Making the edge disappear

Young Chang

Tony DeLap’s big sculptural paintings are hard to miss. Most of them

are hung prominently on the walls at the Orange County Museum of Art.

But then there are the ones you have to look for. As you walk through

a square-arch resembling a door frame, for some reason you look up.

At the top right corner, what looks like three-quarters of a circle

peeks out, the missing chunk bordering the straight edges of the door

frame -- “Ectoplasm should not be too kinky.” It is a brown-maroon

acrylic-on-canvas piece.

Passing unsuspectingly by another corner of the multi-room exhibit,

you notice a thin rod -- a steel rod. But it’s not touching the floor.

You look up and see that it hangs on a string of fishing line, which

continues perpendicularly with another line.

You follow it all the way across the room and down another segment of

fishing line that holds a wooden post. It too does not touch the floor --

“The Great Escape.”

When asked why, DeLap, 73, says, “I don’t know.”

He created it because the wood and the steel weighed the same. It

fascinated him.

DeLap, a Corona del Mar artist whose exhibit is at the museum through

Jan. 14, mixes illusions and art, paintings with sculptures and sharp

edges with shadows.

The Oakland native’s style has been called minimalist.

A hardcover book about DeLap and his work -- with 80 color plates and

20 black and white illustrations -- was released Friday by Hudson Hills

Press Inc.

“It’s art that’s very pared down in its content, and in my case [most

of] the paintings are monochromatic,” DeLap said.

From an early age, DeLap has been drawn to art and magic. He performed

magic -- sleight of hand, card tricks -- at school and then later

incorporated the concept of illusions into his craft.

A 1974 piece is titled “Floating Lady IV.” It’s a 29-foot-long plywood

beam with thin sheets of Plexiglas on each end attached to the wall. The

beam looks like it is floating.

“I had, from an early age, a naturally intuitive talent for working

with wood,” DeLap said.

As you can imagine, his work space is more than an easel and canvas.

He has a two-story space at home. Downstairs is the shop -- a space as

large as a two-car garage -- where his equipment includes table saws, man

saws and some standard electric hand tools.

“Upstairs, basically, is his painting studio,” said wife Kathy DeLap.

“You can’t really combine them too much because there’s a lot of sawdust

downstairs.”

Most of his work is made up of, or includes, touches of wood.

“Florine, Child of the Air” is a grayish circular acrylic on canvas piece

with a thin frame of wood along half of it. A similar one hangs beside

it, titled “Voxie.”

The edges of these pieces are sloped, connecting to the wall at a

slanted angle so viewers can’t see how they hang on the wall from the

front.

“It’s the edges of paintings that I feel are so important to the

work,” he said. “What happens to the edges, because that’s part of my

aesthetic. I’ve always been very fascinated about when a painting comes

to its end and goes around the corner.”

His earlier works play with the idea of what is in front and what is

in back. One is called “Four Dots.” It is a black, free-standing, painted

construction that spirals in layers toward the middle, as if drawing the

viewer in. A clear block at the center shows four black dots. At each

corner are the letters, “F,” “O,” “U” and “R.”

The word “dots” is spelled out on the opposite side.

“This sort of forces the viewer to go around to the other side,” DeLap

said.

He is a word-oriented artist, one who likes to surprise and

communicate with his viewers.

“The difficult thing about being an artist is to establish your own

vocabulary,” he said. “But still have that work you do, at least in my

interest, relate to what is critical to the times it was done.”

FYI

WHAT: Tony DeLap

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, through Jan. 14

WHERE: Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport

Beach

COST: $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, free for members and

children younger than 16

CALL: (949) 759-1122