Second Saturday Preview: Highland Park's MorYork Gallery is a 'Cabinet of Wonders'

I hope you know about  Second Saturday, when the   in our neck of the artistic woods open their doors and let us enjoy and explore.

Go to the  Second Saturday site, print out a map, and appreciate.

Join me here every month and we will look around a bit and see what there is to see in our so-called "."

Last month we looked at Future Studio and the famous Chicken Boy. Currently on display at Future Studio you’ll find the “Unfolded Things" exhibition by Tim Quinn, a purveyor of paper manipulation gone wild.

This time around we are going to visit MorYork Gallery. Located at 4959 York Blvd. at the corner of Ave 50 and York.

Museums and galleries have come to mean many things to many people in the art world, but MorYork Gallery is a place that really is an example of what the original museums were meant to be--Cabinets of Wonder. 

The building was originally a Safeway Market. Then it was a skating rink. During a visit, you may even find some evidence of its previous occupants.

Now, much of the space is filled with the inspired work of Clare Graham who with his partner Bob Breen has created a place full of magic.

Clare has used Scrabble tiles, bottle caps, swizzle sticks, dominos, tin cans, yardsticks and other found objects to create furniture and shapes and things that will fill you with wonder and awe.

Clare once ran the Entertainment Art Department for Walt Disney's theme parks, but don’t let that fact allow you to make assumptions about this work.

And don’t take my word for it, go into the gallery and see the things he has created and collected.

Clare also devotes a part of this space to show the work of other local artists.

Currently showing there is the work of Karla Aguiniga, in a show titled “Imagined Spaces.”

Photographer Langdon Taguiped will be showing his exhibition titled Free Spirit 4: The Revolution Will Not be Motorized. The artist took a fixed gear bike photo tour of the south bay, West L.A., East L.A. and San Francisco and he will also share with us what he saw. 

This month there is also a secondary gallery space where there will be a display of crocheted hyperbolic geometry.

Your's truly was fortunate enough to contribute his own work to the amazing Hyperbolic Coral Reef, which is curated with the work of artists from all around the world by the astonishing  Institute for Figuring.

You will find on Saturday night many examples of hyperbolic crochet, which is a recently discovered method through which the patterns of hyperbolic geometry, previously only found in nature, can be displayed artistically.  The crocheted creations resemble organic forms, as well as symmetrical geometric shapes.

I'll also be unveiling my Jellyfish installation and will spend a little time explaining how hyperbolic crochet spans the worlds of art and science.

And if you are about on Saturday morning, right outside the gallery on Ave. 50 and York Blvd, you will find a sidewalk sale where you will find many wondrous things to inspire the artist in you, as well as flog your memory with objects from your past.