Paintings and mixed media work by Los Angeles artist Carol Es, incorporating oil paint, paper garment patterns, and textiles on canvas.

George Billis Gallery LA
2716 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
tel: (310) 838-3685

George Billis Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present It’s Mostly About Me and Much Less About You, a solo exhibition of new mixed media work by Los Angeles artist, Carol Es. The exhibition will run from October 30 – December 18, 2010. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, October 30th from 5pm to 8pm.

It’s Mostly About Me and Much Less About You is a new series of work that includes oil on canvas and linen mixed with paper and embroidery, as well as drawings on paper and handmade dolls. Carol Es uses an amalgamation of characters from her family and her apparel industry background to evoke abstracted, childlike narratives that drip in color and tattered threads to tell personal, visual stories. Paintings with paper garment patterns and their scrap surround cartooned family members, and a new non-descript animal appropriately named “Dan.” Black holes, gumball machines, and what appear to be misfit toys as haphazard characters crudely drawn, create a dark, yet light-hearted comic aesthetic – seemingly as dichotomous as the artist.

Also available at the exhibition: Scribbles in a Sandstorm published by Chance Press. This is a hardcover, hand bound Artists’ book containing a removable spine, enabling the accordion-folded text block to unfold and display a 40" color-printed panorama. On the flipside: an instant Carol Es art collection including a Gocco print, a letterpress print, and a giclee print on watercolor paper, as well as a bound-in excerpt from Carol’s sketchbook. The book also includes an original signed sketch. No expense was spared in the construction of this unique publication, which features boutique paper-backed bookcloth, papers from Moab, Canson, Arches, and Rives, and printing using archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks. Because of the time and expense involved in producing each copy, the edition will be strictly limited to 30 copies, of which six deluxe copies will also include a folder containing signed copies of each print, suitable for framing. Only a limited number of advance copies will be available at the exhibition before its actual release date in 2011.

Carol Es’ works are featured in numerous private and public collections, including the Getty Museum, Brooklyn Museum, UCLA Special Collections, the Jaffe Collection, and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She has exhibited at the Riverside Art Museum, Torrance Art Museum, Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, and Zimmer Children's Museum. She is also a two-time recipient of the ARC Grant from the Durfee Foundation and was recently awarded the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.