Art Collectors:  Judith Burke and Paul Corneil

October 6 – 29, 2016

October 6, 6-9 pm – Preview: San Pedro Art Walk

October 8, 4-6 pm – Collector’s and Artist’s reception

Sunday, October 16, 3 – 5 pm – Collectors Talk

*see below for list of artists in this show

Art Collectors serve a great purpose in the development of an art culture, whether international or regional, the role of art collector is critical to artist, gallery, museum and the cultural economy.

Over the past ten years, the South Bay has seen a remarkable growth in the arts; galleries, non-profits, museums and studio collectives have been established and sustained throughout the South Bay Cities and there is no sign of slowing down.

Art appreciators come and go to the receptions hosted by the galleries, enjoying the art, the social scene, partaking in the food and wine but leave empty handed…except for the very few who we call the Collectors.  These special individuals become steady supporters and make a very big difference in the ability for artists and galleries to thrive.

SBC has selected two longstanding South Bay collectors to show a portion of their collections. They have made a big difference in many artists’ lives and have developed a strong relationship with South Bay Contemporary.  SBC would like to honor Paul Corneil and Judith Burke for their years of dedication, passion and support of the arts in the South Bay. Although they may have very different aesthetic taste for what they collect, they have in common a passion for art.

Judith Burke and Paul Corneil (the collectors) will be present for the reception as well as the Collectors Talk.  Join us and find out what motivates these two South Bay collectors and view the two collections on display in the gallery.

*(Paul Corneil collection)

Donald Crocker, Kathy Reis, Ghislaine Gargaro, Mario Mirkovich, Bernard Fallon, David Wolfram, Elma Beck

Lois Barnes, Orma Hammond, Ellen November, Joyce Welsh, Joy Gonzalez, Penny Kastagir, Margaret Mohr

Nina Zak Laddon, Leah Shirejian, Mary Pichette, Richard Stephens, Annie Clavel, Virgina Wyper, Carolyn Liesy

Gil Mares, Paul Blieden, Max Cabler, Lynn Haggard, Judith Herman, Phillip Earl, Ray Carofano, Harold Plople

Alys Chalmers, Mina Tang Kan, Margaret Lazzari, Betsy Lohrer-Hall, Sari Staggs, Jody Wiggins, Pat Hinz

Carolyn Laiberte

*(Judith Burke Collection)

Michelo Favar, Jim Morphesis, Jim Murray, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Arthur B. Carles, Marta Stang, Fielding Walker, Cheryl Warrick,

MB Lambert, Milton Avery, Victoria Burge, Jasper Johns, C.Matty, Perri Schwartz, Georges Roualt, BJO Nordfeldt,

Edgar Ewing, Charles Demuth , June Woolsey, Ani Kasten, Lynn Foster, Mary Merkel Hess

ART COLLECTOR’S STATEMENTS

Judith Burke: Statement

Collector….Ke lek ter… Someone who collects objects because they are beautiful, are of value or are interesting………..or all of the above.

I have been a collector for most of my life as were my parents and as are my siblings. My family lived in a two-hundred-year old farmhouse on Long Island. The house was in total disrepair and weekends were spent in Upstate New York and Connecticut, scouring barns for old wood to rebuild floors, windows and cabinets. Many of the barns were also storehouses for treasures: paintings, frames, ceramics, and other art objects. My mother learned to clean, repair and restore frames. Many of the frames had old barely visible paintings in them. She soon became proficient at cleaning and restoring these as well. My sister, who lives in England, and I share one of these early paintings, The Milkmaid, a primitive folk art piece that we both love. The Maid is due to come back to me at the end of this year. (See photo of her and King George, another example of an early treasure found in a barn.)

