This new L.A. artwork gallery connects NorCal and SoCal artists

Final November, Oakland-based Good Mom Gallery hosted a buzzy inaugural group present in Los Angeles that includes the work of 20 artists, principally from the Bay Space and L.A. On opening evening, the house overflowed with a crowd of creatives from each areas of the state who got here to see the artwork and stayed to speak about it.

Over the past near-decade, Good Mom Gallery has helped elevate the Bay Space’s rising artwork scene. Now, it’s set its sights on L.A. The gallery’s second and bigger location in Los Angeles brings its roster of Bay Space artists, together with Landon Pointer and Morgan Corbitt, in addition to a community-centric ethos, to a brand new viewers. Situated downtown close to the sixth Avenue Viaduct, the gallery is on the primary ground of a constructing the place artists additionally reside in live-work areas.

The group present “Individuals, Locations, Issues” opened at Good Mom Gallery the primary weekend of January. It options figurative, panorama and nonetheless life works by 5 rising L.A. and Bay Space artists that underscore the expertise within the gallery’s increasing neighborhood. It presents vignettes of California metropolis life, highlighting minute particulars of structure and figures sourced from the artists’ day-to-day observations, communities, private histories and identities.

A sculpture by Josh Cloud entitled “Sincere Precarity.”

(Good Mom Gallery)

Corbitt’s zoomed-in particulars of Bay Space constructing facades provide a chook’s-eye view of metropolis streets obscured by the wings of pigeons. On the gallery ground, Oakland-based Michael Diamond’s life-size sculptures of birds collect in a flock; a single papier-mâché pigeon nestles within the ceiling rafters. Within the vibrant portray “You Higher Work, 2022,” artist Brea Weinreb’s associates leisurely collect, music blaring and chests bared, at San Francisco’s Dolores Park — a web site of queer bliss she used to frequent earlier than transferring to L.A. And considered one of Josh Cloud’s three sculptures, “Spring Showers, 2022,” crafted from ceramic, wire, flocking and cotton branches, animates the middle of the gallery.

For L.A. artists, Good Mom’s presence is a welcome place to point out work and meet like-minded creatives in a scene the place a small pool of established artists are sometimes given outsize publicity. “Just lately I’ve seen extra of a grassroots effort to point out work in L.A.,” says the Southern California-based ceramicist Cloud. “As an alternative of ready round for larger galleries to offer folks of shade and queer folks the alternatives to point out work, why not do it ourselves? We’re doing one thing collectively and that feels extra vital.”

In a local weather the place many younger artists transfer forwards and backwards between the Bay and L.A. and much more fluidly trade concepts on-line, the gallery’s two places intend to operate as a bridge connecting artists on reverse sides of California. Good Mom hopes this cross-pollination may also help promising California-based artists develop their collector base and attain a wider viewers. “It felt actually onerous to generate profits as an artist within the Bay, particularly when you have been younger,” says Weinreb, who joined Good Mom after she left the Bay and landed in L.A. final yr. Quickly after her transfer, Weinreb discovered a studio in a big artist compound downtown that’s house to about 50 artist studios. “There was a right away neighborhood and a ton of native galleries huge and small. Everybody is actually excited to attach,” she says.

Brea Weinreb’s portray, “You Higher Work, 2022.”

(Good Mom Gallery)

“The space is useful as a result of I’m capable of go right down to L.A. to faucet into the scene, make connections and see all people, however then I can return house to Oakland and be in my very own little world in my studio,” provides Pointer, who’s displaying for the primary time in L.A. at Good Mom. The artist’s trio of work on show on the gallery mix influences from his Oakland neighborhood with trailblazing Black popular culture icons, like Dennis Rodman. “Good Mom opened up an entire new world for me,” he says.

The gallery’s co-owners and administrators, brothers Ian and Jared Jethmal and Vanessa Indies, checklist L.A.’s booming artwork scene as the primary cause for the enlargement; the Southern California metropolis has extra galleries, extra collectors, extra alternatives to be seen — a sentiment echoed by the current wave of New York galleries increasing to L.A. as nicely. The Jethmals initially opened their Oakland location in 2014, named after their mom who raised her 4 sons as a single mother or father, as a technique to champion their artist associates within the Bay Space and bridge the gulf between small DIY areas and bigger galleries. The Jethmals initially co-founded the gallery with their good pal Calvin Wong, who moved on to pursue his artwork profession as a ceramicist in 2017. Indies joined Good Mom full time final yr to assist open the L.A. location.

Ian Jethmal, Vanessa Indies and Jared Jethmal at Good Mom Gallery.

(Good Mom Gallery)

“After we began we have been surrounded by a number of new, up-and-coming artists. All of us got here up on the identical time; there was a type of renaissance,” says Jared. “Since then, we’ve grown with that scene. Numerous the artists that we have been displaying on the very starting have now gone on to big-time locations of their careers,” like painters Mario Ayala, Jeffrey Cheung and Jahlil Nzinga. Ayala, whose work was featured in Good Mom’s first present in Oakland, not too long ago had a solo present in New York at Jeffrey Deitch.

The gallery hopes to observe an upward trajectory of its personal with out shedding sight of its roots. “The unique purpose hasn’t modified since we began, and I don’t assume it ever will,” says Ian.

“We don’t need to observe the mould of a typical blue-chip, high-end gallery. You may make the gross sales, do the enterprise correctly and still have enjoyable and be artistic and bizarre with it,” provides Jared.

In recent times, artists in Good Mom’s Bay Space circle, corresponding to Cannon Dill, Andrew Barnes, Guillaume Ollivier and Maggie Wang, seeking more room and alternatives, made the transfer to Los Angeles. Good Mom later adopted. “Within the final eight years, we’ve constructed sufficient of a neighborhood framework for us to go right down to L.A. and really do one thing significant,” says Ian, noting that they discovered their new location by way of associates who scouted the world.

Artist Morgan Corbitt’s piece, “Division of Electrical energy.”

(Good Mom Gallery)

The gallery can also be working with Southern California curators to curate reveals and occasions all through 2023 that includes California artists and past. Blended-media artist Paul Flores, born and raised in L.A., is curating a big group present this summer time. Good Mom can also be partnering with longtime pal and director of Tlaloc Studios Ozzie Juarez, an area artist who was showcased within the gallery’s inaugural L.A. exhibition, to put native, rising artists in exhibitions at each areas all year long.

In April, Good Mom will current a solo present that includes L.A. native Daniel Antelo, an artist who creates large-scale oil work, billboards and murals all through the town, together with his grayscale, photorealistic mural of Kobe and Gianna Bryant in East Los Angeles. The gallery can also be planning a style pop-up on the finish of the month with Bay Space clothier Tommy Bogo, who labored on neighborhood style occasions in Oakland with Good Mom earlier than transferring to Southern California. “We’re making an attempt to faucet into the scene and get our arms in as many locations as we presumably can so that everybody feels included into what we will presumably do in L.A.,” says Ian.

“It’s all about increasing whereas retaining the soul of the house as a result of that’s what makes Good Mom Good Mom,” says Pointer. “And that’s why they’ve such a robust neighborhood, that’s why they’re so profitable: On the coronary heart of all of it, they care in regards to the folks and other people care about them.”