Brad Nack photos
Curator Brad Nack has brought three artists, mostly locals from the region, for a show at MichaelKate Interiors that doesn’t even try to match the crazed intensity of its Halloween/October exhibit. Instead, this show, titled “Perfect Day” as a nod to the recently passed Lou Reed, acts as a sort of palate cleanser. We have the bold graphics of James Paul Lambert, the brutal abstracts of Liv Zutphen and the landscapes of Julie Young to contend with. Do the three have anything really to do with each other? Not really, apart from the abstract, but their jarring proximity is a breather, a chance to regroup. All three are worth checking out.
Julie Young’s landscapes break geography into geometric shapes and explode them onto her canvases in her colorful oil paintings. There’s a Chagall and Miro-like dance in such works like “Summerland Beach,” where the sand can barely be seen through the blue and green shapes (swimmers? umbrellas?), or “Paradise Road” with its green curlicues and odd stripes. Elsewhere in sketchier and centered “Hendry’s Beach” or “150 Lookout,” one can see the paragliders off the cliffs, for example, but it’s still like a half-remembered dream. For those not versed in the look of Santa Barbara, it may not just look abstract. Call it a hidden message to the locals.