On Saturday night Sam and I headed to Culver City to check out a group show at the WWA Gallery called Critters and People.  We were going because we’re fans of one of the five featured artists, JAW Cooper.   The gallery has a large outer space and a smaller back room with unsold art from previous shows.  All of the images on this page were lifted either from the artist’s own site or the WWA page. We both liked the piece below from the current show.

Tom Haubrick – Look Past Yourself

Then we traveled along the sparsely art-dotted white walls back to the more dense area of unsold work.  It was here we found pieces from the Julian Callos show that we had to miss last fall because we were in Thailand.

Julian Callos – Deluge

There were also other interesting pieces from other past shows.

Jana Brike – the most delicious bloom

Sam really liked the following two pieces by Jeni Yang.

Jeni Yang – Infusion

Jeni Yang – A subliminal mind conversation part 1

Wandering back up into the main area we found a wall of Jessica Dalva’s sketches.  Jessica is known for her sculptures, which were her main entry in the show, but I think her line work in her sketches is far more interesting than any of the things she does with wire and sculpey.

Jessica LL Dalva – the time spent waking up

Jessica LL Dalva – things you lost

Jessica LL Dalva – waves in the grass

Last, we came to JAW’s work in the front of the gallery.  We’ve been following her since we saw her at the Soap Factory in a group show long ago.  Unfortunately the majority of her pieces in this show were only sketches.  Now, that being said, her sketches look 1,000 times more interesting than a lot of people’s finished work – but we were still dismayed to not see more fully fleshed work from her.  My favorites were the two below.

JAW cooper – Freeze

I really like this Elk (?) piece.  There are so many interesting things about it – the third antler that is partially shaped like a woman – the woman with twigs stuck in her back – the woman holding up the throat.  I suppose I’m fond of people in agony with things stuck in their back.  See here, here, here and here.

JAW cooper – spite