While on your nightly stroll through the Pomona Arts Colony, check out the new group show, Safety in Numbers—featuring seven of the colony’s most prominent photo-artists. Anthony Acosta is featured most prominently in the show, with 13 untitled images taken while on a trip to Nicaragua. Acosta’s shots nearly jump off the wall—and they definitely suck you in, almost as if they’re 3-D. In reality, it’s just that Acosta has a an expert knack for composition and an enhanced color palette; images of two boys on one bike, one whose shoes are too small, the other whose are too big; young boys in a rodeo pen looking out on all the action and a close-up view of the rooty ends of carrots are superb. The detail in the shots is so acute we can actually see the different layers of dirt in one boy’s soiled cuffs, the dotted stains on his shirt, and the orangey substance under his fingernails. Sally Egan has a fantastic retro bed in the show—yellow button cushion headboard, paisley black-and-white bed spread and one of those much-maligned rotary telephones. Amy Bystedt’s series of women with suitcases broken open and spilling out flowers, lollipops and office papers is also campy, but it resonates on a deeper level when you realize that the suitcases are powerful symbols—are these women just on a day trip or are they leaving old lives behind? Cherie Savoie hits the mark with Faith, a portrait of a forlorn-looking debutante, Joe Toreno is a lighting genius, and Melaney Schmidt and Genevieve Wolff go way outside the box with abstraction and goofiness, respectively.
Safety in Numbers, at dba256 Gallery.WineBar, 256 S. Main St., Pomona, (909) 623-7600; www.dba256.com. Thru June 1.
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin 03/12/2009
Dba256 Gallery & Winebar is mixing it up with its "MySpace Show." Primarily made up of California artists, the "MySpace Show" is exactly that, an exhibit of artists you can find on dba256's MySpace friends list.
The range of work in this show is as varied as the 14 artists themselves; nonetheless, a fun and exciting exhibit.
Dba256 Gallery & Winebar is at 256 S. Main St. Information: www.dba256.com.
A GUIDE TO THE THE short pour WINE TASTING IN THE I.E.
BY GINO L. FILIPPI
LOOKING FOR SOMETHING to add a little “spring” to your step? With longer days upon us and warmer weather ahead, now’s the time to discover some fun and wine-friendly places in our own backyard. That’s right, the nectars of the vine are nearby and awaiting your arrival!
Wine bars have become the new niche spot for education, fellowship and palate-pleasing food and wine pairings. Forget the pompous and pretentious, I’m talking about establishments where the hosts are helpful and hospitable, the environment easy and relaxed, and the wines tasty and affordable. Whatever your favor and budget, the selection is impressive.
In downtown Pomona’s eclectic art district, I discovered dba256 Gallery Wine Bar. Proprietors Ron Faris and Andi Campognone are both bright, unpretentious and connected to their crafts.
The young entrepreneurs opened dba256 last fall. This interesting, upscale tasting venue combines a contemporary art gallery featuring local and national artists with fine wines and events.
Faris, of Rancho Cucamonga, also is a vintner and oversees dba’s wines, beers and sensory programs. Campognone, of Alta Loma, is the art curator and organizes all exhibits.
“The initial goal was to highlight boutique, handcrafted, small-lot premium wines. I also wanted to pour bottles of my Vin Nostro (our wine) wines,” said Faris, who partners with winemaker Dario Zucconi in Northern California. Faris was pouring his delicious Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and Dry Creek Zinfandel as we spoke.
More than 20 wines by the glass are poured and priced from $5 to $14. Bottles also are available from $16 to $122. The wine list at dba256 changes weekly, and it is expanding on a regular basis — as is the number of satisfied patrons.
“We are focusing on thematic group exhibitions. We are a commercial gallery, but we approach all of our exhibitions with a critical essay written by a major art writer or critic, much like an academic institution,” Campognone said.
Dba256 works in conjunction with the local art community scheduling exhibits that will celebrate Pomona College’s Montgomery Gallery, Scripps College’s Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and the Claremont Museum of Art.
IE Weekly, Thursday, March 13, 2008
Connecting the Dots: Sum of Parts illuminates the whole of conceptual collage
Aristotle’s principle, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts,” is a widely debated mathematical position. But while the idea might not compute in the finite world, in theory, and especially in art, it makes perfect sense. When speaking of collage and multi-media works in particular, parts are often made up of disparate objects and medium, all of which are conjoined in the artist’s mind and then processed out into tangible form.
In dba256’s Sum of Parts, we find not only displays of this collage process, but often the repetition of forms that are not at all dissimilar—yet tampered with enough to create fragmentation and cohesion all at the same time.
Two of Irene Abraham’s acrylic on panel pieces do exactly this. Ironically, Abraham has a background in a scientific discipline—a research biologist—and so intrinsically knows about sums and parts. It’s no wonder then that all of her pieces evoke cellular images—especially “Strange Bedfellows” and “Random Acts”—orderly jumbles of circles and disks all painted in muted modern tones of tangerine, lemon yellow, brick red and copper brown, almost like records or earthy gumballs, scattered across textured, deep blue and brown washes. The disks are at once stagnant and in motion—what one might really see through a microscope, if it’s a fun, party-inclined microscope that is. Her two Mylar pieces also channel a scientific feeling—in toy land—with blue-green and orangey-brown acrylic dots connected by drips that meld into skyscrapers and industrial buildings made from Tinker Toys—or maybe they’re just amino acids. DNA? Fun, all the way around, nevertheless.
