"The Door is Always Open" on view at the Skirball Cultural Center till August 18, 2013

Gary Baseman's retrospective "The Door is Always Open" at the Skirball in LA opened recently to massive crowds in a huge celebratory opening party. The exhibition is so complex and personal, delving into Baseman's background, family history, and all the layers of prolific work that he has done over the years. After the opening festivities winded down, I caught up with Baseman for an interview. We discussed the underlying meaning to some of the components of the show and how it felt for him, coming from such an honest personal perspective in putting this massive show together.

Gary: Well even when I give a tour of the exhibition or look at just the exhibition itself, it has so many layers to it. So because I was determined when I put together the exhibition to not have a traditional retrospective, but that I was trying to create this kind of art installation- this kind of environment to engage the viewer and in a way disarm them. I wanted to bring them in to the space, to make them part of it and for them to be able to interact with the art differently than just a viewer looking at a painting behind glass. That became such an overwhelming process, so in some ways when I first give a tour of the exhibition itself, you get caught up in the concept. And then because each room represents a theme in my work, you almost end up removing the actual exhibitions themselves.

So again, there are so many layers of not just the work as art, it's the work also as history, as memory and heritage and so you're dealing with a sense of family. For me it was a way to honor my family my parents for one by having their furniture, their original furniture, in there.

G: Yeah, this is a very deep emotional exhibition. The furniture in the Living Room, the Dining Room and the Bedroom was my parents furniture. My mom passed away in October and at first I was going to mainly use relatives' furniture to capture that era, cause its not only my family but its also the Fairfax District that I grew up in. But when my mom passed away in October I made the decision to use family furniture. My brothers and sisters said it was cool and so I moved my parents' furniture that they had left in their home of 48 years and used it in the exhibition.

G: Well the process already started when my father passed away three years ago.... ~continue reading

Paul Wackers has an exhibition of all new paintings up at New Image Art Gallery in LA from February 16th to March 30th. He sheds some light on his inspiration, creative process, new work and his experience of being an artist in NY in this interview with Kristin Bauer.

"Early Romantics" Paul Wackers at New Image Art Gallery
Feb. 16- Mar. 30, 2013
7920 Santa Monica Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90046

I will be showing about 12 new paintings all made since the beginning of 2013, so pretty quickly. One is the largest painting I've ever made which was really fun to do. The rest are a mix of objects in the landscape and very paired down still lifes or almost abstract compositions. I think this show is a really good follow up from my show at Alice gallery in Brussels last year. So continuing to build a bit off an internal narrative for the work and some parameters from my subjects to exist within and seeing where it goes from there.

Yeah, I think that is all in the work, but the work is rarely from direct observation. It's more like a kind of assumption of what something is and that leads to being open to the possibilities within anything. I know that's pretty cheesy, but when you spend 7 days a week in your studio the regular stuff around you and your walks there get really interesting. Funny bits of trash or strange trees and blandness become stages for things to happen. Being able to expand on the boring bit to see how it might be something unique is a hard thing, but a worthwhile search I think. But maybe ask me tomorrow and I won't see anything in it. It's all in the moment.

I like to play with those ideas in some of the paintings. Its strange that what I might see as just background noise that is easy to ignore because it has no focus, other people see chaotic stuff. I love how every person reads them so differently. That's why I usually like to let people tell me what they see before I say what I think is going on, since it is that play and disconnect that I love. If I give away my intention too soon then the person looking usually just ends at that, but when it stays ambiguous I think it remains interesting and the discussion can begin after that. But that being said, sometimes I will try to make images that I think can't possibly work, and then they start to click and I have a whole new thing to explore. So I guess finding some disharmony has been very beneficial to my process.

Jay Howell's solo show "Enthusiastic Person" at FFDG opens Friday, Feb 1st (6-9pm).

