Feb 25, 20173 min read

Long Beach City College Exhibitions Give Hope in the Midst of Chaos

Smaller Works. Linda A. Day. Long Beach City College Art Gallery. Photo courtesy Jody Zellen

Long Beach City College Exhibitions Give Hope in the Midst of Chaos

By Sydney Walters

Through March 9th

From now until March 9th the exhibition, News Wheel and Smaller Works at Long Beach City College Art Gallery offers a hopeful catalog of new media and painting that finds beauty amidst discord.

In News Wheel, Jody Zellen and Daniel Rothman combine visual installation with audio installation, thus creating an experience of organized chaos. The artists lean into the chaos of today’s news and allow visitors to interact and make sense of discord. Projected on the wall, a spinning wheel like that of an evenly divided pie chart, rotates with the headlines of nine international news outlets. Near the center of the room, an iPad on a thin podium invites visitors to touch the screen, which stops the wheel’s rotation. Next, he or she can drag words around the screen, consequently making their own news headline. Positioned around the room, eight speakers project eight different radio stations. The shifts between the sound bites give a sense of flipping through radio stations whose sounds bleed into each other. The result is an all too familiar congestion of headlines. News Wheel is also an iOS app that can be downloaded for free from iTunes. Visit www.newswheel.info or https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1031093157 to experience it yourself.

News Wheel. Long Beach City College Art Gallery. Photo courtesy Jody Zellen

On the opposite wall, pieces created by lenticular printing, or images printed with the illusion of depth or change as the viewer moves, show rearranged headlines depending on where visitors stand. The vanishing lines imitate the transient nature of news. Line breaks between words change headlines into poems. As most poems do, these haikus strip away unnecessary verbage and charge into the heart of an idea. The constant behind all of the images is a static version of the spinning news wheel on the projection. The result is an amusing extraction of poetic beauty from the shockwaves of news.

Smaller Works. Linda A. Day. Long Beach City College Art Gallery. Photo credit Sydney Walters

Linda A. Day’s Smaller Works is a snap shot of works created in Day’s three-decade career. Walking past some of her paintings, layers upon layers of color protrude from wood panels. This creates an atmospheric window of colors, patters and textures. Her pieces are playful with bright colors and vivacious integrity. On the far wall, Day discards traditional framework and creates organic cut-out shapes with canvas. The largest of this series is called Ganesh. Known as the god of new beginnings, Ganesh is a notorious deity of the Hindu religion. Not only do the stacking of oval shapes give the illusion of head, torso and legs, stratified colors and materials emphasize a Ganesh-like idea of new evolution.

Ganesch. Smaller Works. Linda A. Day. Long Beach City College Art Gallery. Photo credit Sydney Walters

Since painting began, it seems like the larger the painting, the more important it is. Day takes that idea and turns it on its head. Smaller Works proves that smallness can pack a heavy punch. Through careful manipulation of pattern and layer, Day suggests that details have as much relevance as larger paintings.

Long Beach City College 4901 Carson Street, Room K-100 Long Beach, CA 90808

Gallery Hours: Monday and Thursday 9am-4pm Tuesday and Wednesday 12pm-8pm