Also on some type of cellular level, Rebecca Hamm’s watercolors on paper filter nature’s offerings through a colorful spectrum of globular mosaic. Up close, it’s difficult to tell where the tributaries of branch-like lines and amoebas are going—but they’re going somewhere in a randomness of organized movement. From afar, we see that the negative space of these fragments indeed make up a tree, foliage, rocks, and even a pond. We wondered if we had put on our red-tinted glasses if a hidden word or phrase would appear—but we forgot our glasses, blast it.
Pulling us out of the microcosm, digital artist and painter Hollis Cooper’s wall-high acrylic on plastic is an energetic splash of color—a twisted abstraction of semi-recognizable city infrastructure that absolutely screams Rock & Roll. Careening across the wall like the environment seen from the windows of an out-of-control virtual taxi cab on acid, buildings plunge and turn in on themselves in waves and ignite upward once again, crashing through another plane, tugging at our reality to come along.
Shedding the color, but transporting you further into wild yet recognizable abstraction, Rebecca Niederlander’s wire mobiles embody once again the repetition of shapes that the human mind craves and seeks out (like when we see faces of Jesus in tree trunks and potato chips). In a very “Seussian” way, her electrical wire danglings evoke childlike imaginings of zany chandeliers or even the bouncing bouffant of a swinger party hostess.
Speaking of childhood, that’s where several of Lisa Adams’ metaphysical acrylic on panels belong—in some Shel Silverstein storybook land. Fairly unplaceable insofar as finding a point of reference in the material world, Adams’ intricate vines with soon-to-bloom buds cling and burrow into a heavenly cameo of clouds, a simplistically circular dreamcatcher-like medallion, and my favorite, “How Important is Volume,” wrap around a plasma-membraned balloon, next to delicate blue string, floating high above a wistfully dark atmosphere.
We are now in a truly otherworldly and indefinable place, and so brings us to the finest piece in the exhibit. We don’t know what the hell is twisting around in the mind of Kimber Berry, but we wish we had it. Her 12x6 mixed media panel of paint and photo linen is utterly engrossing—a vibrant anarchy of super-charged shockwaves igniting almost every color on the palette: Think of an aquatic scene shot through the kaleidoscopic lens of The Yellow Submarine—psychedelic prisms of swirls that suck you into electric coral, vibrating frog’s legs and translucent crystalline waves. Berry, a truly emerging young artist, is a phemon to be sure, and this piece alone serves as the pure translation of the exhibit theme—the whole of her expression not only transcends its own parts, but renders them indistinguishable from it.
And we can’t wait to see what she does next.
Sum of Parts at dba256 Gallery, 256 S. Main Street, Pomona, (909) 623-7600, www.dba256.com. Exhibit running through April 5
IE Weekly - Thursday, February 21, 2008
Don't Cover Your Eyes!
dba256 reveals the nude like you’ve only lived it before
Depicting the nude in artwork means walking a tightrope—and there’s no catch-net below, only crowds of people. People who are still burdened by censorship-minded Puritanical roots, people who are uber-liberals and find nothing pornographic regardless how a nude might be filleted, and the rest of us, who judge the nude on merits of technique and emotional resonance alone. Regardless of who looks and who doesn’t, the human form is the oldest of artistic subjects, and one that we just can’t stop painting, drawing, sculpting, filming and casting. It is, after all, who we are. Still, some galleries and museums will not show nudity in any form, and others display it and then cover it up so that school children won’t be tainted by seeing supple breasts—as if they didn’t look at them for the first two years of their lives and won’t end up looking at them for next 60. Then there are spaces like dba256 that take a more even keeled approach—walking that tightrope of technique and theme regardless of who’s grunting below.
In its latest exhibit, Naked Truth: Figure as Form and Spirit, works from both established and emerging artists come together in a broad celebration of the human body. We found Barbara Berk’s video installation to be the most unabashedly celebratory: the over-50 artist filmed herself marching in place, in the nude, to a military tune in Hi! Hi! Hey!, her private parts masked by computer-generated camo squares that bounce along with her body. It’s hilarious, it’s proud, and it’s spunky. We love Barbara Berk.
A.S. Ashley also pulled one out of the “clever” bag with his Venus de Hey Zeus, a nine-foot cross with an image of the Venus de Milo embossed on the vertical plank and two cast hands attached to glistening, gilly trout forearms on the horizontal wood. It’s a stroke of genius that we can’t believe no one’s thought up before. We’re so glad that Ashley did.
Other mixed media breaks up the human body as well. Laura Larson’s five-box series of female torsos enclosed behind etched glass offers a colorful range of womanly body-types that celebrate the un-anorexic and Andree Mahoney’s She Overcomes Plateous sculpture of porcelain, glaze and acrylic breaks down, shatters, and melts together the pieces of woman and what she can be transformed into and by.
