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Arts & Entertainment

The Four Seasons of Flora & Spice

The Four Seasons of Flora & Spices is a fine art exhibition which takes us thru the seasons turning the gallery space into a veritable garden of flora, citrus blends, and spices by eleven artists. Works in the show comprise a variety of genres and excellent craftsmanship by artists who have received critical acclaim, having shown at national and international venues. Many of the works are a celebration of the continuum of life. Curated by Charity Burnett and Liz Gordon.

 

Opening reception - Saturday May 12th – 7pm to 10pm.
Artist Panel Discussion
- Saturday June 16th – 1:30pm to 3pm
Exhibit featured through Tuesday June 26, 2012

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Curator Charity Burnett hosts micro-exhibitions at Sangria Fine Arts in the San Fernando Valley and curates in Los Angeles. She facilitates Sangria Studio Visits and Lunches for artists, curators, and collectors. Burnett also leads groups of art enthusiasts on tours of the Los Angeles art scene. Burnett attended Art Center College of Design and is a painter having shown at Bergamot Station, Angels gate Cultural Center, and Andlab. 

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Curator Liz Gordon developed The Loft at Liz’s in 2007 (above Liz’s Antique Hardware) as a unique and innovative Los Angeles gallery.  With a featuring of both renowned and emerging artists the gallery provides a blend of fine art, artist panel talks, various workshops and a wide variety of cultural events.  Supporting both southern California artists as well as a myriad of international exhibitions, The Loft at Liz’s continues to shift the paradigm of the modern gallery through its featuring of both contemporary works and historically significant contributors to the arts.

FEATURING ORIGINAL WORKS BY: Sharon Bell, Alison Foshee, Bob Francis, Renée A. Fox, Lynda Pizzuto, Karen Sikie, Mike Street, Sharon Suhovy, Ruth Trotter, Jane Park Wells, Lori Zimmerman.

Domestic gardener and collage-painter, Sharon Bell, explores a digital direction for this show. Inspired by her substantial “home-garden documentation,” the LA artist samples motifs of flowers for the season in which they bloom. Using textured wallpaper samples and film clips, Bell combines multiple patterned motifs by abstracted them into painterly sequenced compositions. Bell attended Claremont Graduate University, and Otis College of Art and Design.

Renée A. Fox’s artworks are inspired by native coastal plants of southern California and the rainforest of Costa Rica. Seedlings and budding plants convey a surreal sexualization: jasmine or amaryllis will have pollinating birds or insects in oil paint and graphite. The classically trained artist’s paintings are delicate, seem weightless and sylph-like in their “pseudo-copulation.” Fox’s line work has the precision of a choreographed ballerina. Fox attended Corcoran College of Art and Design and Otis College of Art and Design. She is Gallery Director of the Beacon Arts Building.

Jane Park Wells’ wooden framed boxes with fluted paper inserts represent the seasons. It is a nostalgic and deeply personal work. The artist often works with themes of agriculture, water, and traditional Korean harvest dances. Wells attended Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University. She is represented “courtesy of the Ruth Bachofner Gallery.”

Alison Foshee is contributing a collage, "Icarus Incense," using a Halloween and fall motif. Lowbrow materials such as consumable craft and office supplies with text are layered and densely patterned into floral compositions. Resourceful, recycled mundane objects represent the fall season. Foshee attended San Francisco Art Institute and Occidental College. She is represented “courtesy of Jancar Gallery.”

Mike Street’s classically drawn spice trees celebrate the seasons using humor. Trees evolve into zoological creatures collaged with mixed media. Street say’s “My goal with this series is to evoke an enigmatic and poetic sense of magical delight.” Street is a self- taught artist, and an expert in visual merchandising and design.

Sharon Suhovy sculpts edible roses on canvas with cake-frosting utensils and acrylic gel medium. The works represent the changing of the seasons and symbolize the seasons of a female’s life. Suhovy says, “The surfaces will reflect the sweetness of youth, the adolescence of puberty, the knowing of womanhood, and the wilting reflections of the sage woman.” The innovative artist may surprise us, with subtle fragrance oils: cotton candy, honeysuckle, cinnamon, green-apple, licorice, and lavender. Suhovy attended California State University, San Bernardino and Claremont Graduate University and is a college art professor.

Ruth Trotter creates asuite of drawings” with intertwining organic lines and contained patches of collage. Trotter references flowering plants through sensate memory of light and temperature. Seasonal landscapes are made with acrylic inks on woodsy faux textures. An entanglement of motifs on factory-made “contact paper” and backed with “Arches” paper. Trotter is a professor of art at the University of La Verne. She attended Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University, and is a Millard Sheets Scholar.

Lori Zimmerman is a fiber artist who explores the effects of time on materials and the beauty inherent in aging and life’s many seasons.” The colors of pods and leaves are vibrant. The artist say’s “The stitches naturally express the branching, fractal nature of growth. In nature, although each stitch is unique, stitch built upon stitch soon becomes pattern. As each leaf fades, the patterns endure.” Zimmerman attended California College of Arts and Crafts.

Lynda Pizzuto contributes large-scale paintings of flourishing tendril garden motifs, poured, stained, scrubbed, and dripped. The woven canvas has luxuriant atmospheric mark making and shimmering color gradients that ebb and flow. The process organically explores collage, drawing, and painting. The artist has a background in textiles and her home is surrounded by a wild garden. Pizzuto attended Santa Monica School of Design, Art, and Architecture and Otis Art Institute.

Bob Francis’s photography of botanical subjects takes us up close to the fine texture and crisp graphic color. Every season flowers have a life cycle, where they become dried, ruffled, and crumpled. Francis say’s “Aging gracefully is a recurring theme in many of these images…” “The perfect flower, in all its perky glamour and exhibitionism, is a stunning thing.” Francis attended Art Center College of Design.

Karen Sikie makes botanical paper mosaics with translucent layered color fills laced into delicate flowing outlines of figures and animals. Decorative papers are used, with a “Dremel tool” for mark making. The artist say’s, “In celebration of the idea: cycles of nature” she is “exploring blooming and transformation.” Sikie attended UCLA and El Camino College She shows work at the Pacific Design Center.

 

Exhibit Location: The Loft at Liz’s   453 S. La Brea Avenue | Los Angeles, CA 90036
Media Inquiries: Attn. Randi Kreeft (323) 939-4403 ext. 6 or randi@theloftatlizs.com

 

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