exhibitions

for immediate release


MARGI SCHARFF & ORVILLE STOEBER
MAY 12- JUNE 17, 2007

IN PLAIN SIGHT
opening reception: SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2007 7 - 10pm

OVERTONES gallery is pleased to present “In Plain Sight” a two-person exhibit featuring the work of MARGI SCHARFF & ORVILLE STOEBER.

“In Plain Sight” presents two artists who share a peripatetic visionary sensibility. Their creative process might be called a miniaturist form of ecstatic spiritual recycling. Both transform materials that high culture often overlooks or even treats as “trash” into revelatory mandalas and reliquaries.
Margi Scharff and Orville Stoeber find delight in humanity’s superfluous materials—bits of discarded wrapping paper, abused toys, and even heels of once-fancy women’s shoes, transport us beneath the surface of our own culture, into the subconscious of other cultures and, in Stoeber's case, into his own microcosmic worlds.
Scharff’s small-scale delicate collages, made on the road during her amazing walkabouts throughout Asia, are jewel-like mini-portraits of the cultures she encountered and wondrous people she befriended along the way.
Stoeber sticks to his own Venice neighborhood alleys. He creates assemblages that bring together seemingly disparate objects, crafting rapturous visual poems out of the blizzard of forgotten, broken and discarded tchotchkes produced by our merchandise obsessed economy—touchingly and humorously reversing the designs of planned obsolescence.
Margi Scharff began assembling her spiritual collages while living in Mexico, making art from she found by the sides of the roads she traveled. After a two-month trip across Mexico, she set off to Asia. Since 2000, traveling on a ten-dollars-a-day budget, exhibiting collages assembled from found materials in China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. A short documentary film of her work, “Rangi-Changi,” was made by BBC reporter Daniel Lak, during Scharff’s time in Kathmandu, Nepal. In 2006, Scharff was also the subject of one of NPR's “Top Emailed Stories.” She has recently received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Orville Stoeber also uses found objects in his ironic, anti-rational boxes. He connects the sacred with the everyday, creating new identities and circumstances for familiar objects through chance, free association and a belief that the salvage of signage just might encourage the signage of salvation. Ukuleles, women’s high heels, hubcaps, sardine cans, ironing boards, discarded drawers, are all fodder for Orville’s creations. He walks the backstreets of Venice with his eyes to the ground and his heart in the clouds, as he puts it, “striving to remain human despite technology’s onslaught.” A singer/songwriter, actor, proud father, and teacher working with the intensive autistic population in the Santa Monica/Malibu school district, he also does volunteer work for “The Music for Healing Program” at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Beverly Hills.

OVERTONES is a contemporary Los Angeles art gallery supporting and promoting emerging artists in all media; showcasing work of established artists to inspire the coming generations. OVERTONES is dedicated to searching outside the confines of established art institutions and presenting work that has the potential to engage a wide range of audiences.

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