Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Realms Ako Castuera, Elsa Mora, and Yellena James. That’s Ako and her father pictured above. He’s got style. The exhibition went without a hitch. The work looks great and the combination of the three couldn’t have been any better. The surprise of the bunch is GR newcomer Elsa Mora who’s works amazed. They’re paper cuts, but as you can see below, some pieces are folded, and turned into a figurative version of objects. The cuts themselves are delicate and precious and anyone who takes the time to look will have their imaginations piqued. The pieces stun everyone. Here’s alink to all of the work.
.jpg)
That’s Elsa and her daughter. Kind of a touching photo as Elsa takes a look at Ako’s works.
[nggallery id=10]
Continue reading
[nggallery id=23] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Group art show opening Realms: New work by Yellena James, Ako Castuera, and Elsa Mora April 16 – May 11, 2011 Reception: Saturday, April 16, 6:30 – 10:00 p.m. GR2 2062 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025 gr2.net (310) 445-9276 Giant Robot is proud to host Realms, a group art show featuring new work by Yellena James, Ako Castuera, and Elsa Mora. Yellena James grew up and attended art school in Sarajevo. At the age of 18, she moved to the U.S. where she continued to study art and design. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Preferring pens, inks, markers, and acrylics, she combines complex abstract forms into dazzling images that take on lives of their own. Her colorful arrangements of organic shapes and tangled lines are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi. Each intimate world she creates seems to posses its own ethos and its own special ability to radiate emotion. For this show, she is creating around 30 pieces, including some collage, and pen and ink on vintage paper. Ako Castuera is a painter, sculptor, and textile artist. For Realms, she has turned her focus to work on paper with a variety of media, primarily using watercolor and gouache. The works continue her ongoing interest in land, the life within it, and the life it sustains. “Suburban tracts sprawl over hills and are at once picturesque, parasitic, and fragile. They coexist with dinosaur like animal forms that suggest prehistoric life,” she says. “Dinosaurs have always inspired awe and fed fantasies of the past. Their extinction forces contemplation of the future, of what’s in store for the land, animals, and humans all.” Ako studied at CCA, and is based in Los Angeles where she works as a writer/storyboard artist on the animated television show, Adventure Time. Elsa Mora is an award-winning multimedia artist currently living in Los Angeles. She graduated from The Professional School of Visual Arts in Cuba in 1990 and taught art for two years before deciding to become a full-time artist. Today, she is a highly regarded paper cutter whose impossibly detailed pieces challenge the distinctions between sculpture and illustration–in addition to humanity and nature–and all of her work is made one cut at a time by hand. For the show, she is preparing about 10 or 15 pieces, mostly paper cuts and also a few drawings that contemplate the idea of re-visiting childhood as an adult. Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as an online equivalent. The opening reception featuring many of the artists will take place from 6:30 – 10:00 on Saturday, April 16. For more information about the artists, GR2, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact: Eric Nakamura Giant Robot Owner/Publisher eric@giantrobot.com (310) 479-7311 ###
Continue reading
[youtube]HX74R4Cqiz0[/youtube] Here’s a short film about Ako Castuera. It’s part of a new video series I intend to pursue called, the Artist Friends Series. I shot, recorded, and edited this film, and got a great music contribution from Goh Nakamura and Tim Bulkley. I’ve known Ako for many years, and actually met her at her Art’s Crab Shack days in Oakland, CA in the mid-later 90s while she was enrolled at CCAC. She’s married to artist, Rob Sato and pursues work that involves nature, humans, and dinosaurs. Often using watercolors, she’s also a knitter and makes beautiful tapestry pieces, and that hat that’s resting on the back of the chair. She’s 1/3 of the Realms exhibition taking place this saturday at Giant Robot 2 in LA along with Elsa Mora and Yellena James. Some preview images are at gr2.net
Continue reading
‘ I asked old friend and artist Souther Salazar about his art show. He replied with this, “The show is about inclusion…falling in love, opening up and inviting someone else in…sharing the joy and excitement of adventures through the act of storytelling, and creating places where stories themselves can continue to develop and grow through other people’s eyes.” Yes, this sounds just like the art he’s been making since I met him as a recent Art Center grad years ago. GR: How has your move to a more smaller town changed your work? It always had a small town feel to it. Has it pushed it in a different direction? SS: Yeah, I think it’s had a big impact. Before, I guess the small town element came out more in the memories of exploring a neighborhood. But my whole world these days is not so much a small town or a neighborhood, but the world of all the life on the river, and my life with Monica and these animals. I have a lot of quiet time to observe, and to focus more on my favorite sources of inspiration. The elements of our life together in seclusion and the river world are in every piece. Click on them to see them larger! GR: Although disasters, war, and so many bad things happen in the world, and we’re bombarded by those images, how do they stay out of your work? SS: I’ve had escapist tendencies my whole life, and I know how to escape much better than I know how to create a dialogue. I try to make work that’s honest, if it’s not honest about the nature of the world, hopefully it is at least honest about the nature of my mind. I’ve tried to shape my escapism into something that actually contributes back to the world in a positive way. When I focus on the negative, it overwhelms me and I start to shut down, and I lose my motivation to create. But when I can go into my little turtle shell and have some freedom to explore and escape into my imagination, I am infinitely more productive and happy. Once I’m in that space, I can process and layer emotions and memories into the worlds I create, and only then do I actually feel like I can emerge with something I believe in that I can hold up and share with the world. I’ve always been that way. Like you said, we are bombarded. Sometimes, I feel like the only way to shout out something you believe in over all the noise and craziness is to provide a quiet argument for the things worth living for. I’m trying to create my quiet argument in the form of a tiny little bubble that floats over the battlefield. GR: Tell me about those pieces that look like terrariums? Your works have a free sweeping feeling, but some might say terrariums have a finite feeling. SS: Those pieces each started very...
Continue reading