The human form goes into funky party mode in Davis & Davis’ series of digital and C-prints as plastic men, a woman and a baby hide behind groovy beaded curtains, dash across nighttime store fronts or simply stand erect in almost discernable anatomically correct glory. William Casting’s seven-foot piled and hand-built winged clay woman takes the form back to ancient and earthy roots, recalling a nature spirit ready to take flight with branch/twig wings.
Two of the most striking pieces come from Darren Saravis: black and white giclée prints of fit and curvaceous women upon whose bodies script sentences are projected. The lighting of the figures and background are exceptionally soft, bringing to mind Hollywood glamour shots from the studio system days. Sally Egan joins the yesteryear photo array with her black and white untitled print of a rocker/pinup blonde in a mussy, retro-kitsch pad, shielding her face from the prying photographer. The piece is remarkably original, especially given the plethora of pinuppy artwork around these days. With this piece, Egan evokes a feeling of isolation and unwanted attention instead of the over-used “starlet beckoning the spotlight” normally seen in the genre. Cherie Savoie goes even farther into the rocker/pinup scene with her Coco Noir gelatin silver print, but again, her raven-haired model has remarkable depth and little come-hither—a refreshing change that evokes the darker side of being a sex symbol.
Perhaps the pièce-de-résistance of the show is Herb Olds’ mixed media The Gift. Using what appear to be acrylic, graphite and collage images, he takes us into the world of a woman who appears to be collapsed or maybe just gently folded upon herself in front of a large painting she is either creating or has discovered. The painting within the painting is exceptionally detailed and layered—faces of a small child, a bird, and a baboon all connected through a strange stringing together of life. The woman’s body itself is both of and not of this other world.
The rest of the show is filled with admirable work as well—oils, charcoals and pastels of human bodies floating, embracing, stretching and partially draped. And, true to the title of this collection, all of these human bodies are there to be enjoyed for their form alone, with no attempt to persuade or shock, with no need to hide or placate. They are the human spirit incarnate, and they are us.
Naked Truth: Figure as Form and Spirit at dba256 Gallery & Wine Bar, 256 S. Main St., Pomona, (909) 523-7600; wwwdba256.com. Tues.–Thurs., 10AM – 10PM; Fri. & Sat., 10AM–midnight. Thru March 1.
IE WEEKLY - Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Western Brink
The latest dba256 exhibit shows that the Pacific Coast has a lot of depth
In the print edition of New American Paintings 2007, Pacific Coast Edition, from which the current show at dba 256 was culled, MOCA curator Alma Ruiz remarks, “ . . . a place to think and be productive, at a pace that suits the individual, is often more precious than being in the middle of an art scene where how the artist looks or what he or she is wearing has become a hallmark of success. After all, it is the art—not its creator—that should capture our attention.” This appealing statement reveals the conflicting impulses that govern not only the art world but the larger world as well. People of prominence and cunning fascinate us; and the sophistication, drive and hard work it takes to succeed, in the art world or elsewhere is compelling. Accordingly, the art and its creator are inseparably linked. Even so, Ruiz’s statement resonates with me, as I prefer to approach the art on my own terms, away from openings where individuals—artists, critics, movers & shaker, et al—present a public persona. The art in Selections from New American Paintings at dba256 is intimate, both in scale and tone, encouraging quiet contemplation.
Full of subtle color, Untitled (Performance Documentation) by Ana Teresa Fernández is deliciously satisfying and full of irony. This mostly soft focus interior scene of a woman straddling an ironing board bears some resemblance to soft-core pornography, yet it also turns the genre’s conventions upside down. Consider that the woman in the painting irons a garment as she gets on her grind. This is one in a series of paintings by Fernández—the only one in the series at dba256—which document the artist’s performances. Strikingly, Fernández chooses painting—a medium of subjectivity, sensuality, and metaphor—rather than photography to document her performance work. Rich with nuance, her work addresses questions about the traditional roles of women, the invisibility of domestic work, and the control of women’s sexuality.
Patricia Hagen’s Adrift alludes to copious numbers of spores, viruses, fungi and odd cells seeking to reproduce. One spongiform sphere floats above the rest, presumably giving the painting its title, flying off to implant itself elsewhere. There’s an inherent beauty in these forms, based on organic matter. The paint is layered and dense, with lovely and unexpected color harmonies. The composition reminds me of Giorgio Morandi’s treatment of bottles and jars. Yet there is an implicit threat in this painting that does not occur in Morandi’s work; it is both seductive and ominous.
Rift, Aaron Peterson’s elegant abstraction, combines passages of glazes and drips with gumdrop colored bubbling shapes. Jelly fish-like circlets with hanging tendrils float across the painting. It’s beautiful and inventive, evoking images of Zen painting and cloud shrouded Zen monasteries.
