Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Fox Whitney, Alitzah Oros, Melika Sebihi, and Kaya Noteboom pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Liz Larner: Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA
September 6, 2024 – January 5, 2025
Tendrils of zip-tied garbage unfurl onto OCMA’s glossy floors encircling amorphous ceramic forms named after asteroids that have passed through our solar system. The garbage is all too recognizable–plastic bags, styrofoam, take-out containers, Halloween masks, and straws. Amidst the heap, the ceramic asteroids’ organic qualities–their colors, grit, and porosity–appear seemingly alien. Dispersed across two galleries, Larner’s floor-bound garbage patches, Meerschaum Drift (Green) and Meerschaum Drift (Blue) (both 2020-21) recall once seemingly unreachable frontiers now marked, perhaps forever, by the presence of humans through our waste.
Standing before the Meerschaum Drifts, my mind was on space junk. Composed of rocket fragments, tools lost to zero gravity, and microscopic debris like paint chips and metals, it’s estimated that the total mass of space junk orbiting Earth exceeds 10,000 metric tons. This is about 1/8th of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an island of (mostly) plastic twice the size of Texas floating between Hawaii and California. Fusing ocean and exosphere one zip tie at a time, Larner’s sculptural works reflect the dangers of technological advancement, a growing population, and a mindset that places profits and consumption before the needs of our planet and its multitude of organisms.
Reflection: Did you know that most space equipment is designed for single use only?
Off Register: Santa Barbara Art Book & Print Fair
Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop, Santa Barbara, CA
November 16, 2024
Boyfriend, mom, and dog in tow, we spent the afternoon hanging out at Off Register, Santa Barbara’s first art book and print fair. Held at Community Arts Workshop (CAW), Off Register featured over 60 exhibitors from around the country alongside hands-on workshops and panel conversations.
The energy and joy were infectious. From making zines to buttons to learning how to screen print or use a risograph printer, people of all ages bustled through CAW’s indoor and outdoor spaces lugging crafts, prints, books, and other treats. I made a zine with my mom. It was really sweet.
Reflection: More family-friendly DIY/DIT (Do-It-Together) events, please?
Oriana Poindexter: Blue Forest Portraits
Laguna College of Art & Design Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
November 7, 2024 – November 24, 2024
There are few things that I love more in this world than seaweed. Maybe that’s something visual artist and marine scientist Oriana Poindexter and I have in common. A Southern California native, Poindexter photographs oceanic ecosystems around the world documenting not only their beauty and diversity, but also how these ecosystems have changed and continue to change as our oceans warm.
On view at the Laguna College of Art & Design’s gallery are Poindexter’s Blue Forest Portraits, individual portraits of organisms that inhabit the state’s southern coast. Each print feels suspended in time, the kelp arranged in forms that preserve the loose rhythmic quality of bobbing in the ocean. In the window, a cyanotype kelp forest is printed onto fabric that flutters and leaks light creating the illusion that we, too, are exploring the depths of the kelp forests off of our coast.
In a far corner of the gallery, above two shelves of jarred specimens, one cyanotype sticks out from the others. In it, two feet flanked by sea bits appear blindingly white against the cyan, a trace of Poindexter’s body deep within the worlds she illuminates.
Reflection: What’s your favorite type of seaweed? Mine is Turkish Towel.