Shoshana Wayne Gallery , Los Angeles, California Continues through March 22, 2025 February 8, 2025 Visiting Jeanne Silverthorne's exhibition “They Will Be Like Shadows” as the recent Los Angeles wildfires burned influenced my response to and interpretation of the works. Silverthorne’s platinum silicone rubber and mixed media sculptures — some figurative, others referencing the body — alluded to the death and destruction of real time events. Seeing “Banshee (Self-Portrait at 73)” (2023), a life-like, off white sculpture of a woman (the artist) stretched out on the gallery floor sent shivers down my spine. Silverthorne recreates her aging body, devoid of color but full of detail: untied sneakers on crossed feet, gray synthetic hair and black rimmed glasses flanking her complacent face. Jeanne Silverthorne, “Banshee (Self-Portrait at 73),” 2023, platinum silicone rubber, synthetic hair, glasses, 16 x 30 x 70”. All images courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles. In “Too Dumbly in My Being Pent” (2023) she presents the same figure, now in fragments and stuffed into a cardboard box lined with bubble wrap, suggesting the sculpture will be shipped and/or stored somewhere hidden from sight. In keeping with Silverthorne's practice, the figure as well as the box and wrappings are all intricately fabricated casts. Silverthorne is a master of her chosen material (platinum silicone rubber) and can fabricate and transform just about anything of any size with acute veracity. Jeanne Silverthorne, “Too Dumbly in My Being Pent,” 2023, platinum silicone rubber, 36 x 36 x 24”. The exhibition unfolds as a narrative on life and loss, as well as on an artist's practice as it relates to the rest of the world. The pieces simultaneously feel fragile and sturdy. Because Silverthorne has such a command of her materials, the works are also minimal and maximal: they feel alive though they are fabricated. In the disconcerting “And the Unfathomable Night of Dreams Began” (2022), a tiny, sleeping baby wearing a knitted cap rests on a billowing white cloud that also resembles an enlarged wad of chewing gum or cake frosting.  Jeanne Silverthorne, “Double Sneakers (‘The Three Sillies’),” 2023, platinum silicone rubber, figure: 11 x 40 x 9”, crate: 14 1/2 x 51 x 26 1/2”. Silverthorne describes a trajectory of maturation as the infant grows and becomes a child. Children's sneakers appear in “Crate with Sneaker,” “In My Mother's House,” and “Double Sneakers ('The Three Sillies’)” (all 2023). In “Crate with Sneaker” Silverthorne fashions, completely from rubber, a four-foot-high wooden crate. The otherwise empty container holds one small black sneaker at its base. As the footwear is its only contents, the piece suggests the unsettling idea that there could be a disembodied foot inside. The narrative progresses: the child becomes an adult. Silverthorne depicts not only herself in the aforementioned “Banshee (Self-Portrait at 73),” but also her mother in two other richly impactful works, the evocative small-scale table top sculptures “Mom Under a Cloud II” (2024) and “Mom on Book” (2023). In “Mom Under a Cloud II,” Silverthorne's mother is seated on top of a pile of crates that are suggestive of coffins. This exacting figure leans forward, one arm across her lap, the other below her chin as if lost in thought. A floating cloud magically hovers above her head. Jeanne Silverthorne, “Quotes,” 2021, platinum silicone rubber, 1 1/2 x 2 x 1/2”. For “Mom on Book” Silverthorne's mother stands on a hardcover volume of a book of fairy tales. The closed book sits on a pedestal. It has white pages and a black cover. Its title (“365 Fairy Tales”) appears as raised letters on the book’s spine. The implication in this quasi-narrative could be a mother reading from the book to her growing child before the mother is consumed by the clouds (referencing “Mom Under a Cloud II”). Jeanne Silverthorne, “Mom Under a Cloud II,” 2024, platinum silicone rubber, 20 x 10 x 5”. “Hanging Question Mark” (2020) in many ways sums up the overall experience of the exhibition. Here, Silverthorne suspends a large, black, three-dimensional rubber question mark from the ceiling so that the circular punctuation point sits on top of a tall rubber crate. The excess rubber rope loops over pipes in the ceiling and rests on the floor behind the crate. As we try to decipher the various elements, the work appears ambiguous and absurd. When seen in relation to the empty quotation marks of “Quotes” (2021), which bracket empty space on the wall, it becomes evident that Silverthorne is playing with language, enticing us to think metaphorically as we weave our way through the various elements of the installation. Jody Zellen  is a LA based writer and artist who creates interactive installations, mobile apps, net art, animations, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artist’s books. Zellen received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), a MFA from CalArts (1989) and a MPS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009). She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1989. For more information please visit  www.jodyzellen.com .

