Shoebox Projects has always been a space to present alternative programming for artists. They recently opened “The Closet” in Shoebox Projects (run by The Shed Collective) as an alternative to alternative spaces to allow artists an outside-of-the-box (or inside) opportunity for creating new work in an unusual space. Creating an artist-in-residence program, Shoebox Projects offers artists space which has become an incubator for experimentation, inspiration and community.
The natural next step was to give artists an even more unique space to create work, experiment and transform their art practice. This space became the shoebox.
Please join us on August 12th to see the culmination of the residency and witness how each of the artists has transformed their shoebox.
Featuring: Debby Kline Larry Kline Nancy Larrew Diane Williams Susan J Osborn Nancy Kay Turner Emily Wiseman Dani Dodge Jennifer Gunlock Kayla Cloonan Chenhung Chen Debbie Korbel Elizabeth Tinglof Lorraine Heitzman Susan T. Kurland Frederika Beesemyer Roeder Karen Hochman Brown Cathy Immordino Steve Seleska Colin Roberts Pranay Reddy Randi Matushevitz Maya Kabat Katya Usvitsky Catherine Ruane Bibi Davidson Dwora Fried Linda Sue Price Ashley Hagen Vincent Tomczyk Don Porcella
“For the past four years, I have been combing the Mojave Desert, wandering in and out of abandoned homesteads, taking pictures and collecting artifacts. These relics have served as reminders that someone used to occupy these once-hopeful spaces. It is here that I find myself drawn to the multitude of textures, colors, and patterns that live within the detritus. I have carefully gathered planks of splintered wood with the paint peeling off, lugged rusted-out pieces of metal across the desert floor, and gathered too many broken pieces of mirrors, tiles and windows to count. These bits of history excite me, and have been accumulating in my studio waiting for life to be breathed back into them. For my residency at Shoebox Projects, I will be creating a series of sculptures or wall hangings using the found objects from my adventures in Wonder Valley. The final product will be an immersive installation that places my 3D pieces in situ with collages/works that I have already created from my recent body of work.”
// Artist Statement //
I am a Los Angeles-based artist whose work embodies systems that erode. I salvage history, suspending the architecture of Southern California in time with a process
“Beginning in 1994, I collected audio for an artwork entitled 3.9. I collected a minute of sound each day, noting the time, for 1440 minutes in order to capture a full 24-hour period. It took 3.9 years to reach 1440 days/1440 minutes.
I’m compiling the tapes to create a version of 3.9 to be exhibited at The Closet at Shoebox Projects. I see this unusual space as a persona, enterable by visitors one at a time. Think of a sensory deprivation chamber with shifts of location and years made audible. Time and geography reorganize as minutes of a day. Taken from a master clock and ignoring conventional time keeping, the container of my life is defined by its own construct.
The piece spans both sides of the equator, and the first of these audio fragments was gathered 24 years ago. My daughter Zoë, who can be heard often in the minutes, is now 29 and now has her own daughter. Voices of my grandparents, or friends like artist Karl Matson and gallerist Bill Bartman, all of whom have died, rise from the audiotapes as if it’s today. Conversations with lovers remind me of best choices and worst mistakes. The minutes range from snoring roommates, trips to the dentist, to city-wide cheers in Rio during a soccer match between Brazil and Ghana for the Olympics.
I started 3.9 at a difficult time in my life, when a minute was about all I could bear in a day. I see now that it is an unabashed accounting of a life, excavated decades later, as if a ghost trailed to this moment.”
Funded in part through the Abeles’ 2015 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.
KIM ABELES is an artist whose community-based projects explore biography, geography and environment. She has created projects with the California Science Center, air pollution control agencies, health clinics and mental health departments, and natural history museums in California, Colorado and Florida. Abeles received the 2013 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and is a recipient of fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the smog in the air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to national and international attention. She is currently working on sculptural suitcases for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains that embeds artists in the Los Angeles County Fire Department to work in collaboration with the paid and inmate workforces. Her work is in public collections including MOCA, LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, California African American Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Abeles’ journals, books, and process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art.
THE CLOSET IN SHOEBOX PROJECTS is one of the sister galleries of the newly formed SHED COLLECTIVE, a group of “alternative to alternative” galleries located in Los Angeles, Ca. These spaces are not your typical run-of-the-mill galleries. They are tiny, located in residential backyards and other unique crevices where very cool and innovative art happens.
