Yolande McKay Documents the Human Condition in ‘Throes’

FACES

“I don’t think that there are any answers. I don’t even have one for my own work; If I had some absolute answer, I don’t think I’d be interested in doing it so much,” says Yolande McKay, a Glendora-based sculptor who finds her pleasure in the process of creating art, rather than making statements through completed pieces.

McKay’s latest body of work, grouped under the title “Involuntary Throes,” is at Richard/Bennett Gallery on La Brea Avenue through March 30.

“My interest in making art is in manipulating materials,” she says. “I never know how a particular piece is going to end up when I start it. I do things that are quite experimental, and sometimes it ends up rather interesting. But other times it’s not and I just end up chucking it. You still learn from things like that, though.

“When I make an artwork, it’s ambiguous, so people can put their own meaning into it,” she continued. “I have a very convoluted sense of logic, so I don’t know if anybody else can follow it, but that’s not what’s important to me; what’s important is that people can look at the work and get something out of it. I get something different out of it myself everyday.”

Although she’s been grouped with artists who do “environmental” or “political” work, McKay, 36, says she has no intention of joining that legion. Instead, she tries simply to document the human condition.

“I do what I do and I have no illusions about it,” says the philosophical yet matter-of-fact artist, who received her master’s degree in sculpture from Cal State Fullerton last year. “People are always looking for answers, but life is a matter of ups and downs. For instance, I’m always interested in contradictions, maybe because my life has been (full of them). I think contradictions are indicative of the human condition.”

In “Involuntary Throes,” McKay draws similarities between humans and inanimate objects and addresses such conflicting ideas as the need to look back on one’s life even as it’s going forward, and the unwillingness to deal with insecurities that one feels. She even sees her materials as contradictory.

“Soapscum is a material that I’ve been using a lot; there’s something very human about it,” she says. “It’s the contradictory nature of soap, that we use it to cleanse ourselves, but inside of it there’s something very dirty that makes this scum.”

THE SCENE

A new portfolio of photographic prints by L.A. artist Michael Tidmus can now be viewed at Fahey/Klein Gallery on La Brea Avenue. The series, begun in mid-1990, features the artist’s depictions of the “first decade of AIDS in America,” such as images of a bleeding Christ juxtaposed with homoerotic postcards and surrounded by deteriorating calla lilies and broken concrete. The series features 10 hand-toned black-and-white prints in a limited edition of 10 each.

CURRENTS

The J. Paul Getty Trust’s Art History Information Program and France’s Institut National d’Information Scientifique et Technique have launched the collaborative publication of the largest, most comprehensive bibliographic index of Western art ever produced.

“Bibliography of the History of Art,” a bilingual guide to current literature on Western visual arts from late Antiquity (4th Century A.D.) to the present, will succeed both the Repertoire International de la Litterature de l’Art and the Repertoire d’Art et d Archeologie, currently the two largest bibliographic services.

The new bibliography will be published quarterly and will cover the visual arts in all media, drawing from a journal list of about 4,000 titles. An annual subscription is $325. Information: (413) 458-8260.

DEADLINES

Applications must be postmarked by April 1 for 1991 Western States Arts Federation regional fellowships. This year, WESTAF will award up to 10 unrestricted $5,000 fellowships in two categories--photography and sculpture. In addition to the cash award, recipients will have their work reproduced in a catalogue distributed to galleries, museums and collectors, and stipends will be made available to art spaces and museums who mount exhibitions of the fellows’ work. Professional artists from Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming are eligible. Information: (505) 988-1166.

Slides must be submited by March 15 for the painting category of the new Art of California Discovery Awards. In the juried competition sponsored by Art of California magazine, 10 contemporary artists from California will be selected in each of five categories to be featured in a free full-page, full-color ad layout in the bimonthly magazine. Other deadlines are April 15 for sculpture/ceramics; May 15 for photography, June 15 for prints; and July 15 for mixed-media. Information: (707) 226-1776.

March 22 is the application deadline for the Long Beach Museum of Art’s seventh annual Open Channels Television Production Grant Program. The program awards $2,000 cash plus a supply of videotape stock and seven days’ access to production and/or post-production facilities to four California-based video artists or independent producers for the creation of new short video works. Information: (213) 439-0751.

DEBUTS

The first Southern California showing of Swedish artist K.G. Nilson’s work is at Santa Monica’s Ersgard Gallery Saturday through April 13. The exhibition features recent paintings and wall reliefs by Nilson, who recently showed at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nilson, a professor at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, has received several major national commissions and has works in Sweden’s National Art Museum and Museum of Modern Art.

Polly Apfelbaum, a veteran of numerous Los Angeles group shows, now has her first solo exhibition at Beverly Boulevard’s Sue Spain Fine Art through March 31. Called “The Constellation of the Dart,” the show features sculpture exploring man’s relationship to fate, luck and chance.