San Pedro Galleries Bloom with Expanded Arts Events

Art in San Pedro is in full bloom as spring approaches. Three notable exhibitions will be on view in time for the First Thursday ArtWalk at Michael Stearns Studio @ The Loft — Shifting Ground and TransVagrant at Gallery 478 — Marie Thibeault — Drawings. Additionally, Cornelius Projects continues Dust & Wisps as it celebrates new literature by the exhibitions’ artists. Each gallery will present works by local artists and one, formerly of Los Angeles but who now resides in Northern California. 

Cornelius Projects

DUST & WISPS, Drawings and ceramics by Michelle Seo, paintings and ceramics by Daniel Porras

Celebrate the release of Michelle Seo’s comic book DUST and Daniel Porras’ show zine, and the continuation of the exhibition, which has been extended through March 26. 

Daniel Porras and Michelle Seo share a world of color and characters that reflect their respective cultures and experience: Porras elusive and ghostly, Seo maximal and detailed.

Michelle Seo’s work balances societal class rage against the happiness and love of the nuclear family. “Korean” in approach but with an “American” core, she turns her reality into a universal fiction with animal figures symbolic of naïveté such as the bunny and teddy, and the turtles and fishes of Korean tradition.

Seo’s DUST series is an homage to a long-time admiration for the art of comics. DUST is concerned with what happens after death and is her response to not only the ongoing pandemic, but also to her living together with her grandmother suffering from dementia.

Daniel Porras’ work presents anthropomorphic creatures that are engaged in both mundane routines and magical rituals, inspired by ancient Peruvian art. These seductive creatures are modeled after fertility effigies, ceramic vessels and tropical bird plumage. In his latest series, Wisps, Porras imagines a world melting into itself, where creatures emerge and fuse with their surroundings, inviting us to mourn with them, partake in sacred ceremonies, and battle demons.

Both Porras and Seo are Angels Gate Cultural Center Studio artists in San Pedro.

In alignment with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s policies for indoor public places, face masks are required for all visitors, regardless of vaccination status. 

Time: The exhibition is viewable on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 to 5 p.m. or by appointment.

Cost: Free

Details: 310-266-9216; corneliusprojects@gmail.com

Venue: Cornelius Projects, 1417 S. Pacific Ave., San Pedro

Michael Stearns Studio

Shifting Ground Mirabel Wigon, an exhibition of landscape paintings 

These paintings are inspired by Wigon’s immediate surroundings and address the abject setting of the aging industrial landscape, the growing expanse of the American urban-scape and resulting environmental issues.

Michael Stearns said initially, in a conversation he had with Marie Thibeault, Professor Emerita of Art at CSULB, the idea to have this exhibition took hold before the pandemic and before everything subsequently shut down. Fast forward nearly two years, as things are beginning to reopen, Stearns and Thibault revived their plans, this time specifically to show Wigon’s works.

“She is a gifted young artist,” Stearns said. “She recently graduated and went on to become assistant professor of Art at California State University, Stanislaus which is very unusual.”

Stearns said her paintings are colorful, very large and exciting. 

“They are very much a part of San Pedro with the industrial complex and nature,” Stearns said.  “The internal and external energy that moves back and forth combines nicely in her compositions with lots of texture. You get swallowed by them.”

Mirabel Wigon’s large-scale landscape paintings depict a vast and complex technological sublime. 

Wigon writes, “The landscape is a stage for the drama of human activity. Painting is a container, a conglomeration of material signs that act as iconographic representations of  a particular historic moment. Through these paintings, I explore my place, and space, questioning modernist notions of progress and reflecting on the inherent instability in the built and natural Landscape.”

The paintings depict an imagined and constructed landscape, which is fractured and unstable.

Wigon states, “The urban system is in a state of continuous change, altering the way we move through – and understand – our physical location and socioeconomic status in relation to the environment. I am particularly focused on the energy infrastructure that fuels this continual growth and change in the LA area. These energy structures are the epitome of modernist notions of success, advancement  and progress. This body of work depicts the dichotomy between this notion of progress and the environmental crisis.”

Upon close inspection, the paintings’ visual elements are repeated, fragmented and coalesce through various painting strata. The resulting image creates a condition in which the viewer cannot pinpoint which layer came first. 

Mirabel Wigon’s works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions both regional and national. Her recent work has been exhibited in (Per)Mutations at the Gatov Gallery in Long Beach, Insights at the Kleefeld Contemporary in Long Beach, Now Trending at the Palos Verdes Art Center in Palos Verdes, Made in California at Brea Gallery in Brea and Painted 2021: 5th Biennial Survey at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Wigon is assistant professor of art at California State University, Stanislaus where she teaches drawing and painting. 

The exhibition will have a soft opening on March 3, during the San Pedro First Thursday Artwalk. Shifting Ground will be on view from March 5 to April 15. The gallery is open by appointment only. The artist talk will also be broadcasted via Instagram Live on the artist’s Instagram handle @mirabelwigon.

Time: Artist’s talk, 1 p.m. and reception from 2 to 5 p.m. March 5. 

Details: 562-400-0544; www.michaelstearnsstudio.com

Venue: Michael Stearns Studio @ The Loft, 401 S. Mesa St., San Pedro

TransVagrant at Gallery 478

Marie Thibeault — Drawings 

Liz Goldner, in an Artillery Magazine interview Marie Thibeault: Views of the Harbor, begins: “The artist showed me numerous drawings she began in March at the start of the lockdown.” 

“I was blown apart by the pandemic,” Thibeault said, “and stuck at home teaching on Zoom, and all I could do was draw, so I did three to four drawings a day.” 

While their shapes and forms echo those in her paintings, these drawings are more abstract and include medieval illustration, astrological maps and ancient diagrams illustrating serpents, insects and birds. 

“They also use diagrammatic forms referencing global mapping and scientific charts,” Thibeault said.

Thibeault’s drawings are not only investigations into possible architectures for painting, but also reveal the geography of the artist’s imagination. Whatever its approach, each work embodies a unique consideration of gesture and structure and a deeply felt understanding of the expressive potential of the graphic mark.

Thibeault is a professor emerita of art at California State University, Long Beach where she teaches painting and color theory. The exhibition runs March 3 through April 15.

Time: Artist reception 3 to 6 p.m., March 5 

Cost: Free

Details: 310-732-2150; www.spacedistrict.org/a/gallery478 

Venue: TransVagrant at Gallery 478, 478 W. 7th St., San Pedro