Alma's Art Asylum

Alma's Art Asylum
Los Angeles, CA 90045
United States
ph: (310) 869-8469
alma@almasartasylum.com

My Life, My Thoughts and My Work

I guess this is where I am supposed to say something very intellectual and meaningful, lol. I was asked by the engineer of this site (my very intelligent and kind-hearted husband) to consider answering the question 'Why does this site exist rather than not exist?'.

I think this site exists because I have found the art galleries in LA and possibly throughout the US to have taken a turn for the worse. When I have approached the people in the "in crowd" with the galleries regarding my chances of showing at any of them, I have pretty much uniformly gotten the same response: I'm too old and my art is 'dinosaur' art.

If you haven't been to any galleries lately, go by all means and you will find that most of them are crammed with nightmarish, angry, screeching, screams. When I asked one of these acquaintences why this was, he said it was the art world's version of punk music and that was one of the reasons only the young 'hipsters' were invited to participate.

So now with that long explanation I guess this site is my scream right back at the art world. Now more than ever the art world has become exclusionary, narrowly focused and, to add insult to injury, ageist.

My Thoughts

Now to answer the question 'Why continue to do the art, rather than not do it?' or 'Why all the art'? Art has always been the mode of expression that flows most naturally from me and I believe that sharing feelings is a valuable tool to finding common ground with our fellow humans.

Who hasn't felt excluded, joy, suffering, love or any number of other feelings at some time in his or her life? These common feelings are a great way to reach into the core of the shared human experience and further other meaningful messages as well.

For many years now, even before it was fashionable to carry "green bags" for your groceries, I have been advocating recycling old things ready for the trash into new and exciting things. It began more than 20 years ago when I picked up my first pair of tattered old 'boy friend' jeans and decided the back pockets were still in good enough shape to construct a small purse for myself. Since then I have been able to see art in the common and everyday objects I see around me and, with a little creativity, I have been able to make at least half of my art out of recycled materials.

I have come to believe that we buy entirely too much in this culture while throwing away valuable resources every day. Furthermore, I like being an example to my fellow humans of being circumspect about making only meaningful purchases and being conscious about the resources we consume and getting the fullest use out of them.

During my studies in the social sciences, I came to be aware of and appreciate cultures we consider primitive that carefully use every single scrap of the natural resources they consume and I have often thought we could learn a valuable lesson from that.

My Life

I was born in Canada in 1965 and moved to the deep south as a young girl where I majored in art at Centenary College (a four- year program) in Shreveport, Louisiana. I left college after only two years and eventually as a young woman moved to California.

I have lived in the LA area for more than 20 years now. busily conducting my life both as a married and single parent and as a working mother and stay-at-home wife. During that time, I have gathered many experiences and impressions of life and on occasion found the time and space to express these in art.

More recently, I have attended various art classes and classes in the social sciences at Santa Monica City College. During the last few months, my husband and I have begun daily walks on Venice Beach and I have used them as an opportunity to gather more valuable ''found" resources for art: discarded and thrown away as trash, washed up on the beach or left on the beach turning the beach into a city dump. For further details on our daily walks, check my husband's blog at ayearatvenicebeach.blogspot.com.

Alma for Site Launch - November 12, 2010

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Alma's Art Asylum
Los Angeles, CA 90045
United States
ph: (310) 869-8469
alma@almasartasylum.com