Lisa Sette Gallery , Phoenix, Arizona Continuing through February 22, 2025 February 8, 2025 I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before…. Mayme Kratz, “Everything That Rises After the Fire,” 2024, resin, globe chamomile, snake ribs on panel, 60 x 108". All images courtesy of Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix. So begins the Mary Oliver poem one sees when descending the stairs into this subterranean space surrounded by Palo Verde trees that beckon us towards Mayme Kratz’s bountiful body of work. Kratz creates tableaus of transformation that speak to change on both a cellular and cosmic level, nestling natural materials foraged in the desert landscape within resin forms that signal a poetic pause in time and space.   Titled after Oliver’s poem, the exhibition features over 30 works created during 2024, a year replete with revelations of climate change impact from wildfires to floods. Most striking is Kratz’s 60 by 108 inch “Everything That Rises After the Fire” diptych inspired by her memory of seeing fire burn across a landscape in her youth. Bright flames reach towards a dark sky, where she has placed a star-like form composed of delicate snake ribs. Three circles crafted with globe chamomile, an invasive species from South Africa that’s best weeded out before it takes hold, seem to rise within the fire. Resembling tumbleweeds, they suggest not only the miasma of materials and memories that circle within a fire, but also the arc of geological time bent towards the Anthropocene era. Kratz’s star recurs in other works, conveying connections between distant landscapes while serving as a beacon of hope. Mayme Kratz, “Long After the Echo 26,” 2024, resin, shells, wood, and star fish on panel, 52 x 40”. Small points of light appear to explode across a vibrant blue expanse in “Long After the Echo 26,” a 52 by 40 inch piece steeped in subtleties by virtue of its exquisite materiality and Kratz’s thoughtful choices. Shells, bone, wood, and starfish allude to ocean and sky, prompting reflection on the vast expanse of stars that light up the night, and microscopic creatures that inhabit the deep seas. Considered from a linear view of time, the painting alludes to origin stories centered on an explosive cosmic event and visions for a future that’s moved past anthropocentrism. The gallery is filled with circular forms echoing the spinning orb that anchors human existence, enabling us to easily embrace the idea of a common humanity. Four 12 by 12 inch panels, each filled with cross-sections of poppy pods and hesperaloe seeds, reinforce a concept typically associated with snowflakes: no two beings are alike.   There’s a meditative, reflective quality to Kratz’s work, especially evident in “Eclipse 4,” a large circle of resin-encased bones, crab claws, galls, seedpods, bobcat claw, shells, and shell dust on a 24 by 24 inch panel. The dark interior circle formed by these objects connotes rest and healing, even as the exhibition as a whole serves as a call to action amid climate catastrophe. The interior circles are much smaller in three 36 by 36 inch works, created with botanicals, from her “Vanishing Light” series. Given their likeness to the pupil of a human eye, they speak to the importance of carefully observing the natural world. “Vanishing Light 44” is distinguished in part by Kratz’s decision to build up easily visible layers of snake weed that give the piece compelling depth and dimensionality.   Mayme Kratz, “Vanishing Light 46,” 2024, resin and snake week on panel, 24 x 24”. This exhibition includes one particularly playful deviation from Kratz’s pristine circular perimeters. In the 55 by 55 inch “Hunter’s Moon,” the artist composes whimsical curved lines of bones, fur, and shell dust that loosely refer to similar forms in nature, from waves of water or wind-bent branches. “Within Without” provides an intriguing variation of form and materials. Made by encasing a wasp’s nest in resin, the image brings to mind the duality of values assigned to particular elements of the environment. In this case, one is reminded that a creature feared for its sting plays an essential role in keeping the ecosystem in balance.   The sculpture sits atop a plinth that takes on altar-like qualities within an intimate interior space, where Kratz also presents numerous small-scale works, including some of her 5 by 5 inch “Night Study” panels in which delicate objects that seem to float in space lend a feeling of freedom one imagines the artist might have experienced exploring the California forests of her youth. One “Night Study” grouping features cross-sections of artichokes, their remarkable variations speaking to the ways a multitude of worlds can exist in a single entity.   Mayme Kratz, “Hunter’s Moon,” 2024, resin, bones, fur and shell dust on panel, 55 x 55”. Echoes of the forest reach a crescendo with “Dark Garden 14,” a 40 by 80 inch piece made with Cassia, snake ribs, and butterfly wings. Botanicals line the bottom half of the work, but drips of resin form a ghostlike forest that seems to rise behind it. A vignette in one corner suggests a grouping of trees, but also ambiguity: Do they beckon us to escape into or away from their darkness? Mayme Kratz, “Knot 396,” 2024, resin and grass on panel, 12 x 12”. Kratz’s exhibition brings both the plight of forests and the delight of spending time in the woods to life, especially as she plays with language, materiality, and form. As a final example, consider “Sleeping in the Forest,” where a circle that’s made with bones, seeds, roots, lichen, and galls on a 55 by 55 inch panel allows the woodgrain to show clearly through the resin, unlike much of her work in which layers of resin lead to opacity.   Mayme Kratz, “Dark Garden 14,” 2024, resin, Cassia, snake ribs, and butterfly wings on panel, 40 x 80”. The images that comprise this exhibition couple with the language drawn from Oliver’s poem to pose a poignant query. Are we “sleeping in the forest” to find comfort, safety, and kinship within the natural sphere? Or are we slumbering our way through it, oblivious to the impacts of our actions — or our inaction? Lynn Trimble  is a Phoenix-based art writer whose work ranges from arts reporting to arts criticism. During a freelance writing career spanning more than two decades, over 1,000 of her articles exploring arts and culture have been published in magazine, newspaper and online formats. Follow her work on Twitter  @ArtMuser  or Instagram  @artmusingsaz .

