On a visit to Gallery 825 in WeHo on August 24, there were solo shows by artists Christine Ferrouge, whose work explores mother-daughter relationships (https://www.laaa.org/christine-ferrouge-1) and Meghan Quinn whose work references various goddesses (https://www.laaa.org/meghan-quinn-1). And a group show called “Corporeality,” juried by Nancy Kaye. Images from the latter can still be purchased online at this link. https://www.laaa.org/corporeality
Nancy Kaye is a photographer, educator, and curator in Los Angeles, previously based in New York and London. Her keen eye for narrative, form, and story are displayed in her choices in this Gallery 825 curatorial project. Themes including geometry, biology genesis, and social constructs and their deconstruction weave in and out of the collection. Viewers experience the “corporal reality” of the human condition through the eyes of various artists-too many to cover individually in this context.
Gallery 825 is not exclusively a women’s gallery. It was designed to show the highest caliber in contemporary underrepresented artists on the West Coast. Many in this category are women. Nancy Kaye guided us through relaxed but lively conversations with the artists.
The first work we discussed was a tactile showstopper called “Sunrise Wanderer” by fiber artist Liberty Worth. Liberty upcycles scraps of fabric that otherwise would become landfill. She weaves together very small, silky, flimsy and the forgotten discards into something spectacular, powerful yet frangible. Shape and shapeability, spectacle and introspection, color and more color perambulate social and formal art space, giving tone to conscious inhalation and exhalation of visual pleasure. Like many of the artists in this show, Ms. Worth affirmed her commitment to zero waste and sustainable environmental practice.
S.P. Harper discussed upcycling and reclamation as well as how the Fibonacci sequence informs her geometric and diamond-like forms. Her work is widely collected and highly sought after. Gina M shared her babies with us. By babies, I mean “Not a Toy,” a grouping of ceramic figurines modeled after a floppy pom poms set of play dolls of the 1970’s. The babies’ faces were frozen in infantile rage. (Gina blithely informed us that she did not have
children.) Rather than impose her own meaning on the work and dictate it to us, we were invited to “cold read” her sculpture. A wide array of divergent emotional reactions registered from the same material.
Annie Clavel continued the theme of tactile visual offerings with “Touch It 1 and 2” small works that broke the picture frame into a window box. Joanne Chase-Mattillo is a photographer who engages in portraiture. In discussing her photograph of a shaved-headed woman, “She Stands in Shadow and Light,” Ms. Chase-Matillo’s expressed empathy for and curiosity about her subject. Ronald Victor described what amounts to an analog Photoshop process (although that’s a gross oversimplification) for creating images like “Seven Orbs Reflection.” Themedium is described as Technagraphy® printed on glass. You will not find a definition of technagraphy that explains Mr. Victor’s arduous, sui generis technique online by looking up the word, but you can find out more here https://www.ronvictorart.com and here https://trademarks.justia.com/907/53/technagraphy-90753414.html. He trademarked the term.
My friend Frederika Roeder, aka “Fritzy,” displayed a couple pieces with a Japanese print vibe. Fritzy is one of the mature women I’ve met through Gallery 825 who inspire me. Sharron Shayne, who’s already had a successful career as an actress, still rocks the platinum hair and red-penciled lips of screen goddess Marylin Monroe. She gives an aura of iconic glamour, while the painting she discussed, Vaginal Masking, to quote Greta Gerwig, “does the thing,” and “subverts the thing.” I read into the work a defense of all femininity.
And then there were two solo shows. Christine Ferrouge packed the gallery with images of her growing daughters in front of mirrors. Girl-in-mirror, or girl on the cusp of womanhood, is a traditional theme in art history. The lives of actual women artists, unfortunately, have all too often been traumatic. Male art historians of the past have deliberately erased our work from the canon, and its value in the market today is artificially depressed. Ferrouge’s work is powerful because it is free of that weight of the past. The girls in the paintings like themselves. Their power is self-referential, natural, and healthy. It is everything we want to see in art and culture today. Ferrouge’s brushwork is loose and confident. Her choices are bold and well-informed.
Last, but not at all least, it was a pleasure to meet and connect with Meghan Quinn, an avowed devotee of the goddess. My friends raved about Quinn’s work before I saw it. They’re photographs, but they look like Old Dutch paintings with a contemporary twist. Quinn’s offers florals on fire, with titles evoking Hecate, Birgit, Freyja, Persephone, Brigid, and, when she chooses to turn the camera on herself, her own Divine Being.
Although I didn’t ask her for anything more than general commentary on her work, Quinn answered my question/ongoing exploration of “what constitutes a goddess?” as follows: Anyone who identifies with the divine feminine is a goddess. We are more resilient than we think. These are my flowers for them honoring the strength they embody. As part of the show, I had people write something they wanted to let go of on a bay leaf. On the following Harvest Moon I burnt the offerings. Hopefully, this helps them on their path unblocked.
About the Author:
Moira Cue is a creative polymath who holds a BFA with Leadership and Fellowship awards from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the David Lynch School of Cinematic Arts. She has appeared on E!, Chicago Tonight, and numerous celebrity tabloids. Her paintings have been collected internationally, including numerous stars. As an art critic, her work with The Hollywood Sentinel was translated and excerpted for the2nd Beijing International China Cultural Artifacts Fair catalog.
Note: This review of an August show at Gallery 825 was delayed by the author due to unforeseen circumstances beyond her control.
