wk 10 artist: Audra Graziano “Off-line”

Audra Graziano’s gallery, “Off-line” was featured this past week in the Cal State Long Beach art galleries .Audra originally worked in New York for ten years and then moved to California. She began started painting scenic backgrounds for commercials, Fox Sports, and reality shows. After awhile, Audra decided to attend grad school here at Long Beach. For the purpose of this gallery, Audra composed the pieces by starting with very tense common paint as the ground layer and then kept adding glazed layers until the pieces were complete. 

The thesis for Audra’s exhibition can be split into two different parts: an analysis of the wiring communication systems (our phone usage) and how much of what we actually intend to communicate is transmitted via said phone wires. Audra’s main focus was on the fact that we operate these forms of communication without consciously thinking, like the function of our human bodies. According to Audra, we do not become aware of these habitual functions until something goes wrong. Audra claims that, “these paintings have evolved from an abstract relationship with technological transmission to an embodied metaphor for visual communication”. 

wk 7 artist: Alanna Marcelletti “Paneless”

 

“My work is a visual journal of image, text, and found objects that document the people and places I encounter as well as memories of my family and literature I read”. This is a statement from featured artist this week, Alanna Marcelletti. Alanna is twenty-nine years old and works in the library at the elementary school, Carlthorp in Santa Monica. A few years ago, she attended Long Beach State and majored in art. Now, she is back at Long Beach as a student in contemporary practices in painting at the art program and claims she loves it; “you can’t do it if you don’t love it”. 

The gallery, “Paneless”, is comprised of work by Alanna as well as Arezoo Bhartania. Alanna’s part of the gallery took about a month to finish because she worked on all of the pieces simultaneously. She dedicated around sixteen hours of work in her studio a week until the gallery was completed. Alanna says that her overall focus of the gallery is “social pressure on outside society on personal life”. She also wants the theme of expression from a female perspective to be conveyed through her work. This theme alludes to “societal pressure on domestic life as a woman; such as, gender roles, biological clock, and maintaining a family”. 

Alanna says that the overall theme of the piece pictured above is about deterioration and loss. She furthered her explanation by saying, “I think it’s also about the good things of deterioration; even though something falls apart, good things may still happen”. 

http://alannam.pixpasites.com/#/home?i=370

Wk 5 Artist: Megan Kinney “Pulse”

The art gallery, “Pulse”, is an “exploration of nature through reoccurring forms, unpredictability, and processes. We approach our work intuitively and seek out what excites us”. This previous statement was provided by the artists; Henela Bae, Jamie Vilatoro, Megan Kinney, and Dianna Franco whose work makes up the gallery.

I was given the opportunity to interview artist, Megan Kinney, who is a Michigan native. When she was fifteen, her and her family moved to 29 palms; this is where she drew the majority of her inspiration for her art pieces. She draws a lot of inspiration from texture. She likes “woods and trees and rock formations especially in Joshua Tree”. Megan claims that her whole life, she has enjoyed art and would not want to do anything else. Even from a young age, her “parents always knew [she] was going to be an artist”. For most of her pieces, she starts out with colaging and and drawing before she actually starts the paintings. She went on to say that she spends more time studying the art piece than actually painting it.

The above piece pictured was done by Megan Kinney which represents nature with the female form. The piece was inspired by her own “personal experience influenced with body image like how we are hiding who we really are within  something else”.

https://www.facebook.com/MeganKinneyArtist

WK 2 Artist: Patricia Anderson “Urban Exodus”

Artist Patricia Anderson uses simple geometric shapes to symbolism current controversial issues in our society including conformity, alcoholism, and being gay. The inspiration behind her artwork can be attributed to her own personal experiences. She grew up in different neighborhoods throughout Orange County and from there became fascinated with the “suburban facade and how everyone is polite and how everyone is conformist”.  Through her work, she started showing representations of “how they [people of suburbia] live and things in the neighborhood”. Patricia’s artwork is a great example of how meaningful a piece can be.

Her favorite pieces in the gallery are called boxes two and four (pictured above). Patricia “likes it structurally because [she] likes to work with wood”. She says that besides wood, she likes to work with the color gray because “there are so many textures and it is so artistic”. Patricia’s initial interest in art was a result of her “grandfather [being] a cabinet maker and [growing] up with art by drawing and going to museums”.

Artist, Patricia Anderson, pictured above with an art gallery viewer.