Garden Party (Chinatown)

Garden Party (Chinatown)

GARDEN PARTY

Friends of Contemporary Art

970 N. Broadway, Suite 208, Los Angeles, CA 90012

curated by Carolyn Castaño and Hadley Holiday

 Garden Party takes Los Angles’ gardens and green spaces as its focus. Over a three month span, artists Castanõ and Holiday 5 “Garden Parties” in which participating artists were invited to draw or make art outdoors. The destinations ranged from the Huntington Botanical Gardens, to an Urban oasis at Ferndell in Griffith Park, to an artist’s home garden, to the wilds of Angeles Crest and Ocean View Farms, the largest community garden in L.A.

Garden Party is inspired by the tradition of Matisse and Rousseau and the fantastical flora of Los Angeles itself. Garden Party plays on artistic concerns with capturing nature, the sublime, celebrating biodiversity and movements such as victory gardens and sustainable gardening. During the sessions artists were free to interpret the idea of plein air by drawing, painting, taking photographs, collage, making cuttings, or simply hanging out for the day. Artists in Garden Party build on the social aspect of art making. Ideas begun during the sessions were taken back to the studio for further development. These completed artworks were exhibited at Friends of Contemporary Art, Chinatown, Los Angeles.