Thomas Pathé’s paintings, americancheeseFrench’smustard, big Bing, and Aim toothpaste gel, playfully subvert the precedent of minimalism. These paintings feel almost as if they are machined—they have crisp, glossy surfaces, seamless continuity between painting and support, rounded corners, and monochrome color. Yet you can see the evidence of brushstrokes in the layers of translucent paint and varnish. The paintings are named for the substances that give them their color, transferring emotional association from object to painting. Pathé deftly combines cool sophistication and human emotion.
Two paintings by Jeffrey Gillette, “Toilet” and “Hospital,” are urban landscapes of complexity and fright. Gillette’s work takes aim at American economic dominance, consumer culture, and corporate imperialism. These landscapes present third world shantytowns that could be anywhere and nowhere, an agglomeration of Gillette’s experience abroad. While they are representations of human suffering, showing the deplorable conditions that afflict millions worldwide, there’s nary a human in sight in either painting. In “Toilet,” an upside-down Pepsi sign is the side of a cobbled together structure—very likely, someone’s home. A fence separates the shanties from the piles of refuse that make the slum a living garbage dump. Stains along the fence are very possibly human waste from the toilets advertised on the sides of the shanties. In the distance, the urban haze of pollution obscures our view. “Hospital,” named for the Red Cross emblazoned on a door, speaks to the proliferation of illness brought about by the difficult living conditions in Gillette’s source material. Hospital presents a closer view of the shanties, to show us an explosion of color.
There’s more work in this show that deserves to be seen. The dba256 can be an intimate setting; if you need a little solitude, it is possible to settle down with a glass of wine in front of these paintings when nobody else is here. Or, if you want to make the scene, stop in when the place is pumping—there is a reception on January 12. Either way, Selections presents an opportunity to take in work you would normally see in Los Angeles or beyond. It’s worth the trip.
Selections From New American 2007, Pacific Coast Edition at dba256 Gallery, 256 South Main Street, Pomona, (909) 623-7600; www.dba256.com. Reception, Thursday, January 12, from 6pm–10pm; Exhibit goes through February 2, 2008
The apparent art explosion at the east end of the county is illuminated by two exhibitions concerned with light. “Ephemeral” deals with light literally, bringing together the radiant work of five artists (one from the Bay Area, two from here, two from Mexico City). Iñaki Bonillas’ fluorescent corridor slyly updates Bruce Nauman by stressing the optical rather than the corporeal, and physically leads to the other works: Thomas Glassford’s extravagant starburst of neon tubes, Elaine Buckholtz’s shimmering cascade of colors (derived from a van Gogh painting), Won Ju Lim’s miniature plastic bright-lights-big-city, and C.E.B. Reas’ lily-pond-like scattering of disks on which brittle, ever-changing patterns are projected. The show comes across as something of an avant-garde funhouse, and the works gain extra magic by playing off one another.
Dawn Arrowsmith, Song Blue/golden light (2005)
Similar interplay ensues between the wall works comprising “Liquid Light,” — paintings, by and large, with abstractions that seem to glow from within. Roland Reiss’ actually glow right through, consisting as they do of transparent acrylic applied to transparent acrylic. Even given the colorful nature of all the work, a quality of febrile near-invisibility pervades the show: In Dawn Arrowsmith’s orbs or Sharon Weiner’s blobs, for instance, or Andy Moses’ or Gregg Renfrow’s just-short-of-monochrome streaks, color is so luminous and expansive that the canvas seems to disappear into it. Also warming the eyeballs are Suzan Woodruff’s looming washes, Patrick Wilson’s and Alexander Couwenberg’s optisensual geometries, and the bounding brushstrokes of Michele Tabori and Jimi Gleason. “Ephemeral: Explorations in Light” at the Claremont Museum of Art, 536 W. First St., Claremont, Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; thru Dec. 30. (909) 621-3200. “Liquid Light” at dba256, 256 S. Main St., Pomona; Tues.-Thurs. 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m.-mid.; thru Dec. 1. (909) 623-7600.
IE Weekly, Thursday, November 15, 2007
ETHEREAL ABSTRACTIONS AND PRIMORDIAL SOUP dba256 serves up the elemental world in Liquid Light
By Stacy Davies
Rapidly asserting itself as the force to be reckoned with, Pomona Arts Colony's dba256 Gallery has erected another monument to innovative California artists. In her second exhibit, Liquid Light , dba director Andi Campognone features works that embody the polished, unrestricted cosmos of what could be our inner or outer worlds—or both. Unconcerned with specific structure, these pieces, which are decedents of the 1960's “Light and Space” and “Finish Fetish” movements, are more concerned with the act of purely looking, rather than art that supplies commentary or dramatic narrative. In fact, these pieces, most of which employ high gloss layered acrylic, look almost machine produced, a staple of the Finish Fetish idea of removing all evidence that an artist has been there—no brush or graphite strokes, no wild, emotional embellishments of any kind. This technique distinctively allows the viewer to enter into the work unguided by the artist, and thus, unhindered by preconception. In essence, it's visual freedom to absorb imagery and create meaning that is specific to each person. With this in mind, one might choose to forego reading the titles of the pieces until after experiencing them. We will, however, note most of the titles in this review—just take it with a dollop of polymer.
