Long Beach Museum of Art

On Wednesday I attended the Long Beach Museum of Art opening reception for Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water, which for me was the culmination of a very positive experience that any artist can appreciate. My inclusion in this show came to me out of the blue, or so it seemed. I didn’t submit to it. I didn’t know about it. I didn’t, in fact, have to DO anything, except to accept the invitation to have my painting Reflection included in the show, at the request of Megan Ellisor, the co-curator. Of course she would not have found out about me or my paintings if I had not over the years put in a lot of effort into the marketing that anyone who means to make their way in the arts must do – creating a website, submitting to juried shows and galleries, etc, etc. ad nauseum. But even so, it still felt like it came out of the blue, a gift of acknowledgment.

I hand delivered the piece back in November because we happened to be in Southern California visiting our eldest son and his family before taking a flight to San Miguel. I quite honestly had never heard of The Long Beach Museum of Art so I had no idea what to expect. My wife later confessed she had fears that it would be in someone’s garage – almost anything can be called a museum these days. But what a pleasant surprise to find this gem of a small museum! It is located on Ocean Blvd. overlooking the water across a nice stretch of beach. The building is a solid three story structure with two floors of spacious galleries and a lower floor for an arts education program. It has a dedicated parking lot, a lawn area for receptions and another building that houses a museum café. Phew! Meeting Megan and others on the staff, seeing the quality of the work on display, I felt relieved and elated, especially when they told me that my art would be used for the cover of the program shown above!

Flying down just for the day to go to an art opening of a group show seemed a little crazy, but I am so glad we went. Of the eighteen artists represented in the show, seventeen of them attended the reception, many coming from much further than our hour flight down the Coast from San Francisco. It was wonderful to be able to meet so many artists who have the same passion and concern I do for the subject of water. It turns out one of them, whose work I have admired for some time, Eric Zener, lives near us in Marin County, so I hope we will stay in touch.

Among all the really high-quality work displayed, here are a few artists’ whose pieces stood out for me. Matthew Cornell of Orlando, Florida, had two pieces in the show: one a miniature oil on wood titled “Low Country” that is very tightly rendered, Old Masters’ style, and a second, called “Genesis II” a very large canvas of the ocean in reddish tones. Such totally different styles and approaches, but each so well realized!

I looked forward to meeting Elizabeth Patterson after seeing her work “Sunset Highway” done in colored pencil with such photographic detail that I recognized a kindred spirit. She said she is busy preparing for a show in Paris. The thought of working that tight under a deadline makes me a little weak-kneed, and she seemed more than a little stressed, but I’m sure she’ll be up to the task.

Bill Viola is an artist I’ve been aware of since the early 1980’s when I first saw his black and white abstract computer animations at SIGGRAPH technology forums, back when I too was an animator. In this show, his high-speed, hi-def video of a group of people being blasted by water canons (run in super slow motion) titled ‘Tempest,’ was a riveting crowd-pleaser. He told me how great it was to meet all these artists and be able to talk about our work, and I concur. The shared passion we all have for the subject of water and for art made me wish we were all hanging out a bit longer to really explore our shared concern and varied mediums.

Sant Khalsa’s display of 42 gelatin-sliver prints of images she’s taken over the years of water store fronts and signage all over Southern California she says is just a part of an installation that includes Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. For me one of the most poignant was a sign announcing, ‘Fresh Water Coming Soon!’

It was great to have our son and daughter-in-law there with us, and to have dinner with them afterwards before they deposited us at the airport for our flight home.
If you are in the area, be sure to see the show that’s up through April 3rd.