SHOW STUDIES SURVIVAL

We continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, to pollute our water and air, and to build on what empty land is left us. Will planet Earth survive?

“Reflections on Survival,” a multimedia exhibition Friday to Aug. 7 at the Woman’s Building, takes up the question.

Initially, the exhibit was conceived as an observance of Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the Japanese city, and some of the 24 works on view deal with the ecological and psychological fallout of that event.

“But when we started looking at the artworks, the theme broadened beyond one that was strictly anti-nuclear,” said Lynda Lyons, the Woman’s Building gallery coordinator who co-curated the show with a nine-member committee. “A lot of what we saw addressed a general disrespect for the Earth evidenced by the willingness to destroy it--not just with nuclear weapons but with chemicals or overbuilding.”

Hence, artists in the show examine the destruction wrought by nuclear warfare, such as the physical and psychological damage still suffered by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the affects of technological progress, and, as one states, what the “price of affluence” and overconsumption does to the Earth’s ecological environment.

“An installation by Rose Marie Prins ties it all together,” Lyons said. “Suttee, Moths and the Bomb: A Trinity,” is based on a rite in India in which widows cast themselves upon their husbands’ pyres. The work features a five-foot candle surrounded by suspended moth-like forms. It likens the destructive tendencies of moths to fly into flames, the Indian suicide rite, and what Prins sees as humanity’s self-destructive bent, Lyons said.

“Prins examines why the human race is behaving so self-destructively, and asks: Is it inevitable that that potential will be acted upon or are we just socially conditioned to do these things?”

Despite the somber theme, Lyons said the exhibit doesn’t necessarily drag viewers down.

“It’s a very subtle and reflective show,” she said, “without a lot of shouting or slogans in the work. It gets down to the basic reasons for most of these things happening, which is greed and stupidity. And hopefully the works evoke, as Helene Aylon, another artist in the show, says, ‘a reverance for the Earth,’ and causes people to stand back and say, ‘Why are we doing this?’ that really, we are proceeding at our own risk.”

“Reflections on Survival” also features works by Nancy Baytos-Fenton, Beth Block, Nancy Buchanan, Judy Chan, Alice Dubiel and Elizabeth Richardson.

ART WALK: A window into the art world of Long Beach will be offered today during a daylong tour of studios, art galleries and museums throughout the city.

“Long Beach Art Expedition ‘87” will include stops at about 18 artists’ studios, 12 nonprofit and commercial galleries, two museums, plus an overview of public sculpture, mural commissions and architectural landmarks.

Artists such as Slater Barron, Clark Walding, Christopher Schumaker, Michiel Daniel, Patrick Mohr, Jake Gilson and Rod Briggs will allow visitors a chance to view works in progress in the environments in which they are being created.

Galleries on the tour route include the Works, the FHP Hippodrome and the T. Billman. Museums along the way are the Long Beach Museum of Art and the University Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach where the tour begins at 10 a.m.

The tour is sponsored by the Public Corporation for the Arts in Long Beach. General admission is $15 and $5 for senior citizens and students. Tickets may be purchased today at the University Art Museum. Some vans will be provided for the tour but participants are advised to drive themselves. The tour will culminate with a reception at the Long Beach Museum from 6-8 p.m.

LOBBY FOR ART: “Skyline,” a painted cityscape by Robert Moskowitz, and seven other artworks reflecting the look of Los Angeles are on view in the lobby of One California Plaza, the 300 Grand Ave. structure that towers over downtown’s new Museum of Contemporary Art.

MOCA has lent from its permanent collection the eight paintings and sculptures by artists from California, New York and the Midwest. The other selected artworks by museum assistant curator Elizabeth Smith are: “White Horse,” by Deborah Butterfield, “Six Ninths Green,” by Ron Davis, “Affermatoz,” by Michael Dvortcsak, “Masnad,” by Bryan Hunt, “Untitled,” by Matt Mullican, “Winter Garden,” by Louise Nevelson and “Exit for the South Bronx,” by Dennis Oppenheim.

The display, the first of an on-going series of collaborations between MOCA and the developers of California Plaza, will remain on view for about one year.

EAST/WEST MERGER: Two nonprofit museum service organizations, which for 75 years have originated exhibits that traveled to art institutions across the nation, are merging.

The American Federation of Arts in New York and the Art Museum Assn. of America in San Francisco plan to unite Wednesday. The new organization, which will retain the name American Federation of Arts, will offer its art museum members such services as 45 traveling art, film and video exhibitions annually, computer software and fine-arts insurance.

Myrna Smoot, executive director of the Art Museum Assn., will head the new organization, which will maintain its administrative offices in New York City.

LATINO ART ARCHIVE: University of California, Santa Barbara, will soon house an extensive Chicano art archive.

The repository will include silk-screen prints and posters and thousands of slides and photographs from two major Chicano art collectives, the Los Angeles-based Self-Help Graphics and San Francisco’s La Galeria de la Raza. It will also house the personal collections of the late artist Ralph Maradiaga and artist Richard Duardo.

Some of the archival materials have already been received by the university and the rest are still being received. The materials, which will eventually be logged in a computerized national information network, are being housed in the university’s Coleccion Tloque Nahuaque, the Chicano studies unit of its library.

FOR RENT: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions has begun a video rental service.

The downtown gallery will offer two dozen tapes by such artists as William Wegman, Yvonne Rainier, Survival Research Laboratories, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto and Bill Viola at $2.50 per day for LACE members and $3 for non-members. The tapes, also for sale, are available at the LACE bookstore, open Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, noon-5 p.m.