TAG Presents 5 Solo Artists and Stitching Multiverse Curated by Marianna Baker

TAG Gallery’s September exhibitions bring together artists who reinvigorate familiar subjects, bring fresh interpretations to history painting and the human form, and push everyday themes (love, inquiry, contemplation) into new visual territory. About Featuring painting, photography, drawing, digital media, and fiber, the exhibitions move between the human figure and the interior landscape, art-historical references and contemporary experience, personal memory and shared cultural histories. Whether revisiting an iconic image, transforming the body through light and movement, tracing the dimensions of love, or expanding the language of fiber into sculpture and installation, the exhibitions invite us to look again — at the images we inherit, the bodies we inhabit, the histories we carry, and the materials through which we make meaning. Journey to Love: A Retrospective After Dorothea Lang Plus EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Creatures of Imitation The greatest works of art did more than endure. They invite us to ask... what if? LAURENCE BARBERA I came to painting after more than thirty years in the motion picture industry. That experience trained my eye to notice character, gesture, light, composition, and the stories contained within an image. When I began painting seriously, the human figure became my natural subject. I paint the nude figure because it is honest, vulnerable, strong, and timeless. Without clothing to identify a particular period or place in society, the pose, body, expression, and light must carry the meaning. I am interested in the moments when a figure appears quiet, guarded, awkward, confident, humorous, or lost in thought. These human qualities interest me more than creating an idealized body. My influences include Lucian Freud, Egon Schiele, and Alyssa Monks, although I am not trying to paint like any one artist. I work in oils, using color, value, edges, and texture to create the emotional character of each painting. Some of my recent paintings revisit familiar works from art history. I use the original painting as a starting point, then change its figures, relationships, or meaning. These works may contain humor, contradiction, or an unexpected point of view, but they remain part of my continuing exploration of the human figure. I want my paintings to invite a second look. I do not expect every viewer to see the same story that I see. What someone brings to the painting—their memories, feelings, and personal interpretation—becomes part of the work. Mindscapes and New Lines of Inquiry “Mindscapes and New Lines of Inquiry” explore the evocative power of color, shape and line to open up our senses to contemplation. “My art strives to convey the strange beauty of life and invites those who view it to pause and arrive, even if for a moment, in a singular place of perception and imagination.” SHIRLEY ASANO GULDIMANN Shirley Asano Guldimann is a Los Angeles native, who seeks through her drawings and paintings to awaken the meditative attention of the viewer. Guldimann has exhibited widely in the southern California region and her artwork is held in a number of private collections. Her artistic style is undoubtedly inspired by her Japanese heritage. Her paintings and drawings often include the human figure, as seen in unusual and poetic works where she explores the mutability of a variety of water-based media. Allowing the vagaries of water to inspire her work, she intuitively creates with the medium as her partner in silent but organic collaboration. Similarly, when drawing, she often allows the line to take her where it will. Shirley grew up with a creative extended family that included a paternal grandmother and maternal aunt, each in their own way bringing a Japanese aesthetic of beauty into their lives in humble ways. Arranging a graceful ikebana flower arrangement or allowing a plant to trail from the top of a bookcase were small aesthetic accents that still resonate with the artist, providing a lyrical and poetic inspiration to much of her work. Working in a variety of mediums, techniques, and styles that range from line drawings to small but intense portraits done with dip pen and ink, to paintings in watercolor, acrylic, and water-soluble oil, each piece of art she creates has a logic and life of its own. This tendency to change things up, she half-seriously jokes, can result in her solo shows looking a bit like group shows. What marks her uniquely captivating drawings and paintings, whether they feature people, nature, architecture or abstraction, is the intensity of her gaze by which she entices the viewer to actively engage with her art. For my past several solo exhibitions, I have returned to the word LOVE many times. Yet the word never tires me. As time passes, I continued to discover new layers of meaning and new ways to express LOVE through the images I create. The height, depth, breadth, temperature, and length of LOVE are continually renewed. Each experience reveals another dimension, another shade, another way of understanding what love can be. In retrospect, I see life as a journey — a journey toward love that continues until final breath. SUNHEE JOO Sunhee Joo is a Korean American artist based in Los Angeles, whose figurative