YOUNG ARTISTS FINDING SPACE AT AREA GALLERIES

Like many emerging artists, Karin Feuerabendt-Steinberg, 24, and Julie Medwedeff, 26, have had a difficult time finding a gallery willing to exhibit their paintings.

“When I first got out of UC Irvine, I called a lot of galleries, and it was hard to find someone who would take the chance,” said Feuerabendt-Steinberg, who lives in Corona del Mar.

“It’s tough to get on with a gallery,” added Medwedeff, an Irvine resident who is working toward a master of fine arts degree at UCI. “First you have to enter juried shows and know the people and go to openings. It takes a lot of time.”

Both artists, however, have found a place to show and sell their creations in the Afternoon Gallery, a tiny structure tucked amid pastel-colored bungalows on Balboa Island’s Park Avenue.

Says owner Patty Lillegraven, who opened the gallery in September, 1984: ‘There are some good contemporary artists in Orange County, but not many places for them to show their work. That’s what I hope to provide.”

Although the gallery displays a variety of artistic styles, Lillegraven favors contemporary art. “Having graduated from UCI, I learned to appreciate contemporary art,” she said.

Paintings by Feuerabendt-Steinberg and Medwedeff are permanently on display at the gallery. And through Jan. 10, an exhibit of Feuerabendt-Steinberg’s “Cards,” a series of oversized greeting cards with handmade envelopes, will be featured.

Feuerabendt-Steinberg assembled the “Cards” series from monotype prints and paintings. She cut up “works I felt were unsuccessful” and glued them back together in new compositions. The cutouts were adhered to heavy, four-ply rag paper in complex, decorative patterns against subtle backgrounds. She also incorporated stained paper towels, printing ink and two-sided tape. “It was a good way for me to create a lot of texture,” she said.

When Feuerabendt-Steinberg enrolled at UCI, she had little interest in the emotive, neo-expressionistic style in which her colleagues were working. “When I started school, I was aggressive and angry, but I worked that out,” she said. “Now I want to present something that is not so confronting.”

In contrast to Feuerabendt-Steinberg’s delicate cards, Medwedeff describes her garish gouache paintings as “cartoons” that “draw the viewer into a direct confrontation with the ideals and relationships . . . of the middle class and suburban life. The distorted perspective and flat space indicate a world askew.”

“See how green this grass is?” she asked, gesturing toward a painting titled “Living in Irvine,” which depicts a man standing between two gray buildings, holding an animal carcass. “Everything is so civilized, but there’s some undercurrent. All is not right.”

Her favorite motifs are stylized images of packaged meat, people, computers, apartment buildings and useless “electric boxes,” or colored cubes plugged into the wall.

Medwedeff said she usually makes about 100 sketches for each painting by photocopying drawings, cutting them up and rearranging the pieces. She considers her method “a less rational way to think. Shuffling the everyday images gives them a dreamlike quality.”

Medwedeff claims people either love or hate her work. “Art is supposed to be so serious, but mine is sort of humorous--at least to some people,” she said.

Her compositions appear deceptively simple, she said. “There is certain visual strength in being deliberately ‘bad’ by using traditional design concepts in a tongue-in-cheek way. Viewers recognize the images, but it isn’t what they expected.”

Medwedeff has shown her work in several Orange County exhibits, including “A Serious Look at Humor” at the Irvine Fine Arts Center last July. Her paintings have been in group shows at the Laguna Museum of Art and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. Her works also are shown at the Alternate Gallery and the Avrom Gallery in Dallas.

Medwedeff has scheduled two solo exhibitions for 1986 at the Burbank Creative Arts Center and the Fine Arts Gallery at UCI.

The Afternoon Gallery, located at 503 Park Ave. on Balboa Island, is open Wednesday through Friday, 2 to 6 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. (714) 675-8675.