One of the most dramatic and enveloping displays in the show is Michel Tabori's “Abstract Forest,” a monolithic expanse of high resin greens, ambers and yellows poured across almost two-dozen panels of varying widths. The size of your living room wall, if you have very tall ceilings and a living room, it's a rendering of the mere elements of nature, defining none specifically, and therefore evoking not necessarily a forest per se, but perhaps the aura of a forest as viewed through an emerald prism of warmth and coolness in motion.
Similarly, Sharon Weiner's gold and violet couplet panels of fuzzy orbs floating in space or plasma (depending upon whether they strike you as Venusian river stones or protein molecules) might also be the stuff of dream worlds. More focused in shape, the soft collisions shimmer along the border of biology and the metaphysical.
Suzan Woodruff's tumultuous panels, however, drive this ethereal emergence into the earthly prehistoric with her poured acrylic canvases of what might be the turbulent browns and reds of volcanic primordiality—eventually cooling and transforming in the second panel into an oceanic blue and white of embryonic life.
Andy Moses capitalizes on this elemental realm as well: his “Desert Light” streaked copper and blues creation flecked with the iridescent metals of sand is both tied to the earth and yet apart from it. Up close, one will recall holding these very same grains in your hands during a beach or desert excursion; from afar, these details submerge into what could be recognized as the cross-section of Mojave dune or Saturnian clouds on a serene and thoughtful night.
Diverging from the heavy paint and liquidity that typifies most pieces in the show, Dawn Arrowsmith's delicate, solitary pastel circles are what one might see looking up into a barren sky through a softly vibrating portal, and is certainly the most spiritual of the works on display.
Alexander Couwenberg (who was also in the inaugural Inland Emperors exhibit), once again brings his smartly glossy acrylic palate of accessible abstraction to the table in a Kubrick-like fashion with “Star Duster.”
Departing from the embracing colors of light, Roland Reiss' clear acrylic casings utilize actual light filtered through lucid markings on a front acrylic panel to create shadows of images on the background wall, effectively bringing his “Falling Water” and “Traveling Light” to three-dimensional life.
Equally inconspicuous, Patrick Wilson's docile gray and muted orange geometries of “Pearls are a Nuisance” require a patient close-up in order to appreciate the delicacy and detail.
Finally, Lita Albuquerque's “Auric” might well be a fitting final touch on the show (if you view the works in the order that I did). Like a mysterious portal of time and place undefined, her simple, white-gold burnished canvas is embellished with only a large black circle in the center—a passageway, perhaps, to other inner and outer worlds, promising neither safety nor immediate comprehension—just the fluidity of life.
Liquid Light at dba256, 256 S. Main St., Pomona, (909) 623-7600; www.dba256.com ; Open Tues.-Thurs., 10 am -10 pm ; Fri.-Sat., 10 am –midnight. Closed Sun. & Mon.
The PO@256
In addition to their gallery exhibitions, dba256 reserves street-side display space for various installations. Currently featured is Noche by Riverside video artist and Claremont Graduate school alum Marsia Alexander-Clarke. Using time-lapse footage of the moon on a cloudy night, more than a dozen flat screens roll fragmented images in quick progression, creating an ominous visual of that most emotional fixture in our own lunar heavens. Alexander-Clarke has spent the last decade and a half perfecting what she calls “visual and aural carpets in grid format,” using pieces of imagery to create an overall composition of movement and feeling. The installation is only visible after dark, however, so make sure you stroll by on your evening walk through the Colony and take in this nature-based minimalist viewpoint.
inland art empire - Art LTD Magazine November 2007
If California’s art landscape has an underrated region, it’s encompassed within Claremont and Pomona. Even many who are thoroughly engulfed in the Southern California art scene aren’t fully aware of the double magnitude of these bordering towns on L.A. County’s eastern edge. Claremont is, after all, where a young native son named Millard Sheets became an art professor at Scripps College in 1932. Even while emerging as a leader of the California school of watercolor painting, he was shaping the college and the community, serving a dual role as educator and artist, recruiting an enviable faculty of respected artists. This attracted talented students to Scripps and the other Claremont Colleges, and a vital artistic community was born. In 1952, Karl Benjamin, the famous hard-edge abstractionist painter, moved to Claremont, where he taught at Pomona College (he still lives in town). Likewise, his hard-edge peer, painter Frederick Hammersley, came of age as a professor at Pomona College in the 1950s.
Though it has always had a strong art presence because of its schools, today, a critical mass of hip galleries is now taking root. Pomona, sometimes referred to as “the SoHo of the West,” has acquired a funky vibe perpetuated by the fact that even businesses that aren’t art-related are likely to be owned by artists, and even likelier to hang local art. “Everyone is very supportive of each other here,” says Andi Campognone, previously the exhibitions curator at the Riverside Art Museum, who now owns a new downtown gallery called dba256.
