Bridges from the film “The Big Lebowski” depicts him as “The Dude” descending a staircase wearing his rumpled hair and attire. The title is a play on words of Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 salacious painting “Nude Descending a Staircase,” adding a double entendre to Salamon’s work.

Another charmer is “Animal Style,” a succulent close-up of one of In-N-Out Burger’s most popular items. While observing the illustration of burgers with melting cheese, mustard and other mouth-watering accoutrements, the hungry museum visitor might want to visit the famous fast-food joint. Here is also “What, Me Worry?” a detailed three-dimensional illustration of Alfred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine’s mascot. Salamon revealed his interest in current events when he wrote about it, “I can’t help but wonder what Neuman would say about our current political and societal circumstances.”

One style that Salamon excels at is detailed, figurative domestic scenes, often of people he knows posing as themselves. Several such examples include the 2009 “Expectations” of David Michael Lee, a Coastline College educator, relaxing while gazing admiringly at his pregnant wife, Julie Perlin Lee (now executive director, Laguna Art Museum). Also displayed is “White Rabbit” of the artist’s daughter, Lauren, wedged in a doorframe, surrounded by his daughter Sarah, wife Kathy in the kitchen and mother-in-law at the piano. He wrote about this piece, “I included the white rabbit as a reference to procreation.”

“White Rabbit” – Oil on canvas” (Private Collection)

Among Salamon’s personal favorites are his portraits of artist friends – paintings that he has been engaged in for several decades. While his books and catalogs contain many dozen examples of these gems, six of Jodi Bonassi, Alex Couwenberg, Tony DeLap, Llyn Foulkes, Mark Ryden and Don Bachardy are included in this exhibition. The latter of the Santa Monica-based artist relaxing after painting all day is resonant with Salamon, as Bachardy is also a major portrait artist who has portrayed Salamon 23 times. He wrote about Bachardy in his narratives, “He’s a great friend, but he remains also a great hero.”

Salamon’s two most recent portraits, representing his departure in technique, created since the start of the lockdown, are eight-foot-high drawings done with drafting pencil on vellum paper. “Clare V-V #16” is of Clare Dowling, the beautiful daughter of good friend and artist Tom Dowling. “Holly V-V #6” lives in Salamon’s Monrovia neighborhood. “I drew her,” he told me, “because she is an innocent, vulnerable, beautiful girl. And with the Black Lives Matter movement on my mind (Holly is African American), I feel that she represents the future.” I asked him why he creates these new portraits on a larger scale than previously. “Large suggests power,” he said. “And women today need more power.”

“Holly V-V #6” – Drafting pencil on vellum paper (The Hilbert Collection)

Powerful sentiments indeed from an artist who continues to evolve in technique and perspective, for whom portraiture is more than just likeness, and who one day may become as significant and well-known as is David Hockney!

“Bradford J. Salamon: Forging Ahead” is on view through May 7, 2022. Hilbert Museum of California Art, 167 N. Atchison Street, Orange, CA. Tue.–Sat., 11 am–5 pm. 714-516-5880. Free. www.hilbertmuseum.org

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