This concept started out as a joke between the co-founders: Kristine Schomaker, Cathy Immordino, Sheli Silverio and Diane Williams, then recognized how much the art community needs more spaces to show art in fun and non-traditional spaces. So… they made it happen!
in conjunction with an installation by CSUN Professor Emeritus Kim Abeles in The Closet in Shoebox Projects, a part of The Shed Collective, a new alternative art space. https://www.facebook.com/events/180711715932732/
We are a young alumni chapter of the CSUN Alumni Association with a goal to keep connections through both exhibition and curatorial opportunities, artist talks, social gatherings and promoting the accomplishments of our incredibly talented alumni.
Please support the CSUN Arts Alumni Association through this Fundraiser Art Exhibition. 50% will go to artist with 50% to CSUN Arts Alumni Association to help fund future exhibitions, portfolio reviews, critiques and more.
Lynn Aldrich print (image in thread)
People in Real Estate, 1997
Iris print on cotton paper, Edition of 6
For a year of Sundays, I went through the “Your Valley” editions of the Los Angeles Times, checking out the black and white portraits of real estate agents in the advertising supplement. Every week, new faces of men and women, posed by professional photographers, appeared beside their sales promotions and accomplishments. Finally, I selected twenty-five of the women only, arranged them in a grid, and printed it with the fonts lifted from the newspaper.
In many ways, this print helped identify my major themes moving forward as an artist. I would collect objects from the consumerist culture, particularly with the oddly suburban/celebrity glam of the San Fernando Valley/Hollywood influence. Then back in the studio, I would arrange them in a simple accumulation, with little manipulation on my part. My work became more three-dimensional, but I never lost the desire to reveal layers of metaphor buried in the most obvious of objects and situations.
In art school, I remember thinking too bad I can’t have Urban Angst. Didn’t seem appropriate in El Lay. We seem to have more of an underlying anxiety – humor comingled with pathos, extravagance covering over loss, dreams flirting with disaster.
Lynn Aldrich
Image in cover photo a detail of work by Emily Sudd
L.A. COLLABORATORS LARRY AND DEBBY KLINE CONFRONT GROWING HEALTH CARE CONTROVERSY IN “THE CANDY STORE” AT SHOEBOX PROJECTS
OPENS AT SHOEBOX PROJECTS WITH A RECEPTION ON JUNE 9TH, 3-6 PM; ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 1ST, 2018
Shoebox Projects is pleased to present Los Angeles duo Larry and Debby Kline’s piece The Candy Store. By way of symbols between contemporary and ancient artifacts, the mixed-media installation surveys rising healthcare costs and its impact upon a subsequent increase in self-diagnosis and treatment. By providing medicinal candies and other objects with prescription pharmaceuticals incorporated into them as art media. Many objects, for example, are ceramic works with medicines baked into the glazes. These inconsumable medicinal talismans are a welcome addition to the panoply of healthcare choices and are guaranteed to meet or exceed FDA standards for safety or effectiveness.
In alarming numbers, those with limited access to medical care have turned to self-diagnosis and medication, often crossing the borders in search of affordable drugs. While large segments of the population lack health insurance, the privileged are often over-medicated, using “mind focusing” drugs to enhance test scores and relying on pharmaceuticals as treatment for conditions once held as normal variations in personality and temperament. The Candy Store is a natural extension of these trends, providing greater access to medication, through the placebo effect.
Debby and Larry Kline are collaborative artists, whose works have been featured in many solo exhibitions, including Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (San Francisco), California Center for the Arts Museum, La Casa del Tunel Art Center (Tijuana), Southwestern College Art Gallery, Mesa College Art Gallery and Athenaeum Music and Arts Library. Their work was featured in “Nature/Nation,” an international exhibition of environmental artists at Museum on the Seam (Israel), which involved traveling to Jerusalem and creating a 1 ton adobe structure on the roof of the museum. They have participated in The Center for Land Use Interpretation’s residency program and were featured artists at BEYOND the BORDER: International Contemporary Art Fair and Art San Diego 2013 Contemporary Art Fair. Their work has received international acclaim and coverage in both fine arts and mainstream publications. They have also been awarded three grants from The Gunk Foundation, NY, and grants from Potrero Nuevo Fund, San Francisco, and Center for Cultural Innovation, Los Angeles. They were recently awarded the 2013 San Diego Art Prize and Established Artist Grant, which recognizes the work of some of the most accomplished artists in the San Diego region.
