‘Hyper America: Our Manifest Destiny’ is featuring work by three artists, two from Pacific Palisades, through December 24 at TAG Gallery at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., D-3. Artists John Clendening and Palisades residents Camey McGilvray and Joan Vaupen will be at the opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 3, in the gallery. Clendening combines still-life images with landscapes in a form he calls the ‘Stillscape.’ As the former chief of design at the Smithsonian, Clendening’s relationship with American art and history is second nature. His current show, ‘American Landscapes,’ surveys American national parks, including Zion, Joshua Tree, Snow Canyon and Indian Canyon. He reveals how the natural world can inspire on any scale, bringing the majestic together with the commonplace, juxtaposing monumental natural imagery with traditional still-life. In ‘Wired,’ sculptor McGilvray challenges the multifaceted, fragmented, high-speed nature of contemporary culture. By capturing individual slices of life in hyperdrive, McGilvray’s sculptures force us to realize that despite the benefits, digital communication is no substitute for the quality of an unedited, face-to-face interaction. What do fortune cookies and Plexiglas have in common? Mixed-media artist Vaupen revels in the two in her new exhibit, ‘Fortune.’ She brings the kitschy cookie into the realm of 21st-century art’molding the soft plastic of Plexiglas into the hardened, sensual shapes of that frustrating, sweet paradox: the fortune cookie. We want to eat it, but we don’t want to eat it. We want to open it, and we want to keep it closed.
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