Linking art to the past
Young Chang
Tell Alexa Alexander that a place or a tradition will no longer be
-- that it might get discontinued or demolished or that people are
talking about doing something along those dooming lines -- and
that’ll be enough to get the Newport Coast artist painting.
Last year, when she learned that the Newport Beach boat parade
route would get shortened as of this winter and that the longtime
holiday tradition would now last five days instead of seven, she
picked up her canvas and oils and went out to the water and started
painting.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s part of Newport Beach history,’”
Alexander said.
She’s done the same for a buffalo ranch that used to be on
MacArthur Boulevard.
She’s working now on sketches of the Lion’s Club Fish Fry, which
is no longer a Costa Mesa tradition. She said she used to go to it
for years and years. She said she has a vision of the memory that she
wants to get down on canvas.
Most of her images make a second jump -- from her canvases onto
the covers of cards.
Two months ago, Alexander started selling her cards to area
stores. About 15 Newport-Mesa venues have bought her work. Recent
purchasers include the Marriott Villas in Newport Coast as well as
stationery stores in the community. Her sole Northern California
business, Pomegranate Publishing Co. in Sonoma County, recently
signed a deal to sell her Christmas cards in 2003.
Matt Keto, an employee at Francis-Orr Fine Stationery in Corona
del Mar, said Alexander’s cards offer something different from the
image Newport Beach typically promotes.
“This area comes off so often as so sophisticated and high end,”
Keto said. “But her cards have more of a sweet nature to them that a
lot of the other cards miss.”
Everything is done in what Alexander calls the “primitive” style.
“It’s sort of like Grandma Moses or other primitive painters,”
said the artist, who was recently hired as an art teacher at Corona
del Mar High School. “It has an old-fashioned, historical feeling
about it and it’s not threatening. People like looking at my work and
they don’t feel I’m making any big statements or that I have to
explain.”
Alexander will only paint what were once real slices of life. Most
often, it’s a slice of California life. About a third of her work is
of places and events in Newport-Mesa.
“I look around and if I see something that I feel I need to record
because I’m sort of interested in the history of it, then I end up
painting it,” Alexander said. “My art is saying this is how it was
this day or 20 years ago, but definitely at some place in time.”
She’s painted the fireworks show at Castaway Restaurant, the Dory
Fishermen, the Crab Cooker, the harbor entrance channel, orange
groves that are no longer here, farms that are now buildings, local
oceans and even a scene involving umbrellas at Big Corona Beach.
“I feel almost obligated to paint these paintings,” said
Alexander, who is also a history buff.
A quick scan of her bookshelf at home reveals 10 volumes of the
“Macaulay’s History of England,” a hardcover of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
a book on Adolf Hitler and volumes 1 through 6 of Winston S.
Churchill’s “The Second World War.”
“I love history,” she said. “It gives me a connection.”
Gesturing to the artfully cluttered studio around her, Alexander
said she wants to play a part in connecting the past to the present.
“I feel that if I do this, it links us,” she said.
Alexander, though happy about her large hometown following, has
also exhibited around the country at venues including the San Diego
Museum of Art. She has also commissioned paintings to the Capistrano
Mission, the Belvedere Winery and other businesses.
A common response to her paintings and her cards from buyers is
that they make them “happy.”
“They’ll say, ‘I remember that place,’ ‘I remember that ocean,’ ‘I
remember that happened to me,’” Alexander said. The works “bring back
memories for them and they’re usually glad ones.”
Keto added that both Alexander’s everyday cards as well as
Christmas cards afford more than just a close-to-home feel.
“They’re popular images, but here’s a little different take on
them,” he said.
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