2010-02-28 00:42

Interview With Peter Frank  

About "Reaching Inside" Competition Results

Lark: What is different in this competitions and what impressed you in it? 

Peter Frank:  What impressed me in this competition is that we have very complex thinkers: Kaloust, Savva-Kornyshev, Gwen Samuels, Jasmin Etemadi. They are willing to break away from generic practice in order to respond to the contemporary world using different media and techniques.

In Savva Kornyshev’s case it’s the complexity and rhythm of his imagery, influenced by his Eastern European sensibility.

In Kaloust’s case it is his graphic power and the intensity of his imagery, the way he mixes his media, using photo, painting and sculpture techniques.

In Gwen Samuels’ case it is her graphic rhythm and interesting technique mixing photography, computer techniques and textile. This is something she did not invent, but she has made it her own. It’s strong as image and as composition, and it is clever.

Anne Marie Rousseau uses in her drawings a very simple technique, but realizes very complex imagery, density and movement. Also, I like her sensous textures and the uggestion of the organic not being organic.

Jasmin Etemady’s strength is in her strong combination of painting and collage. She is a complex thinker with a powerful but at the same time subtle political edge. Beauty is not enough, but it is very important, and Etemady’s images are also strangely beautiful.

Joshua Elias’ abstract painting is at once gestural and controlled, driven as much by a rich color sense as by a sense of formal dynamics. His formula is hardly unique, but his realization of this by-now traditional approach is particularly distinctive. It simply doesn’t look quite like anyone else’s.

There’s another Joshua in this mix, Joshua Y’Barbo, but his work could hardly be more different than Elias’. Y’Barbo works with technical, technological, evidently computer-generated imagery, speaking of the way we try to quantify and even commodify our lives. But he doesn’t argue against its lack of humanity as he tries to humanitize it, to bring it down – or up – to our scale.

I was quite taken with Jolanta Badyna-Budny’s grainy, mysterious images, perhaps because they take a surrealistic view of the urban landscape,.but I think even more because they deliberately confuse dream and reality, above-ground and underground, even photography and hand-rendered technique. In her Kafkaesque world, nothing is as it seems.

Natasha Kostan’s abstractions are colorful and rhythmic, like Joshua Elias’, but she orders her non-objective world along much more architectonic lines than he does, and her use of collage enlivens both her surfaces and her compositions.

Monika Steiner practices a less aggressive kind of abstraction, one rooted in nature and preferring organic tones to rainbow hues. There is a touch of surrealism here, but it is as much in the atmosphere of gentle mystery as it is in the sense of metamorphosis.

Kaleeka Bond’s handsomely described naturalism places real people in real contexts. In fact, they seem a little bit more real than they did last year, a little more contemplative and a little less active. Maybe she is moving away from theater and more towards philosophy.

2010-03-04 15:27

Events Our Artists Participate In

"A Month of Music"

"A Month of Music" at Liz's Loft started with a reception on Feb. 27 for the new show which will run during the 4 weeks during which there will be six concerts of all different kinds of music, one each week. A Month of Music, "is a fusion of musically inspired art and live musical performances from a range of genres each Wednesday throughout the month of March.

The show was great. The art was brilliant and complex. Juan Rosenfeldt created a ravishing construction I particularly liked, which featured rhinestones reflecting lights onto the seductive body of a naked violin. Lark contributed four stunning assemblages inspired by the Pasadena Symphony in its glory days.

The crowd was very young and glittering, whatever there ages happened to be. Chemistry between strangers was happening all over the place, Liz definitely is a gold standard for finding artists who each has an individual personality which coexists with and fuels their integrity about process, materials and message. There was a series of sun-baked landscapes by Antonio Guerrero featuring giant guitars stuck in the sand that not only had the kind of reassuring iconic power that beginning collectors feel comfortable with but a peculiar sense of architectural space and telemetry that speaks eloquently to the human need for solitude.

