Art for All at Samohi

Roberts Gallery Enters New, Different Era

                             Page from Joel Fox's website, whimsyland

                                           Esquizoflove by Alejandra Jarabo

Clara Sturak
Associate editor

   As the oldest art gallery on the westside (over 100 years, in fact), the Roberts Art Gallery has a served as a professional gallery on the Santa Monica High School campus for most of its existence, showing the works of professional artists. More recently, owing to ongoing construction at Samohi, it’s played a less glamorous role, as a part-time classroom and full-time storage space. Never in its history has it been a showcase for student art.
   Until this year, that is. Art teacher Tania Fischer and art department chair Amy Bouse decided that they were going to reclaim the gallery, refurbish it, and re-envision it as a gallery for both the students and the community – a place for teaching, for learning, and for enjoying, art.
   Fischer, who has added to her jobs as art teacher and cross country and track coach the title of Gallery Director, says that it took some convincing for the administration to give up its badly-needed storage space, but “credit goes to [co-principal] Mark Kelly,” she says, for making it happen.
   She was more surprised to find that “there was some resistance” to converting the gallery into a student-friendly space from its former status as strictly a professional gallery, used, in part, to raise funds by renting to professionals. “It’s a philosophy thing – how do you want to use the space?” To Fischer, it was obvious that such a resource should be available to the students, but she adds, “We still have professional standards for the gallery.”
   Fischer began the school year with a splash, hanging a faculty art show, that included new works from all the school’s art teachers. Fischer herself exhibited some of her new painting and sculpture. “I feel, as an art teacher, that you should be practicing in your field…you should practice what you teach.” Viewing the artwork allowed the students to look at their teachers in a different way, as artists and mentors.
   A collaboration with the Pico Youth Center led to a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) exhibit, in which student-made alters, retablos, prints and tiny skeletons were seen by the youth programs participants. Spanish teacher Jose Lopez worked with Fischer to make it a cross-department event. A school parent leant original prints by Jose Guadalpe Posada – which were hung next to student work.
   Fischer’s next project was to be an Alumni exhibit – a way to show the kids that people from their very own school were working artists. It proved to be a bit too ambitious, so Fischer changed her focus, and decided to work with one alumni – 1990 graduate Gus Harper – for a solo exhibit. Harper, who, like Fischer, is a runner, had been an athlete at Samohi in the late 1980s; so, Fischer says with a laugh, “We even got the athletic director to come to the show!”
   Flush with the success of her first three exhibits, Fischer has asked artists Joel Fox and Alejandra Jarabo to show at the Roberts Gallery – the first show without a school connection since the gallery’s reopening. Fischer, inspired by Samohi’s new status as a “digital high school” (the school received a grant to buy state-of-the-art computers and related equipment), wanted to “do a show about what’s happening now,” in website design and mixed media. Fox and Jarabo, both website designers as well as artists, were the perfect fit.
   The married couple rushes around the gallery, sweeping, dusting, hammering and nailing. They’re preparing for the opening of “Whimsyland,” an exhibit of their interactive web work and more traditional pieces (if you can call stuffed animals traditional). Both are slim, with the retro-serious style of dress that says, “artist here.” In a fuzzy orange sweater, Jarabo leads me to Fischer’s classroom, where she gives me a tour of the exhibit’s website. As she clicks from page to page, she explains, “We tried to put together his world and my world. Certain pieces have to do with each other, and others don’t, but they all have to do with being human, paying attention to everyday life, and to detail.”
   Jarabo describes Fox’s web art as “naïve and charming.” And says that her husband calls her work “more academic. “I don’t like that word,” she smiles, “I’ll say I’m more serious, my work is honest, with effort put into it so you can believe me.” There is a clear difference between the two artists’ work. The brightly-colored childlike world of Fox’s “Magic Robot” contrasts with Jarabo’s primarily black-and-white, delicate web work, entitled “Bosom,” in which you have to move the mouse over the nipple of a female statue to activate tiny dancing ballerinas, or rows of blooming flowers. Although the content is “intimate,” Jarabo uses only dolls, statues or sculptures to show women’s bodies in her work, and, she says, “the piece is very delicate, not aggressive…it’s a little world for women, but not a sissy one.
   Jarabo, from Spain, came here on a Fullbright Scholarship to do graduate work at Cal Arts. There she met Fox, also doing graduate work (Fox now teaches there). They live in Santa Monica, only a few blocks away from the Samohi campus.
   Upon returning to the gallery, Fox displays his work saying, “These are my stuffed animals. I sewed them.” The simplicity of that statement gives way to a discussion, first about the abstract nature of the “animals,” and then about the elitism of most art, and the couple’s hopes that this work will more user friendly that most. Says Fox, “When I was a kid, there was always one exhibit in a museum that had a button you could push, that was the one I liked.”
   Jarabo’s small, intricate mixed-media pieces with drawings of people in yoga poses sharing the space with amorphous blobs of color, will be displayed as well, Jarabo says she was trying to “create a little world” with them.
   Fischer jumps in during this conversation, adding thoughts about Jarabo’s pieces, “they’re very intimate,” and about her stuffed animal, “He’s like a pet!”
   Her enthusiasm seems to be catching, as more and more members of the Samohi and Santa Monica community come to each new exhibit. The next, created by the Black Student Union (with a little help from Fischer) will be a celebration of Black History Month entitled, “Look at Our Past and Make a Difference,” opening on February 13. A Senior Art Show will wrap up the year.
   But for the next week, Samohi’s Roberts Gallery will be Whimsyland, filled with creatures, human and not so human, physical and virtual, who, the artists hope, will be “transgressive and modern.” as well as “accessible, something you could take home with you. Guess who said what.
   Whimsyland, opening reception, Thursday, January 31 7-9 p.m. Gallery Hours 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. For more information on the exhibit, call (310) 395-3204 ext. XXX, or visit www.tontosreunited.com/art/ whimsyland_show/.