Thursday, August 31, 2017

Cathy Ward's Phantasmata

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Cathy Ward's Second Solo Show at The Good Luck Gallery
Phantasmata

Reception: Saturday Sept 2, 7-10pm
Exhibition Dates: Sept 2 - Oct 15
The Good Luck Gallery
945 Chung King Rd
LA, CA 90036

The Good Luck Gallery is excited to present UK artist Cathy Ward’s second American solo show, “Phantasmata”, built around the enormous (84 X 284 ins) title piece -- a black and white “drawing in acrylic on canvas” that expands the charged atmospheric intimacy of her celebrated scratchboard drawings to a new epic scale.

Surging and pulsing with dark energies constrained and released, Ward’s dense Herworld drawings capture the restless energy of abstract expressionism through meticulously rendered organic forms. Their undeniable mystery, emotional depth, and sensuality are delivered in a dazzling visual package that recalls psychedelic graphics, hermetic alchemical illustrations, and outsider horror vacui.

In addition to this magnum opus, Ward’s exhibit includes a bronze sculpture incorporating pagan ritual symbolism; exquisite ink drawings on translucent amoeba-shaped mother-of-pearl (Diluvian Sculptures); and two distinct gesso-on-ink portrait series -- Sprites and Spirits -- depicting supernatural entities in a style ranges from action painting to precise draftsmanship, resembling vintage hi-contrast micrographs of cellular structures.

Visions of The Luna Sea comprises a series of hand-painted and photocollaged visionary landscapes -- originally glimpsed during the artist’s “Madge Gill Medium & Visionary Artist“ residency at Orleans House in 2013, but only just completed. Corn Maidens depict “Wicker Man”-like pagan fetishes in incised ink on gold, while the Gaia’s Crown series are some of the most accomplished examples of Ward’s virtuosic scratchboard drawing technique.

With inspiration ranging from coral reef restoration initiatives to the myth of Demeter (the ancient Greek goddess of harvest) and her connection to the pagan corn dolly, Ward’s work opens a portal to a parallel reality -- one in which our exhausted world is revived and restored to a state of awe-inspiring complexity, wholeness, and fecundity by an upsurge of dark feminine energy from the mythological underworld. Step on through!

Monday, August 28, 2017

Kirby at 100

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In honor of his 100th birthday, here are some links to some Jack Kirby stuff I wrote or was involved in over the years... there a couple of other things somewhere, but my archives are slightly disordered.

http://dougharvey.la/doug_harvey.php?ID=192
www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-at-csun
www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-hand-of-fire-roundtable-part-1
www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-hand-of-fire-roundtable-part-2
www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-hand-of-fire-roundtable-part-3

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Videos of The Hi Hopes Live at The Good Luck Gallery!

Video from the closing celebration for "Summery Appeal" at The Good Luck Gallery in L.A.'s Chinatown, Aug 26 2017. Apologies for the outsider cinematography. More info: http://hope4arts.org/ http://www.thegoodluckgallery.com/exhibitions/past/summery-appeal/
 



Cath's Pix from the Hi Hopes at TGLG

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Summery Abstraction

One of the most surprising aspects of the curatorial process of Summery Appeal was discovering so many dev/diff artists with mad abstract skills -- indistinguishable from the work coming out of Yale or UCLA grad programs. Which isn't a slight to studio art grad students, just a gentle reminder that visual art is not a subset of sophisticated verbal discourse. Check out these (mostly still available) abstractions and judge for yourself...

PS: Although the show's now over The Good Luck Gallery is set up here for online sales: https://the-good-luck-gallery.myshopify.com/…/summery-appea…

Artists: Aljosha Owen, Aljosha Owen, Raymond McAdams, Wendell Frank, Vanessa McConnell,
Alejandro Diaz, Raymond McAdams, Leslie Paul, Crystal Serna, Tiffiny Boyd, Jonathan Jackson, Leslie Paul, Wendell Frank, Christie Cook, Chris Johnson, Vanessa McConnell, Marvin Castillo



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Alejandro Diaz - Untitled (A_Diaz4)

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Still Standing!

"Dark Fudd Rising"


New Flash Fudd icon painting for the eclipse - "Dark Fudd Rising" 61 X 42 ins, acrylic + shoe polish on paper (2017)

"Whom should I turn to, if not the One whose darkness is darker than night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid -- the Deep One, whose being I trust ..." --Rainer Maria Rilke

Bud Handelsman, PUNCH, 1964

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When I was a kid I used to get anthologies of PUNCH cartoons (as well as from The New Yorker and others) out of the library and make photocopies of my favorites -- this was one of them, and it stuck in my head, long after I lost the xerox -- just tracked it down on the interwebs. Timeless.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Shana Nys Dambrot on Summery Appeal


Summery Appeal: A Group Show Curated by Doug Harvey

August 16, 2017

There are a handful of unforgettable breakout stars among the 50+ artists included in this, the most epic of summer salons. But the true strength of the showing is the sheer breadth of eclectic styles represented, definitively pushing back against the idea of any kind of monolithic Outsider Art aesthetic. A dialogue is increasingly ongoing as to whether it’s better to consider Outsider Art as a stylistic denomination, or as a demographic focusing on the background of the practitioners? In any case, with this kind of diversity and clarity of vision representing the genre, the real question might be, outside of what?...

https://artandcakela.com/2017/08/16/summery-appeal-a-group-show-curated-by-doug-harvey/


Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Summery Appeal People

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Pix from various sources - Cathy Ward, Paige Wery, Marlene Picard, Babak Motamen & ?...

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Sunday, August 6, 2017

Guy Peellaert's Duchamp/Dylan/Driscoll Pop Pastiche



So here's a brilliant and improbable cultural collision - Julie Driscoll & Trinity performing their searing rendition of Dylan (& Danko)'s "Wheel's On Fire" on a Belgian/German TV show dedicated primarily to the BeeGee's 1968 album IDEA, with spot-on Pop Art sets by Guy Peellaert (who later did Bowie's Diamond Dogs cover) which in this case consists of a pretty solid homage to Marcel Duchamp. Guy Peellaert also did amazing comix in the mid-60s...





Saturday, August 5, 2017

Hell Up in Harlem!

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John Kilduff Punk Ass Bitch (Hell Up in Harlem), 2007? 2006? oil on canvas, 70 X 70 ins, created for my (DH) UCLA grad painting seminar on the cinema of Larry Cohen!

Friday, August 4, 2017

KISS Salukis in jail!

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I guess Peter Criss is still under that bridge. [Lance, Lily, & Rose in Lompoc]