Here is a small preview and also a short interview with the man who's been working his butt off in Los Angeles on his upcoming cartoon with Nickelodeon, video shorts with Vans, a new zine, and other projects when he's not walking Street Dog in the warm Southern California air.

Everything is going good. Life is busy and fun!

It's been 2 years, and it's going very good.

We'll be airing in July! Maximum excitement!!!

It's a bunch of new stuff that I've been doing when I get home from work. A lot of it goes along with a new comic I've been developing.

Get up early, go to work, stress out, get really excited, hang out with Street Dog and draw.

Los Angeles based Joshua Petker recently closed the show "Adrift" at Lebasse Projects a few weeks back. After switching up his style and direction to inlcude these simplier/ nautical/ ship themed works, we had the chance to ask him a few questions about this new body of work.

I've always been interested in juxtaposing beauty and melancholia in my work and it was important to me I continue in that vein whilst expanding my visual vocabulary. This new series of work is built on an interest in conceptual painting rather than on the aesthetic approach I've taken in years past. I was very inspired by thoughts of vastness. I uncovered a quote by Anna Freud that said, "We are imprisoned in the realm of life, like a sailor on his tiny boat, on an infinite ocean" and though I found this quote well after I began painting, it is the same illustrative metaphor that I had in my mind informing the direction of my work.

I became a full-time artist a few years ago which has been really important to the evolution of my work. I've been able to read and research more than I was able to while balancing a day job with time in the studio. Having the freedom to focus fully on my interests has allowed me to see more art, learn more about art, and generally focus all of my attention on art and philosophy and this has been very important to my work.

I welcomed a baby girl into the world a little more than a year ago and that has been a bigger joy in my life than I honestly expected it would be. I spend a lot of time with her.

Los Angeles has become an even more interesting place to be an artist in the last few years. Lots of galleries and artists here making the place interesting.

Skimming the Internet looking for new artists and inspirations, I'm always looking for something that can not only catch my eye, but sustain my attention. I stumbled onto New York based artist Matt Mignanelli's website a few months ago and got stuck on it; his black, matte and monochromatic paintings having some sort of transmittable information for aesthetic and structural reasons. In researching his earlier work I saw an interesting transition and wondered how it happened. I sent him some questions and this is the result.

Outside of the studio I'm usually going to openings, looking at painting, and going to the bar. My second passion is cooking. It relates to painting for me, I love the hands-on creation, the control, the quick gratification it brings. I use it as my way to decompress; it really relaxes me. I come from a strong Italian-American background where food means family and great friends; I love that aspect of food bringing people together. My brother and brother-in-law both live in and around the East Village, and my wife and I try whenever possible to keep up the tradition of a Sunday dinner. I wouldn't say that my painting takes up more time than I want it to, but it does consume me. I have a very hard time shutting it off. I like to maintain a rigorous studio practice, it feels right to me.

These current works developed out of a gradual process of working through and reexamining my earlier painting. At first I was creating small areas of monochrome, which then slowly developed into monochromatic backgrounds, and finally entire paintings. While I was working on larger scale works, I would always be making smaller works where I felt freer to take risks. These were always much more minimal, and almost magnifications of elements in my larger works. In a lot of ways those smaller works felt more satisfactory to me, which then led to me chasing that simplification. The grid paintings started as I began to concentrate on these smaller areas within the works and use the grid to create a confined space. The works that focus more on figure/ground relationships I arrived at by stripping away distraction from the paintings, I want these to be minimal environments that are still somewhat relatable to the viewer.

I've always made bold paintings, and the black on black is bold yet there is so much subtlety, there is a balance. The black paintings are just as much if not more about the gloss/matte relationship as they are the blackness. As you move around these works they change with the light as it's reflected and absorbed into the surface, this level of engagement has really driven my continuation with this body of work.

