2 New Exhibits at Irvine Fine Arts Center

The Irvine Fine Arts Center (IFAC) is one of the few City-operated galleries in Orange County (other notable City galleries are Huntington Beach and Brea). IFAC consistently exhibits work of very high quality, and mixes exhibitions by artists outside the area with works by local artists.

The 2010 All Media Show that opened last night was juried by Karen Moss, Curator of the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), so I was especially eager to see what she had found among the many submissions that might meet her rigorous standards. I was not disappointed.

There was extraordinary vitality and variety to the works on display, from the small (a delightful and intricate homage to the pinned insect display boxes seen at science fairs--but created with man-made materials) to the sizable (like a mettalic white sculpture made of styrofoam, fiberglass and auto body paint that burst out from the wall).

I ran into Ellen Breitman, former curator of the OCMA-predecessor organization, Newport Harbor Art Museum, who praised Karen's work on this exhibition.

And then one of the artists, whom I knew previously only by e-mail, introduced himself to me: Emet Martinez, a fine art photographer. Two of his photos were selected for the show, including the Paris street scene above.

IFAC usually opens two exhibitions simultaneously. The All-Media show was in its larger gallery space and an exhibit of works by Bill Jaros in the smaller space. Jaros creates sculptural wall pieces (and some tabletop works), and most of those on exhibit were made of corrugated boxes that had been stiffened into shape using plaster and colorful pigments. If you didn't look at their edges, you wouldn't necessarily have guessed at the original box material. Other works were assembled from wood.