Landscape Artist John Kilduff Goes to the Source

FACES

Landscape painter John Kilduff doesn’t have a studio. Instead, he paints everything on location. That way, he said, he can feel a part of the scene that he is committing to canvas.

“By painting on location, you get a good feeling of what’s going on--you really get stimulated,” said the artist, whose visions of local sights such as Echo Park and downtown L.A. are on view at Santa Monica’s Koplin Gallery through Sept. 1. “By being there, you kind of live out the scene. And it forces you to really paint.”

For the 24-year-old artist, the Koplin show marks not only his first one-man show, but the first-ever inclusion of his work at a gallery of any stature.

“This show puts me on the map as far as getting any kind of respect as an artist,” he said during an interview in his Echo Park home.

Kilduff, who has been able to support himself solely through sales of his paintings ever since graduating from Otis-Parsons Art Institute in 1987, said that although he might be young to be showing at a major gallery, he doesn’t consider it abnormal.

“I don’t think age means anything,” he said. “Most of the artists out there today are thirtysomething, but there’s a lot of room out there for everybody.”

Nevertheless, Kilduff is trying to make himself stand out. Rather than just painting on a flat canvas--”like a million other boring paintings”--for instance, he shapes his own wavy canvases to add dimension to his work. He also “dabbles” in mixed-media with additions to his paintings such as buildings that extend out from the canvas, or freeway ramps that jut out and are filled with miniature plastic cars.

“I feel I’m doing a few different equations,” said the artist, who has also been experimenting with paintings on curved tiles, which he hopes to one day be commissioned to do for a rail transit project.

But the main thrust of Kilduff’s work are his landscapes, which the artist says are produced in an almost theatrical context.

“It’s like performance art, in a way, to be out there, especially with the size of my paintings,” some of which are as large as four feet by six feet. “I meet the people who live in the neighborhoods, and the people who work in the neighborhoods. But I rarely meet someone (familiar with) art. I just meet a lot of regular people--a lot of immigrants, a lot of street bums and a lot of drug dealers. But they don’t mess with me because I’m an artist. I have free reign to go anywhere.”

Noriko Gamblin, the newly appointed curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, says her presence will be felt most through an increased emphasis on the museum’s permanent collection, which she feels has been downplayed in the past.

“I’m very much interested in expanding and developing the permanent collection, and I think that’s one of the reasons why the museum looked at me for this job,” said Gamblin, 33. “I think they’ve emphasized it less in the past, but want to more in the future. The permanent collection is a very important part of what distinguishes a museum.”

Gamblin will be able to acquaint herself well with the museum’s works as she prepares her first exhibition there, “Selections from the Permanent Collection,” which opens Oct. 7th.

Gamblin--hired to replace the well-regarded Josine Ianco-Starrels, who resigned June 30 to pursue independent curatorial projects including several undertakings for September’s Los Angeles Festival--has big shoes to fill. But even though she has never held a previous curatorial position outside of internships at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Gamblin feels she is up to the demands of the job.

“This is a very responsible position that I’ve been given, and of course I expect there are many persons who will question the decision of the Long Beach Museum of Art to hire me,” said Gamblin, who began her study of art in 1983 after working as an English instructor in Kobe, Japan. “But obviously the museum had its reasons. I’ve been given an extraordinary opportunity, and . . . I feel like I’m equal to the challenges.”

Gamblin, who called herself a “generalist” and cited the broad area of 19th and 20th Century Art as her area of special interest, said she believed her internships had prepared her well for the job by exposing her to a variety of institutional needs.

At the Getty, where she interned in the Department of Photographs and taught a lecture series on the history of photography, Gamblin said she learned about the operations of “a very special kind of museum with a lot of resources that other museums may not have,” whereas at MOCA, where she was a 1989 National Endowment for the Arts Curatorial Intern, she experienced “the challenges of a museum that’s new and has to raise money within the community and be involved in the community.”

She noted, however, that she could not run LBMA’s curatorial department in the manner of either of those institutions.

“It’s important to be open to the personality of this institution,” said Gamblin, who assumed her post July 30. “It’s a very special one, I think, and I’m hoping that I can bring in a variety of skills and approaches, and find, through trial and error, a method that works.”

CURRENTS

Arts enthusiasts who haven’t chosen their pick for governor may want to know that Sen. Pete Wilson doesn’t plan to take a stance on state arts spending, whereas Dianne Feinstein has come out in favor of maintaining--at least--the current $16.3-million budget of the California Arts Council.

