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Santa Ana Art News

MEXICAN ARTIST, ALFADIR LUNA’S MAN OF CORN PRODUCTION & EXHIBIT, HITS SANTA ANA STREETS

4/20/2017

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Interview By Madeleine Spencer
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Taking Action Project: Building A Symbol Unity Through Art  “The Man of Corn Sculpture & Procession”

This exhibit is the artist’s vision of a unity project. The main piece, from which the exhibit derives its name, is a human scale sculpture of a man made of corn. It is a piece that has received widespread acceptance in the Mexico City where the original production occurred in 2014.

The “Taking Action Project” is an art production and exhibition piece to be performed in collaboration with Santa Ana’s artists, merchants and community. This creative production is being enacted in Santa Ana, CA. by the visiting Mexican artist Alfadir Luna, currently hosted by Grand Central Arts Center
 who will be an artist-in-residence for  a series of site visit to the city. His first site visit was from March 28 – April 18. Once  the final sculpture is completed, the produced sculpture will continue to tour in different cities in the United States after which it will come home again. (http://vorticidad.org/artist/alfadir-luna-2/).

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The inception of this project occurred when Luna was approached by a Los Angeles art Exhibition who asked Luna to tour the piece after witnessing the procession in 2014 in Mexico City. Luna’s first reaction was that merely touring the piece would not properly share the art works full intention. The work first had to be actively produced within the States since making the art is seen by Luna as an important part of the total process and is a process to be done collaboratively in community. The work itself of creating the work, the process that takes place is the action, not the object. Therefore, it was proposed to perform the action and build the sculpture “A Man of Corn” in Santa Ana, appealing to the city of Santa Ana as a historical, social and commercial center in Orange County that is in close relation with different towns in Mexico. The collective production of the art piece will, once completed, be transported to sites in Arizona, Queens, Chicago and San Francisco, after which the sculpture will finally return to the city of Santa Ana .

The artist stated that the productions acceptance and the request began with an invitation from a  Los Angeles Art exhibition  that made him realize that it was necessary to “fly out” and reach other people outside Mexico and since Santa Ana, CA is closely tied to Mexico with the largest number of Ex-Patriated Mexican  population in the world outside of the Country, this was the logical place for this production to occur.

Artist Biography
​Alfadir Luna Lives and works in Mexico City as an Artist and teacher. He studied visual arts at the National School of Plastic Arts (now Faculty of Arts and Design), UNAM. At the momento Alfadir has his Masters in Art and Environment from the same university. Among others, he is also accomplished in the studies in Aesthetics, Art and Violence in the School of Knowledge. His work has been shown in different public and private platforms, both in Mexico and abroad. He is currently a professor at the Arts and Crafts Factory of Orient, a unit of the Ministry of Culture of Mexico City. In the company, Teatro Línea de Sombra he is director of the Ruta Migrante project, and is an adviser and teacher in its educational program.
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Logan Creative Open Studio

12/11/2016

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If you don't know the Logan Creative...

WELCOME TO SANTA ANA'S INDUSTIAL ARTS COMPLEX

Article by Ryan Smolar
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A spiral staircase rises high above Logan Creative's gated entry, piquing interest and harkening back to the days when the property was a spiral staircase factory. Nowadays, the former factory is home to both the Blinking Owl Distillery and 11 talented artists who have found a working space in the heart of Santa Ana in mediums as diverse as metal, glass, wood, printmaking, paint, ceramic, photography, floral and graphic design. 

Logan Creative is an industrial arts hub tucked in the historic Logan neighborhood on quiet Santiago Street near the Santa Ana Regiontal Transit Center and Santiago Artist Lofts.

On December 10, 2016, the artists held an open studio show, much like an open studio event at the Brewery or Bergamont Station in Los Angeles,  welcoming visitors to see their art-making facilities and works on display. We had a great time touring the property, viewing the art, and speaking with the artists.
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Bret Price, metal sculpture

Bret Price never got the memo that you have to act like a grown-up to be a world-famous artist. Bret has an exuberant Robert Redford smile and he marvels at his work with the energy of a child. Raw talent  runs in the family: Bret's son Greg is a glass artist at Logan Creative, and Bret's father worked closely with Walt Disney. (Disney trivia: Disneyland's City Hall pays homage to Bret's father, "Buzz" Price, with the ornate window sign "Call on our Numbers Man for the Best Price!"). Bret's work has a well defined point of view. He works in metal pieces get as large as RVs that he twists and turns into frozen movement. Effortlessly twisted, giant red beams and spheres shocked out of frozen tracks of lighting make metal look like its as easy to bend as fuzzy pipe cleaners. But better yet, their playfulness and overwhelming scale puts a smile on your face as wide as Bret's. 
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Greg Price, glass sculpture

Greg Price is a prolific glass artist whose candy colored, multi-layered forms emulate nature exploding through glass, time and the fabric of reality itself. With the intensity of this work, it's hard to believe how laid-back he seems (and then you remember he's the son of Bret Price who really needs to write a book on work-life balance. I would read it!). Greg has expanded his space at Logan and it's well worth a visit just to check in with him and his amazing array of lava-like creations (especially at night when the lighting has the most impact).
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Hiromi Takizawa, glass

