The Alchemist is the original “maker”, an icon for a world that demands cheap, readily available material goods, without concern for the byproducts of manufacturing. But our relationship with industry is a complicated one. At its core, the Alchemist also represents our need to design, build and change our environment through understanding the principles that guide our world.
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SAN DIEGO – The contemporary art exhibit, “Beyond the Age of Reason,” curated by Larry and Debby Kline, is nearing the end of its run at the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park. If you want to be intrigued, or even possibly enraged, by various artists’ visions of religion and spirituality, you’ll need to get to the museum space before the exhibit closes on October 31st.
The myth-master is Eleanor Antin, one of the founding members of UC San Diego’s Visual Arts Department, and an internationally-admired artist, or as the Klines put it: “an artist of the world.” Shown here is one of the pieces from her “Roman Allegories,” a series of large-scale photos staged in Del Mar and La Jolla that re-envision the last days of an ancient civilization remarkably similar to ours.
We understand Larry and Debby Kline stepped in when a curator dropped out for the Reuse Recreate Reimagine and they did a stunning job of pulling together an exciting group of artists in this museum level exhibition.
Curator of the 3Rs exhibition is Debby Kline — half of a dynamic art duo with her husband, Larry — who was called in to organize the show at the 11th hour, when the previous curator suddenly departed. No stranger to the museum, Debby had worked there in the mid-1990s, even doing a stint as Interim Director. Besides working on the new Alchemist installation and teaching art at Design Institute and UCSD Medical School, Debby managed to step into the curator’s role and assemble an eye-popping show in record time.
For years, The Klines have engaged in an unusual ritual by making art when dining out. It is one facet of their art that spawned their collaborative ventures. These works capture creativity at its most playful state, resulting in surprisingly complex and impromptu sculptures borne of only the materials at hand.