The GOP senator doesn’t want to “undercut” Gov. George Deukmejian and the Legislature by opining on the 1990 council budget recently signed into law, a Wilson spokesman said.

“It’s their budget, and the senator, if and when he becomes governor, will put his imprint to next year’s budget,” spokesman James Lee said.

But the former San Francisco mayor, a Democrat, has made her views clear: “Feinstein would like to continue arts funding at current levels, and if the (state) budget allows, would like to reach the objective of at least” a dollar per capita for culture, a spokesman said.

A dollar per capita--a long-held goal of the advocacy organization California Confederation of the Arts--would mean just about doubling the council’s spending allowance to $29 million. The confederation has not yet selected a candidate for endorsement.

A total of $112,000 in grant money from the City of Long Beach is available to Long Beach-based individual artists and arts organizations through the Public Corporation for the Arts. Grant applications must cover projects from Nov. 1-June 30,1991. The application deadline is Sept. 14. Information: (213) 499-7777.

THE SCENE

For those who like their art on the functional side, “Sweet Chair-ity,” a special show of chairs designed by prominent artists including Gronk, Frank Romero, Jacqueline Dreager, John Mottishaw and Rod Baer, goes on view Thursday at Art Options in Santa Monica. The chairs will be auctioned off Sept. 9 and proceeds will benefit the Venice Family Clinic.

Downtown’s Cirrus Gallery is taking a late-summer hiatus and will be closed to the public beginning Monday. The gallery will reopen Sept. 8. with a show of prints by John Baldessari and a four-person group show of installations and new sculpture.

Six paintings by Los Angeles-based artist George Yepes appear in the new ticket brochure for the Mark Taper Forum. Yepes’ paintings, which depict the artist’s own stage setting, will be on display in the Taper’s upper lobby at the beginning of the 1990-91 season in September.

OVERHEARD

“Most of the people here still feel partly astounded that they can make a living out of art, because it was never expected. It used to be that the best you could do as an artist was buy time. Now it’s become a viable occupation whereas it never was.” --A noted Los Angeles-based artist in his early ‘50s, during a Santa Monica gathering of several of the city’s most prominent artists.

“My wife and I love it when someone writes a (newspaper) story about our favorite artist--it makes the value of our artworks double overnight.” --A casually attired man in his mid ‘30s during a recent Santa Monica gallery opening.

DEBUTS

Italian painter Michele Vargas has his first U.S. show at Melrose Avenue’s Cure Gallery through Sept. 18. Titled “Mythological Views,” the show features paintings reminiscent of Classical Romanticism but combined with modern techniques in a figurative form.

ELSEWHERE

Washington’s National Gallery of Art has received $2.9 million in grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. The money will be added to a museum endowment which generates income to acquire new art works.

In announcing the major grants, George V. Grune, chairman of the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Fund, noted the importance of American museums’ being able to acquire major works of art, and said the gift would assist the National Gallery in “continuing to acquire works of art on behalf of Americans everywhere.”

Los Angeles-based artist Ruth Weisberg, the first woman to be elected as president of the National College Art Assn., has received the Fresno Art Museum’s Distinguished Artist Award. The museum recently mounted a retrospective of Weisberg’s prints from 1961-1990. Her works were the subject of two past survey exhibitions in Los Angeles, one at Laguna Art Museum in 1988 and one at L.A. Municipal Art Gallery in 1979.

HAPPENING

A family mural making workshop for kids 4 and older will be held today at Newport Harbor Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition “Committed to Print: Social and Political Themes in Recent American Art.” The workshop, part of the museum’s “Fun Day Sunday,” begins at 2 p.m. and is free with museum admission. Information: (714) 759-1122.

ETC.

Newport Harbor Art Museum has appointed Ellen Breitman as acting head of its curatorial department, while the museum searches for a new chief curator. Breitman, director of education at the museum since 1982, will fulfill both roles until the new curator is hired. . . . The Craft and Folk Art Museum has selected the Santa Monica firm Hodgetts and Fung Design Associates to design the interior of the new CFAM complex, which is scheduled for completion in 1993 at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Curson Avenue. The firm’s recent L.A. projects include American Cinematheque, UCLA Gateway and the Music Center Entertainment Complex at Universal Studios.

Zan Dubin contributed to this column.