Having been longtime fans of one another's work, Michelle Blade and I thought it would be interesting to talk about our ideas, inspirations and work processes as well as our concurrent solo exhibitions at KRETS, in Sweden and Carter & Citizen in Los Angeles. The conversation, passed back and forth between email over a week, took place as follows... -Alexis Mackenzie

Blade: Okay, to get the ball rolling I think I should start with a basic, but crucial, question: I've always been curious, where do you find your gorgeous source material?

Mackenzie: It all comes from used books; here in SF I mostly buy them at Green Apple Books or Adobe Books ~ so sad they are having to close! I also have a friend who is a book reseller; he keeps an eye out for books for me, and has found me some really amazing things. Most of the books I use are topical; vintage books about botany, rocks & minerals, fashion, and anatomy mostly. Lately I've been looking more for photographic source material that includes objects, such as decorative art ~ vases, frames, furniture ~ things I can build interior scenes with.

Blade: It seems like part of your process is about balancing your intuitive response to found imagery while simultaneously preplanning abstract shapes and text. Can you describe how you move back and forth between the two? When do you know a collage is completed?

Mackenzie: You're completely right; for my text-based collages, finding that balance mostly consists of having a letter-shape in mind, and searching for an image that resonates with me, which I can twist into the shape I need and melds with everything else around it. It is a long process of searching, cutting, arranging, rearranging, searching, cutting, and rearranging some more. Generally I stop when it feels like a completed scene. I don't glue anything down until this happens, because if I decide to add anything it may change the balance of everything else, thus necessitating changes. My process for the abstract line collages is the complete opposite; everything is unplanned. I'll chose an existing cut-out silhouette from the millions I have floating around in stacks, one that has a shape which is interesting and compliments the found image I'm working on in a dynamic way (or is compelling enough on its own, for working on blank paper), and I just start cutting & pasting, working with the existing shapes and trying to create something resonant. It is a much more freeform approach; I sometimes think of it as drawing, in a way.

Blade: You have some really interesting text in some of your pieces. What is your process for finding or writing these phrases? Is there a story behind "Look Alive", the title for your current solo show at KRETS?

Whether conceptually motivated or intuitively created, the process of painting has been a main attribute in art for sometime now. Controlling the surface of a canvas is at the root of most contemporary painting. Vancouver native Jeff Depner's work creates avenues for visual discovery through a process based aesthetic. Layers upon layers of paint each relating to the next. Masking some, if not all, of the past creates a visual history within. The work ebbs and flows between graphic qualities and thick painterly styles with muted but contemporary feeling colors. The constant process of ‘improvised moves' allows some of the work to be based in grid like structures. It allows some of the smaller paintings a chance for inquiry in constructive qualities and aspects of painting, inserting his work into the long history of painting.

I usually have a general idea of what I want to do going into a painting, but it's usually a series of improvised moves piled on top of each other until something starts to makes sense. There's a lot of building up and tearing down going on, it's a slow process.

Deciding what stays and what gets painted over is a balancing act, long periods of looking followed by painting things in and out, and moving things around on the canvas. Not much escapes being painted out at some point.

It's tricky, usually when I can't think of anything else to do to it.

Yokonori Stone may have started out as a "dumb kid," who performed poorly on exams and was constantly chided for never paying attention, but today she's attracting the attention of curators in Asia and Europe as a young feminist artist who has a cunning ability to distill images of raw debasement. This summer, she'll have her American debut at Ever Gold Gallery with a suite of works that simultaneously embrace and ridicule her new hometown, San Francisco.

This spring I visited "Nori," as her friends call her, in her small apartment in the Western Addition neighborhood to talk about how she's been settling in and what's behind this new body of work. We sat on the floor of her living room and ate red bean mochi while we spoke. -Chad Calhoun

I have been here for just over a year.

Absolutely. The generosity of this city constantly surprises me and all the great artists working here is very inspiring.