As evidence, she points out that the Pomona Arts Colony Art Walk, which happens the second Saturday of each month, is always “jam-packed.” It’s true: hundreds of art patrons show up, many with intentions of purchasing art. Nearby, musicians play and a farmer’s market bustles. “In the last six months,” Campognone says, Pomona “is really energized. People are saying, ‘Oh, there’s real art in Pomona.’ Right now, it’s building to a pretty loud crescendo, but I don’t think it’s peaked yet,” she adds.
Pomona, named for the Roman goddess of fruit trees (depicted in a relief sculpture above a portal at Pomona College), was incorporated in 1888 and is now L.A. County’s fifth-largest city, with more than 163,000 residents. Within its 23 square miles is Fairplex, home of America’s largest county fair, the L.A. County Fair. It was in Pomona that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz spent their honeymoon in 1940, and in 1963 and 1981, respectively, Mark McGwire and Jessica Alba were born there. More recently, prominent artists, including Susan Rankaitis, Nancy Macko, Michael O’Malley and Mercedes Teixido, have moved their studios from L.A. here.
Claremont, too, is and has been home to a remarkable concentration of important artists. William Moreno, who was recruited away from San Francisco’s Mexican Museum to direct the Claremont Museum of Art, has been around since last December. He admits, “Claremont would never have been something I thought about until I moved back to L.A.—and then I found that there’s a lot going on here. What really convinced me was the intellectual capital here, and the enthusiasm for building a new institution... When you think of the arts,” he went on, “the Inland Empire doesn’t necessarily pop to mind. I was aware that there were schools here and of the Art Colony in a vague sort of way. When I actually came down here, I saw the art production and studios. It was kind of an epiphany moment for me.”
To Moreno, the area is in the throes of what he calls “new urbanism”—people creating opportunities within their own community: “It’s just a stark reality of the dismal transportation system—people in this area want to go somewhere to spend the day and not necessarily fight the transportation agenda. So communities that have the wherewithal to do it are creating cultural amenities to cater to their own.” No wonder, then, that Claremont ranks fifth on Money magazine’s “America’s Best Places to Live” list, it is the top California city on it. “The City of Trees and Ph.D.s,” as it is called, has a downtown enlivened by hip boutiques, artists’ lofts, and the new Claremont Art Museum. And then, of course, there are the galleries, of which 13 are volunteer-based and two are for-profit. Notes Campognone, of Pomona’s burgeoning gallery scene: “They provide a place for artists to get their feet wet in the art market, give them their first show out of art school.” She adds, “Community members are very excited to be able to buy work by established artists that before they’d have to drive to L.A. to get.”
One of the two for-profits, Campognone’s dba256 just opened this fall. “The inland region was lacking a viable high-end commercial gallery to support regional artists,” she says. “That was my motivation. Pomona has an amazing and vibrant art community, so that’s why I came.” It gratifies her to give locals a place to show their work—she dedicates a wall to emerging artists. The response has been huge. “Obviously, there’s a need here...my phone was ringing off the hook with, ‘When are you going to open?’”
When she opened dba256 in September, it was with a thematic, museum-quality exhibit called “Inland Emperors” celebrating the region’s artistic prolificacy. The show, which runs through October 27, features works by internationally recognized local artists, including Karl Benjamin, Paul Soldner, Robbert Flick and Susan Rankaitis. Campognone’s next show, “Liquid Light,” is planned concurrently with the Claremont Museum’s “Ephemeral Light” exhibition.
Campognone cites one big reason for the burgeoning of galleries: the Tessier family. The Tessiers, it seems, are to Pomona what the Medicis were to Florence. Two of its brothers, Ed and Jerry, inherited many of Pomona’s important buildings, then donated space to fledgling galleries and kept rent livably low on artist’s lofts. One of the Tessiers’ beneficiaries is the 20-year-old dA Center for the Arts, which supports emerging artists by providing exhibition space and hosting community programs. The Tessiers also donated space for Cal Poly’s downtown gallery and for the Latino Art Museum.
George Cuttress is another advocate whose efforts have been instrumental in getting people to take Pomona seriously. He opened a gallery in Pomona about 15 years ago, selling the works of established artists, but it was before its time. People in the community couldn’t afford to spend $50,000 on an artwork, so his doors closed, but the impact remained.
Christy Johnson, director and curator of Pomona’s American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), summed up the shift thus: “Art and galleries began to be seen as the key to redevelopment in this area. Over the years, galleries have come and gone, with one step back to every two or three forward, but overall progress has been positive. Today, like a car in motion, this momentum is picking up speed.” She points to Pomona’s hugely popular Art Walk as an indicator of that success. Participating galleries include 57 Underground and the Tessier-funded SCA Project Gallery, both forums for cutting-edge art, especially installations. In contrast, Soho Gallery, a co-op run by the Pomona Valley Art Association, presents more traditional art.
Pomona’s other for-profit is Armstrong’s Gallery, owned by David Armstrong, a key community leader who also founded AMOCA. In 1969, he transformed his father’s furniture business into a gallery showcasing ceramic collectibles from all over the world, including limited-edition porcelain figurines from Royal Worchester, Royal Doulton and Lladro. Later, Armstong added a ceramic-production studio, and today, Armstrong’s has become a nationally recognized source for contemporary ceramic art.
