Marisol Benitez, center. Along with much of the Exhibitors and Gallery Staff.
There is a noticeable activity within the Friday marketplace that occupies the usually sleepy downtown quarters of San Pedro, CA. Amidst the vendors, shoppers, lingerers, sitar players, and morning fog, appears an army of artists marching into the Findings Art Gallery. Armed with large canvases, some of their works are almost too big for the gallery's relatively small quarters. There's already a casualty: a large, colorful, and wordy acryllic painting, swirling with colors echoing of sixties psychedelia, suffers a mortal wound. A large hole tears into a painting, just missing the eye of a woman within. "This will take a week." says Marisol Benitez, frankly. She's the one in charge at the moment, and her exhibit, titled Thru My Eyes, doesn't have a week to wait. Less than a week from now, the exhibit will make it's premiere, and she intended on having all the arrangements done today. What Marisol sees is a wildly eclectic display of visual talent from the South Bay, and the sum of all her artistic experiences under one roof.
At thirty one years old, Benitez wears many trades up her sleeve. As a jeweler, a bookstore clerk, and a teacher, Marisol is active amongst the local art community. Her boss and mentor, Marta Valladolid, brought her up in the crux of the local culture since her teenage years. "If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have participated in the community meetings, which means I wouldn't have been involved with the Croatian Cultural Center or The Angels Gate Cultural Center, as well as the downtown galleries." One of her first exhibits was at the former, and she regularly teaches at the latter, for grade school children. Her stature has earned her what she considers, "a wealth of experience".
That stature is at least a decade in the making. A graduate since 2008, she has earned several Bachelor's degrees at California State University Dominguez, particularly on in Studio Arts, and has earned several teaching credentials across all grade levels. She wants to expose students to the arts. "In my family, there wasn't a model set for a background as a visual artist. As a teenager, I finally had the chance to indulge in what was true inside me. As a teacher, I want to drive the point that people should maintain their artistic nature into adulthood." Despite that, she says it's hard to find a job as an art teacher at a public school. "Those programs are the first to be impacted," she says. In the meantime, part of her motive is trying to feature herself and her fellow alumni into new galleries. For a few of the artists, Thru My Eyes is their exhibitional debut.
The work of the Macatrao's, et. al.
Why Thru My Eyes? It's pretty simple, really. "I wanted a wide portrait of how I see the artistic scene in the South Bay." One artist, Steve Jacobson, does a series of collages with found objects. Coby Cerna puts his cartoonist sensibilities on canvas and other unusual mediums, like drink coasters. Keiichi Hasukawa prints his digital photography on large canvases. "Marisol teaches just about as good as she paints," says Hasukawa. "I think she's a great painter." Two days pass, and the small gallery is populated from wall to wall with images and spectators of all kinds. A table contains a form for an e-mail mailing list and a large variety of pastries. The sheet fills up rather quickly, but by the end of the night there are a few pastries left. Two pieces are sold that night.
Coby Cerna's unusual coaster portraits.
A large man looks intently at Hasukawa's largest photograph. It's a rare photograph of the city: a Hollywood film production films a San Pedro neighborhood while the power goes out in the neighborhood. The residents gather along the set, illuminated via a generator. The streets are wet, reflecting the headlights from the traffic. "I don't know what you did, but I have glaucoma, and this picture captures exactly what I see perfectly!" Hasukawa then stares at his own image, nodding.
HA
ReplyDelete