Traywick Gallery , Berkeley, California Continuing through March 15, 2025 February 8, 2025 The British Romantic landscapist John Constable (1776-1837) once declared, “It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the keynote, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.” Samantha Fields, “The Path of Totality,”  2024, acrylic on canvas, 41 x 27”. All images courtesy of Traywick Gallery, Berkeley. Samantha Fields’ exhibition of recent paintings, “Portents,” with their multiple layers of airbrushed pigment, focuses on the skies of Fields’ Los Angeles as their “chief organ of sentiment.” In the 21st century this organ is one brought about by natural forces subject to physical laws, not the judgments of celestial overseers. Even without God in his heaven, however, the skies retain their fascination and awe. Fields has returned to the skies — and their associated clouds, fog, celestial bodies, fires, and fireworks — after a transitional period of domestic interiors realized during the pandemic lockdown. Samantha Fields, “Whole Sky,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24”. “Portents” includes eleven medium-sized to small paintings, all derived from “failed photographs,” i.e., flawed snapshots, replete with photographic ‘mistakes,’ like lens flares, but adapted and perfected during the artist’s lengthy painting process. All are beautiful and mysterious, all imply something that is not yet evident, the promise of a withheld or ambiguous revelation, as Jorge Luis Borges put it. In the aftermath of the recent wildfires, a subject that the artist has explored before, it is easy to interpret the paintings secularly as environmental warnings to Angelenos to get our minds right about rebuilding in the naturally fire-prone Southern California ecosystem, especially given our poisoned political culture. Samantha Fields, “Portent,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24”. The gallery notes that “Portents” evokes a fractured world that may be slipping away — a reality that is constantly in flux and just out of reach. “Fields,” they assert, “uses the metaphor of celestial phenomena, such as a total solar eclipse, to articulate this elusive feeling.” The transient phenomena of the natural world are thus caught and preserved in paintings that freeze and condense time for our leisurely contemplation. “Portent,” the show’s eponymous painting, depicts a dust storm or tornado as seen from afar, darkly foreboding swirling masses of muted color that evoke recent natural twister disasters in the American south. Looking at this ominous image I could easily imagine the desperation felt by pre-scientific people who anthropomorphized such brutal force in order to explain it. Samantha Fields, “The World is Not as You See It,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 28". “The Path of Totality” presents a wide-angle view of a total eclipse, with the blacked-out sun at the top encircled by an aureole of clouds, and echoed by a tiny sun at the bottom, just above the dark horizon — a scientific anomaly, given poetic license: the heavenly and earthly realms suggest the Latin ut supra ut infra , as above, so below, and the bipartite composition of Raphael’s “Transfiguration.” “Prominence” and “Cathedral” focus on the blackened solar disk in eclipse surrounded by clouds. In reality, the danger of eye damage prohibits us from staring at a solar eclipse without eye protection. Fields’ image allows us to stare fixedly, the black disk metamorphosing into our eyes’ pupils, as in Magritte’s 1928 painting, “The False Mirror.” Fields depicts doubled celestial bodies in “Twin Solo,” with its overlapping Venn diagram of partial eclipses, and “The World Is Not as You See It,” with its twin crescent moons, one seen from a clearing in the cloud cover, and the other seen through it. In “Whole Sky” and “A Light Hurt” the bokeh balls or lens flares beloved of photographers multiply, suggesting optical phenomena like auroras and glories, sun dogs and moon dogs, all of it spiritualized. Samantha Fields, “Cathedral,” 2024, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9”. Fields’ paintings, with their mood of quiet absorption, are also reminiscent of the skyscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, with their rapt, enchanted viewers turning their backs on us. Fields reminds us that we are now those silent witnesses to the mystery of the universe, reminded once again that we and our culture are part of nature, not always its masters but its subjects. We are not inevitably — as the status-quo fatalists rationalize — victims of our own nature. As Shakespeare’s  Cassius says in “Julius Caesar:” “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” DeWitt Cheng  is an art writer/critic based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written for more than twenty years for regional and national publications, in print and online, He has written dozens of catalogue essays for artists, galleries and museums, and is the author of “Inside Out: The Paintings of William Harsh.” In addition, he served as the curator at Stanford Art Spaces from 2013 to 2016, and later Peninsula Museum of Art, from 2017 to 2020.

