Born in Seattle, U.S.A. in 1952. Attended Whitman College, majoring in mathematics; the University of Washington in mathematics, art history and studio art; University of California, Berkeley. Studied art history with Rainer Crone, painting with Jacob Lawrence and Michael Spafford, sumi-e with George Tsutakawa, Chinese brush with Hsai Chen. Wrote on art for Vanguard, ArtExpress, High Performance, ArtWeek, Bellevue Journal-American, Seattle Voice. Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force for media, and Special Task Force for educational Institutions in the late 70s. Taught art history, color theory, life painting, and design at Seattle Central Community College for 5 years before leaving Seattle in 1984. Current studio is in Ventura, California, north of Los Angeles.
Website URL: http://erikreel.com/
Wednesday, 17 May 2017 22:44
Art Review: Assembling Assemblage
Art Review
Assembling Assemblage
Buenaventura Arts Association 3D Open Competition
The Buena Ventura Art Association [BAA] is exhibiting its annual 3D Open Competition show through 20 May 2017. This annual exhibition and competition, while it does not draw many of the top sculptors and 3Dartists living and working in the 805, it does draw enough talent to remain one of the more interesting, if not the best, 3D group show in the 805.
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Visual Arts
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Tuesday, 25 April 2017 08:00
Review:To Woo Is to Win
Theatre
Review
Santa Paula Theatre Center’s Outside Mullingar and The Elite Theatre Company’s Engaging Shaw
Though profoundly different in virtually every other aspect, the current offering of two 805 theatres, the Santa Paula Theatre Center’s Outside Mullingar and the Elite Theatre’s Engaging Shaw, feature the exact same theme: the long-term wooings of a woman for a remarkably resistant man.
Jessi May Stevenson (left) as Rosemary, Cecil Sutton as Tony and Rosalee Calvillo as Aoife in the romantic Irish comedy OUTSIDE MULLINGAR by John Patrick Shanley, Photo Credit: Brian Stethem
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Performing Arts
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Wednesday, 26 April 2017 08:15
Review: Beached
Theatre
Review
Two Lights at Elite's South Stage
Elite Theatre Company has brought the world premier of Brett Busang’s Two Lights to its South Stage theatre, which is their annex for showing new work, and more experimental productions. Set in the 1950s it is a tight little drama loosely based on the life of Edward Hopper, the great American painter, and his wife, who was also a painter and modeled for her husband.
Jake Mailey (left) as Al and Clayton McLannock as Ed- Photos Credit: Joe Orrego
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Performing Arts
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Monday, 10 April 2017 07:00
Jean Dubuffet Drawings at the Hammer
Art Review
BEYOND THE 805
Jean Dubuffet Drawings at the Hammer
The current exhibition of Jean Dubuffet’s drawings at UCLA’s Hammer Museum is the first exhibition of Dubuffet’s drawings of this depth and scope. Consisting of almost 100 works created between 1935 and 1962 it spans Dubuffet’s most creative years, curated by Isabelle Dervaux, Acquavella Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum. The Hammer presentation is curated by Connie Butler, chief curator, with Emily Gonzalez-Jarrett, curatorial assistant. Dubuffet is in some ways the most influential and perhaps best French artists since WW II , so this show represents an important addition to the understanding of his work and post-war art history scholarship.
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Visual Arts
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Friday, 31 March 2017 02:50
Moholy-Nagy at LACMA
Art Review
BEYOND THE 805
Moholy-Nagy at LACMA
Every so often a person is able to see the consequences of their current time so clearly, to see the lines of development play out ahead of them, it is as if they can see the future. In such a case it doesn’t seem so much as if they influence those who come after, so much as that they seem to almost live and work in the future. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was such an artist. Working well over a half-century ago, there are few areas of our visual culture today that have not been touched or anticipated in some way by Moholy-Nagy. God knows what might have happened had he lived long enough to use a computer.
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Visual Arts
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Tuesday, 14 March 2017 03:34
Review: Agnes of God at the Elite
Theatre
A well-worth seeing production of Agnes of God is currently playing at the Elite theatre in Oxnard. It is the first play in a season of challenging and important plays by the Elite this year. Season tickets are highly recommended.
As the play opens, we are given to believe that Agnes is a young woman who has evidently murdered her newborn child while living in a Catholic convent. She seems remarkably and a bit uncannily unhinged and it is up to a court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr Martha Livingstone, with her own Catholic demons to fight, to try and unravel the situation or even decide whether Agnes is sane enough to stand trial. Set as a murder mystery, the play completely upends that genre as it unfolds as a three-way psychological wrestling match between Dr. Livingstone, Agnes, and Agnes’s Mother Superior, who is herself not all she at first appears to be.
Photo credit:Joe Orrego
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Performing Arts
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Friday, 03 March 2017 06:49
Review: Devil’s Music That Saves Your Soul
Miche Braden stars as Bessie Smith in the Rubicon Theatre Company's premiere production of "THE DEVIL'S MUSIC: THE LIFE AND BLUES OF BESSIE SMITH"
Photo Credit: Ronnie Slavin
Review-
The Rubicon Theatre Company of Ventura is currently showing the West Coast Premier of a very special project. Not really a play as such, or even what used to be called a “review”, The Devil’s Music: the Life and Blues of Bessie Smith is an extremely well-done hybrid whereby we, the audience are brought into a live speak-easy performance by Bessie Smith, the early pre-war Blues legend whose influence has shaped so much music since, from post-war small-band jazz to rock and roll.
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ARTS & CULTURE
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Tuesday, 07 February 2017 02:00
Review: Driving Home: Rubicon Concludes Nibroc Trilogy
Review-
With the wonderful cast and director of the previous installments reprising their roles, the third and last installment of the Nibroc Trilogy, Gulf View Drive, the conclusion to one of the most popular and critically acclaimed projects in Rubicon Theatre history, opened to an energetic and enthusiastic house last night. The play runs through 12 February 2017, and if you missed any of the two previous parts of the trilogy, no worries, this play stands on its own and offers up some first-rate comedy in the process.
(left) Erik Odom, Faline England, Sharon Sharth and Lily Nicksay star in Gulf View Drive, the final play of the acclaimed Nibroc Trilogy by Arlene Hutton .Performances January 25 – February 12 at Rubicon Theatre Company. Photo credit: Jeanne Tanner
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Performing Arts
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Saturday, 10 December 2016 00:19
Review: Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe
Review-
Oxnard-born Henry Taylor’s current solo show takes up the first floor of the Blum & Poe space in Culver City, Los Angeles. Best known for his large, thickly-painted, emotionally-charged paintings, often modeled on photographs, but not photorealism in any sense of the word, Taylor in this exhibition also extends his engagement with installation and contextual concerns.
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Visual Arts
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Monday, 05 December 2016 20:33
Review: Chapter Two at ETC
Review-
Ensemble Theatre Company’s production of Neil Simon’s Chapter Two offers ample evidence why Neil Simon’s plays are some of the most successful and frequently performed theatre in the world. Chapter Two is in many ways one of the best and certainly one of the most uniquely personal plays in the Neil Simon universe.
Understanding beyond all expectation. Caroline Kinsolving and Todd Weeks in Neil Simon's Chapter Two at the Ensemble Theatre Company.
Photo Credit: David Bazemore.
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Performing Arts
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