Technically, a grande dame is a highly respected elderly or middle-aged woman who has extensive experience in her field. Although gallerist Jane Chafin is certainly not elderly, she is highly respected and experienced in our art business. And she is building a...
Jim Morphesis
To walk into the Jim Morphesis exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art is to be flooded by rich, intense waves of color. The tsunami of red, blue, black and white is matched by roiling surges of thick, densely textured impasto. Only after the initial...
Rebecca Ripple and Kim Abeles’ Shared Journey
Many young artists, especially those coming right out of school, find working as a studio assistant to be a valuable intermediary step. If they are lucky, they learn practical skills—and perhaps even more importantly—they make significant connections with more...
Alyson Souza
California artist Alyson Souza creates paintings and sculptures that draw parallels between man-made relics—vintage electrical equipment, say, or battered geographer’s tools—and nature forms of similar shape, texture, or function. An immense head of cabbage opens to...
Irene Hardwicke Olivieri
In Irene Hardwicke Olivieri’s Subterranean Family (2013), a large woman crouches, her body sinking into the earth, weighed down by a patchwork of introspective self-images. One curls in a sphinx-like pose, her feline tail circling behind her back, as she clutches a...
MEXICO as MUSE
"Mexico is truly the promised land for abstract art." Anni & Josef Albers, 1936 “Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world.” Andre Breton, 1938 Why Mexico? It was not only that Mexico was nearby and easily accessible to U.S.–based artists, although that was...
All over the map
Early in her career, Joyce Kozloff gained prominence on both coasts. Here in Los Angeles, as one of the organizers of the 1971 protest of LACMA’s white-male-dominated exhibition record, she became an early proponent of feminist art. Four years later, she joined Miriam...