You may remember Phil Tarley as the producer of “The Year of the Queer” documentary about LGBT activism in Los Angeles in 1991. Tarley – who is an art critic, Fellow of The American Film Institute, member of the Los Angeles Art Association and on West Hollywood’s task force on Public Art Installation – is now the curator of Artist’s Corner, a new fine art photography gallery in Hollywood.
His first project is the debut of artist Lori Pond’s solo show, Self, with an opening reception for the artist on Friday, August 10th from 7:00-9:00pm. Artist’s Corner is located at 6585 Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood (a bright red building on the corner of Seward Street – 323.464.3900)
Tarley sent me this press release to describe Pond and her artistic sensibilities:
Self, a decidedly different take on nude self portraiture, is an intimate, fleshy and fecund exploration of one woman’s very personal journey to heal herself through her art work.
At fifty-two, Pond severed the ties of a twenty-year marriage. Her divorce propelled her into an every-woman’s odyssey of Self discovery, parsing the passage of humankind’s most primal relationship. Her show of Self portraits – some literal, some allegorical – chronicles her sense of loss, mourning and reawakening. Pond seeks to harness her unconscious and ride it like a wild horse; sniffing out the unfamiliar; then galloping across a precarious emotional landscape -ultimately hurling herself into some highly original pictorial images along the way.
Through the twenty works in Self, Pond takes apart and then reintegrates the shattered aspects of her Self. She emerges as we do, strongly moved by an artist working out a new identity right before our eyes. This is a totemic, often poetic show of highly evocative photographs. Lori Pond makes different aspects of her body serve as markers of a kind of Jungian iconography– a personal symbology that resonates in all of us who have suffered loss and who question our bodies as we seek out a new identity.
The artist does this in striking, compelling and visually sensitive ways. Pond morphs her torso as she turns flesh into stone. She ritualizes her body into a kind of Druid forest, letting the limbs of its trees punctuate her owns limbs with filigrees of branches that cut and curl as visual metaphors for her own mind-body conflict. She dons a chador and goes whimsical; measuring out six plateaus of feeling.
“My photographs attempt to codify my dreams, to integrate and blur the lines between waking and dreaming…I am not concerned with depicting reality as we see it, but instead altering reality to open a window into the viewer’s imagination. “My creative process involves using both the camera and post-processing tools to paint in light, color, texture and movement. “
Pond who currently works as a graphic artist on Conan O’Brian’s late night talk show has labored over video images for some of the most compelling television shows of the last twenty-five years. Newly minted as a serious photographic artist, her opening at Artist’s Corner marks Lori Pond’s Self as her first-ever solo show – an heraldic debut.
Artist-writer Phil Tarley curates at Artist’s Corner, Hollywood’s newest fine art photography gallery.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
A thief and a betrayer of truth.
This is an amazing series and you should be well proud. You have an incredibly strong, unique voice as an artist and I feel that women across the globe will be able to relate to this particular body of work. As one of those women, I want to thank you for your honest interpretation of the female form, and the many complexities that go along with it. Congratulations!