Christopher Noxon

Tomorrow we kick off the 42nd annual Ojai Studio Artists Open Studio Tour, and I'd argue this event has never had more to offer. The outside world can feel pretty lousy right now. Technology is terrifying, the economy is teetering, politics are toxic. But here in this magical five-mile-wide valley, dedicated artists are using their hands and hearts and minds to make and share things. The Tour is a chance to connect with this place and meet curious, generous people. It's about human experience and unmediated expression in the real world. That said, let's be honest: it’s a bit of a hassle. It's inspiring, exciting, and adventurous, but "easy" isn't on the list. A ticket gets you into the private workspaces of 60+ artists, from way up in Upper Ojai down to the canyons near Taft Gardens. You'll find painting, ceramics, sculpture, photography, jewelry, fiber arts, assemblage, mixed media, and everything in between, by artists from all kinds of backgrounds and approaches. So my first piece of advice: don't try to see it all. Pace yourself. Do some research, make a plan, and sketch out a route. (Rebecca Odes' spiffy digital map can help - check out www.osatourmap.org!) But don't let that put you off. Make a weekend of it and start Friday evening, Oct 9, at the reception at the Ojai Valley Museum from 5-7 pm. You can meet all 60+ participating artists, see their work, pick up a booklet, and finalize your game plan. Then talk to artists about their favorite spots. Obviously taste is subjective, but there are definitely studios you won't want to miss. Keep your ears open and be ready to change plans based on what you hear. I'm excited to be showing a lot of new work, including several new round paintings and the sound installation Sonic Blooms. Also on the same stop you'll experience the magnificent multimedia creations of Rebecca Odes. Come by!

One of the most valuable things I've learned about art – and really, about life – since I began painting seriously six years ago is this: it's all in the making. In other words, "inspiration" isn't a straightforward one-to-one transaction. The idea of an artist waiting patiently for a muse to float down from the heavens and then, touched by the grace of inspiration, rushing (usually in quick-cut montage with swelling soundtrack) to assemble a masterpiece - this is bunk. It doesn't work that way. At least it doesn't for me. Take for instance Sonic Blooms, a sound art installation made up of clusters of public address speakers painted with botanical imagery, which I'll be sharing at the Ojai Studio Artists fall tour. The project is a partnership with composer Will Thomas, who late last year invited me to participate in a show sponsored by the Ojai Music Festival. The show, titled "A/V" (Audio Visual) featured artworks that incorporated original sound. That was the "inspiration" - a set of parameters. Whatever I made would be shown somewhere on Will's property, possibly outdoors, and accompanied by some kind of sound made based on our conversations. Thinking it over (really more like daydreaming about Will's garden and trying to picture how we'd wire it for sound), I started thinking about outdoor speakers and how those PA horns that you see bolted to the walls of schools or on boats. Aren't they kind of flower-shaped? Wouldn't it be cool to paint those with petals and stamens and leaves and then make a big bouquet? After playing with various design configurations and walking around the garden for a few weeks, it became clear that this thing shouldn't be one large object shooting sound out from a single source. By breaking it up into multiple "blooms," we could create a surround-sound experience that would flow in and around the space. And since we were working with AV speakers designed for the frequency of the human voice, Will created a piece of music using my daughter Eliza's voice that spoke to the connection between humans and nature. Then over the course of eight months I got online and started ordering speakers of various sizes, working with industrial designer Chris Hacker to sand, prime, and assemble them into flower-like arrangements. By the time we were done, the piece had grown to 59 individual speakers. It all happened in steps, one set of parameters and notions and problems leading to the next, a chain of iteration that is still unfolding and expanding. We're now working on plans to expand it to triple its current size and take it into new public gardens. All of which is to say: art is a process. As much as we who make things would like to imagine them arriving in one fell swoop inside a single package with a pretty bow on top, the truth is art happens over time. Art keeps changing and evolving. Just like life. Just like us. The Sonic Blooms will be out and making their magical sounds in my garden of cacti and olive trees for the full three days of Oct 10-12, 10 am - 5 pm. Tickets for the whole tour are available at www.ojaistudioartists.org. Would love to see you!

Every summer since moving to Ojai six years ago, I make a busy picture. That was my grandmother Betty's name for the drawings I did as a kid, lying on the floor with a box of markers and a big sheet of scrap paper — I'd draw imaginary maps with railroads and roads, mountains and trees, houses and buildings. When I became a parent myself, I'd make busy pictures with my kids, filling big sheets of butcher paper with imaginary landscapes, funny characters, and whatever doodles came to us. I picked up the busy picture habit again in (late) middle age, as a way of connecting to that kid-on-the-floor approach to making pictures, and also mapping my feelings about this magical place I now call home. There are now seven "Awha'y" pictures (from the Chumash word for "moon" or "nest"), and the latest makes its public debut this week at the Ojai Valley Museum as part of OSA's "As We See It" group show. This latest one is a coming together, a mixing up of ideas and symbols and approaches I've been obsessing on lately. Unlike the other "Awha'y"s, this one is ROUND, which gives me a chance to bend perspective and honor the shape of the planet, eggs, eyes, and so much else. Looking at all the "Awha'y"s, I'm struck by the things that keep showing up — that orange orb, the Monopoly-piece houses, the silhouette with brainwaves, and of course the obligatory Ojai post office tower. I feel like they're actors in the repertory company of my imaginary picture theater — I'll use them any chance I get! We just love working together! See you at the Museum! There's a ton of great work — the whole community of OSA artists is in full flower these days. Reception this Friday, Aug. 21, 5–7 pm.

