Prolific artist Karena Massengill loves to work with metal and fire. In her exhibition Reverberations at the Palos Verdes Art Center, every one of her 43 artworks on view showcases the raw sculptural materials of fire and metal.
Massengill describes her process beginning from a drawing on watercolor paper.
“I ‘draw’ in steel using the drawing as a pattern upon which I subsequently weld the sculpture, and witness the controlled destruction of the image, using a spray bottle to prevent too much burn damage. The burned drawing becomes a reverberant reincarnation of the steel to use as a painting canvas to further explore the concept in color or monochromatically. When shown together, they tell a story of evolution, spiritual discovery and self-reflection.”
She calls this process a spark of the infinite. Walking through the Palos Verdes Art Center galleries, there is a sense of a language that exists in Massengill’s work. Between her constant use of raw and recycled materials, her deep love of nature and wildlife, and her travels to Africa and Asia, Massengill’s works, in a “vocabulary of lines and steel,” ask the viewer to contemplate how we as humans affect the earth.
The artist recurrently underscores the fact that “the people least responsible for climate change are suffering the most with their lifestyle and culture forced to change in order to survive.”
Massengill’s works offer accolades and respect to their unique and very special relationships with nature.
Reverberations features several works that are singular sculptures without the ‘Echo.’ One of these, Repeated Reverberation, presents vivid, fiery color on a form evocative of a reconfigured, abstract French horn. A quarter note form on its left side denotes music, as does one small curve of red steel as the edge of a stylized bell that extends off a dynamic red-yellow semi-ellipse, at its top right. Another red-yellow curve features a biomorphic abstraction of five appendages reaching toward the bottom outer curve of the sculpture, while a green ladder at the top, which recalls expanding musical scales, leads to the focal point of this horn’s bell, creating a continuum of visual musicality.
A pair of works titled Shinto Today and Yesterday and Shinto Today and Yesterday Echo represent Shintoism. The Japanese religion, dating from the early 8th century, focused on living in harmony with nature, ritual purity, and showing gratitude. Massengill describes these two pieces as meaningful because of the indigenous spirituality Shintoism represents, but also both the old and new architecture of Japan, which the artist said is like a work of art. The sculpture is made from stainless and mild steel and oils; the ‘Echo’ features charcoal and acrylic on Arches paper. The works are representational of abstracted Shinto Shrines with torii gates, forked roofs and sweeping curved canopies. Iridescent magenta and red fill the borders of the sculpture, while the ‘Echo’ background is awash in burnt red. Together these are a pair of majestic works.
Ode to César Pelli (stainless, galvanized, and mild steel) and its ‘Echo’ (charcoal and acrylic on Arches paper) are both striking pieces. The pair give reference to, likely, at least, two of the famed Argentinian and American architect Pelli’s buildings; the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan, and the Wells Fargo Center, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
At first look, the sculpture’s clean, steel lines on the left resemble the shape of a wing on top, and a conical form below. Pelli has said, “the forms are an expression of bamboos growing from the ground, reaching for the clouds and swaying in the wind …” Massengill’s gestural lines in steel replicate the structure’s form exactly. At the center and to the right could be a nod to the Minneapolis bank edifice, highlighted in two sets of rectangular ‘skyscrapers’ featuring the stepped-setbacks of Pelli’s 774-foot modernized Art Deco building.
The ‘Echo’ departs from the modern shiny steel towards a surreal scene awash in shadowy charcoal and prominent burn marks that surprisingly highlight the museum’s glass rooftop in sepia-toned shadows and light — a fascinating contrast. Both works contain a decorative element. In steel, individual pieces of the metal curve into each other as they form another funnel shape, upward toward the rectangular structures. In charcoal, the same funnel is cast in foliage-like dark green, representing fluid dynamic shapes found in nature in a nod to Pelli, who wrote, “Buildings, with their changing needs and their attachment to site, are more like living trees than inert blocks of stone.”
Front and center in this show is a sculpture entitled Peace, fabricated mild steels, oils, from 2007. The work, placed on the center wall, faces the viewer as they enter the upstairs gallery. Gazing at it initially, the form with soft, enveloping curves holds attention as one, looking through its multi-colored, vertical form, tries to discern what they are looking at — and soon reading — a word, a simple word that could be the main concept of Massengill’s oeuvre, peace. This creative sculpture in orange, green, yellow, and a bit of deep red reveals clean curving lines; the ‘e’ mirrors a smiling profile as, ironically, an actual sculpted face peers out from behind the same letter. Massengill’s characters parallel the bold, expressive gesture of graffiti wildstyle.
“Peace.” It’s in Massengill’s diligent message when she speaks about her work, it’s in her actions as she cares for our environment, and in her activism. It’s what she shares in her art, whether painting, welding, or sculpting.
Together, in this one setting, Reverbations allows one to read Massengill’s vocabulary through themes of evolution, discovery, and reflection, and its visual manifestation in a multitude of evocative expressions, on view at PVAC through July 2.
Time: 1 to 3 p.m., artist talk, June 20. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday thru Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday
Cost: Free
Details: pvartcenter.org
Venue: Palos Verdes Art Center, 5504 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes