Without Alarm III
an LAPHS / Arroyo Arts Collective Event

The Arroyo Arts Collective presents WITHOUT ALARM III, a site-specific installation of works related to custody, captivity, containment.

Location:
Behind the Badge;
the LAPD Experience LAPD Museum and Education Center

LA Police Historical Society
6045 York Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90042
(323) 344-9445

Viewing hours:
Thursday, noon-9 pm Friday & Saturday, noon-5 pm
(Please see list and bios of Exhibiting Artists below)

The Arroyo Arts Collective has been invited by the Los Angeles Police Historical Society, 6045 York Boulevard, Highland Park, to present an exhibition in this 1925 historic building.

From the Police Historical Society, which manages the site:

Click here to read the LACP article:
LA Police Historic Society

The building includes a number of former jail cells, maintained in their original condition, as well as open areas providing wall space, display cases and areas suitable for sculpture.

For information call: 323 / 850-8566
E-mail: info@arroyoartscollective.org

Artists in "Without Alarm III" explore the themes of custody, captivity, containment. Many works evoke visceral feelings about being confined, something most of us will thankfully never experience.

Artists in the Exhibition:

Stuart Bender
"Sanctuary 10" is a digital print from a series called "Sanctuary," which is comprised of isolated male figures appearing behind bars or curtains. Mr. Bender has created installations, single-channel, multi-channel, and live-performance music/video works which have been exhibited internationally since 1985. His recent prints, taking their cue from the poster and billboard-studded LA landscape, offer a reflective, playful or sardonic twist on the instant visual "hits" we are immersed in.

Dos Cabezas Oscar Martinez/Linda Arreola
"Homeland Security" is a handcrafted grass/straw hut, wrapped and completely covered in plastic and duct tape as per instructions from the national office of Homeland Security. The team Dos Cabezas (Two Heads) is symbolic of the dualities found in Mexican-American heritage and the male-female dynamic. The artists have been working and exhibiting in the LA area for over ten years, both individually as well as collaboratively, in painting, sculpture, installation and photography.

Joanne Chase-Mattillo
"Donny G" is the update of Mozart's "Don Giovanni." The modern day Donny G cannot repent to save his soul. He is imprisoned by lust and a corrupt soul. The cell of Donny G is covered with the photos and letters of those who loved and hated the neighborhood lothario, Donny G. Ms. Chase-Matillo has been working with photography since 1991, and experiments with the manipulative qualities of photography.

Ione Citrin
"M'Lady" is a feminist statement of 20th century female enslavement. Her black torsohas been decorated with the trappings of enslavement and her body is opened to show two more armless, headless women enslaved within her. Showing nationally since 1998, after decades of world travel and a successful television, radio, theatre, and film career in the performing arts, Ione now focuses her creativity and passion for communication on the creation of art.

Neil Fenn
"Just Above My Head" simulates a cell filled with water. All items in the cell are wrapped in blue translucent plastic paper and the floor is covered. Mr. Fenn has been working as an artist in Los Angeles for over 20 years. His work has been shown in many galleries locally and nationally. The City of Los Angeles has commissioned him to do a permanent environmental art installation for Van Ness Park in South Los Angeles, to be completed in 2004.

Natalie Kahn & Victoria Alvarez
Our installation is intended to convey the emotional pain and despair of the former inmates of the cell. The mesh figures are like thought forms that manifest this energy in time and space. Our proposal illustrates the point that when the human has left the cell only the inhumanity of his confinement remains. According to Victoria, "Art making is an important part of my life along with issues of social justice. The mixed media work I do discusses the outer reality of human life while the installations. Natalie and I create address the inner self … " And Natalie says, "Since graduate school my art work has shifted from a concern with outer body form to an exploration of the energy matrix of the perceivable universe. The installations Victoria and I create explore universal themes."

Ron Koertge
Mr. Koertge is a poet as well as the author of many novels for Young Adults. He has contributed a poem:

"Annunciation at Pico and Sixth"
My partner and I pull over this possible
DUI and run her plates. It's just routine,
but something about the way she looks
in all that hopped-up light reminds me
of what my art teacher said that time
I went to city college:

In bad paintings nothing fazes Mary.
Not the wattage, not the angel, nada.
But in good ones, she's like this
blonde -- half-blind, a little scared,
pretty sure she hasn't done anything
to deserve all this.

Joyce Kohl
"Archaic Cleansing Rituals" is an installation that deals with the Death Penalty in the United States since it was reinstated in 1977. An old-fashioned cloth towel dispenser unfurls the names, dates and states of all that have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977 (starting with Gary Gilmore) cascading down steps and into the jail cell. The inside of the dispenser has a diagram of soiled and clean towels while the outside has an image of the electric chair on the decaying mirror. Ms. Kohl was born in Oakland, California, and now lives in Altadena. She's a Professor of Fine Art at California State University, Bakersfield. Her work includes public art, assemblage sculpture and social commentary, including a recent collaboration with a Fulbright Fellowship, which generated a ceramic AIDS Wall in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Gina Kuraner
For "Gunshot Wounds," Gina Kuraner took rubbings and traced the gunshot holes and shattered windows of the bullet-riddled getaway car and police vehicle from the North Hollywood Bank of America robbery. When violence erupts in our community and lives are lost, we are reminded of the edge we walk in life with death. Lifting the remains of the crime onto translucent, skin-like paper transform brutality into something abstract and beautiful. Using biodegradable materials, Gina Kuraner's work is performance-based within specific sites. Action residues reference issues of body and gender within the context of psychological narrative.

