Light works

Paul Saitowitz

“When you don’t have the funds to really do the things you want to do,

you have to be a little bit more creative,” Christine Nguyen said.

With out a doubt a women of her word, the 23-year-old Long Beach

artist has the most creative display in the Four From The Floor show at

the Huntington Beach Art Center. The gallery opened Dec. 15 and runs

until Jan. 11 Nguyen’s mixed-media style comes from her background in photographs.

She received a bachelor’s degree in photography from Cal State Long

Beach.

“I have always loved painting and drawing and I didn’t want working

with photo to limit me from [also] doing those things,” she said.

People have a difficult time telling if her works are photos or

paintings -- the correct answer is a little bit of both. Nguyen’s works

-- titled “Imagine Nation” -- are a hybrid of painting, drawing and

photography. She makes her own negatives by drawing or painting on large

acetate transparencies. She then cuts them up into four- by five-inch

squares, has them enlarged and then printed on photo paper. The result is

a deluge of colors and images.

“I have some idea of what they are going to turn out like color wise,

but I never know for sure,” she said.

Most of the images are an amalgamation of various animals with the

artist’s own interpretations. There are monkey-cat hybrids, fish and

elephants just to name a few. The imagery mixed with the colors recalls

Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade at times, but there is a more

introspective agenda than simple visual appeal.

The drawings are all done intuitively with narratives behind each line

or brush stroke. Many of the stories involve man’s plight with nature --

extending natural resources to their limits, the symbiotic relationships

between animal and man, man and machine, and animal and machine.

The images begin with an organic subject and the the machine or human

links develop from there.

“I can hear the stories taking place when I draw them, and I can feel

the way the different elements all work together,” she said.

Thus far Nguyen has yet to see any artist portray work in this same

mixed-media fashion, and the response from the Huntington Beach

exhibition has been positive.

“A lot of times the simplest work is the best work,” Huntington Beach

Art Center curator Darlene DeAngelo said. “I’ve had people come up to me

and call Christine’s work light paintings, and I think that is a good

description.”

Although she is limited to the work space of her garage, Nguyen’s

pieces seem to be getting larger and larger. The reproduction process

allows her to make things as big or as small as she would like to.

“I think the stories are just conveyed better when they are bigger,

they jump out at the person looking at them more,” she said.

Her work has been displayed at more than 40 galleries, and her

relentless pursuit of finding places to display her creations is what has

garnered her quite a bit of exposure. She has had work in galleries all

over California and into Orgeon, Missouri and New York. She has had

offers on some of her works and sold some of her smaller pieces.

“It would be great if this was something I could make money doing,”

Nguyen said. “But more than that I couldn’t imagine my life without art,

I’ll always be doing this.” * PAUL SAITOWITZ is a news editor. He can be

reached at (949) 574-4295 or by e-mail at [email protected].