Art Buddies: Journey to LA and Back - Creating Art and Creating Life are One in the Same

Armory Center for the Arts, Floor Map/Sculpture Liz and Cathy added to.

Sometimes seeing good art involves long car rides, enduring traffic clogged highways, and summer heat  - but when you have a buddy along, it becomes non-stop conversation running the gamut between talking about family, friends, art world relationships, partners, and working out. Occasional deep and serious issues turn into often hilarious banter about the crazy absurdities of our lives. Such was my trip yesterday with Liz Goldner, an art writer for several publications in southern California. We visited Pasadena - the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena Museum of California Art and the Armory Center for the Arts. At the Norton Simon there was the "Beyond Brancusi: The Space of Sculpture" examining the work of 20th century great sculptors and how they were directly or indirectly influenced by Brancusi. Works by Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Barbara Hepworth, Donald Judd, Carl Andre, John McCracken and Robert Irwin in a variety of materials are on exhibition. It was tough to leave without also seeing the permanent collection of wonderful impressionist works by Degas, Picasso, Braque, Renoir, Van Gogh and others into post World War II  California artists Sam Francis, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell and Richard Diebenkorn. We also visited the Pasadena Museum where we saw a large exhibition of Sam Francis's paintings on canvas and paper, known for their light and color,  covering several decades of the artist's life. From small watercolor and gouache works to large scale canvases, we saw the development of this California native's life as an artist. Also of note was the exhibition "Ignite!:The Art of Sustainability",  featuring 13 California artists using varied media focusing on the issues of our environment and the natural and human forces shaping the current landscape. Lastly we visited the Armory Center for the Arts which is featuring a show called "The Armory Show and Tell" which invited current and former Armory teaching artists to do presentations about their practice and then leave behind remnants of their events.  There is also an interactive component which invites viewers to participate in dialogues with others and/or creating art. Liz and I participated in creating 'sculptures' out of egg boxes, plastic CD cases, fabrics, yarns and tape and then
placed them within a floor map landscape depicting the geography of the LA area. We had lots of fun, and the show is engaging - a reminder that making art is as much or more about creating experiences as it is about making an object. Creating art and creating life are one in the same.

Liz Goldner, next to Kim Abeles Installation "Waiting Watching",Pasadena Museum