Animal Expert, 2022
oil on canvas
11 X 16 inches
Opening Reception: Sunday 3- 5 PM
November 6 – December 18, 2022
AVA WOO KAUFMAN | SELVAGE
June 19 through July 31
Opening Reception: Sunday, June 19. 4-6 PM
South Willard is pleased to present the work of Point Reyes-based artist
Ava Woo Kaufman (b. 1986, San Francisco) in her first solo exhibition with the gallery.
–
When I’m in the air I am weightless. Wind pierces through
each interstice of the feathers. Find weight in the water.
Find fish, find krill. Find plant and sand. Find earth
when I’m feeling brave. Dig dig. In the earth with my mouth
in the air with my nose. Friends come friends go. Make formations
find direction. Clouds are sweet. Cover me shield vision.
Bit of fear bit of pleasure. Not knowing where you’re going
as you charge through the sweet. Dry is clear and clear is day.
When you see the forest for what is laid. Leaves and twigs
and spines. Find some miraculous pool. Seeing my eyes,
glinted reflection of air and blue. Find new pool. See eyes.
Find spine. Return to air.
–
The work on view stems from a decade-long practice of engaging with found textiles and materials. To put that into perspective: the undulating rock formations found in Central Park are 500 million years old; the Coast Miwok inhabited tamál-húye (Point Reyes) for 10,000 years.
Woven tapestries constructed on Walco Indian Bead Looms* salvaged from Los Angeles thrift stores by her grandmother, Josephine Woo, are mounted onto palm-sized armatures made of materials ranging from book-making board to bamboo from her mother’s garden. Motifs range from transport graphics to dragonflies: “Lily”, a trucking company named after the founder’s mother; “Young” references the Young Brothers logo, belonging to the monopolistic shipping company that touches almost every product sold on the Hawai’ian islands; dragonflies, appearing in art from haiku to the Pueblo Isleta cross, are depicted here as the adder (referring to the snake’s similar pattern) and darner (referring to the mending needle). Centered within the space is a tapestry work, “Untitled (ritual bronze, seasons)”, 2022, affixed to a bronze armature inspired by ancient Chinese ritual bronze vessels. Accompanying these sculpture works is a series of linoleum block prints in sumi ink made during spring 2022 in New York City. Taken as a whole the exhibition is a meditation on the ways in which vestigial materials, objects, and histories of the past, present, and future shape our relationship to a changing landscape of consumption and production.
* A New York company based in the now defunct Manhattan bead alley, the looms were marketed to Americans during the Depression to start projects at home. Beading work had already been practiced extensively by Indigenous Americans using porcupine quill beads, and eventually glass beads that were traded into the U.S. via Italy.
June 18th, 2022
RAVI JACKSON
JAMES HARRISON
3 – 6 – 4 -17
Opening Reception Sunday
March 6, 2022. 3- 5 PM
This is a two person exhibition of paintings comprised of oil, canvas, ink, stretched paper, watercolor, wood, latches, doorstops, acrylic, hinges, tile and paper.
March 5th, 2022
Sitting, 2021
oil on linen
48 x 68 inches
JAMES IVESON
JANUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 27, 2022
Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don’t try for it. When you arrange, you fail.
The profoundest order is revealed in what is most casual.
– Fairfield Porter
January 10th, 2022
Hydroplaning / Lights Off / Psilocybin Stems, 2021
acrylic paint, gouache, watercolor and pencil
40 x 36 inches
South Willard is pleased to present new paintings by Christopher Garrett. This will be his first exhibition in Los Ángeles.
A 180 minute mix tape compilation made up of 1983 – 1988 California new age and composer cassettes will be playing for the duration of the opening made by @kyepotter
Free Poster for first 100 visitors
CHRISTOPHER GARRETT
BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE
November 20 , 2021 –
January 9, 2022
South Willard is pleased to present Christian Vargas’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.
Christian Vargas’ vessels, scepters and busts are embedded with memories of assimilation, deeply influenced by being a first generation Mexican-American and a child of farm laborers in the San Joaquin Valley of California. He repurposes and reinterprets existing and found objects, creating layers of meaning and symbolism. Religious icons, pop culture knick-knacks, and childhood superhero figures are all given equal consideration as objects of value. The way in which Vargas places objects together and collages ephemera is deeply connected to his mother’s non-hierarchical home altar aesthetic. A religious icon can be placed next to a toy — both having a place due to their personal importance and the memories they evoke. His collaging of objects also derives from a place of necessity, resourcefulness and ingenuity — rooted in his father’s creation of utilitarian tools made of scrap metal and discarded objects. When layered with humor, Vargas’ sculptures turn into cultural oddities that transition between identities — becoming a reflection of his bi-cultural relationship to objects.
The exhibition will run from
August 14 through September 26, 2021
I am afraid that you are mistaken in the matter of my tails for I have never worn less than two or more than twenty-four at the one time and together, notwithstanding anything I have confided in you this fine morning.
Your personal difficulty will be resolved when I tell you that my second-best day-shirt is fitted with two tails, the one longer than the other, thus enabling me to intermix the physical comfort of two shirts on a cold day with the ceremonial probity of four tails about my bottom (the four of them moving in unison in my trousers when I waggle my hair-tail).
I never permit myself to forget that truth is an odd number and that my own personal numerals, the first and the last and all intermediaries, are inevitably even.
I have frequently missed these small things which are necessitous to personal comfort-my glasses and the black glove I use for moving the hob when it is hot, these are two examples.
It is not impossible that my kangaroo has hidden them in her pouch, for by the hoke there was never a child there.
– Flann O’Brien, “At Swim-Two-Birds” (1939)
January 10th, 2022
South Willard is pleased to present an exhibition by Roger Herman.
