State of the Art: Your Weekly Guide to LA's Latino Art Openings

Photo: Abelardo Morell

State of The Art is Remezcla’s weekly guide to Latin art openings in your city each week. Mingle with art admirers, collectors and casual passersby to check out these new works. And don’t forget to grab a free glass of wine…or three.

Abelardo Morell — ROSEGALLERY

Forget Instagram — if you want seriously retro photographs, you can use a camera obscura. Basically, it’s a method of taking photos that involves a completely darkened space (like a box or even a room) that only gets light from a small hole. Photographer Abelardo Morell has mastered this technique and created some awesome photos that no amount of X-Pro filter could replicate — or at least not with the same dedication. When he first started camera obscura work, the exposure could take around ten hours. The result is gorgeous outside views juxtaposed onto interior settings in different variations, like some sort of time warp where you’re in two places at once. The photographer also takes black-and-white photographs with subjects ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Money. If you want to see more, this weekend you can check out a range of his work at his show “Outside In.” Head to ROSEGALLERY on November 23 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to see work from all points of his artistic career. It beats browsing through your Instagram feed.

Discovery Tour — Highland Park

Sometimes seeing the process behind a work of art makes that object even cooler. If you want to find out more about how artists create their art, consider joining the Discovery Tour Sunday, November 24 from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The self-guided tour will let you discover work from a number of artists (more than 100 actually!) in homes and studios residing in the areas of Eagle Rock, Highland Park and Mount Washington. Most art walks in LA mean gallery visits but this is a unique opportunity to see artists’ studios — so basically witness the workspace where all the magic takes place. The featured artists for this tour are photographer Angela Maria Ortiz S. and Anselmo Ortiz. The rest of the artists you can discover yourself. Pre-sale tickets are $10.

Mata Ortiz Pottery and Oaxacan Folk Art Artisan — MOLAA

If you admire the beauty of a well-crafted pot or the beautiful details in traditional weavings, this weekend at MOLAA is for you. The museum will host a number of events from Friday, November 22 to Sunday, November 24 related to pottery and folk art. Potters Lila Silveira and Carlos Carillo, along with Zapotec weaver Porfirio Gutierrez and Oaxacan wood carver Jesus Sosa Cavio will showcase their work in the museum lobby. Some of that work will also be on sale all weekend and on the 24th, there will be a free family art workshop from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Learn more about how these objects are created — you might even end up taking one home.