March 3rd – An Evening of Moroccan Bliss  

March 10th – An Evening of Chamber Music & Opera  

March 17th – Brazilian Jazz Night 

March 24th – A Night of Country and Western 

March 31st – An All-Star Rhythm & Blues Revue

The doors will open at 7:00 pm and the cover for all of the events will be , or only if you bring a beverage or dish to share. This is a limited capacity event, so RSVPs are suggested. Call 323.939.4403 

453 S. La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036

By Laurence Vittes

2010-02-21 16:33

Represented Artists Show

Closing Reception:
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 6 - 9 p.m.

Contemporary Art that Sparkles with Originality
Live Music by SangomaBeat
You will see artwork of our most acclaimed represented artists and hear them discuss their artistic process.

Phantom Galleries, 344-346 E. 3rd Street,
Long Beach, CA 90802

2009-12-15 18:12

Holiday Celebration

At Bleicher/Golightly Gallery

one of our Larkgallery Online artists - Cristina Natsuko Paulos was chosen by one of our jurors - Om Navon - to represent her art in the Bleicher/Golightly Gallery in Santa Monica. Congratulations Crisitina! That's what she wrote to us:

2009-12-09 02:39

2009-11-07 18:27

Hidden Treasures

Second Reception at Phanthom Galleries, Long Beach

Dear Artists,

We have the second Hidden Treasures reception at Phanthom Galleries
104 E.3rd Street Long Beach, CA 90802 on November 12th from 8-10 pm
and will be happy to see you all!

With so much happening in LA, we thought a good way to entice you to visit us, would be to have live music and dancing.
And if you feel like bringing   something to add to the potluck we would all be thrilled.

Please visit our new Events page to see the photos from the first reception.

Look forward to seeing you.

Lark Gallery Online Team

2009-10-21 00:23

For immidiate release: November 7th, 2009

LarkGallery Online announce the new online competition Reaching Inside and the winners of Hidden Treasures competition

"Reaching Inside"
A new LarkGalleryOnline international competition

We are all experiencing the increasing number and often immediate impact of daily events in our lives. How do creative people deal with it. From where do they derive their inspiration?

We think that artists always reach within themselves to tap their creative process even as they are depicting landscape or outside events.
The inner filter through which artist look at the world make each piece of art unique and therefore irreplaceable.

We invite artists to respond to our new theme Reaching Inside by sending us new submissions.
The winners of this competition will have an opportunity to showcase their art online and in brick and mortar exhibition
sponsored by Phantom Galleries.

The winners of "Hidden Treasures" competition

* Monika Steiner, first place

* Kaleeka Bond, second place

* Vered Galor, third place 

Each of the three winners will be featured on www.LarkGalleryOnline.com and receive an individually-designed web with one year's free web hosting from Tron Center. Five percent of the funds raised have been donated to The Dreaming Zebra Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides young low-income artists with tools and resources to explore and develop their creativity.

The top 10 artists from the "Hidden Treasures" online competition and LarkGallery Online Represented Artists
were invited to present their winning entries at our first brick and mortar exhibition
"Hidden Treasures" by Phantom Gallery at 104 E. 3rd Street, Long Beach, CA 90802.

We are proud to have received entries from so many talented and highly skilled international artists in different media. It made judging the competition both rewarding and difficult for our jurors:

* Peter Frank, Chief Editor of THE magazine

* Liza Simone, Phantom Galleries

* Airom Bleicher, Bleicher/Golightly Gallery

* Liz Gordon, The Loft at Liz Gallery

* Anna Meliksetian, Anais Gallery at Bergamot Station

* Dawne Camera, "Dreaming Zebra Foundation"

The following artists received honorable mention: Peter Bill, Lesley Krane, Tim Gratkowski, Alexander Saibedinov, Alexander Osipov, Thomasin Dewhurst, Helen Youngblood, Cynthia Rogers, Vladimir Avdeev, Djibril Ndoye, Nicole Duet, Helen Berger, Christina Paulos , J Natasha Kostan.

Please click here to visit our website for announcements.