Small Works launch is a Big Success

As the warehouse door cranked upward last Friday night, a queue formed along an Urban Oasis lounge and 1599 Tennessee pulsed with music, lights, art, and excitement for yet another cultural event unlike any other.

The entry banner painted by street artist, Jocelyn Superstar, was a crowd pleaser

Here are just a few of our favorite moments from the launch of the first stARTup Small Works weekend. If you hurry, you can still see all of the exhibiting artists on our website and find many of their works for available on Artfinder. (Sign up to shop and enjoy 15% off you first purchase with code: STARTUP15)

Crowd favorite, Dolores de Sade, came from the UK making a slight break from her Palm Springs vacation to exhibit at Small Works with a beautiful series of delicately detailed landscape drawings and prints looking at landscape as a series of temporary borders.

Local exhibiting artists Mike Sanchez (above left) and Beth Waldman (above right) enjoyed selling to a new audience including young couples in tech looking to fill the walls of their new homes.

Beth created these digital media and painting works at a Playa Institute residency in the desert of Oregon’s Big Basin and debuted them here.

Prolific artist, Karen Olsen-Dunn, created an unabashed body of paintings just for Small Works pre-selling several pieces on Instagram! She showed up with several red dots already in place and enjoyed even more success this weekend.

Dan Lythcott-Haims enjoyed success with his latest ‘Wood + Rust’ sculptures, which he presented for the first time at Small Works. The pieces elevate rusted industrial parts to form by encasing them within concisely constructed maple frames.

Visitors admired long time Bay Area artist Paulette Traverso's tiny “Drawing on History” paintings (above) with vernacular photos mounted on vintage book covers, frames and embossed velvet…

…while LA-based Lynda Keeler's textural objects and sculptures (above), inspired by Salvation Mountain near the Salton Sea, were on display along with colorful abstracted map paintings.

(Top) Jamie Banes, Gina Herrera (lower left), and Matthew Floriani (lower right) all captured collectors looking for wall-mounted sculptures and works in unexpected materials.

Another top seller for the weekend, Dani Arrecis/Sicerra pushed her signature assemblage sunglass portraits even further adding geometric and abstract forms of ethically sourced butterflies to her offerings.

Notice Emily Maddigan’s camel in the foreground and Clint Imboden’s “Hammers” installation and Robin Denevan’s Mixed Media paintings in the background

We could go on and on about this but, go see more for yourself on our Small Works page before we take this fair down from the website.

And while you’re there, check out details for exhibiting artist applications and stARtup LA coming to Venice Beach.

Big thanks to a stellar line up of exhibiting artists as well as Urban Farm Girls and Galanter & Jones for creating such an urban chic lounge, to Raff Distillerie for serving a fantastic tasting of premium Gin, Absinthe and Rhum, to Von Holt Wines for donating delicious pourings of Pinot Noir for opening night, and to delicious Aunty Vicky's and the incomparable Bartender Truck for their food and beverage service.

We appreciate you all, and our Advisory Council, for making this small event such a big success. We'll see you next year.

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Photography by Content Curator Mica England