digital paintings explore themes of nature, humanity, and spirituality. She is known for blending classical artistry with contemporary digital media. After immigrating to the United States, Joo pursued her artistic career, earning MFA in painting from UCLA in 1987. Although she began as an abstract painter, her artistic journey gradually evolved toward expressive, poetic figurative works that reflect both emotional depth and spiritual contemplation. Joo has presented twelve solo exhibitions and curated one group exhibition in Los Angeles. Her work centers on journeys of love, hope, and spiritual renewal in an era marked by threats to both humanity and the natural environment. My works here, “I Painted Over Andy Warhol” and “After Dorothea Lange,” are both inspired by art history. Represented here by a single painting, “I Painted Over an Andy Warhol # 329,” was created when I moved my studio from California to New York City, and I found an impenetrable Art World defined less by creativity and more by privilege, and gatekeepers. After Dorothea Lange paintings fill out the walls in the show. Dorothea Lange was inspired by the figures in California camps, fields and living in their cars alongside Highway 99. Like today, she witnesses the class division between her subjects and the privileged politicians and corporations, who like today, discredit scientific and social evidence for their own personal power and greed. MEL SMOTHERS I am motivated by subjects inherited from our times, drawn from personal narratives, reflecting my interest in philosophy, contemporary thought, and sources that span art history. MFA 1999, selected for the ‘Artists of Year,’ exhibition at Cooper-Union, NYC 2006. Teaching includes University of California, University of Idaho, University of Nevada and currently, Adj. Professor of Art at Lake Tahoe Community College. I work in a hard-to-find studio along the shore of Lake Tahoe and I’m a student of fly fishing and jazz violin. Human Art - Underwater I have always been fascinated by the human form—not simply as a subject to photograph, but as a source of line, shape, movement, emotion, and abstraction. My Human Art series explores the body as an artistic landscape. Rather than creating traditional portraits, I am interested in what happens when identity becomes secondary and the figure itself becomes the means of expression. Underwater, that transformation becomes even more pronounced. Gravity disappears. Hair, fabric, and limbs move in unexpected ways. Light bends and ripples across the body, and familiar forms become fluid and sometimes mysterious. Water becomes both my environment and my collaborator, creating moments that cannot be completely planned or repeated. I am drawn to that uncertainty. My photographs begin with a human figure, but my goal is to move beyond the literal—to create images that can be experienced as form, movement, atmosphere, and emotion. Ultimately, Human Art is my exploration of the beauty and expressive possibilities of the human body, transformed through photography into something that exists somewhere between the real and the imagined. Dan Katz Dan Katz is a Southern California fine art photographer whose work explores the human figure through light, movement, form, and abstraction. After a 40-year career as an advertising creative director and agency owner, Katz retired in 2020 and devoted himself fully to photography. Katz’s award-winning work has been exhibited in galleries and online exhibitions and published in numerous books and publications devoted to fine art photography. TAG presents STITCHING MULTIVERSE: A FIBER ARTS EXHIBITION curated by Marianna Baker Presented in The SKY GALLERY at TAG Stitching Multiverse brings together an exceptional group of East and West Coast artists who expand the possibilities of fiber art. Through crochet, quilting, embroidery, soft sculpture, mixed media, and video installation, the exhibition presents textiles as a living language—one that carries memory, identity, labor, and imagination. Connecting artists from Los Angeles and New York, the exhibition creates a vibrant dialogue across distance, weaving distinct artistic practices into one shared creative universe. This exhibition features: Barbara Danzi, Bonita Johnston, Deborah L. Morris, Fernando Villena, Flor Quinto, Iris Jing, Katie Stubblefield, Liberty Worth, Marianna Baker, Monica Loss, and Sam Slipkovich.. Curator- Marianna Baker, a contemporary fiber artist hailing from Southern California, seamlessly blends her background in graphic design with a lifelong passion for art and fashion. Transitioning from the entertainment industry to the world of textiles, Marianna specializes in needle-felting techniques on natural linen and cashmere, crafting wearable art pieces that embody both timeless elegance and cutting-edge fashion. Her creations transcend traditional boundaries, evolving into multi-dimensional sculptures that grace ceilings, walls, and floors alike. By incorporating unconventional materials like wire, Marianna produces abstract sculptures that honor feminine traditions and the often-overlooked narratives of historical art. EXHIBITION DATES: September 30 - October 21 OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 3, 5 - 8 PM Read more Toggle Drawing Prints Mixed media Painting Photography