Can I admit right here and now that my current guilty guilty pleasure is Bennifer 2.0. There, I said it. Anyway, summer is pretty much here, it’s hotter than it should be, and there’s a closing shin dig over at the park for the Arroyo Arts Collectives “Fools for Hope”. Festivities begin at 2:00, Saturday June 19th. La Tierra de la Culebra @ 240 Ave 57. HighlandPark.
Join them this Saturday, June 19, from 2-5pm at La Tierra De La Culebra Art Park for the closing reception featuring a musical performance by Jessica Fichot. Our Poets will be back to read along with artist conversations and fun giveaways.
It's FREE to attend for all age groups, so feel free to invite your friends and family.
Come a little early and enjoy making art with nature
1:00pm - Workshop / Cyanotype Printing:
Cidne Hart invites you to make your own blue and white nature print with sunlight, leaves, water, dirt, and other found materials, using a photographic process that dates back to the 1840s.
Artists
Katrina Alexy, Ronald Carrillo, Mona Jean Cedar and Jeff Boynton, Joanne Chase-Mattillo, Mary Cheung, Cat Chiu Phillips, Pascaline Doucin-Dahlke, Lillian Doyle, Richard Ferguson, Karen Greenbaum-Maya, Cidne Hart, Linda Hoag, Heather Hoggan, Kristen Johannesen, Patty Sue Jones, Yvette Nicole Kolodji, Ashley Kruythoff, Lisa Montagne, Bill Ratner, Josie Roth, Robyn Sanford, Mary Torregrossa, and Ricardo Tomasz.
For a full list of exhibiting artists and poets, please visit: https://arroyoartscollective.org/fools-for-hope/
Email us your questions at arroyoartscollective@gmail.com
Fools For Hope is made possible in part through the generous support of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Los Angeles City Council Member Gil Cedillo, First District.
Out Of The Dark: Tessie Dong Brings Light To Glendale
87-year-old Chinese American artist exhibits monumental work in MONA’s windows featuring hand crafted stained glass, metal, and neon.
One of my favorite ladies on the planet, Tessie Dong has a window over at MONA, the Museum of Neon Art, in Glendale. Please check out her beautiful work and what MONA says…
Glendale, CA Artist Tessie Dong and the Museum of Neon Art were planning to display the artist's monumental and delicate work in summer of 2020. Due to the pandemic, the exhibition of work by the 87-year-old artist was postponed until now, when visitors can enjoy the delicately handcrafted screen for free from the windows. Tessie Dong has been an artist all her life. “I've wanted to be an artist since I was in the first grade in China,” states Dong. Since the 1970’s Tessie Dong has created multimedia artworks ranging in scale from a few inches to up to 40 feet with materials such as steel rods, patinated sheet metal, paint, stained glass, textile, and neon. Tessie states, “I was working for a lot of banks creating woven pieces that were 40 feet long.To add dimension I proposed creating a welded metal structure to an architect with lace like metal and they approved it, when I got home I thought- what have I done? I realized I had to teach myself how to weld so I bought a welder and got to work.” Through her work in metalwork and neon, Dong creates elegant and rhythmic compositions that play with weight, delicacy, and light. The screen and chair that are displayed in the Museum of Neon Art’s windows are composed of undulating curves and circles that unify but also complicate the composition that contains stained glass, hand bent, and blown neon glass.
Tessie Dong was born in Canton, China. She moved to Arizona as a teenager and received an Associates of Art from Eastern Arizona College and later moved to Los Angeles for further study. She received her education at Art Center College of Design, specializing in commercial illustration. After photography grew in prominence as an advertising medium, Dong pivoted from illustrator to work in architectural model building. This attention to space and proximity to architects led her to propose monumental works, designed with architecture in mind. She conceived of and created large-scale architectural installations for banks, restaurants, tennis clubs, private homes and synagogues. The mediums she used ranged from batik canvases, painted dimensional murals, and multimedia sculptures. She is a skillful welder and glassblower who hand makes each element in her work, embracing the transformative capacities of color, light, and material. “I had to learn how to bend neon tubes in order to add them to my metal work so it's integrated in the whole,” states Dong. Dong’s 20-foot tower Enlightenment is permanently installed at the Chinatown branch of the LA Public Library.
The second degree black belt in Shotokan Karate, avid gardener, and artist states “I keep on going.” Several years ago Tessie Dong was offered a large art commision the same week that she was diagnosed with cancer. The artist pushed through with the commission, secretly battling her diagnosis through studio sessions, chemotherapy, radiation, and naps. Every day she would move towards completing the work, promising herself she would not die before it was finished. “I almost died of cancer, but designing and completing my 24' x 6’ x 2’ wall sculpture helped me to survive,” states Dong. The artist has been cancer free since.
Dong states, “My work is about interplay of space and form, of natural lines and industrial materials, of harmony and tension- it's sometimes hard to delineate where my pieces start and stop and where work and life intersect. There is nothing about my world that is not part of a vast composition: My garden, my house, my studio, my life. They reflect the same symbiosis of organic chance and composition which typifies my evolving work.” Tessie Dong’s work has been exhibited internationally and she has participated in several museum exhibitions. Her work is held in various private and corporate collections.
“My art is a continual process. My goal is to design and create multi-media works for public and private spaces to enhance human communication through artistic media. I grow with each project and then apply my extended experience to each future work,” says Dong.
“Tessie Dong’s work bursts with vitality and elegance. Though she often uses industrial materials, she subverts expectations of the materials she uses. We waited a year to share Tessie’s work and it was well worth the wait,” states MONA Executive Director Corrie Siegel.
Though the work can be seen and appreciated all day long, the best time to see it is at dusk or after nightfall. The exhibition will be on view until December of 2021.