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The 46th annual fall Beverly Hills Art Show will be held on Saturday and Sunday, October 19 and 20, 2019, in Beverly Gardens Park, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days. Four garden blocks in the City’s center will be brimming with nearly 250 artists from throughout California, the Southwest and beyond. Visitors will find sculpture, painting, photography, mixed media, ceramics and glass, digital art, drawing, printmaking, and jewelry. This popular event has drawn 40,000 local and international visitors throughout the two-day show.
A special feature within the larger show is entitled Dwelling. In our diverse Southern California locale, a dwelling can come in many forms, and these featured artists come from a wide range of places and circumstances. These artists showcase their depictions of a diverse range of home and home-like environments. The artists who are exhibiting their work in the special feature category are: McPherson Downs, Eul Hurley, Rob Macdonald and Steve Hodowsky are from Los Angeles, Calfornia; Fortune Sitole lives in San Francisco, California, Steve Ohlrich is from Pasadena, California, James Randle resides in Phoenix, Arizona and Corey Pemberton recently relocated from Penland, North Carolina.
Amid the 250 artist displays and demonstrations, other amenities offered include gastro-worthy food trucks, a wine garden, a beer garden, family art projects, and live, ambient music.
The FREE artSHOW is produced by the City of Beverly Hills Community Services Department. Parking is available in city lots just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, adjacent to the show site. For more information, visit www.beverlyhillsorg/artSHOW, or call 310.285.6836.
Art Show Sponsors and Partners include the Beverly Hills Historical Society, the Beverly Hills Conference and Visitors’ Bureau, the LA Weekly, Stella Artois, the Los Angeles Art Association, LA Art Party, Blank Espresso, hint water. The show’s charitable partner is Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Featured Artists – Dwelling
Near the center of the artSHOW by the Beverly Hills Sign, a special installation entitled Cardboard City by McPherson Downs, also know as Mac Maker, will feature a crowded, lively town rendered in cardboard. Mac’s background is in production design, custom fabrication, and theatrical design; he has participated, as an installation artist, at venues like Coachella and Burning Man. He says, “My creations primarily consist of found, familiar, and repurposed materials, often urban-foraged…I often see these creations as story-telling machines…” Mac has a passion to teach fun! The Los Angeles Art Association, an art show sponsor, has helped to make this installation possible.
Eul Hurley, an oil painter born and educated on the east coast of the United States, captures the suburban homes and urban spaces of Los Angeles with wild, swirling brushstrokes. The lovely buildings and places are immediately recognizable as Southern California scenes, but are more extreme and surrealistic. In his own enthusiastic words: “The paint is naive, thick, and viscous; it adheres, coagulates, and congeals across the igneous blank canvas”. He aims to create paintings that pulsate, so as to engage his audience emotionally and physically.
Fortune Sitole, originally from South Africa, is a mixed-media painter who recreates the shanty towns of his youth: buildings and lengthy pathways made by his contemporaries and ancestors, using whatever discarded materials were at hand, including strips of corrugated metal, tires, and stones. He uses the same materials in his art. Though these scenes contrast starkly from those in Beverly Hills, he is one of the most sought-after artists by local collectors attending the artSHOW. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Corey Pemberton is traveling to the art show for the first time having recently relocated to Los Angeles from Penland, North Carolina. His practice flows back and forth between collage and blown glass. Corey states, “My latest works take an intimate look into the personal dwellings of my closest friends. Whether the subject is lying in bed, or watching television on the sofa, they are made instantly relatable and intriguing by our proximity to their personal space and belongings, which are rich with character and information. As a queer person of mixed race, I often feel other. There are visual devices I use (in my art) that urge my viewer to spend more time with the subject, really getting to know them.” He has studied, worked and taught in many locations, including North Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Vermont, Denmark and Norway.
Steve Ohlrich’s most recent work is of older, Midwestern, craftsman-like homes. Many are slightly haunted, besieged by a snowstorm, or captured in a nightscape. He grew up in the Midwest and obtained his art education in Chicago, Illinois, having more recently moved to Pasadena, where he continues to paint still, mysterious homes which invite the viewer to fill in the blanks — where is this house, does anyone really live there, why aren’t there people on the street, is this a painting of a dream? His nickname in art school was “Pieter Breugel Jr.”, for the great Dutch painting family who always told a story with their art.
James Randle grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and like so many Utah painters, expertly renders a clear, glowing light which bathes his depictions of motels, hotels, houses, and camper shells (many of which are going to seed). He currently lives in Arizona, and travels around the country to capture the architecture, decay, and light that have been obsessions since childhood. The son of an artist, he says he grasped the world of perspective drawing in elementary school, and recommends, like any language, one should learn it early!
Rob Macdonald is a graphic designer and art director as well as a digital artist who works with various computer programs. He is originally from England, where he received his art education. For this show, he presents modern, pristine dwellings – hip pads that could float in space or land on a beautiful Los Angeles foothill. This is Rob’s first time in the Beverly Hills artSHOW.
Steve Hodowsky lived and went to art school in New York City – the School of Visual Arts – prior to moving to Los Angeles. He says his wife, L.A. architecture, and L.A. light inspired him to paint the “rag-tag” structures he found in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the Palm Springs area. He began showing his work in flea markets, and was discovered by Patt Morrison of KCET, KPCC, and the LA Times. The LA Times featured him in a story called “LA’s Court Painters”. He has had gallery shows at Bergamot Station, and frequently exhibits at the Beverly Hills artSHOW.
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