Vibrant shades of Orange County in ‘The OsCene’

Millions of eyes focus on Orange County each week, thanks to Fox’s slick and sexy soap “The O.C.,” as well as MTV’s pseudo-reality show “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” This much attention could make even the Chamber of Commerce blush.

While the rest of the nation ogles O.C.’s onscreen beautiful people, the shows have prompted those who actually live in the area to look anew at their home base and what really defines it. The Laguna Art Museum has done just that with “The OsCene: Contemporary Art and Culture in OC.”

Pronounced “O-Seen” to riff on the popular series’ name, the exhibition features the work of 40 visual artists and designers, an additional 40-plus working in film and video, and 17 bands. Although a handful of names are familiar -- artists Marcia Hafif, Michael Reafsnyder, Ed Templeton and Elizabeth Turk, among them -- most have not had wide exposure. Some of the artists are still in graduate school.

Among the memorable moments in “The OsCene” are Dana Lovell’s interactive memory map, which allows viewers to click on various locations where the artist has lived, to bring onscreen a brief snippet of audiovisual recollection; Ren Blood’s feature film “Drag Nuns,” about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of “queer nuns” intent on “expiating guilt and spreading joy”; Jeff Gillette’s “Slumscapes” painted on skateboards and surfboards; the simple but elegant realist scenes of Charles Huang; and an amusing video installation by Chie Yamayoshi, featuring an image of a jumping dog projected onto the back of a small fishbowl, so it appears as though the poor pup is leaping up for air.

A goal of the show was to feature “underestimated” art of the area, but it’s not just the art that’s been disregarded, according to museum director Bolton Colburn, it’s Orange County itself, in spite of an influx of cultural activity over the last decade -- numerous new art venues, expanded arts districts and the growth of university arts programs.

“It’s perceived as an in-between space between L.A. and San Diego, and there’s the sense that what’s going on here isn’t as important as what’s going on [there]. But there’s a renewed zeitgeist here, and it’s now coming of age as a county. The interesting thing about Laguna is that it has more cultural history than anywhere else in Southern California, and it’s catching up in spades right now.”

Looking close to home for inspiration is nothing new for the Laguna Art Museum. Laguna Beach became a popular art colony more than a century ago, and the museum evolved from an association established to support the exhibition of local artists. The museum has continued to keep an eye on local work. In every exhibition period, Colburn notes, there’s a show featuring a contemporary Laguna Beach artist or some aspect of the area’s art history.

But there’s never been a show like “The OsCene,” which differs in its manner of organization and its broad inclusiveness across media. Rather than surveying the gallery scene or culling names from professionals in the field, chief curator Tyler Stallings decided to put out an open call for artists. And open it was, far more than is typical of survey shows.

“We have a three-pronged approach to our curatorial programming -- historical, cutting-edge contemporary and popular culture,” Stallings explains. “When we decided how we’d do ‘The OsCene,’ we decided it would be about visual culture.”

The flier announcing the call invited artists working in “all media” (written in bold), including “painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, multimedia installations, video / film, sound/ music, architecture, and design (which includes graphic design, gaming technology, animation, fashion, tattoo artists, custom cars and bikes, skateboard graphics, innovative surfboard design, etc.).”

Artists were encouraged to send materials in any format that best represented their work. More than 400 packages came in. Both the number and the quality of the submissions -- especially from grad schools at UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton -- were pleasant surprises to Stallings. He and curatorial assistant Jacqueline Bunge sifted through the material and made dozens of studio visits to winnow the list down to the 40 artists included. Tim Schwab, a musician, DJ and the museum’s chief preparator, organized the music component, a “sound wall” with listening stations and band ephemera. Keiko Beatie, director of program development and special projects for the Newport Beach Film Festival, curated the film and video portion of the show. Both the music and films in the exhibition are streaming online, but no catalog has been published.

The show’s freshness and funky variety act as counterpoints to another exhibition nearby, the more slickly produced “2004 California Biennial” at the Orange County Museum of Art. OCMA (formerly the Newport Harbor Art Museum) has been staging biennial exhibitions since 1984. A few have focused exclusively on Northern or Southern California, but most, like the current one, aim to survey the entire state. The 28 artists in the show are all in their 20s and 30s, and most had not had a significant solo show before being selected for the biennial.

Geographical diversity was a concern, says Irene Hofmann, OCMA’s curator of contemporary art, who organized the show with chief curator Elizabeth Armstrong, “but first and foremost was looking at the pool of artists and choosing those we felt were most promising. At the end, we counted up where they were from.” All of the artists except one live in either the San Francisco or Los Angeles area, although several, Hofmann points out, attended graduate school in Orange County.

“Looking back,” says LAM curator Stallings, “the biennial hasn’t included many O.C. artists over the years. As we realized that the next one was coming up, we thought this would be an opportunity to create a further dialogue. When I realized that there hadn’t been a survey of Orange County artists in over 20 years, it inspired us even more.”

Museums depend on local audiences for support, and artists look to their local museums to reflect their community in some way. With “The OsCene,” the Laguna Art Museum has hit upon a formula that seems to give administrators and audience what they want. The show has been well-attended, Colburn says, and seems to be particularly successful at enticing the elusive younger demographic, people in their 20s. Thanks to the open-call procedure, Stallings now has “a great library of artists” to draw from, with many new names.

“There are so many shows you could make out of this one thing,” he says. The first spinoff will be a show focusing on skate and surf fashion based in O.C., which will open at the museum next summer. After that, look for variants on “The OsCene’s” lively mix of media.

“We’ll always want to add other components or shift components,” Stallings says. “I’d like to add a literary component that takes in the UC Irvine writing program, which is one of the best in the nation. The next show will probably be in ‘06, but we’re not going to call it a biennial. It’s a survey that appears periodically. My hope is that each time, the take on the show will be different.”

‘The OsCene: Contemporary Art and Culture in OC’

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Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily

Ends: Feb. 27

Price: $9 adults, $7 students and seniors

Contact: (949) 494-8971; www.lagunaartmuseum.org