Slab rolled ceramic tables painted with glaze are placed throughout the space at various heights
Two large oil paintings titled The Ocean (1979) surround the tables on the walls.
Opens Saturday, April 17 through June 7, 2021
April 16th, 2021
Flintridge Hilltop, 2021
Oil on Linen
11 X 14 inch
JP MUNRO FEB 13 – APRIL 4, 2021 consists of six oil paintings on linen and one oil painting on board.
These pictures are composed of the foothills and mountains surrounding Los Angeles. Dense chaparral shrub forests with oak woodlands, gradually climbing to pine and fir-covered slopes create a habitat unique to Southern California.
JP Munro lives and works in Los Angeles
February 12th, 2021
Chumash Chair, 2020
Adobe and Acrylic Paint
24 X 34 inches
November 14, 2020 through January 17, 2021
Downhearted Duckling Organized by Ryan Preciado
Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Mario Ayala, rafa esparza, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.
“Will you eat me Mr. Pussycat, please eat me, I’m serious”
Downhearted Duckling,
(Tom and Jerry), 1954
Downhearted Duckling is a personal offering by Ryan Preciado, inspired by his family history and fueled by an ongoing relationship to the violence of assimilation in the United States.
Through his creative practice, Ryan reconciles the apparent erasure of his Mexican and Chumash identities with the very real power of recovery and return.
While this erasure is evident in the exclusionary nature of the mainstream art world and its associated spaces, this exhibition is a conscious counterpoint, a gathering of artists that have taken unabashed modes of representation, abstraction, and experimentation and placed them at the epicenter of an honest new canon.
– rafa esparza
Throughout my life I have been culturally trying to piece myself together.
I would like to give the opportunity for others to explore themselves as I have through these artists .
To be proud of who they are.
– Ryan Preciado
November 22nd, 2020
Drink, 2020
Oil on board mounted to linen
11 3/4 X 11 inches
JAMES IVESON PAINTING
September 1 through October 15, 2020
Questions from Daisy Sheff
August 2020
In our Graphite Journal chat, you said you were interested in “families.” Does having a daughter change your practice/subject matter? Is that sweet Norma in Drink?
Yes, that’s Norma in Drink. She was holding a cup whilst watching a tv show and she let it balance on her nose. This gave me enough time to draw her. I never set out to make a drawing. I draw when there’s time to draw, when everyone is preoccupied, when I’m not needed for anything. The drawings I get most attached to and take to the studio seem to happen when I feel fortunate and quite literally happy.
Although the faces aren’t defined, I have the feeling that these are of specific individuals/actual events— is this true?
The paintings are very accurate to me in their description. I think the definition of a person comes from their whole body, not their face. I think likeness begins with posture, which is formed out of personal gestures––how a person sits on a chair, the shape of their elbow or shoulder in repose.
They have such specificity while relying on color blocks- could be called “abstraction.”
Yes, the paintings have ended up here. I am sensitive to what can’t happen in terms of illusion and these color blocks are what get left. There are a lot of changes that take place in these paintings. A sort of timeline is evident in their textures, edges, and underpainting. The process is technically illogical in terms of the craft of painting. They are quite clumsy.
South Willard will re open regular hours 12 – 5 Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
as of September 4.
Also by appointment 323 683 1376
Opening Reception: SATURDAY
March 7, 2020
3:30 – 5 PM
This exhibition of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess will include stoneware and drawings.
Entryway, which is comprised of 79 stoneware tiles will also be exhibited. This was the entryway to Michael and Magdalenas home for over twenty years. The stoneware tiles edges are exposed and exhibited in the exact arrangement as their home. Magdalena built Entryway over a 9 year period from 1990 to 1999
Magdalena will be in attendance Saturday
Entryway, 1990 – 1999
Stoneware and Glaze
40 3/4 x 44 3/4 inches (79 individual tiles)
Nina De Creeft Ward
Challenger, 2013
Ceramic and Glaze
17 X 12 inches
South Willard is pleased to announce an exhibition of ceramics by Nina De Creeft Ward titled Animal Ties
The exhibition will run from January 5 though February 10, 2020
There will be an opening reception Sunday, January 5 from 3 to 5 pm.
Nina De Creeft Ward grew up in Ojai and Santa Barbara, California in the 1940’s and 50’s.
De Creeft got her first horse when she was 12. She grew up caring for horses, goats and a variety of other animals, as well as being surrounded by the animals indigenous to California. Animals have always been the primary focus in her work and have been the constant thread throughout. Her parents Alice and Jose De Creeft were both artists and Nina never considered being anything other than an artist. In 1956 De Creeft went to Scripps Colege under Paul Soldner and learned to Raku-fire her work, a method she uses to this day. She completed her MFA in sculpture from Claremont in 1964.
De Creeft Ward currently lives and works in Santa Barbara and continues to build ceramic works of the animals she loves. Her most recent works have been ceramic reliefs of coyotes and deer in their native habitat in the Santa Ynez Mountains in Santa Barbara.
Nina De Creeft Ward was featured in a retrospective at the Beatrice Wood Center in Ojai, California and is included in Primal Nature: Animalia by Women in Post-War Claremont, curated by Susan M. Anderson at the Claremont Museum of Art.
Ihlongozo, 2019
Stoneware and Glaze
31 X 16 X 16 inches
WATHINTA IMBHUKODO, WATHINTA ABAFAZIL
IF YOU STRIKE A WOMAN, YOU STRIKE A ROCK
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 10. 3 – 5 PM
November 7th, 2019
An Exhibition of Paintings
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 22, 4-6 pm
Through November 3, 2019
“to look at it is more
than it was.”
Extract from Robert Creeley “The Immoral Proposition ”
September 18th, 2019