Is life nothing more than a series of unreal events created in the mind – like a dream? What do we hold dear to us as we watch time and precious moments slip away? How do artists preserve these sentiments? These are some of the questions the Arts Council for Long Beach’s 2016–2017 Professional Artist Fellows tackle in A Dream within a Dream – an exhibition, opening Thursday, October 12, from 6–9 p.m. at MADE by Millworks, a makerspace located in the heart of downtown Long Beach.
The exhibition features four professional, Long Beach-based artists whose work exemplifies artistic merit and professional achievement. The fellows are Anna Bae, Norma Haas Rosen, Angela Willcocks and Dave Van Patten.
Arts Council Executive Director Griselda Suarez said, “Our Professional Artist Fellows represent what Long Beach has to offer: diverse, dynamic arts that make statements on city life.”
Anna Bae collects domestic rubble, abandoned relics, cast-off pieces and found remains. The debris has been deconstructed from other people’s memories and clamors with the fragile narratives of humanity. The desolate psychological landscape and dislodged remnants of time invite the viewer to contemplate the narcotic residue of our consumer society.
Norma Haas Rosen sees humans as creative vessels, capable of capturing images, eclectic memory bits and combining these jigsaw pieces to create new objects or performances outside of ourselves.
Angela Willcocks is interested in micro communities, those individuals that play a huge role in the local economy and are our cultural essence. She explores the way we judge each other and how that affects our interactions within and between communities. Working with the public, the unseen become seen, the haves see the have-nots, the displaced connect with the establishment.
Dave Van Patten illustrates dream-like absurdism, psychedelic surrealism, childlike-storybook simplicity, ethical fables with disturbingly dark humor.
A Dream Within a Dream is a project of the Arts Council for Long Beach in collaboration with Millworks. The exhibition will be on view at MADE by Millworks (240 Pine Ave.) from October 12 through October 29, with a closing reception from 6–8 p.m. The exhibition is on view, Tuesday–Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday–Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.artslb.org/news or email info@artslb.org.
| Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow— You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream
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I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand— How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep—while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe
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