The Closet at Shoebox Projects is pleased to present its upcoming exhibit Something Extra by L.A. artist Chelsea Boxwell, whose paintings push boundaries and traditions of the medium. A recent MFA graduate from Claremont Graduate University, Boxwell focused on painting as installation with multi-medias and quite a bit of glitter during her studies. She attempts to transform what painting can be in her work as she now extends her painterly vocabulary within the parameters of The Closet in Shoebox Projects. In this tiny broom closet, Chelsea will attempt to make something quite small and ordinary into something seemingly large and extraordinary.
Her interest in alchemy–a derivation from the medieval practice of chemistry created in an attempt to transform base metals into gold–though never officially successful, is both a source of fascination for the artist as well as in popular culture. One definition of Alchemy is “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation or combination”. Boxwell refers to her studio practice as a combination of what transforms and evolves in her studio and gives credit to influences like magic, fantasies, and fairy tales. The so-called ‘fairy tales’ that strike her interest though, are the stories of other worlds, the possibilities of Wonderland, Neverland, OZ or Narnia. Now Chelsea will create her own Narnia in this dark, little closet inside Shoebox Projects, more associated with the simple, contemporary definition of Alchemy; “the ability to transform something ordinary into something extraordinary.”
Boxwell comments, “Generally, I feel like I make art for myself, or ‘art for art’s sake.’ I just make what I want, and here, I’m going to make a sequin-filled closet because I can. But there is a goal in making this for viewers. I think it’s an optimistic kind of goal. To brighten up someone’s day by literally brightening something up that will make someone want to maybe take a minute away from being an ‘adult’ and just bask in something shiny.”
________________
The Closet is one of the sister galleries of the newly formed Shed Collective, a group of “alternative to alternative” galleries located in Los Angeles, Ca. These spaces are not your typical run-of-the-mill galleries. They are tiny, located in residential backyards and other unique crevices where very cool and innovative art happens.
This concept started out as a joke between the co-founders: Kristine Schomaker, Cathy Immordino, Sheli Silverio and Diane Williams, then recognized how much the art community needs more spaces to show art in fun and non-traditional spaces. So… they made it happen!
Boredom-as-Catalyst in Martin Cox’s Museum of Ennui at The Closet
(Los Angeles, California) – The Shed Collective was created when four artists decided to host art events in their sheds and closets. Coined “the alternative to alternative galleries” a group of sister galleries emerged. Inspired by spaces like “Elevator Mondays” and Gallery 1993 and believing that artists have to create their own opportunities to exhibit and curate, the first show opens at “The Closet” an annex in the Shoebox Project space at the Brewery on March 17th from 3-5pm.
As an experience, The Shed Collective attempts to capture the imagination in its challenging of existing modes of presentation of contemporary art. It responds both to the artist’s need to experiment and curator’s need to stage exhibits in unconventional spaces in order to engage new dialogues. Seen together, The Shed Collective fluidly explores both artistic and curatorial conditions in its varied spaces. Formed by Kristine Schomaker, Cathy Immordino, Sheli Silverio, and Diane Williams, the group aims to more efficiently enact the presence of art in varied communities throughout Los Angeles and capture a unique sense of diversity and character within each of its spaces and projects.
L.A.-based artist Martin Cox’s Museum of Ennui, another alternative project, will inaugurate The Closet as the first exhibition. Mr. Cox has long examined places where natural and man-made worlds meet. The artist’s capturing of landscapes, often abandoned or vacated shelters, and other artifacts inject the past within the present, as a site of imagination and evolution. Cox refers to these spaces of possibility and potential doom in his most recent project, The Museum of Ennui that began at Fjuk Art Center Residency in Iceland. Shifting modes from his own singular production, Cox reached out to a wide range of artists all over the world. The artist asked each participant to produce a piece of art in response to their own reflections of ennui. The word, Cox feels, has been wrongly perceived as a condition of debilitating despair and lethargy. The artist’s investigation brings historical and literary dimension in championing its connotations of boredom and melancholy as necessary to human invention throughout history.
