Dept. of Deliberation & Obfuscation
Philip Johnston
Martin Cox
Cox grew up in the busy port of Southampton, England where centuries of maritime culture and the connection to the sea made a huge impression. Instead of soccer Martin’s childhood was all about boats and researching maritime history. Martin attended two attended excellent art schools in UK where he was immersed in photography. A desire to explore led him to California in his 20s. Later he settled in Los Angeles trained as a master black & white analogue printer before going on to establish himself as a fine art photographer.
His photographs have been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London. His work is in the collection of an Icelandic museum and in the LA Maritime Museum where his seven-year series “Stranded” captured the decline of the ocean liner was exhibited. Last summer prints from landscape series Terra Figmenta were exhibited in Iceland and LA. Later this year his charcoal maritime drawing will be on show at Coastline College, CA.
In the pandemic he restarted his dormant drawing practice which had begun in Southampton. Fascinated by the old back and white maritime photo collections from his youth and influenced by British painters JMW Turner, John Martin and Sculptor Phyllida Barlow he explores the medium of charcoal drawing, and painting on low status materials like wood off cuts, packaging materials and cardboard.
Suzanne Pratt
Her art examines processes, perseverance, repetition and routines and their effects on [daily] life if the objective is to reach beyond those constraints in order to create something worthwhile, and perhaps beautiful: the quality of making the mundane in everyday life magical. Her sculptural wallworks harness the light and space around themselves to complete their objecthood.
Her work has been shown nationally and collected internationally.
Lee Pratt
Lee Pratt was born in Iowa; he received a BFA from Drake University in Des Moines, IA and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA.
His work is the documentation of an evolution. It is a chronicle of a personal history and a journey of experience that can be read through his selection of materials, modes of production and the revelation of process.