A Celebration of Art/Life

History keeps renewing itself in the saga of Art/Life, the limited edition art magazine launched by Joe Cardella in 1981. At the time, he was an East Coaster living in Santa Barbara and hungry for cultural fiber or interaction. He launched Art/Life, partly in sync with the revolutionary technological advances in photocopying, inviting artists to submit works of visual art, collage, poetry or blends thereof, to be bound and distributed in bookstores, museums and elsewhere.

Cardella moved to the Northeast for a few years, continuing the operation from there. But for the past several years, his, and Art/Life’s, home base has been Ventura, and, although the artwork comes from an international circle of contributors, there have always been hometown connections. County-based artists lend their work and ideas, and, on notable milestones, the magazine hosts a gallery show.

The 10th anniversary wingding took place at Ventura’s old Momentum Gallery, with celebrity artwork by Yoko Ono. Currently, the cause for celebration is the 200th edition of the magazine. The accompanying show, in the upstairs gallery at Natalie’s Fine Threads, is a fine way to check in on the operation, or, for the uninitiated, to get a primer.

One of the virtues of a gallery exhibition such as this is the chance to thumb through multiple magazine issues in one space. More than 30 are on display, in addition to individual pieces on the walls and assemblage works by sTeVe Knauff, Doug Lipton and other local artists.

From the beginning, an implicit message contained in the magazine is that creative possibilities are fairly wide open within its 8 1/2-by-11 format. Artists have drawn on the rapidity and ephemeral nature of the format to include found objects or found text in their work.

Among the materials found in this collection are a rubber fried egg, bubble wrap, handmade paper and a domino. One particularly fat issue, Vol. 11, No. 1, includes a stick, a dried fish and a yen on a chain (one of Cardella’s pieces). For the cover of the current edition, the 200th, frequent contributor Mel Zaid combines chicken wire and a thin layer of plaster in a clever design worthy of two facing pages. It one-ups the idea of creating a tactile, mixed-media piece suitable for binding.

This is the ‘90s: Besides its physical, limited-edition format, Art/Life can also be found in unlimited editions in cyberspace, at www.art-life.com.

Leaving the Natalie’s gallery, you see one last winking piece hung over the stairwell: a life preserver reads “Art/Life, Art Saves Lives.” It’s one of many in-house, boosterist slogans running through the show, and the operation itself, which now boasts status as “the ORIGINAL and Longest Continually Published Artists’ periodical of the Twentieth Century.”

There has always been a gently ironic self-promotional aspect to Art/Life, as it espouses a vague but clearly idealistic creed contained in its very name. The slash mark offers a graphic clue to its meaning, inextricably linking art and life. Damn the art-world torpedoes and market shifts, it’s art and life, marching toward the future, and future milestones.

DETAILS

Art/Life 200th Edition Retrospective Show, through April 18 at Natalie’s Fine Threads, 596 E. Main St. in Ventura. Gallery hours: 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Tue.-Sat.; noon-4 p.m., Sun.; 643-8854.

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Art in Motion: What happens when a museum, that symbol of solidity in the otherwise fleeting matrix of art exhibition, has downtime? Without walls, does the art stop? Not according to the UCSB Art Museum, which is undergoing renovation this year.

Curator Elizabeth A. Brown has organized inventive “Site Works” exhibitions, the third of which was unveiled last week. “Mass TransArt: A Moveable Feast” features works in a decommissioned MTD bus, which will be on view through April 5.

Still-life tradition was, ironically, the theme for several artists. The very term “Still Life” is blown up with Ed Ruscha-esque wit, in Phil Argent’s road-sign-like painting. Keith Puccinelli wrapped stuffed animals in cellophane meat packs, in a grocer’s display case, sanitizing innocence. Puccinelli’s “Window Garden” shows canned goods with out-of-focus labels, subverting the very clarifying purpose of product labels.

Jane Callister’s “Creamlined” is a discreet dazzler, a long white wall fitted with ornate, yet goopy relief decor, rococo to a fault. Scattered throughout the bus are flowers encased in plexiglass boxes, in Rie Hachiyanagi’s “Stilled Lives”; and Keith Conley’s assemblage, with popcorn and crushed velvet in the mix, is lavish and loony.

Joan Tanner shows garish yet lovely light-box images of still-life objects. In the sonic department, Dick Dunlap has created an ethereal and ambient patchwork of drones, selective tones and other murmuring noises.

This is a fine example of exploring alternative art exhibition methods. Brown and company literally take art to the streets, while also creating a focused, narrow-walled world of its own.

DETAILS

“Mass TransArt: A Moveable Feast,” through April 5, in an MTD bus parked in front of Pier 1 Imports, 928 State St. in Santa Barbara. Viewing hours: Sun.-Thurs., 1-5 p.m.; Fri. and Sat., 1-8 p.m. Info: 893-7564.