Inspired by the museums often dedicated to a single subject or person dotted throughout Iceland, Cox developed the Museum of Ennui, as a mobile object that could alter in form and travel with all of its elements contained within its apparatus. In its second iteration for the Closet called Museum for One, the artist has added new additions from artists he is in contact with throughout the globe, as well as text and sound pieces. Though mostly digital photographs, Museum for One also includes drawings and mixed-media works. The piece’s title refers not only to The Closet’s architecture, who’s maximum capacity is one person, but the concept of ennui as a state of being solitary.
21 artists will be represented at the museum of ennui including visual, literary and sound artists from the US, UK, Iceland, Canada, India, Germany, and France have responded with small art works. Participating artists: Anna Amethyst, Cynthia Minet, Douglas Hill, Gary Edward Jones, Jessie Rose Vala, Julie Murray, Katrina Alexy, Kim Abeles, Kirthana Devdas, Kristine Schomaker, Maggie Lowe Tennesen, Marina Rees, Martin Cox, Nataliya Petkova, Röðull Reyr Kárason, Rose Portillo, Ryan Hill, Sally O’Reilly, Sara Jane Boyers, Scott MacLeod, Thora Solveig Bergsteinsdottir.
(Los Angeles, California) – Members of the San Diego Feminist Image Group, Shoebox Projects and the Swedish Group Krogen Amerika present artworks that explore multiple visions of what feminism is today, in the context of Southern California and Northern Europe. Artists address the complexity of gender equality through themes such as sexism, body image, class, race, politics, spirituality, domesticity, biology, and history.
This exhibition will travel to Stockholm, Sweden in May 2018.
The public is invited to attend the opening reception on Sunday, February 25, from 3-6pm at Shoebox Projects in the Brewery Arts Complex, Los Angeles. Artists will be present to engage the public.
The Feminist Image Group was formed in 2009. FIG is a coalition of San Diego visual artists who meet to discuss art, see exhibitions, and support one another in our careers. We work across many media, including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, installation, digital media and performance. The group has had exhibitions at San Diego Mesa College, Art Produce Gallery, Hyde Gallery at Grossmont College, Art San Diego Artfair, and has an upcoming exhibition at the Women’s Museum of California.
“Krogen Amerika” is the name of a Swedish printmaking group in the region of Östergötland in Sweden. The group works out of a a red wooden house from 1704 in the very center of the Swedish city of Linköping. During the years, it has functioned as a private home, a local pub, and a meeting place for emigrants to America (hence the name of the house, “Krogen Amerika”). Now it is a fully functional printmaking studio and art gallery. This artist-run gallery and studio space is partly funded by the city of Linköping. About 20 artists work here, and also together manage the space, with the support from the local community. The gallery exhibits artists from all over Sweden. Krogen America has exhibited as a group at Norrköpings Museum, Östergötlands Museum, Grafiska Sällskapet, the Palo Alto City Hall, Odense Konsthall Danmark, Berlin Kunstfactor.
Participating Artists:
Agneta Östlund, Amy Paul, Ann Olsen, Anna Stump, Anna Zappoli, Anne De Geer, Åsa Kvissberg, Berit Hammarbäck, Bhavna Mehta, Bibi Davidson, Caroline Färnström, Catherine Ruane, Cathy Immordino, Cecilia Uhlin, Chenhung Chen, Christina Ruthger,, Cindy Zimmerman, Dani Dodge, Daphne Hill, Diane Williams, Dwora Fried, Emily Blythe Jones, Emily Wiseman, Erika Lizée, Ginger Rosser, Grace Gray-Adams, Hannah Johansen, Hasti Radpoor, Helen Redman, Irene Abraham, Isabelle Nilsson, Jane Szabo, Janice Grinsell, Jeanne Dunn, Jennifer Bennett, Jenny Treece Jorup, JJ L’Heureux, Judy Christensen, Kathi McCord, Kathleen Mitchell, Kathy Miller, Kathy Nida, Kim Niehans, Kit Aaboe, Kristine Schomaker, Lauren Carrera, Lena Möller, Lena Wiklund, Linda Litteral, Linda Rae Coughlin, Lisa Hutton, Marina Holmberg, Moya Devine, Nilly Gill, Nurit Avesar, Petrina Cooper, Pia Göransson-Lie, Prudence Horne, Randi Leirnes, Randi Matushevitz, Samantha Fields, Samuelle Richardson, Sheli Silverio, Stacie Birky-Greene, Stephanie Bedwell, Susan Amorde, Susan Osborn, Susan T. Kurland, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Terrilynn Quick, Yasmine Diaz
Artist Dani Dodge takes people on a ride that ends in disaster — and possibly redemption — at Shoebox Projects
Screech. Bam. Then, eerie silence except for the sound of a hissing radiator.