After my parents moved to California, they began to change the nature of their collection. They were very fortunate to purchase the Rodriquez House, a little known Schindler in Glendale. They began to collect paintings from the Ashcan School of artists from NYC. Alfred Stieglitz also nurtured a small group of American Modernist painters in NY around the same time. Many of these artists were represented in my parents’ collection. They regularly bought at auction during this time and when it came time to settle their estate, most of their collection was sold by Christies. My sister and brothers and I were each able to choose a few paintings prior to the auction dates. The Demuth, Avery and Nordfeldt in this exhibit are ones that I chose to have in my collection. Milton Avery was well represented in my parents’ collection. My sister and I each chose one but the most valuable was sold at auction. My husband and I also bought two Avery woodblock prints from a New York Gallery in the 1980s. We were members of the Los Angeles Art Association gallery. The first paintings we purchased were from this Gallery and I still have 8 of these works hanging in my home. The June Woolsey landscape in this show was our first purchase. Jim Murray was part of the group exhibiting at the Los Angeles Art Association in the 70s. His recent work Untitled Manhattan Beach Xtra was purchased from his studio in Manhattan Beach. For 30 years, I owned Mixt Collection, a gallery representing contemporary American, Japanese, Canadian and British crafts. The wire beaded baskets, reed basket and the Owl in Winter textiles were from artists represented by Mixt. The ceramic vessels and pitcher are recent purchases enhancing my life long interest in clay.

Peggy Zask’s expertise as a curator and artist is reflected in her selection of the paintings and objects from my collection. I am honored to be part of this exhibit. I am still an “all of the above” collector.

PAUL CORNEIL STATEMENT

Not For Sale — A Collector’s Tale

Soon after my first wife and I got married in Berkeley in 1966, we were shopping for things in a San Francisco Pier 1 store, where a couple of original paintings caught our eye.  They were reportedly executed by artists in Spain, the price was right — about $5 each — and they cheered up our apartment.  Five years later she didn’t want them (or me), so I got them in the divorce and still have them.

That whetted my appetite for art.  In the months to follow, I occasionally perused some of the galleries on Telegraph Avenue and bought a few more works, of higher quality and price, but by known artists.  My interest continued as I moved to Southern California and travelled more widely (for example, to Santa Fe).  But as this show is focussed on local South Bay artists, these earliest purchases aren’t included.

In 1982, I had the great fortune of moving to Redondo Beach for a new job and continued to live there for 20 years.  Even with a very stable childhood, that marked the longest I’ve ever lived in one town.  I remarried in 1984, and we continued to buy art occasionally.  Susan herself had some paintings, but again, by artists from some distance away.

Then in 2002, I retired, and we moved to Palos Verdes.  What a sedate life, after working and living in the beach area!  I started looking for organizations to get involved with, one of which being the P.V. Art Center and its gallery shops.  We quickly picked up on the color and energy of works by certain regulars in PVAC’s Artists’ Studio Gallery.  Some were vivid and others subtle — as were the artists behind them! — and, like their creators, some spoke to us.  Also, again the prices were good, well suited to the qualities in the works.  So we started buying works and found this was a great way to meet fascinating people and pep up our lives.

A few other galleries existed in P.V., and our growing interest took us to them also.  Most have gone out of business, but the Zask Gallery, which opened about 2009, developed a long-running continuity.  Not knowing she’d had a previous gallery in Torrance, I met Peggy Zask in her gallery’s first P.V. manifestation, underneath the Admiral Risty restaurant, of all places!  She included artists she knew from further afield than just Palos Verdes and had shows with well-defined and engaging themes.  That got our attention, and we’ve stayed loyal over all the intervening years and her successive locations — across a parking lot from the Risty, a remarkable large space in the Promenade of the Peninsula shopping center, and now the Loft in San Pedro.

Although our show features only works by local artists, I’m somewhat tongue-tied as to how to articulate the qualities of what we’ve acquired.  It’s somewhat like trying to say what causes us to have certain close friends among all the folks we know.  One theme for me, the depiction of the human condition in visual terms, grows out of my career-long computer-modeling of physics systems, but we have myriad other threads, such as local architecture, local vignettes, and animals.  For some reason, most of what we’ve bought are two-dimensional, but we have a good number of sculptures, jewelry, and other 3-D works.  In any case, I probably look at a hundred works for each one that “speaks” to me enough to purchase.

Over the years, we’ve inevitably collected more works by certain artists than others.  Jody Wiggins, in Rancho Palos Verdes, is our champ, with near 40 works.  But other strong representatives include Nina Zak Laddon (Redondo Beach), Don Crocker (Rolling Hills), Margaret Mohr (Rolling Hills Estates), Norma Cuevas White (San Pedro), Penny Kastagir (Torrance), and Phil Earl (Palos Verdes Estates).  So if I were structuring an exhibit of the most representative local works from our collection on the four walls of the gallery room, I would make groupings of our most extensively held artists (obviously we like their works the best), and fill in the spaces around them with other works that relate to those “tent poles”.