Patricia Lee
"Life's Imaginary Reach for Freedom" conveys our misguided ideas of what freedom is. Trapped in a small corner, imaginary hands reach out from the floor. History holds the subject, faces of conflict come from the darkness of the floor, ideas holding one back. Ms. Lee has worked in the entertainment industry in addition to exhibiting her artwork. She studied at Art Center as well as Otis Art Institute.

MaryLinda Moss
"Suspended" uses the cocoon form as a metaphor signifying the incredible ability we have for transformation in extreme situations. We see a familiar image of a figure hanging in a jail cell in "suspended". Instead of the hopelessness suggested by that image though, this inverted encased figure, created from cheesecloth and beeswax, represents the ideal of potential change. An alumni of The School of the Art Institute, Ms. Moss's sculptures and installations are inspired by natural forms and reflect her profound connection to nature. Shapes, textures and elements found in various natural environments are later transformed using sculptural materials like beeswax, wool, wire, threads, paper, silk, iron, & bronze.

Joseph W. Oliver
Joseph Oliver's drawing, "Protect and Serve", shows a police officer handing a child an ice cream cone. Mr. Oliver has participated in community art exhibits and has taken art classes at the Armory Center for the Arts, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, and other venues.

Sheila Pinkel
AAC invited Sheila Pinkel, who has produced activist work for 30 years, to exhibit one of her photo-essay pieces about the prison industrial system in the State of California and to act as juror for this show.

Mary Ann Ripper
"Warm" and "Forgotten" are two installations of discarded shoes gathered from street corners and freeways, gutters and fields, and parking lots and alleys. Each shoe is tagged with a date and location where it was found. The shoes in "Warm" squeeze under a radiator; "Forgotten" is installed in a water utility closet and raises questions regarding physical and psychological captivity. Ms. Ripper, a Los Angeles based artist working primarily with mixed media assemblage, loves to go barefoot in the mud and eat spicy foods. She is motivated to reveal what we might not want to see in ourselves or become aware of in other people.

Karen Schwenkmeyer
"An Education in Freedom" is a photo installation representing local public elementary schools within the LAUSD seen from the parent's perspective the outside of the school, glimpsed through bars of a fence. Ms. Schwenkmeyer is a photographer and multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited nationally. A founding member of M.A.M.A. (Mother Artists Making Art), her work explores maternal experience within contemporary American culture.

SJ Schulman
Mr. Schulman will offer his "Barriers" Photo essay, a series of color photographs that examine the barriers we encounter each day in our "free" lives. Chains, padlocks, fences, bars all restrict access and create barriers within our society. Mr. Schulman is a self-taught artist whose passion has evolved from sketching to watercolor to photography. Following years of self-directed work, she enrolled in a formal program in 2001, and was awarded 3rd place in the first show entered.

Miki Seifert & William Franco
"For Whom the Bell Tolls", a public altar, asks the viewer to contemplate the public policy of capital punishment by selecting the name of someone executed in the state of California and the name(s) of his victim(s) and ring a bell for two minutes. The altar, simple and spare, arranged on the sheet metal cot in a prison cell, pays homage to John Donne's poem:

"Devotions upon Emergent Occasions"
No man is an island, entire of itself ...
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Seifert's and Franco's previous altars have addressed the war on terrorism and the bombing of Afghanistan. "Our lives have been an exploration, searching for ways to best express whatever is demanding to come out and be heard." Miki has been a dancer, a poet, a producer, a visual artist, a circus performer, and a competitive gymnast. Willie has been a filmmaker, a sound mixer, a visual artist, a Butoh dancer, and a cabinetmaker.

Suzanne Siegel
"Distress" is about the pleas that police dispatchers receive. It is a visual metaphor of those cries for help. This piece is dedicated to my sister-in-law who worked as a police dispatcher for the Santa Ana Police Department for fifteen years. When she began work for the department, she operated a switchboard similar to the one in the Police Museum. While always efficient and professional, she was consistently caring, compassionate and concerned in responding to the distress of callers. Ms. Siegel is a visual artist who lives in Highland Park. Much of her work is assemblage and is influenced by personal experience and poetic ideas.

SOS (Society for Orgonotic Streaming)
Our strategy consisted of aesthetic juxtaposition between relatively free-flowing energy and the squared-up institution of law enforcement by creating an on-site not-for-profit, non judgmental (open-minded) atmosphere of nonprofessional sensual pleasure, playfulness, and trust. Using hands-on approaches such as massage, hand & feet washing and grooming as well as conversation, games, experimental therapeutic devices, healthy snacks, etc. within the law enforcement institution itself, SOS sought to examine the possibility of temporarily demilitarizing the law enforcement body by introducing fluxes of non-paranoiac divergence directly into its circulatory system. SOS, The Society for Orgonotic Streaming, a group of artists, offered treatments to LAPD officers in the Summer of 2002. Service was available through appointment or at a mobile plain air therapeutic center. We arranged visits at the Revolver Club at the Police Academy, at the Principal court in downtown Los Angeles and at a restaurant where LAPD officers came for breaks.

Jill Van Hoogenstyn
A hand-made book highlights the contrast between freedom and containment. Using black and white photographs, the book illustrates the dark, desperate side of being in prison and, in striking contrast, images of freedom where individuals are able to make choices and create a life that is satisfying and meaningful. Ms. Hoogenstyn was raised on the East coast, lived in Maine and Germany before moving to L.A., has mainly concentrated on photographing people in their environments and city urban scenes.