SF Camerawork , San Francisco, California Continuing through April 22, 2025 February 22, 2025 Elizabeth Sunflower, San Francisco topless dancer Lola Raquel getting ready to fly to LA in a Rudi Gernreich designed topless dress with pasties. She was arrested in the airport when she landed in Los Angeles, 1969/1970. Courtesy of the artist, © Retro Photo Archive. “A Strange Vibration,” including Lenn Keller, Darcy Padilla and Elizabeth Sunflower, is comprised of three black and white photographers who have documented three decades of San Francisco communities. Each were differently impacted by and adapted to the sexual revolution. Situated alongside one another, a linear narrative unfolds amongst these works, one that not only reflects shifting moirés nationwide but also the latent effects of sustaining oneself on the fringes of capitalist heteronormality.   Like a point of origin, the work of Sunflower (1943-2008) kicks things off. Known for capturing iconic moments like Altamont, the Human Be-In and the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford, Sunflower’s nine works depict the mutually inspired and cooperative agendas of San Francisco sex workers and the feminist liberation movement. In “Arousal” (1970) a thick crowd surrounds a woman with long dark hair reading a limp flyer. The print of the paper in her hand is out of focus, but she carries a handwritten sign upright and overhead in crisp, all caps clarity: “WOMEN: ARISE NOW, AROUSE LATER” with the Roman sign for Venus underneath. The figure’s concentration is notable. She is decidedly unaroused, turned inward, and may as well be anywhere but at a protest. Only one person in the shot looks directly at the camera: a clean-cut middle-aged man in a button up shirt, tie, and dark-rimmed spectacles. Elizabeth Sunflower, “El Cid Ladies,”, 1971, photograph. Courtesy of the artist, © Retro Photo Archive. This photograph helped to pave the way for dynamics present in subsequent images in which women use nudity theatrically to advocate for more agency in public. In “Free the Nipple,” (1970) a woman with a short bob hairstyle in a macrame hat wears a dress that runs down the middle of her chest. Her breasts — nipples covered with pasties — lay bare on either side of the fabric. Behind her stands a thick crowd of suited men. In “Classy” (1970), Sunflower documents a haberdashery, which allegedly remained open for all of one month, during which topless shop girls attended to male customers. In “El Cid Ladies” (1971), dancers from the aforementioned North Beach club are photographed prior to their arrest on the San Francisco Airport’s White Courtesy Telephone, drumming up customers prior to their arrest. While Sunflower’s camera accentuates the divisive and celebratory flirtation with which her female subjects challenge a background of male suits, she captures a concurrent secondary narrative in which those same suits become heteronormative beneficiaries, maintaining their unbroken gaze (and reputable incomes) upon the spectacle of women’s sexual liberation.   The show continues with three works by the Oakland-based photographer, filmmaker, and founder of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, Lenn Keller (1951-2020). The first is a close-cropped, semi-profile portrait of a black child with dreadlocks falling in orderly rows that nevertheless obscure her gaze. It is as though the figure can see us, but not the other way around. Like a photograph taken of or for a family member, the image reads more intimately than any of the other works in the show and stands out as such, recalling Keller’s own role as an activist (and mother) determined to validate women living outside of conventional nuclear families. Lenn Keller, African American dykes at San Francisco Pride Parade, 1991. Courtesy of the artist. Above the framed portrait is a “Dykes for Peace” banner taken from Keller’s archive, which documents ephemeral traces of black lesbian activists in Oakland. Keller’s works are regrettably thin here. One feels compelled to fill in the gaps with her remarkable biography: that she helped found a crisis center for woman, La Casa de las Madres, for instance, and a rape crisis help line. Her five-minute film, “Ifé” (1993), screens on a loop, with the camera in the passenger side of a classic car as a black French woman cruises San Francisco. She smokes and pontificates on how she came to San Francisco because she’d heard it was more liberated than her hometown of Paris. She refuses the trap of love as a weakness, eager to experience as many women as possible. This deceptively simple film subverts the gaze so predominant in Sunflower’s work, though Keller’s own position as expressed in this selection of who exactly is liberated remains ambivalent at best. Lenn Keller, still from "Ifé," 1993, film. Courtesy of the artist. Continuing in chronological order, the final set of works of “The AIDS Hotel, San Francisco (1992-1997) by documentary photographer and photojournalist Darcy Padilla (b. 1965) features the inhabitants of the Ambassador Hotel, a six-story, 134-room single occupancy hotel in the San Francisco Tenderloin district. