L.A. Art World Fringe

On Saturday, October 17, I attended an artist reception for three female artists at 5412 Wilshire Blvd. The location was called, "Sophia Louisa Projects with Phantom Galleries LA." It was at an art gallery. I'm not sure whether the gallery was called "Phantom Galleries LA" or not.

The artists were Rebecca Niederlander, Leigh Salgado, and Coleen Sterritt, and the exhibition of their work, which runs from October 8 - December 5, 2009, is called "Grace Beauty Fortitude." The piece that heads this post is "Take me out tonight" by Leigh Salgado.

I've been watching Leigh's art develop for over a decade, when I attended her first show, "Girly Things" in Los Feliz. I even own a piece of hers:

This is how her website describes her current working style:

"Her labor-intensive compositions are of abstracted imagery occasionally morphing into recognizable subject matter. Viewers are simultaneously looking at interpretations of netting, lace, clothing patterns and original woven abstraction.

"Salgado is a leading proponent of Sculpted Drawing. This buegeoning medium brings a third dimension into pictorial space without compromising the elements of drawing. Exacto knives are used to eviscerate the negative space between the lines in her ink drawing, while texture and shadows reinforce a physical experience. Hung away from the wall, this medium delivers the spatial sensation of a third dimension in static two-dimensional drawings.

 In Other Art News
Another artist whose work I've been following since the late 90s is Chris Ward of CWA Architects. His most recent work is the Park Century School in Culver City, Los Angeles. Chris and the school were mentioned briefly this past Sunday (11/8/09) in the New York Times Magazine "Style" section. One cool thing about this project is that Frank Gehry was a consulting architect on the project. Chris was his "boss."

Also, last night I had the opportunity to hear another person whose progress I've been following, gallery owner Peter Mendenhall of Peter Mendenhall Gallery, talk about his work as a gallery owner. Here are some of the highlights of his talk:

• The art market peaked in 2006, making NOW a great time to buy art, if you've got the cash
• In 2006, galleries were successful if they sold 75% of the pieces in a show
• Today, they feel good about a show if they sell 25%
• Back in the heyday (2004-2006), you'd have a show up for four weeks; that's stretched to seven now
• Peter has two or three artists a week requesting to show; he accepts about .05 of those requests

One of the artists Peter represents, David Buckingham (I can't link to his page on Peter's site, so visit it on your own) was a copywriter for a big ad agency in New York for a number of years. It's easy to tell from his work. It kind of reminded me of another friend, Tom Koehne, who was a crossword editor when I first met him; he then became a children's book editor, a legal proofreader, and a poet. Now he's doing art, sometimes using words, sometimes not, but doing very provocative mixed-media collage:

He's got a website, now, too.

During his presentation, Peter Mendenhall said that artists need imagination, skill, and anxiety to succeed. I'm tempted to add another quality: a dose of healthy obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Leigh has been making the Sharpie/Exacto lacy constructions for years; each year they morph a little, but are recognizable from year to year. And if you look at the gallery on Tom's site, you'll definitely pick up that sense of doing something over and over and over and over again.

Quoting a famous Robber Baron (he didn't know which one), Peter said a good gallery owner had to be a combination businessman/dreamer/sonofabitch. He cited Larry Gagosian as the ultimate art dealer, who embodied all those qualities. "You spend years nurturing a market for an artist you believe in, and the minute your artist and his market clicks, Larry takes them from you."