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Wheels go round and round and cogs begin to grind and pound.
- Willy Wonka

The potential roller coaster to be found at the metaphorical center of "Crashed", black and white, blue and orange concentric circles gracing a drawing in Mark Dutcher’s circle-laden “Come and Go” at SolwayJones, is a dizzying portent to more radical circles to come. Morphing ink spots and glitter swim more than spin in new works by Mery Lynn McCorkle at Ruth Bachofner, yet the repeating circular motif mirrors a rounded orbit. The ferris wheel at the pier made me sick last summer when I agreed to ride it with my niece, so I chose to gaze at Watusi bulls and fading vegetables at the Los Angeles County Fair instead of rides which would have fit more comfortably with this circle-speak. But the more pressing reason for my visit to the fair awaited in Millard Sheets Gallery, where Irene Tsatsos curated “Fair Exchange” with four consulting curators, Glenn Phillips, Jeff Cain, Julie Deamer, Veronica Wiman. Here the circles begin to weave from the manifest back to potentiality.

Effectively connecting art and the more general fair-going populace, the exhibition successfully ignites a series of questions as radically bright as the sparks of giant fireworks from the Hollywood Bowl that I can see from my porch many evenings. And while I hold to the fact that the folks at the fair were just as pleased to wander the galleries looking at conceptual, collaborative, video, installation, and other contemporary art as were the more usual suspect art-audience members that arrived later for the opening, several conversations with artists since then have put me squarely in the minority with this opinion; apparently, it wasn't so popular. Nevertheless, viewers I saw in the gallery pre-fancy-opening were enjoying themselves and the work despite complaints that may have been lodged from others.

I took a break before the festive opening to find a restroom and had a miniature epiphany on the way. There I was in the gadgets tent, having already taken the obligatory tour around the fair (sans rides and cotton candy), rushing back through as quickly as possible, head down except for the occasional glance to look for the woman icon - when I stopped and took a deep breath.
I looked around as I felt my steps slowing.
In front of me, an older man was pushing a woman in a wheel chair. I paused, and maybe I smiled, I don’t remember. They passed and I continued on.
A man in a pale blue suit smiled and courteously let me pass.
I may have been laughing by then because that one deep breath led to a couple more and suddenly there I was in the thick of the crowd, in a tent full of every kind of gizmo I would never have set eyes on otherwise, in a fun and un-choreographed dance with the others.

When I went back outside, calm intact, I realized how often I speed through crowds (among other things) to quell my claustrophobia. Outside, making his/her way among the hot dog stands and stuffed animal booths was a huge person on stilts with a glamorous costume and sparking décor. Fantastic - otherworldly even - round sequins balloon the costume in my memory.

The event circuitously led me to appreciate the connections “Fair Exchange” set up like a string of rings on the surface of a lake after a proverbial skipped stone. It was even more interesting to note the degree of interactivity in much of the work in the show, from the Internet scoring system set up by Jeff Cain and the Shed Research Institute to merge the fair’s popular photography contest with the new, more experimental vibe of this exhibition, to socially responsible and educational tours of the fair offered by the collaborative Los Angeles Urban Rangers. With an emphasis on the social, economic, and interactive, “Fair Exchange” forms a layered and inclusive relationship to the site of the fair itself.

Another Los Angeles collaborative on view, Fallen Fruit, shows viewers a way to make use of produce dotting many Southland sidewalks. The mis-shapen, forgotten fruit is the perfect visual link to another kind of sphere, that odd yet familiar phenomenon of connections between the categories and subgroups we create. My deep breath led to a greater appreciation of the fair experience, yet the awareness to take that breath comes from my long-time study of yoga, an outlier to art-speak that tends to reside in a separate compartment of my life (in that way that we have of placing this here and that there, these people in one circle and those people in the other).

Then I interviewed a couple for an article I am writing about mantras, and what do I learn but that they are zerodegrees artists? Margaret Griffith and Jamison Carter answered my request for interviews at Liberation Yoga, where they practice yoga. If this connection stopped at artists who do yoga, it would be a nod to coincidence - remotely interesting at best, trifling at least - but a deeper look begins to reveal that which brings us together, art as a part of this thriving, confusing, excessive, exciting, frustrating, and amazing city.

But Los Angeles wouldn’t be Los Angeles without an interesting alternative venture suddenly springing into the mainstream. When Edible Estates, a project by Fritz Haeg and Gardenlab and one of the many installations at “Fair Exchange”, cropped up on DailyCandy this week, I knew that art was not only breaching the wall, but climbing it – hopefully planting lush green vines to cross even the wildest sidewalks.

Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, October 2006)

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