Web Extra
OsCene 2010 offers one of the best surveys of Orange County’s visual arts scene. Here’s a closer look at a few of the roughly 50 artists whose works are in the Laguna Art Museum exhibit, which runs from Feb. 21 through May 16.
‘Formations—Mixed Terrain’
Virginia Katz, Irvine
ARTIST A childhood love of nature and college studies in philosophy influence her work, in which she creates images that resemble aerial photography and satellite images.
CREATION Katz creates printmaking plates in her Tustin studio and then ships them to New Mexico, where the prints are created on a large press. Katz then layers the returned prints with a variety of media, such as colored pencils, ground pigment, and water-based paint.
INSPIRATION “Natural patterns and traces tell a story. Eluviated patterns of rivers, mountain ranges, flatlands, and canyons appear comparable to those of field water runoff and the settling of soil, the culmination of residue in a city gutter, a dry creek bed or the details of the composition of a rock. I inferred that throughout natural phenomena, regardless of scale, the same elemental forces are at work and are predictable. These simulated topographical images were formed from my intuitive memory of accumulated observations.”
SEE MORE
www.virginiakatz.com
‘Smash Down’
Jocelyn Foye, Long Beach
ARTIST In Foye’s brand of performance art, she has captured the movements of a Pueblan dancer, college wrestlers, and street fighters in photographs and sculptures.
CREATION Members of the Orange County and Long Beach roller derby girls will “play fight” an exaggerated game of Red Rover in one of the museum’s galleries Feb. 18. Eight-foot squares of clay will hang at either end of the gallery to catch the players’ impressions as they hit the walls. After the game, Foye will pour liquid plastic on the clay squares to make a sculpture.
INSPIRATION Foye counts Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly among her inspirations, as well contemporary artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Jenny Saville, Ron Athey, and Ed Fella. “Additionally, niche community groups that inspire, change, or alter the way we perceive our environment inspire me. I am drawn more to athletic and artistic groups, but sometimes something outside that genre attracts my attention and I play with it.”
SEE MORE
www.jocelynart.com
‘Wall Mold’
Shannon Faseler, Encinitas
ARTIST The gallery director and art instructor at Irvine Valley College has built a body of work on the “aesthetics of decay”—as she says, “I strive to change the viewer’s perception of the physical world.”
CREATION Faseler started by researching toile wallpaper patterns found in the older homes of wealthy people. She painted a trompe l’oeil toile pattern in acrylics, and used oil paints to render the mold.
INSPIRATION Faseler says she was struck by the images of mold-infested houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “I began an investigation of household and food mold. I now use oil-glazing techniques to render highly detailed paintings of food that I have let mold. In the food images the original subject has been completely transformed and is unrecognizable and abstract.”
SEE MORE
www.shannonfaseler.com