There are more than 150 car crashes each day in Los Angeles and the number is rising.
Last year, artist Dani Dodge was one of those statistics. She was driving to a Mid-Wilshire gallery on the 101 when her Honda Element was sandwiched between two cars in a four-car pileup.
The experience left her with bruises, a broken car and a moment of clarity.
“The moments before, during and after the crash were surreal in so many ways,” Dodge said. “But in those moments after, as I sat in my car checking to see how badly I was bleeding, and wondering how hurt the people were around me, what also came to mind was: I survived. What does that mean? And how will I live my life differently?”
Before gingerly getting out of her Honda to assist others, Dodge had one more thought: “Remember this. Translate it into art.”
With her residency and show at Shoebox Projects, Dodge makes her first attempt to realize that promise to herself. The experimental work will force visitors to go on a journey that includes soft, stuffed car parts that fly through the air, video and sculpture rendered from wreckage.
“Life is short. And on L.A. freeways, it can be cut even shorter,” Dodge said.
In 2016, 260 people were killed in traffic crashes on Los Angeles city streets, an increase of almost 43 percent over the previous year. Early estimates show that number was likely higher for 2017.
This exhibition will remind participants of their own moments of clarity, and asks “What will you do with the rest of your life?”
___
About Dani Dodge
Dodge creates immersive, interactive environments and installations that incorporate video, paint and performance. For the past decade, her art has focused on themes surrounding identity, forgiveness and social justice. She is a member of the Durden and Ray collective in Los Angeles and A.I.R. gallery in New York. For more information about Dodge, please visit http://www.danidodge.com/
About Shoebox Projects
Shoebox Projects is an experimental art space in DTLA, where emerging and midcareer artists are given an opportunity to freely experiment with new ideas and directions for their practice. Founded by Kristine Schomaker, multimedia artist and director of Shoebox PR, Shoebox Projects intends to give artists a chance to recharge and renew their relationship with their work. http://www.shoeboxprojects.com
December 4, 2017 – January 14, 2018
Reception: Saturday, January 13, 2018, 3-6 pm
Shoebox Projects is pleased to announce “Embodied: St. Anthony and the Desert of Tears” a residency and exhibition featuring the work of Leonard Greco. Greco’s residency runs from December 4, 2017 – January 14, 2018 with a reception on January 14, 2018 from 3-6pm.
During his residency at Shoebox Projects Greco will create a new body of work in which he explores the relationship between the solitude of the artist in his/her studio and disruptions from the realities of life. The installation draws from the narrative of “St Anthony of the Desert” and the fact that St Anthony resisted supernatural temptations during his desert sojourn. In this exhibition, Greco will explore his own struggles, making mixed media works that reflect on the temptations of lust, boredom and the perils of isolation.
Leonard Greco is a painter, printmaker and puppet and doll maker. Largely self-taught, Greco has had a successful career as a decorative painter and muralist for over 25 years. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions including, Tomorrow Today at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2011); Clive Hicks Jenkins, Wales, UK (2012); Kaleidoscope, Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles (2014) and Out There, Gallery, 825, West Hollywood (2016). He had a solo show at Ave. 50 Gallery in 2017 and was also included in numerous exhibitions: Pop-Surreal Playhouse at Artshare LA; Stitch Fetish 5, The Hive, Los Angeles; Pickles Galore, curated by Linda Vallejo, Lamperouge Gallery, Los Angeles; The Faces Within, South Bay Contemporary, San Pedro and With Liberty and Justice for Some, Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles.
For more information on Leonard Greco please visit: leonardgreco.me
About Shoebox Projects
Shoebox Projects is a new experimental art space in DTLA, where emerging and mid-career artists are given an opportunity to freely experiment with new ideas and directions for their practice. Founded by Kristine Schomaker, multimedia artist and director of Shoebox PR, Shoebox Projects intends to give artists a chance to recharge and renew their relationship with their work.
Kim Abeles 3.9
CSUN Arts Alumni Small Works Show
Chelsea Boxwell
Feminism Now
Dani Dodge: Then/Now
