May 24, 20225 min read

The Brewery Artwalk Marks 40 Years

Updated: Dec 13, 2024

Maëlys Renaud at the Creative Technology Center, Brewery Artwalk, April 2022, Photo Credit Genie Davis.

The Brewery Artwalk Marks 40 Years

Brewery Artist Lofts, Los Angeles April 9th & 10th, 2022

Written by Genie Davis

After missing two years due to the pandemic, the Brewery Artwalk was back live and in person for 2022 April 9th and 10th. I started attending the art walk when my son – now 27 – was 18 months old, so I was thrilled to be back at what has been an annual, or in some years, bi-annual event for art lovers everywhere. While some studios were closed, there was still plenty to see on a Sunday that was even fortuitously much cooler than the past week has been in LA. Here’s a look at some of the art treats I was fortunate enough to be able to see.

Jill Sykes continues to impress with her images of nature, including seaweed as well as floral works and leafy plants. Rimmed in thin lines of gold or shimmering on a gold leaf background, these are masterful works. Emily Elise Halpern featured dramatic, lush large-scale works both figurative and abstract, including philosophically dark works on addiction and homelessness, images inspired by pandemic times. Also on view were witty, smart pastel drawings of everything from alligators to her own inclusive take on Adam & Eve. Patricia Branstead’s lights and screens, whether shaded with handmade printed monotypes, Asian prints, or black and white paintings provided viewers with glowing, compelling illumination.

Teale Hathaway’s studio included pandemic-years images of a different kind of illumination, streetlights of all types, as well as rich, beautiful detail work in a new fine art series featuring perfect fragments of architectural elements; her home décor items, under the Pearl & Maude banner remain gracious. Next door, Marshall Vanderhoof’s photographs – many of our group’s beach home-turf, were full of effervescent light. Shari Lee’s precise work in mixed media and pastel also explored architectural images, each in an entirely different way.

Ryan McIntosh’s text art was both poetic and excitingly chromatic; Guillermo Bert exhibited stellar laser work of all types, from sculptural to holographic. Tony Pinto’s dimensional photographic cutouts filled the diminutive Red Post Gallery outside Randi Hokett’s studio with faces of resident artists at the Brewery itself, while inside Hokett’s space, her grown-crystal work and abstract images of metal discoloration shimmered. Working in encaustic, Nicole Fournier’s work recalled the past and evoked a mysteriously alien future.

Ange, of @CatsRuleAll, revealed a mix of vividly colorful cat goddess, and grooming cat clusters, with a completely original, op art, fresh feline aesthetic. She had cool T-shirts available, too.

Melissa Dyanne’s mix of painting, drawing, and digital art took varied forms: impressionistic, sculptural, and vividly realistic dimensional cutouts. The terrific work included a short video presentation of the landscape and wildly flying birds that inspired a number of her images. Andrew Covell’s thick mosaics of color also stood out.

So much fine art in one place: at the Jesus Wall Gallery, the Westside Art Collective held forth in part with both kinetic-looking abstracts and delicate florals from Kristine Augustyn, as well as quartz crystals that the artist culled from an Arizona gem show. Robyn Alatorre brought lustrous, vibrant images of both floral and sea life. Lina Kogan’s layered abstracts varied from small to larger scale, with the latter created in the colors and mood of Ukraine. Nearby, Cathy Immordino exhibited haunting blue and gold cyanotypes as well as cool pins created from her own images framed in Victorian settings. Randi Matushevitz offered works both large and small; smaller works were charcoal and graphite drawings based on dreams, replete with fragmented, fraught, and meaningful intensity. Michael Craig Carrier’s fiery, hypnotic fine neon works included several pieces contained in desiccated metal that seemed like barely contained flames. Rajiv Khilnani’s blue marinas and golden docks issued a contained luminosity. Robert Costanza and Maria Bjorkdahl also exhibited impressive work.

Monk and Milo’s exhibitions of ceramic sculptures and planters charmed; elsewhere, so did Matthew Robinson’s fuzzy, multi-colored chicks.

At the Institute for Creative Technology, a wildly inventive space where large screen, immersive abstract images formed a background while graceful, athletic modern dancers performed their own interpretations of the moods and forms these images conjured. Among the performers was the acrobatic pole dancer, Maëlys Renaud. It was a mesmerizing celebration of swirling movement and color quite unlike anything else viewed. Maya Fuhr, with white-painted floors and surreal images, as well as clay sculptures shaped as “muse,” was also fascinating.

Todd Westover’s always eye-popping, rich acrylic florals were back; also on exhibit was a collaborative work with photographic artist Jeffrey Sklan. Across the hall, @fake.brand.cool.name showed mixed media sculptures – including a tall, stacked vertical work of found objects and caution tape that hummed with textures.

Downstairs in the same building, Theodore Svenningsen’s haunting monochrome trains, snowy landscapes, and even a lit café with a perfect miniscule cat outside were well matched by his spread of full color works of slightly ominous houses and other structures against a sunset sky. Charles Swenson displayed his fine watercolor “South Western Iconography.” Baha H. Danesh’s canvas art photos, and Scott Yeskel’s desert images of pools and brown hills, Air Streams and pink Thunderbirds each presented perfectly captured views of Southern California.

And in the gallery space, outstanding work from multiple Brewery artists shone. Among the standouts: Cameron Cohen’s swirling purple sky as backdrop to “The Giving Tree” in gold leaf and resin; Cynthia Minet’s fired stoneware “Diana in Clay;” Stephanie Vosper’s metal sculpture “Motorcycle Mania;” Ada Pullini Brown’s so-alive graphite on paper “Derby Girl;” and Martin Cox’s wonderfully surreal “Titanic visits the Brewery.” Also grabbing the eye were Chloe Allred’s truly wonderful orange fluff cat, “Alliance of the Unicorns,” and Kristine Schomaker’s joyous photographic work “Plus 4.”

Always iconic and filled with “Viva LA,” Andre Miripolsky provided colorful sculpture and opulent wall art in his popular studio space; while at Theory Labs, the “Fields of War Gunpowder Dandelions” were a graceful, but all too relevant series of images created by exploded gunpowder.

Just like every year – even the virtual edition in 2020 – Brewery Art Walk brought a sense of joy, exploration, and excitement shared by participating artists and viewers alike.

https://www.breweryartistlofts.com/artwalk.html