The Millard Sheets Center for the Arts, located on the grounds of the Fairplex in Pomona, began as the fine arts program of the L.A. County Fair. The current exhibition, “A Tapestry of Life: The World of Millard Sheets,” celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Center’s namesake. Among Sheets’ most memorable, and most visible, works are the striking murals, sculpture, stained glass and interiors he did for approximately 45 branches of Home Savings & Loan from around California starting in 1952, a monument to the versatility of Sheets’ talent.
As for the region’s museums, Campognone calls them “incredible.” The Claremont Colleges play a large role: the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps presents substantive exhibitions, such as “Millard Sheets: The Scripps Years” and their 60-plus-year-old Scripps Ceramic Annual. Always predictive of clay art’s future, this prestigious, long-running annual group show attracts a huge following, especially among students studying ceramics.
Pomona College Museum of Art also mounts significant exhibitions: earlier this year, a retrospective of Hammersley’s abstract paintings took the spotlight. Currently, it’s “James Turrell at Pomona College” (through May 17, 2008), honoring an important light-and-space artist whose major new architectural installation on campus (called Skyspace) is garnering much attention. Turrell, a Pomona College alumnus and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, is the architect of Arizona’s Roden Crater Project, an ancient volcano being transformed into a complex interplay of light, sky and perception. At a recent Pomona College-hosted symposium called “James Turrell: Knowing Light,” the keynote speaker was Michael Govan, LACMA’s new director—an indication of how Pomona is angling into the center of Southern California’s art life.
Pomona College Museum also houses an impressive permanent collection in its Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center. Holdings include the Kress Collection of Renaissance-era Italian paintings and more than 5,000 Native American artifacts spanning from the Pre-Columbian era. But the non-academic institutions more than hold their own. The new Claremont Museum of Art (CMA) is a decidedly sophisticated addition to the region’s art landscape. CMA is in downtown Claremont’s largest historic building, the College Heights Lemon Packing House, built in 1922. Slated for demolition before community preservationists (led by the Tessiers) saved it, this light-filled, environmentally friendly edifice is industrial-chic, with corrugated metal walls and a saw-tooth roof. It opened in April; the museum occupies the building’s rear. Upstairs, artists work in live-in studios, and the ground floor boasts restaurants, stores, and a jazz club.
Under William Moreno’s direction, CMA’s inaugural exhibition was a Karl Benjamin retrospective. A recent show, “Locus 1: Art and Craft of Claremont and the Region,” featured works by Amy Maloof, Thomas Pathé, and 10 others. Its statement said, “This region is home to a vibrant and ever-changing community of artists and craftspersons of the highest caliber.” The current exhibit, “Ephemeral: Explorations in Light” (until Nov. 18), timed concurrently with Pomona College’s Turrell events, includes artists who use light as a medium.
“The idea,” Moreno says, “was to create a show completely antithetical to the typical painting show. It’s experiential in a very direct way... Not every individual responds to painting. That’s what the art world is really about: expression and how people respond to the work. There’s something for everybody out there, and there’s no right or wrong.”
Another recent addition is AMOCA, which opened in downtown Pomona three years ago thanks to Armstrong’s driving vision and Johnson’s leadership. Ceramic is an important medium in Pomona, so it stands to reason Pomona should be home to the only all-ceramic museum west of the Rockies. AMOCA’s stellar exhibits draw up to 1,200 guests on opening night. Their newest show, “Form and Imagination: Women Ceramic Sculptors” (until Nov. 24) highlights 15 American female sculptors, including Esther Shimazu, Kathy Ruttenberg and Cynthia Consentino.
In line with its mission of art education, AMOCA sends packets about each exhibition to 450 local ceramic teachers; many take advantage of their wealth of offerings. AMOCA’s permanent collection boasts more than 750 pieces of contemporary ceramic art, most of it representing the Studio Pottery Era of wheel-thrown, utilitarian works—or abstract expressionist forms like those in the Paul Soldner collection. Says Armstrong, “My goal has been to create a destination for those interested in ceramic art.”
Meanwhile, the Latino Art Museum, founded by painter Graciela H. Nardi, promotes Latin American contemporary artists living in the U.S. It aims to instill appreciation for Latino art, a goal carried out with exhibits featuring colorful pieces by Central and South American artists, art-making classes, and a small store selling crafts and jewelry.
Unsurprisingly, schools play a large role in the Pomona-Claremont art scene; their emphasis on craft and medium promotes a formal approach to art-making, though the works are often conceptually driven or experimental. At the hub of this educational ferment are those institutions comprising the highly respected Claremont Colleges. The founding member of the Claremont consortium is Pomona College (which is actually in Claremont), currently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as America’s No. 7 liberal arts school. Their distinguished art faculty produces a wealth of exhibitions and lectures, and the school’s annual Senior Art Show draws a large crowd each spring.
