One of Ramone Muñoz’s “Towers of Vik” series of paintings. All photos are courtesy of the artists.

Muñoz calls the geological wonders “huge, towering sea stacks which stand, imposingly, over 60 meters above the indigo/black turbulence of the Atlantic Ocean.”

Muñoz’s “Towers of Vik” series was inspired by the rugged rock formations on the beach near the village of Vik in Southern Iceland.

By Louis Medina

LA Artcore, a nonprofit community art gallery in Los Angeles that showcases contemporary art for the public while helping visual artists develop their work, pursues mutually beneficial exchange shows with galleries in cities the world over – including Bakersfield.

One such exchange show opens free to the public on Thursday, Oct. 15, at Bakersfield College’s Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery. Titled “LA Artcore Artists,” the exhibit, which lasts through Nov. 19, will feature the work of Ramone Muñoz, Jon Nguyen, Mark Strickland, Robert Walker and Joyce Kohl.

Art lovers can expect edgy, thought-provoking pieces. For example, some of the inspirations for Muñoz’s abstract paintings, characterized by overpowering, overlapping geometric forms, are the decay of manmade structures, time and death. And some of the works by Kohl, who is the only sculptor in the show, are connected to such social and political concerns as “the negative side of checks and balances – how our government allows things to often not change,” and “the absurdity of modern warfare,” she said.

Organizers are excited. “It’s instructive for our students to see artwork that they would not be seeing otherwise,” said Jones Gallery curator and CSUB instructor Margaret Nowling. “And it’s great for them to see what kind of work is being done at other schools that they might transfer to,” she said, as the artists featured in the show teach locally and in Los Angeles.

Kohl is one such artist. She commutes from Altadena to teach sculpture, ceramics and three-dimensional design at CSUB. She has been on the board of LA Artcore for six years, and helped organize another exchange between it and CSUB about two years ago.

Art Exchange: Bakersfield in 2009, Los Angeles in 2010

Now it’s BC’s turn, and the reciprocal part of the LA Artcore/BC exchange will take place next September, when BC professors get a chance to show their work at the Artcore Brewery Annex, one of two facilities LA Artcore operates in downtown Los Angeles.

Los Angeles-based artist Ramone Muñoz.

“It’s really great for Bakersfield professors to show their work outside of Bakersfield,” Kohl said. “Any exposure of their work is great,” but it’s particularly beneficial “to be able to exhibit where they’re not well known.”

Nowling agreed. “Los Angeles is such a big art hub,” she said. “We have got some wonderful artists teaching at Bakersfield College and it’s really nice for people in Los Angeles to get to see the kind of work that they’re producing.”

Joyce Kohl, the only sculptor in the LA Artcore Artists Exhibit, calls this piece "Checks and Balances," and it involves "a piece of furniture with cubby holes in it, rusty metals, old-fashioned scales, and stuck weights." She said it represents the negative side of checks and balances, which prevents government from moving the nation forward sometimes.

She said the BC professors expected to exhibit at LA Artcore in 2010 are Nan Gomez-Heitzeberg, Cameron Brian, Debora Rodenhauser, Laura Borneman, Kristopher Stallworth, Emily Maddigan, Nina Landgraff, David Koeth, Claire Putney and Adel Shafik.

Interview with an artist in the Bakersfield Exhibit

But first thing’s first: The Bakersfield half of the BC/LA Artcore exchange opens with a 5:30-7 p.m. reception Thursday, Oct. 15, at the Jones Gallery. Here are highlights from an e-mail interview with participating artist Ramone Muñoz.

In "Pigeon Impersonating a Canary (of the Mines)," sculptor Joyce Kohl tries to depict "the absurdity of modern warfare" by calling attention to the fact that, just like canaries were once used to detect the presence of gas in coal mines, pigeons are now used to detect the presence of biological weapons used in germ warfare.

Muñoz, 58, is a full professor at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, his alma mater, where he studied advertising as an undergraduate and fine art painting as a master’s student. He currently teaches in the graphic design, foundation studies, and liberal arts and science departments. He has exhibited his work throughout California, in New Mexico, and overseas in Japan, Thailand and Germany. Muñoz has been board vice president of LA Artcore since 2005.

“I consider my teaching the greatest contribution I will make while I am breathing,” said  Muñoz, who has taught art and design for three decades and has been “happily partnered” for 15 years to a Los Angeles-area playwright.

He has this advice for art students getting ready to go out into the real world as artists during troubled economic times:

“Being an artist is a calling. You do it because you must,” he said. “Like music, acting, dance, any of the arts, it is in you and you must get it out. Many artists, like myself, find other things to do to make a living if you can’t live on art sales alone. Start to exhibit as soon as you can. Learn as much as you can about all kinds of art and embrace art history. Teaching is a very natural second profession for the artist. Go to the best school you can to study the kind of art you want to do.”

The kind of art Muñoz himself likes to do is clearly defined in his artist’s statement:

“I have always had a deep interest in the decay of manmade structures … I also have a deep, long-standing interest in geology … We have all observed that the earth is always at work, patiently and systematically reforming and reclaiming everything, including manmade objects … As buildings crumble and corpses decay, there is a poetic beauty in this reclamation process … Much of my current work could be seen as landscape in nature. I refer to these works as ‘Shift Sites,’ which depict the slow movement of large natural and manmade formations.”

Besides geology, archeology and decay, Muñoz has other sources of inspiration that are just as visceral.

“I am preoccupied with death and time. These factors are naturally a part of geology and archeology, but I also see the earth as a form of vast memorial. There is a sadness in the loss of things, through natural and unnatural causes.

“I am completely infatuated with the life, times and work of Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828). He witnessed one of the most terrible times in European history (the bloody invasion of Spain by France during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s) and was miraculously able to leave us some testament to those times.

“Coincidentally, when I was in Iceland doing research for the paintings in this exhibition (the ‘Towers of Vik’ series of paintings is abstracted depictions of huge rock formations near the small village of Vik on the southern coast of Iceland), I saw a comprehensive exhibition of all of his ‘Caprichos’ (‘Whims’) etchings. It is rare to see all 80-plus in chronological order. I was mesmerized. He was a genius.”

Muñoz is excited about exhibiting in Bakersfield and getting to see a bit of the city for the first time. “I have passed through Bakersfield many times going to other places,” he wrote, “but I must honestly say that I have never been there for more than a bite to eat.”

Check out the show

The Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery is presenting the LA Artcore Artists show featuring Joyce Kohl, Ramone Muñoz, Jon Nguyen, Mark Strickland and Robert Walker. The show is from Oct. 15 to Nov. 19 with an opening reception Oct. 15 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The gallery is open from 1 to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, inside the Grace Van Dyke Bird Library on the Bakersfield College campus, 1801 Panorama Drive. To get to the exhibit, enter the campus through the Haley Street entrance and park along the street inside the campus or look for parking in one of the lots. The gallery will be closed for Veterans Day on Nov. 11. For more information call 395-4616. To learn more about LA Artcore, visit www.laartcore.org.