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the hotel, managed by an LGBT Activist, became “an informal hospice” center for those who needed care and had nowhere else to go. Like Paul Fusco, Padilla documented its residents and shadowed social workers on their rounds. Twenty-seven photos titled, “Of Suffering and Time,” hang framed on the wall so as to mimic the windows of a building. An accompanying binder includes numbers and notes affiliated with each photo. Darcy Padilla, “The AIDS Hotel, San Francisco,” 1992, photograph. Courtesy of the artist. Flipping through, “26” jumps out at you: an emaciated face, close-cropped and smoking, with the Times Roman note: “After the health care worker changed Steven’s clothes and bathed him, she lit his cigarette. In his last months, Steven desired ice cream and vodka because of the open sores in his mouth. I would bring him a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a pint of Royal Gate Vodka in the plastic bottle — Steven’s favorites.” The portrait of another young man, seated upright, looking off to the side as he smokes is designated as “08”: “Chris shares a room with his partner Drummond; both are HIV-positive. They are drug-users and dumpster divers. Every week, the hotel staff has to clear out their room.” Or, “09”: “Dorian, a transgender woman who has AIDS and multiple sclerosis, is flirting in the hallway and says, ‘I’m still just happy and blind as ever.’” Another photo of a man on crutches receiving someone at his door, perhaps a social worker, situates the camera behind the visitor’s shoulder, like a gate crasher. Darcy Padilla, “Of Suffering and Time,” 1992, photograph. Courtesy of the artist. Others among Padilla’s photos capture men close to death, hands covering their faces in different arrangements of anguish. It’s impossible not to question the camera’s voyeuristic intrusion — an experience further complicated by Padilla’s diary. To consider what consent means under terminal conditions is complicated, particularly when documenting a population whose boundaries have already been irrevocably eroded and dismissed by society at large. What does it mean, in other words, for these now-posthumous subjects to be presented on the wall? What does it mean for Padilla’s unofficial notes to be presented, rather casually, in the plastic sleeves of a binder? We might bear in mind something the late Barbara DeGenevieve (1947-2014) pointed out with her “Panhandler Project” (2004-06) that representation is also important. Padilla’s work raises such concerns, though they regrettably serve as a subtext to the more gripping foreground tragedy of suffering. On this last count, perhaps, the work fails its subjects, making us — like those well-suited men in Sunflower’s photographs — no more than a spectator. Caroline Picard  is a writer, publisher and curator. Her writing has appeared in Artslant, ArtForum (critics picks), Flash Art International, and Paper Monument, among others. Fiction and comics appear under the name Coco Picard. Her first graphic novel, The Chronicles of Fortune, was published by Radiator Comics in 2017. She is the Executive Director of the Green Lantern Press—a nonprofit publishing house and art producer in operation since 2005. Curating exhibitions since 2005, Picard has worked with artists like Takahiro Iwasaki, Ellen Rothenberg, Edra Soto, Xaviera Simmons, and others, presenting exhibitions at La Box ENSA Bourges, Gallery 400, The Hyde Park Art Center, Vox Popuili and more. More at her website,  cocopicard.com .

February 22, 2025 I came across a couple of Instagram posts promoting an action called “Lights Out Meta,” a targeted boycott of all Meta platforms (including the biggest: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) for the week of January 19th through the 26th. I appreciated the challenge, both to stick it to the man (or men) and do a little social media detox simultaneously. Instagram has clearly become a destination app for so many industries, contemporary art (along with modern, historical, graphic and schlock art) very much among them. I run two feeds on IG: one for my art and one for my podcast, “The Conversation,” and while there have been periods where I’ve found the experience of checking in to be somewhere in the range of benignly satisfying to a nice dopamine hit, the enshittification  of the platform over the last couple years has turned the experience into a chore about as satisfying as taking out the trash. H.A. Schult, “Trash People,” 2006, 1,000 mixed media figures at Cologne Cathedral. Courtesy of the artist. Despite learning healthier approaches to navigating IG, the feelings that come with time spent there remain a problem — a combination of envy, FOMO, and general uneasiness that’s been extensively documented. While I can’t claim that my one-week detox was profound, it definitely reduced my rumination levels significantly. Over time, I can imagine those benefits would continue to improve my overall mental health. But I’m a visual artist living in the 2020s: not having an Instagram feed doesn’t seem like something I can afford to