Allison Schulnik. Video still from ‘Forest’ (2009), clay stop-motion animation, color, sound. Courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City
The work of two CalArts alumni will be featured in one-person exhibitions in Southern California this week. Allison Schulnik’s (Film/Video BFA 00) ex•pose is on view at Laguna Art Museum now through April 28 and Meg Cranston’s (Art MFA 86) exhibition, Emerald City, opens at LA><ART Gallery One on March 2.
Meg Cranston: Emerald City
Cranston, who was among the CalArtians featured in last year’s Made in LA exhibition at the Hammer, focuses on the emerald and its color and explores the increasing popularity of the gemstone in the fashion world.
More about the show from LA><ART:
Emerald has […] been announced as the official hue of 2013, available as kitchen and household wares, retro chandeliers, school supplies and stationary, flannel shirts, head scarfs, upholstery, shag rugs, smart phone cases and screen savers, interior paints and exterior trims, silk trousers, May birthstone tiaras, evening gowns and five-carat rings.
Modern life […] is defined by the speed with which ideals can be imprinted in the prevailing fashions of the moment. The quicker these ideals become redundant, the more modern the world may seem to be. With each new season, the most elegant, stylish and debonair overcome the coarseness of a démodé world. This year, emerald embodies the eclipse.
Meg Cranston explores these historic yet always-evolving relationships between the beau monde and visual art with a new series of monochromes and painterly reflections on emerald.
Cranston, who serves as the acting Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design, produced another exhibition Keep It Simple. Keep It Fresh, working in collaboration with artist John Baldessari (Chouinard 59) at Galerie Michael Janssen in Singapore. The exhibit opened Jan. 19 and runs through March 10.
Meg Cranston: Emerald City
LA><ART Gallery One
2640 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles
March 2 – April 20, 2013 (open Tuesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm)
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 2, 6-8 pm
ex·pose: Allison Schulnik
Allison Schulnik. ‘October Flowers.’ Oil on canvas stretched on board, 2012. 20 x 16 inches. Collection of Jay and Carolyn Kaplan
Schulnik’s work will be featured in this spring’s ex·pose at Laguna Art Museum, an exhibition series that recently presented work by fellow alum Peter Bo Rappmund (Film/Video MFA 10). Schulnik’s show of paintings, sculptures and claymation films, that exhibit the artist’s signature “viceral, expressionistic and surreal” forms.
More from the museum:
Bright colors emerge through an overall dark palette, as paintings and clay animations alike take on the sense of an ever-morphing figure. Hobos, clowns, and motley creatures intertwine into the environment and each other, forming moments of abstraction then a semblance of representation again. […]
Influenced by kindred artists of the past such as the macabre Belgian painter James Ensor, Schulnik pursues a vein of surreal imagery that is haunting, mournful, and beautiful all at once. In her first museum exhibition, her paintings persist in the exploration of fantastic figures and characters on the fringes of society.
The exhibition includes all three of Schulnik’s animated films: Hobo Clown (2008), Forest (2009), and Mound (2011).
ex·pose: Allison Schulnik
Laguna Art Museum
307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach
Through April 28
Monday-Tuesday, Friday-Sunday, 11 am-5 pm
Thursday, 11 am-9 pm, Closed Wednesday
Admission: $7 General, $5 Students and Seniors, Free for children under 12, active military and museum members