This Friday is the opening a new show called "r/evolve" at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation. The title holds two meanings: to revolve, as in rotate and return, and to evolve, as in change over time. Both feel true to how this work came together. Everything here is new — I only started working in the circular format last summer, and this is the first time it's all been in one place. There are round paintings, a hand-painted acrylic sphere, a series of limited edition prints, and two Sonic Blossoms, painted PA speakers clustered into colorful flower forms that sit on rotating turntables. The centerpiece is a seven-foot circular landscape mounted so visitors can spin it themselves, like a Wheel of Fortune, a mandala, a planet. Which way is up? Working in the round has changed how I approach making art. Without corners to navigate or edges to fit, the fixed vanishing point loses its authority. I've found myself drawn to the curved and wiggly over the straight and angular, to forms that meander and spiral rather than march toward a horizon. The opening reception is this Friday, May 8, from 5 to 7 pm at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, 248 Montgomery Street in Ojai. The show runs through May 25. I'd love to see you there.

I have a show opening at the Carolyn Glasoe Foundation here in Ojai opening this Friday May 8 called "r/evolve." I struggled with the title – I love the sound of it, but I worry the forward slash between the "r" and "e" is maybe a little pretentious? We’re going with it anyway - this is, after all, a show of round paintings, a few that turn, a painted sphere and two sculptures made of horn-shaped PA speakers mounted on turntables. All of it looks a little like my previous landscapes, but it’s nothing like what I’ve made before – it’s about evolving! The biggest piece in the show, the anchor, is a seven-foot diameter disc: a lacquered composite tabletop my friend Joel discovered sitting next to a dumpster last summer. It was transported across town in another friend's truck with blankets and lasso straps (and the happy discovery that it could be rolled across my yard like a giant pool raft); then it was sanded, primed, and varnished before a drop of paint went on it. I painted it over a few months in wedges, one pie slice at a time. The real challenge wasn't logistical. It was compositional. When I’m doing a landscape I follow a familiar rule-set: horizon about three-quarters up, diagonal lines receding to a vanishing point, bigger things closer, smaller things further, color vivid up front and soft in the distance. The rectangle is obedient. It holds still. The circle doesn't play by those rules. Where is "closer" in a circle? Which way is up? Where’s the horizon? (Somehow it never occurred to me to just treat the circular edge as a border — a viewfinder — and paint an ordinary scene inside it.) Instead I worked from the center out, playing with radiating lines of perspective and curved, patterned wave shapes to suggest form, undulation, slope, elevation, distance. What came together felt like a little planet. Also a wheel of fortune. Also a mandala. At a certain point it became obvious: it needed to turn. I researched and acquired an industrial-grade lazy susan mechanism and called in a builder friend to help make and affix a mounting plate so it could hang on the wall (none of this would happen without the help of friends! so grateful for this community!) . And once the whole thing was turning, everything opened up. I fell into my familiar dreamlike way of working, filling in spaces like putting together a puzzle, leaving space for pink to show through, creating telescoping points of view. I tossed little houses across the picture like Monopoly pieces, snaked roads among overlapping tree shapes and crop patterns, painted a sun on the curve of the horizon, then another, further down (or was it up?). Along the way I started to feel genuinely liberated by the circular. The cell, the eye, the planet, the ovum – we’re born of the circle/sphere. We live on one. We see through them. Our origin, our vision, our whole world is a circle/sphere. So what's with all the rectangles? Our windows, doors, tables, screens, books, walls, street layouts — squares and grids everywhere! I felt myself getting carried away looking around the ordinary world, wanting to scream: down with the Oppressive Right Angle! Sure yes rectangles are efficient, stackable, complementary. They give a pleasing sense of ORDER and CONTROL and USEFULNESS. Fine. But they are not the only shape; they need to make room. Come see the show and celebrate the circular! The opening is Friday, May 8, 5-7 pm, at the Carolyn Glasoe Foundation, 248 S. Montgomery St, Ojai. If you want to go deeper: on Saturday, May 17 I'll be doing an artist talk in conversation with Joel Fox. And on Friday, May 16 I'm leading an illustrated sketchbook workshop.