do. With Zuckerberg’s hard-right turn after the 2024 election, eliminating fact-checking and enabling LGBTQ discrimination, along with his kowtowing to the Mango Mussolini, users of Meta are, or at least should be, facing a complicity check. To what extent am I, as merely one of a billion users, stuck supporting Zuckerberg (or fellow despicables like Musk, Bezos, Thiel, and their respective corporate monopolies) by using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, et al? Simone Leigh, “Dunham II,” 2017, terra-cotta, graphite, steel. Courtesy of the New Museum, New York. I am far, far, far from being a media analyst or pundit, so instead of getting out of my depth, I put the word out (mainly on Instagram, of course) to crowd source a range of artists’ current thoughts on their social media consumption. One wrinkle I added to the equation was whether the newer app Bluesky is a better, safer haven for disgruntled IG users to flee to (the short answer is “not so much,” because to begin with, Bluesky is modeled after Twitter, not IG). One IG friend shared a post from the account  all_things_democracy  that read, “Do you dislike Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg but use their platforms? … if so this video is for you!” This is a near perfect emblem of where we are early on in what appears to be a very tepid reconsideration of social media use thus far: you can still be on it, but without the pesky guilt of compliance! Indeed, the general tenor of the responses I’ve received has been, “I don’t like where Instagram, or Facebook, have taken us, but I need to stay on them because of X, Y and Z.” The self-justifications are quite numerous. These thoughts from my fellow IG artist users, including one who’s left the platform, exemplify a solid cross-section of people’s thoughts on both IG and Meta in general. Let’s start with two artists, one in Saskatchewan, one in the Bay Area. No doubt about it, a lot of artists have a lot to say about social media. # # # Kara Uzelman, “Finite Dimensions,” 2022, installation view. Courtesy of The MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Photo: Don Hall. Kara Uzelman , an artist living and working on Treaty 4 Land, Nokomis, Saskatchewan: Like any self-employed businessperson, I am reluctant to give up this network as it is my primary point of connection to peers and colleagues as well as a potential source of commerce to sell my own work through studio sales and promoting exhibitions. I currently live in a rural farming community in Canada … I can afford housing and studio space here, but the tradeoff is being physically cut off from the urban centers of art and culture. There are no public or private galleries at which to view others’ art and socialize at openings. There are no studio visits, no in-person talks, no movie theaters, no restaurants. So that’s why artists gravitate towards urban centers. However unrealistic or delusional it may be, I have not given up hope of being able to make a living from art or craft … and feel reliant on this network as an important tool for enough commerce to allow me to invest as much time and effort as possible to making art. The freedom to do that is the reward of my internet usage. But I am not happy with what social media has become. Moe X, “Free Expression 9 Painting,” oil on canvas, 84 x 70 x 1”. Courtesy of the artist. Moe X,   an Arab-American artist living in the Bay Area: I have considered leaving Meta’s platform as I felt the algorithm was biased against queer and non-binary individuals. There are users who would report queer posts due to homophobia or transphobia and the algorithm might take that as proof our bodies are inappropriate. Due to my long hair, the algorithm sometimes assumes I’m a nude female, when I identify as a non-binary man. I have to fight to keep each post that includes any part of my body. The reason I can’t quit Meta is that as an emerging artist you are expected to have an active Instagram account to showcase your work and keep people in the loop. Almost every application asks for your Instagram account, and you are judged by it. The network effect for Instagram in the art world is so strong that fighting it is a losing proposition. # # # These are just two; there are a lot of really interesting comments, some short articles in themselves. During March we’ll post some more, and ask you to decide if you want to read more of these artists’ stories. If enough of you want to read (or listen) to more, we will give you more. Michael Shaw  is a Los Angeles-based artist and activist. His work was recently included in the exhibition “ Meshuganah ” at A Very Serious Gallery in Chicago, as well as the exhibitions “ Sociality ” at LA Tate gallery in 2023, and It’s My House!  at the Porch Gallery in Ojai, CA, in 2022, and has been exhibited throughout the U.S. He is the recipient of a Culver City Arts grant in 2023, a Puffin Foundation Grant and the Rauschenberg Emergency Grant in 2022, the Center for Cultural Innovation’s Quick Grant in 2021, and the New Student Award at Hunter College, where he received his MFA. Visit Michael Shaw’s website .

Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) , Costa Mesa, California Continues through May 25, 2025 February 22, 2025 Su Yu-Xin, “Searching the Sky for Gold,” installation view. Walking into Su Yu-Xin’s exhibition is to enter a magical display of dozens of large, colorful semi-abstract paintings. Yet look closely and the works evoke a variety of ephemeral scenes, including clouds moving through the sky, sunlight reflecting large landscapes, volcanoes in action, rain-soaked mountain scenes, exotic fires smoldering beneath the earth, mushroom shaped clouds emanating from bombs that were just dropped, and more. Even more impressive are the descriptions of the materials and techniques used to create these artworks, along with the artist’s intentions of what her imagery will hopefully convey to viewers. Materials in her paints — that she laboriously collects from disparate parts of our planet — include earthbound matter derived from soil, natural ores, shells, corals, semiprecious stones and plants, all applied to flax-based canvasses. To create her various homemade pigments, which number in the hundreds, Su gathers raw materials from landscapes that she says have undergone transformation. This ranges widely, from coastal and volcanic terrains to railways at “precarious places in the Pacific regions.” Su Yu-Xin, “Heaven's Sigh (Mount Merapi),” 2024, various colors of volcanic rocks, pyrite (fool's gold), ochre, soil, oyster shell fossil, iwa-enogu, sandstone, and other handmade pigments on flax stretched over wooden frame, 99 3/16 x 83 7/8 x 2 3/16”. All images courtesy the artist. Su has great reverence for the pigments that she makes and uses in her artworks, believing that colors carry the weight of their histories. Far more than just paint, embedded in them are legacies of trade and extraction, and with that an implicit narrative of human exploitation. Her flax-infused canvasses facilitate diffusion and the random spreading out of the paints, which she welcomes and has increasingly mastered. Su Yu-Xin was born in Hualien, Taiwan in 1991, and studied Chinese ink painting and Japanese Nihonga  painting in Taipei. She earned an MFA from London’s Slade School of Fine Art. Her techniques have evolved gradually, having been derived from her studies that may be centered on aesthetics but go well beyond, and also from her sheer creative talent, which transcends the narrowness of traditional painting practices. She regards her imaginary landscapes as, “dynamic, interconnected systems, where sky, earth and substance are fluidly entwined,” creating an expansive approach to our environment that can be seen in the body of work that makes up “Searching the Sky for Gold.” Su Yu-Xin, “A Detonation, and the Time It Spent with the World (Atomic Bomb Test, New Mexico),” 2024, cinnabarite, synthetic cinnabarite, realgar, orpiment, sulfur, soot, gofun, coal cinder, clay, and other handmade pigments on flax stretched over wooden frame and wooden stands, 93 11/16 x 59 1/16 x 2 3/16”. The titles of Su’s artworks are provocative, while reflecting the images they describe. “Heaven’s Sigh (Mount Merapi)” (2024) depicts a cone-shaped volcano, painted with swirling strokes, with the black and red hues fashioned from volcanic rocks and soil. The volcano is enhanced by a thin veil of cloud in greenish metallic tones. “A Detonation, and the Time It Spent with the World (Atomic Bomb Test, New Mexico)” (2024) renders a mushroom-shaped cloud from an A-bomb, an image painted and photographed ad nauseam. What sets it apart is the addition of the falling debris and dying flames that occur moments after the bomb’s detonation. The colors of this painting, suggestive of the deadly forces unleashed from the bomb, are deep red from cinnabar and orange-yellow from the sulfide-based mineral realgar. It is among the best examples of how media and the depicted image resonate synergistically. Su Yu-Xin, “Heart of Darkness (Underground Burning, Utah),” 2024, realgar, orpiment, sulfur, cinnabarite, soot, Chinese fir charcoal, purple shale, black tourmaline, red agate, organ pipe coral (Tubipora musica), soil, hematite, lapis lazuli, amazonite, red garnet, Dupont titanium dioxide, and other handmade pigments on flax stretched over wooden frame and wooden stands, 63 x 94 1/2 x 2 3/16”. “Heart of Darkness (Underground Burning, Utah)” (2024) is a vivid interpretation of coal smoldering underground so energetically that the flames — painted with red, yellow and black pigments derived from realgar, sulfur, and cinnabar — come to life, behaving like hungry serpents. “Dust Crown (Mount St. Helens)” (2024) is an illustration of an eruption at Mount St. Helens in Washington, an event that in 1980 reshaped the northwest landscape and produced the gemstone known as Helenite, which resembles an emerald. The eruption is portrayed here is an exotic dancing figure, while research reveals that the pigment used for the piece is that selfsame Helenite. Su Yu-Xin, “Strange Remedy (Mount Kuju Hot Spring),” 2024, soil, orpiment, silica malachite, chrysocolla, black marble, iwa-enogu, gofun, and other handmade pigments on flax stretched over wooden frame. 55 1/8 x 87 13/16 x 2 3/16”. “Strange Remedy (Mount Kuju Hot Spring)” (2024) is a landscape style painting, illustrating the power of curative waters, based on Buddhist teachings. Employing the minerals malachite and chrysocolla produce the bluish mud undertones, to which is added the element known as orpiment, along with soil, that produces a layer of yellow that floats on the top of the mud. The artist employs materials that are both aesthetically illuminating and which have a therapeutic effect. Su Yu-Xin’s paintings are amalgams of her well-trained artistry, combined with her profound knowledge of earth, air, fire and water, the four base elements recognized in the ancient world. Her empathetic use of the earth elements that she collects are crucial to what distinguishes this exhibition. To immerse yourself in them is to experience a foretaste of the kind of harmonious world that we yearn to inhabit. Liz Goldner  is an award-winning art writer based in Laguna Beach. She has contributed to the LA Times, LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, Artillery, AICA-USA Magazine, Orange County Register, Art Ltd. and several other print and online publications. She has written reviews for ArtScene and Visual Art Source since 2009.  Liz Goldner’s Website .