I am not using art for anything except my own personal enjoyment and to gain a better understanding of myself. I wish I had the courage to tackle such important topics like sweatshop labor and gender equality but I am just a simple artist, and no one really cares what I think about such topics. They'd rather listen to Hilary Clinton or Reverend Al Sharpton.

I'd like to make monuments but they won't fit in my apartment, so I am not sure how I would be able to work on such things. Videos require a lot of technical skill that I do not have. I can't even figure out how to set up a facebook page. As for photos, there are just too many out in the world right now. I just don't think I have anything to add in terms of taking pictures of things.

I discovered the work of Chicago-based artist Heidi Norton via EBERSMOORE, and became an instant fan of her unique installation-based approach to photography and sculpture. Norton frequently uses living plants as a sculptural element, encasing them in layers of colored wax in conjunction alongside other studio ephemera. I sent her a few questions about her processes and approach via email, and here is what she had to say.

I think I am more interested in man's relationship to these materials versus man's interventions with them. The symbiotic relationship--a reciprocal relationship-- is what intrigues me. For example, the bee's reliance on man to help maintain their hives and the product man receives from this maintenance. My parents were beekeepers and I often assisted them as a child, learning this relationship from a young age. In order to reap the benefits of domestic plants, you must care for them. In Controlled Environments, there is an installation of shelves that are exact recreations of my windows of my studio. Here you can see plants in varying stages of life. Beside plants, there are objects, detritus, and remnants; collections that either reference these relationships or are products thereof.

Last summer I was given a queen bee cage, which looks more like a coffin for a queen bee. When making a beehive, one must introduce the queen bee, as she has not been raised with the collection of worker bees. One side of her cage/coffin has been drilled out and filled with "bee candy". As the worker bees are exposed to her pheromones, they chew through her bee candy plug. Once the plug is chewed through, she can escape and live in harmony with the other bees.

Another example of this was over the summer while making work that is currently on view in Chicago at Johalla Projects, Reasons to Cut into the Earth; I had trapped a butterfly in the hot wax that I was pouring into holes that I had dug as molds. I felt guilty that the butterfly died in my art, but liked the way it became the trophy of the piece. The next morning I had found that a community of ants had eaten out the inside of the butterfly. With that my guilt subsided--one organism contributed to the life of another.

Josh Peters is a La based painter/ curator/ cool guy/ I chatted with him recently about his work, here it is. -Ryan Travis Christian

I'm from Massachusetts.. moved to NYC after grad school at Rutgers, spent 10 years there.... about half of which was spent art-making and half playing in a band. It got to the point in NYC where I was spending too much time working to support myself and not enough painting...so I moved up to Northampton, MA where I was able to afford to take a couple of years just getting back into it. In 2007 I taught painting for a semester at an art college in Oslo, Norway and then did a 3-month residency in Los Angeles, wanting to be back amongst a larger group of artists and a more active gallery scene. The residency was sort of to test the water in LA, and I loved it so ended up moving out here.. where I've lived for two years now... teaching and making my work.

The source material for the paintings are film stills... usually older ones where the sunspots and grain reference a previous era. In the newest work, the proportions of the canvas actually mirrors that of a widescreen cinema format. I choose the frames that strike an emotional chord with me, hoping that they will also resonate with viewers. So it's really done intuitively, without much thought to 'theme' but there are obviously common threads... groups of people isolated in nature and an ambiguity in terms of their identity and what exactly is taking place, as you pointed out in your question. So I would agree with that and say that it's intentional, as it hopefully creates a kind of compelling mystery and draws viewers in.

I should also say that the pieces that I'm working on now might well be the last that come out of this process; the process of finding a single, pre-existing image and translating it into paint.

The original image is also going through more of a transformation because the use of the materials is painterly and not deadpan, as in pop art, but just the same, I feel that with these paintings, once the frame has been selected, the die is cast and the work is half done... I'm hoping to start working more interpretively, more from the imagination, with chance and chaos coming into it more. I want to push beyond the nostalgia of these paintings.