Images courtesy of ArtExchange.
For 10 years, local artist Joy Shannon created life-size large-scale works of art without a second thought. Now, for the past two years, her Celtic and Nordic-mythology inspired pieces have shrunk to the approximate size of a fist.
“Scale has taught me a lot in my work over the years,” she said. “For almost 10 years, I was creating large-scale figurative linocut and woodcut pieces. For about the last two years, my work as a tattoo artist has found me totally switching gears to smaller and smaller design.”
Now, she said her pieces are created in “two extremes,” from life-size figures to “small designs that could be tattooed on a figure itself.”
Shannon will showcase a series of large and small-scale black and grey watercolor and ink paintings, tattoo flash style, investigating ancient mythologies. Her work (pictured left) will be presented within the ArtExchange’s (ArtX) newest exhibit, Large Scale // Small Scale at the Room + Border studio gallery. Work by studio artists Noel Madrid and Rebecca Giesking will join Shannon’s art during other Second Saturday programming on June 13.
Giesking, (work pictured right) who plans to showcase her larger paintings with smaller, intimate works based on landscapes and online media, hopes the exhibition will help the viewer consider a different way of looking at their everyday surroundings.
“Scale is an important aspect of drawing and painting, offering the viewer two very different experiences,” she said. “By contrasting large-scale landscapes with small intimate paintings, we hope the viewer will walk away with the desire to pause and take a closer look at their surroundings while having a broader view of the environment around them.”
Madrid will showcase works-in-progress of landscape-based abstracted paintings exploring the color and composition of the Long Beach community.
ArtExchange CEO Nicolassa Galvez said each artist featured in the studio gallery has a distinct style that translates into a balanced art viewing experience with something for everyone to enjoy.
“It’s fascinating to see how scale informs and influences their works differently,” she said.
Also featured during the “artXwalk” this Saturday is the continuation of The New Familiar, curated by ArtX studio artist Steven Frost, an exhibit showcasing works by artists who participated in the 2014 Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE) residency program in rural Steuben, Wisconsin. The New Familiar will be on display until June 18.
PRINT SALE // ART SALE at the Collective Print Studio will give visitors an opportunity to collect affordable, original works by local artists, while several free and family-friendly activities including a SEED BOMB workshop will be held in the ArtX Classroom.
Two other activities, Illuminated Paper Circuits and Circuit Bend Basics will teach guests how to create a low-power light system for an art piece, drawing, card or folded form and conduct a hands-on exploration of battery powered toys.
Studio artists Kenny McBride, Christine Fuchs, Leah Dixon, J. Renee Tanner and John Thatcher Montgomery, Jr. will open their spaces to show off new and in-progress works of art.
The monthly celebration of visual art, each Second Saturday at Third and Elm in Long Beach’s East Village Arts District from 6:00PM to 10:00PM, is a free event, open to the public, and full of festivities.