James Leong, “In and Out,” 1972-73, mixed media on canvas, 45 x 57”. All images courtesy of Chatwin Arts Gallery, Seattle. James Leong (1929-2011) moved to Seattle in 1990 after a storied career in San Francisco, Oslo, Rome, and New York, and boasting a raft of awards including Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Whitney fellowships. By then, Leong’s saga mirrored that of other postwar American artists of color who had exiled themselves to Europe — James Baldwin, Miles Davis — as a result of lifestyle choice or, in Leong’s and Baldwin’s cases, racial discrimination. The artist, educated at California College of Arts and Crafts and San Francisco State College, contributed considerably to the Seattle art community. He was invited, for example, to advise the Museum of History and Industry, Wing Luke Museum, and Seattle Arts Commission. Sadly, his art was not as readily recognized or appreciated, with only one show at Lasater Gallery in 1994. This survey goes a long way to correcting that embarrassing neglect, especially for an artist once included in the prestigious Whitney, Brooklyn, and Rome biennials and who showed at the legendary Downtown Gallery in New York, as well as at other significant European venues with an important show of American painters that toured Germany. James Leong, “Eight,” 1970, mixed media on canvas, 24 x 32”. Leong is a classic case of an artist transitioning from representational to abstract art, a common shift in postwar art both in the U.S. and in Europe. Examples of Leong’s figurative work are included here, and affirm his reason for rejecting that style as “too propagandistic” — appropriate for a public art mural in San Francisco’s Chinatown (and attacked by Chinese-American neighbors) — and later abandoning awkward mythic-narrative paintings he made in the Bay Area before his relocations. It was abroad where Leong found his formalist voice between 1959 and 1984. With several successful shows in Rome, praised by prickly Roman art critics, he was befriended by Cy Twombly, Vincent Price, Isamu Noguchi, and Buckminster Fuller. Before Rome, however, the artist’s move to Norway on a Fulbright in 1957 pushed him closer to Edvard Munch’s bright sense of color and toward the overwhelming majesty of Scandinavian landscapes — and weather. Many of the abstractions seem like rain scattered across a window, or colored flurries of snow. James Leong, “Stretch,” 1970, mixed media on canvas, 10 1/2 x 14”. Gradually, the abstract paintings in Italy came to depict unusual irregular geometric forms against monochromatic backgrounds, as in “In and Out” (1971-72) and “Little Theatre” (1970). Haunting and enigmatic, they are unlike any other advanced painting of that period. Gradually optical effects came to dominate, connecting the artist to parallel trends throughout Europe, and in advance of American artists discovering Op Art. “Eight” (1970) set up a symmetrical grid followed by “Untitled” (1972), with its whorls of bending linear elements leading to a central circle. “Echo” (1978) imposes the same curves but over cloudy and rocky shapes in the distance. Interestingly, Leong was struck and lost sight in one eye as a child, the result of a hate crime and doctors unwilling to treat him. As he later put it, his space became “one-dimensional,” yet there are paintings, such as “Omen” (1978) that include window-like frames for the viewer to peer deep into and beyond the wide marginal areas. James Leong, “Monied Mountain,” 1999, mixed media on paper on synthetic canvas, 31 1/2 x 23 1/2”. Leong repeatedly stressed color as the motivating factor in his evolution of styles and periods. The extraordinary chromatic subtlety of his canvases is beautifully demonstrated in the survey. By the end of his Roman sojourn, optical explorations gave way to all-over spatter paintings that juxtapose muted tones beneath vertical, horizontal or diagonal drips and streaks in works such as “Source” (1976), “Pulse” and “Set Jade” (both 1978). These are smaller, more intimate in size, averaging 24 by 18 inches, closer to Mark Tobey, whom Leong acknowledged as an influence and who pushed him toward an Asian “look” of sensitive, all-over brushwork, a look that would dominate his last works. In Seattle, as he put it in an unpublished autobiography, Leong found the full measure of his peronal identity. “I never really felt Chinese until I came to Seattle. It is so multi-cultural; you are not forced to take a stand … I came back as a mature artist … the problems are now aesthetic … Seattle provides the comfort of landscape … to work on my own.” James Leong, “Discovery,” 2000, acrylic, casein, gesso on paper on synthetic canvas, 45 x 57 1/2”. The results, to be seen in the upcoming Part II of the retrospective, are impressive, perhaps a climax to the stylistic divagations of his European exile. “Lijiang” (1998), “Monied Mountain,” “Guilian Three” (both 1999) and “Discovery” (2000) could fairly be called Leong’s “late period,” final breakthroughs of glistening color spatters that cohere into classical Chinese mountain-and-river landscapes. Seen with the other works in Part II, they affirm that all Leong’s travel, exile and stylistic transitions fed into a culmination of abstract painting that embodies rich cultural implications.

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