Hiromi Takizawa is an incredible glass artist whose work represents natural forms. Each of these rocks is the result of an inverted glass-making process. It takes 7 days to produce a single rock. Hiromi descirbes the process sort of like making lasagna: With lots of layering of naturalistic patterns and textures, she can create flawless representations of nature.
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Sal Perez, ceramics

Sal Perez, a ceramic artist and Board Member of the National Museum of Ceramic Arts, has been at Logan Creative since it launched. His workshop is filled with works of sublime beauty inspired by the Japanese aesthetics of wabi-sabi. (Most notably expressed in Japanese tea ware, wabi-sabi's elegance is said to represent three simple realites: that nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect.) Perez' cups balance precariously on natural forms, and seem to further represent the wabi-sabi principles by imparting what one scholar would call, "a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing."
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Jordan Christian, painting 

Jordan Christian is a classic abstract painter who loves the works of his 20th century forefathers. In the photos below, Jordan stands before a didatic work he created: He painted the left piece after returning from the desert, and the right while here in his urban home. Putting the two paintings next to each other creates an even more complex implant. Below, Jordan shows a piece called "Double Dipper," a piece he developed in two different periods. The final piece is a great representation of his work in that you can keep finding new meaning, beauty and expressions the longer you view it.
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Eli Woodridge, sculpture

Eli Woodridge is an incredible mixed-media creator. Though he claims he built it to entertain himself while the glue was drying on another project, his tree-form drum set is beautiful -- and apparently a very effective way to kill time while glue dries. The gorgeous wall in the background was constructed for the LAB Anti-Mall, and the cool lighitng fixtures were a collaboration between Eli's wife and Logan Creative studio-mate Hiromi Takizawa.
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Andrea Harris, printmaking

Andrea Harris is an incredibly talented printmaker, illustrator and educator. She has powerful lessons for any artist in being able to understand your role and duties to yourself and society as an artist. The insanely fun character creations from Andrea's recent show "You're Better with Butter," are all over her worksite as well as abstract multi-layered prints she mesemerizingly worked on with lightning speed. Andrea's husband and Santa Ana Arts Commissioner Mike McGee was hanging out in Andrea's studio, and shared wonderful stories of F Space Gallery and the Spurgeon Series (an event in the late 90s where dozens of artists took over unoccupied spaces in the Spurgeon Building for a showcase event). McGee hinted that a revival of this series for a third round would be fun.
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In Conclusion

Like Bergamont Station or the Brewery in Los Angeles, Orange County's Logan Creative is an intriguing workspace and collaboration hub. It is an amazing arts asset in its own right, and it adds another new dimension of work and space for Santa Ana's arts scene. We hope Logan Creative can do more on- and off-site events and that more people connect with these amazing artists and this incredible space. 
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Jorge Marín's Winged-Sculptures to land in Santa Ana

12/7/2016

5 Comments

 
Slideshow Photos from @alasjorgemarin

Public Art Installation Slated for Sep-Dec 2017

Article by Ryan Smolar
Thank the Consulado de México en Santa Ana for two years of persistence to secure Santa Ana as a destination for the world tour of Jorge Marín's contemporary sculpture series "The Wings of the City," 8 of which could be placed on public display in Downtown Santa Ana Fall/Winter 2017.

A proposal to bring the bronze neo-classical sculptures to Santa Ana was presented on Nov. 17th to the City of Santa Ana Arts & Culture Commission,  who recommended the Santa Ana City Council approve approximately $40,000 to bring the program here and create educational tie-ins, workshops and tours of the artworks for Santa Ana students and residents. 
After the final nod from the Santa Ana City Council, downtown art galleries, educators and arts organizations are encouraged to get in touch with Norma Edith Aguilar, Cónsul para Asuntos Comunitarios, Educativos y Culturales at the Consulado de México en Santa Ana and connect your  upcoming events and cultural programming for late 2017 with this amazing outdoor exhibit. 
"The Wings of the City" is part of an even bigger 2017 cultural exchange inititative entitled "The Year of Mexico in California" modelled after "The Year of Mexico in France" which is a French-Mexico exchange that presents the treasures of Mexico through hundreds of cultural events and programs. Examples of past events include a showcase of Diego Rivera's cubist works in Bordeaux and "The Trajineras of Xochimilco," where colorful craft boats of Mexico sail on the Seine River.
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Jorge Marín
Jorge Marín, the artist behind "The Wings of the City" was born in Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, a hometown he remembers like it was “Macondo,” the mystical town in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Starting in 2010, his largest and most representative exhibit, "The Wings of the City" has been on display on the Paseo de la Reforma, a European-style grand boulevard in Mexico City, Mexico. They are now on world tour and could be here from September to December 2017.
We are grateful and excited for Santa Ana's role to display "The Wings of the City" and our opportunity to springboard our own season of magical realism right here in Santa Ana with a little conjuring help from these momentous sculptures and "The Year of Mexico in California" umbrella.
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Partners are already lining up to coordinate events and programs with this exciting cultural exchange including the Downtown Santa Ana Artwalk, SanArts Conservatory at Santa Ana High School, Santa Ana Sites and the Downtown Santa Ana Restaurant Association.

Visit 
jorgemarin.com.mx for more information about the artist
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