Words > Selected Catalog Essays and Press

Holiday Trimmings
Vallence, McCarthy, Besemer, Ott, Calabrese, more

"Bergomot Station is hosting a number of shows that recall Pittman's wise influence. Each One as She May, at Mark Moore, is Sabina Ott's second LA solo show since relocating to St. Louis to teach. As with Pittman, Ott's visibility in Los Angeles in the '90's resulted in many pale imitations, but her true legacy is her own continually evolving work. Overwhelmingly luscious encaustics of extreme visual complexity, Ott's surfaces continue to get more heavily encrusted with forms. In addition to the incised decorative patterns, flowers and typography, areas of shaped wax rolls jut forward four or five inches from the surface of the canvas. While this new work inspires some of the same reservations regarding eye candy that her LA stuff did, there is something compulsive at play that, in combination with the artist's roots in conceptualism (she often cites Gertrude Stein as an important influence), carries it into another realm."

Doug Harvey
L.A. Weekly
December 24-30, 1999