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Arts & Entertainment

Shadow Dancers Meet English Seasides at Sandstone Gallery

Lynn Welker and Elyse Katz transport you to other times, other places.

Whether transported to a time when the human mind was more in tune with nature—where human history meets biosphere meets geosphere in Lynn Welker’s abstract narrative paintings—or plunged into the recesses of your own memories by way of Elyse Katz’s mixed-media abstracts of the English countryside, you’re likely to experience some sort of sensorial immersion.

Open for over 29 years (30 years this fall), on the city’s historic Gallery Row. It showcases an eclectic selection of contemporary abstract fine art by some of the most established California artists. Mediums employed run a broad spectrum: oil paintings, digital art, acrylic, pastel, watercolor, monotype, photography and sculpture. So as you make your way into the gallery—up the stairs, through the main hall, getting lost in the walls—you never know where or when you might be sucked into a painting, if only momentarily. But as Einstein said, time is relative. And depending on that moment of discourse—when your mind registers the image—a lot can happen in the mind in not a lot of clock-time.

Consider Welker’s paintings, for instance. Stare into them. You’re climbing the canyons of the current Southwest hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. You’re chiseling out sacred space from the canyon stone. You’re crafting your home out of adobe. You’re painting the human form on a cave wall, perhaps the first to do so in your family or tribe. You’re trying to capture a shadow dance in movement, thrilled when the human forms appear to come alive on the wall. Then you realize (or remember) that you’re standing in “Stone Houses,” Welker’s latest exhibition at Sandstone.

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And this is exactly Welker’s intention: “to shift importance, if only briefly, away from a mechanistic world to one that reconnects people with the land.” She accomplishes this first by not trying to replicate how a place looks. Instead, through travels and other research, she takes in a great deal of sensory information about a place. Then, once all the information is digested, she intuitively discovers for herself the essence of a place through the act of painting. She uses coats of gesso, flexible modeling paste, oil, acrylic—she scratches at it, removes layers, recoats, repaints, whatever it takes—in effect crafting an abstract narrative of texture, landscape, geology, ancient architecture and myth.

“Honestly, making art is my meditation,” says Welker. “When I am in the zone, so to speak, all awareness of time and surrounding events disappear.”

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Having grown up in Ohio, Welker earned her BFA and (“as an insurance policy”) her B.S. in education from the University of Cincinnati. She then settled in Southern California, earning her M.A. while teaching art classes in the Newport-Mesa school district. She describes herself as having a 24/7 “sensory awareness of color, design and subject matter in nature and the world around me.”

No wonder that as soon as she found herself in a new environment, her work began to express a veneration for the landscape and canyons of the Southwest, inspired by “their structure, texture, color, mythic and historical past.”

Pathways of the Past, for example, highlights the drama between the canyon’s strata. Ancient drawings of galloping horses mark the stone far below the surface, frozen in time, undiscovered. Deep earth tones mix with tinges of violet-pinks beneath orange-red trees beneath a hazy gray sky and a bleak horizon. Rather than from above, the light of the painting shines forth from below, from the past, from within the Earth, from within the rock’s molecular composition.

Stone Houses depicts a kaleidoscopic union between man-made structures and stone. Some houses appear dislocated from a different landscape, other houses become cracks in the rock wall, and you find your eye slowly drawn to a way beyond the houses-on-top-of-houses. Where the rock wall opens up for a glimpse at the sun—as though peering through a crack in a cave—you find the sun either about to set or on the rise, half-eclipsed by the houses. The image is suggestive of memorializing the sun’s path into carved stone (i.e., astro-archaeology, or archaeoastronomy), a practice discovered at many ancient archaeological sites in the Southwest, such as Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.

The figures in Shadow Dance 1 and 2 show a departure from some of Welker’s other recent work. “In the past, I have painted figures, and, since my paintings are spontaneous, I never know when they may appear again.” The figures are simple in form, similar to those on the Hopi Prophecy Rock in Arizona. In 1, the figures appear caught in the motion of dance; one seems to have climbed a crack, posing for an audience like a flier in a trapeze act. The figures in 2 showcase even more buoyancy, depicted almost as if about to float away from the houses below.

But before you float away with the shadow dancers—or perhaps while floating away with them—climb the stairs (the rest of the paintings are upstairs) and check out “English Landscapes” by self-taught abstract artist Elyse Katz. Born in New Jersey (although she considers herself a New Yorker, since she moved to New York in her 20s), Katz combines painting, collage, printmaking, newspaper and other found materials to establish a more tactile surface to the canvas. “I have always been attracted to covering and uncovering layers of material to partially reveal what lies beneath.”

A shift in focus from earlier work, which was anchored by the New York City skyline, Katz’s new series draws from her roaming adventures across the pond. “I spent a month each summer for the last 17 summers in England walking the countryside,” she explains. “These paintings were inspired by my sensory memories of those experiences.” You find yourself imagining an English countryside from all sorts of angles: floating over the land, rolling on the ground, squinting through a 100-year-old keyhole. Your own memories fill the blanks, drafting stories, making possible an infinite number of personal responses and interpretations.

New to the gallery, Katz was recently invited by a longtime member to show at Sandstone. Also showing are contemporary artists Marge Chapman (founder), Jennifer Griffiths, Howard Hitchcock, KL Heagen, Sunny Kim, Anne Moore, Marjorie Sanders and Sheryl Sauer. Welker—whose work is represented in Palm Desert, Sedona, Jackson Hole, the San Bernardino County Museum and elsewhere—has been with Sandstone for more than 13 years.

“The Laguna Beach art community is so extensive,” Welker says. “There are artists working in all media, the young, the old, the inexperienced, the novice, with opportunities to expand and grow no matter what your background. I am presently teaching an experimental water media class at the Community Center where experienced students are enrolled as well as those who have never painted and want to learn. This is what art in Laguna Beach is all about. Opportunity.”

“Stone Houses” and “English Seasides” at Sandstone Gallery, 384 N. Coast Hwy., Unit A, 949-497-6775; sandstonegallery.com. Open daily, except Tues., noon-5 p.m. Runs through Feb. 28.

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