Represented Musicians & Poets

This is a music and poetry program. Listen to the recordings →


In this exhibition

30 works by 18 artists

Lee Balan

1 work

Artist

Lee Balan

About

Born: Detroit, MI

Schools: Wayne State University; University of California

at Long Beach; Arizona State University.

B.A. in Art and Sociology.

Graduate Certificate in Counseling.

I have been working and exhibiting as a fine artist for twenty years. I am also a poet and performance artist.

For fifteen years, I worked as the Director for a mental health program. I emphasized the benefits of art and writing to help clients control symptoms. I developed and facilitated several art and writing workshops for mental health consumers.

Since 2003, I have devoted my full attention to art. I work in collage, assemblage, painting and digital imagery. My work has been featured in several Palm Springs galleries including Evocative Arts, M-Modern, The Vault, and Gallery Mystere. I was represented by the Karen Long Gallery in Long Beach, CA. My newest art combines both assemblage and digital prints. Recently I've also experimented with more traditional abstract painting.

Artist statement

In 2004, I was finally able to realize my goal of creating a Composite Art. Due to advances in computer technology, I could create composite images from my mind’s eye by altering pictures found on the Internet, on TV, and in movies. My most recent series of work is based on my interpretation of "Structuralism." I am interested in exploring the underpinnings of reality. World views are based on Linguistic Structuralism. Architecture is also a "structure" that influences culture and society. In my new work I deconstruct architectural forms and reassemble the basic elements into structures. I'm creating imaginary cities using digital imagery and creating wall reliefs.

Artist

Launa D. Romoff

Artist statement

I find my material everywhere, because, by working in this medium, I believe you learn to “see” the beauty of the discarded and turn it into “art”.

I present my reality in two different manifestations. They are either internal, elusive, suggestive or external, dynamic and engaging. They reflect my duality, which encompasses both.

“How I use the material at hand is often more important than the material itself”. – Kurt Schwitters

Artist

Faina Kumpan

About

Faina Kumpan was moved from Odessa, Ukraine as a political refugee. She graduated from the Theatrical Art College in Odessa. In her not very exciting childhood, she was dreaming of other worlds. She was obsessed with science fiction.

Her emigration to New York opens the new opportunities. She worked as a designer and changed a lot of different professions. After moving to LA she returned to her love for art and Science Fiction. She attended numerous classes at UCLA Extension and many private workshops. She exhibited in many important galleries in LA and NY. She creates a fantasy world that is a once surreal and abstract, whimsical and vibrant. Whether creating painting or sculptures, her subjects are mystical creatures from another world, like fantastic figures stepping out of the pages of the futuristic fairy tale. She was participating in many group exhibitions.

She was awarded as a creative artist by City of LA for working together to celebrate Los Angeles as Creative Capital of the world. Her works are in many private collections.

Artist statement

My art is imagination of created things which do not exist in everyday life. The purpose of my life - is creation of the fantasies. I was always attracted to science fiction books and movies. I put my images of my fantasy’s creatures in paintings and sculptures.

Artist

Lisa Bahouth

About

Lisa Bahouth studied art at Rhode Island School of Design and received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture. The award-winning artist and concert pianist exhibited her work in New York City before moving to Los Angeles.

Her art encompasses ideas about architecture, structure(s), habitat and space shaped harmoniously in a continuous process inspired by musical composition.

As she puts it in her own words: "Painting is my primary laboratory where I explore concrete and vague ideas simultaneously, in a formal structure that hopefully holds some play and whimsy. Although my work has the appearance of abstraction, it is not non-objective; conveying references to rooms, interiors and conceptual spaces. Paintings, drawings and installations often refer to each other as I build upon groups of work. "

In her more recent works, she has been exploring the creation of biomorphic shapes and word compositions merging into an all-encompassing metaphysical style.

Bahouth’s work is currently on exhibit internationally in Japan, Russia, Armenia, and the US.

Artist statement

Nature inspires me, from walking in the Italian forests surrounding Florence, to primordial volcanic landscapes in Japan to hikes in the hills of the Santa Monica mountain range. I’m interested in the natural world that we view and the relationship to the metaphysical space of the inner world.

In my art the idea of journey and process merge – daily drawings that map a mindscape and idea process in automatic drawing that reflects walks in nature and things seen visually in the inner and outer world combining.

My art also encompasses ideas about structure(s), habitat and space shaped harmoniously in a continuous process inspired by musical composition.

Painting is the laboratory where I explore ideas in a formal structure that holds play and whimsy. I’m exploring biomorphic shapes and word compositions which reflect an environment I live in presently that reminds me of my childhood.

Artist

Helen Berger

About

Helen Berger was born in London, England to Russian émigré parents. It was a family of musicians/painters/singers and she grew up surrounded by these artists, making her sensibilities pretty much pre determined. She has been an artist all her life. After years of family influence and guidance, independent study in Paris, London and Los Angeles, assisting established artists and attending numerous workshops, she considers herself self-taught.

After using many different mediums over the years - wood, paper, clay, found objects, fabric and the camera. – Helen then settled into working with wood, paper and acrylic.

Her previous process was to layer paint, painted and cut paper onto a wood panel, continuing in multiple sanded layers and finishing with a distinct application of paint to emphasize the negative spaces. This work started out as a chaos of color, she challenged herself to recreate a mood of coherence, clarity and harmony on the panel.

Her latest series, although still on wood panel and using vellum, gesso and acrylic, blends the simplicity of repetitive shape with simple color and textural contrasts to create a play between tension and harmony.

Artist statement

My new series is much evolved from my previous works. In the past, although I had a feeling of the intangible and of freedom when I worked, my quest was to cull the vivid chaos of color and forms by repeatedly sanding and repainting many layers of paper and paint into a more peaceful, organized surface. It was an expression of the infinite complexities that I found surrounding me, and my desire to tame them.

Rather than being spurred (on) by a categorical statement, I was following an unformed artistic thought through to the end, feeling freedom and energy from spontaneity, the love of form, composition and color and the nostalgia that these energies stimulated. Color, form and composition, and the harmony their combination can elicit, vibrate as a grouping of musical notes might do and touch the nostalgic thinking that first brought such experience into my sights – my musical and artistic family. They were the major creative influence in my life and provided the personal trials of the complex and puzzling world I grew up in.

In my latest series I have taken this need to embrace and contain my memories a step further. I have develop/nurtured/ my reactions to color and form to another level. I try to capture what I feel is the essence of my creative experience.

I render my love of form, color and composition down to it’s minimum and present them in a purer, simpler context – the grid. No less emotionally complex but perhaps calmer, subtler if a little more intricate and peppered with a touch of subterfuge…