Scripps College, also in Claremont, is a women’s college, founded in 1926 by publisher Ellen Browning Scripps. The art school that Millard Sheets built, predictably, is active locally, most directly, through its Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, which also hosts a famous annual ceramic sale. Its heavyweight faculty has included conceptual photographer Susan Rankaitis, muralist Alfredo Ramos Martinez, and ceramicist Paul Soldner, widely considered a seminal figure here. Scripps is also home to the new Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection, named for a professor Emerita and pioneering art historian. The collection includes works by Dr. Lewis and other contemporary artists, with a special focus on work by women and leading African-American artists. Notes Mary MacNaughton, the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery’s director, “At Scripps, our focus on is teaching and training future arts leaders.”
Cal Poly Pomona boasts two venues to display its students’ works—one on campus, one downtown. The campus venue, Kellogg University Art Gallery, coordinates the annual “Ink and Clay” competition between artists from the Western U.S. Another school producing amazing artists—particularly painters—is Claremont Graduate University; a huge percentage of CGU’s MFAs enjoy lucrative art careers, while CGU’s Peggy Phelps Gallery presents new MFA work.
In short, all the major indicators of a local art boom are here: an escalating number of museums, galleries and studios, excellent instruction at the university level. And, most hearteningly, inclusive, synergistic relationships between everyone. “A lot of effort is being made to make this into a consistent and sustainable art center,” Moreno observes.
“Today, Pomona is a community that is being revitalized with fine art as its most important theme,” states Armstrong. “This region has a lot to offer,” he adds, echoing a point that many other arts figures here agree on. “I’d definitely encourage people to visit.”
Oct 2007 by avital binshtock
Fine Art and Fine Wine in Pomona10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, September 6, 2007
By PAT O'BRIEN The Press-Enterprise
When dba256 Gallery opens in Pomona on Saturday, it could well be the first-of-its-kind -- a fine art gallery, offering top-end art for sale, within the comfort of a boutique wine bar.
"I've never come across anything like it," said Andi Campognone, who is opening the gallery with partner Ron Faris. "I've been in several wine bars that have art on the walls, but it's not art of museum quality, certainly not a full-blown gallery."
Campognone should know. She is formerly the associate director of the Riverside Art Museum and has worked as a curator in commercial and nonprofit sectors for 20 years. "I think we are a step ahead," said Faris, who is co-owner of VinNostro, an independent boutique wine label.
He plans to have a wine cellar with 600 handcrafted wines from single-vineyard wineries, primarily Californian. Eventually, he wants to have about 30 types of cheese, as well.
The look is upscale, sophisticated but homey. The walls are exposed brick. Huge sofas invite lingering.
"One of my complaints going to a gallery show is there is nowhere to sit," Campognone said. "We don't want it be some intimidating museum space. We have about four spots in the gallery where you can sit and enjoy the exhibition with your glass of wine."
"Inland Emperors," the inaugural exhibition, features a jaw-dropping number of artists from the region who have national, even international, reputations.
"I feel honored that my opening show would be filled with such talented and important art makers," Campognone said.
They include Karl Benjamin, whose hard-edge abstract expressionist painting is now a chapter in art history.
Benjamin's "Moon Person" and Alexander Couwenberg's "Operator Electric" caught Campognone by surprise when she saw, side-by-side, the paintings made 53 years apart but sharing a similar palette and shapes.
"You can definitely see the influence between the 1954 and 2007 paintings," she said.
Peter Frank, an art critic who writes for The Village Voice in New York and is senior curator for the Riverside Art Museum, writes in an introduction to the exhibit:
"The Inland region is one of the cradles and incubators of California art, and has been since the California idea of hip art was plein air landscape ......
"Indeed, the Inland art scene has arguably been more sophisticated for a longer time than its L.A. counterpart, even anticipating and influencing southern California models for educational and patronage structures. It was out here, after all, that a confluence of artists and critic-curator-historians came together fifty years ago to cultivate and identify a new sensibility, a 'hard-edged' response to abstract expressionism."
Other works in the exhibit include "The Death of the Heartland," a series of landscape photographs by Sant Khalsa with an audio of B.H. Fairchild reciting poetry
Thomas McGovern contributed 10 ceramic plates with black-and-white photographs reminiscent of Greco-Roman images.
There are clay sculptures by Larry White and Paul Soldner.
Doug McCulloh created a piece by doing a Google search of "Inland Empire" and selecting images.
"He has sewn them together digitally. It is a fabulous piece," Campognone said.
Sandra Rowe is making a four-piece sculptural wall installation for the show. Other works come from John Divola, Tim Ernst, Robbert Flick and Susan Rankaitis.
Campognone expects the gallery to serve both artists and collectors.
"In the whole Inland region, there isn't a high-end commercial gallery. There's certainly a great art community but not a commercial gallery to support that," she said. "I think a lot of people who live here don't realize how many important artists live in the inland region, stellar individuals who are major players."
‘Inland Emperors’
Where: dba256 Gallery, 256 S. Main St., Pomona
When: Saturday through Oct. 27. Receptions 6-10 p.m. Saturday and Oct. 13.
Safety in Numbers, at dba256 Gallery.WineBar, 256 S. Main St., Pomona, (909) 623-7600; www.dba256.com. Thru June 1. 
