LAUNCH Gallery is proud to present solo exhibitions by Linda Arreola and Rochelle Botello whose work celebrates an exploration of life through contemporary abstract painting, drawing and sculpture. Linda Arreola’s Almost Home, draws on her appreciation of architecture and form, specifically ancient Mesoamerican architecture, as the underlying foundation of her work. Her paintings are built using primary colors and elemental geometric forms to construct maps for, and recall memories of, her life’s artistic journey. In Wild Child, Rochelle Botello’s series of drawings materialize after hours in the studio surrendering control and embracing the unknown while putting ink, graphite and acrylic paint to paper. Her new sculpture, born from less permanent materials like cardboard, wood, tape and paper, examines the relationship between form and space while mirroring the fragility and inevitability of life. Linda Arreola presents Almost Home a new series of paintings and sculptures that reference the idea of a journey. Moving toward this new destination, Linda is returning to the beginning while seeking a sense of completion and ultimately finding a place of belonging. "In this series I introduce two concepts. The first concept is that the paintings include what I call, “word bubbles”, similar to the ones seen in comic strips holding the words spoken. The “word bubbles” call attention to the idea of speaking, or having something to say. A voice perhaps from the subconscious suggesting an inner journey. The second concept are pieces that include a single word or hieroglyphic-like word symbols. The words mainly reference “street names”. These street names, are of familiar or significant pathways I have frequented. These street names tie together the place I exist, creating a communion of neighborhoods and people signifying a locale and placing my existence in a particular territory. Together, the works are not only expressions of an interior and exterior journey but are also intended to provoke inquiry into who we are and where we are from." A new sculpture and drawings in Rochelle Botello’s Wild Child further express her ability and willingness to surrender to the present moment of discovery, wonder and curiosity. She is embracing the unknown. The result is an honest and original record of our time and place. Rochelle is fascinated in the special, individual space between time and memory, the known and the unknown. "I construct sculptures through intuitive impulses while playing with the relationship between form and space. I use materials such as cardboard, wood, tape and paper that retain an ephemeral quality that I find equally compelling and absurd. The impermanence of my forms mirrors the wondrous inevitability of life.  Like my sculptural work, my drawings evolve from an intuitive impulse. I make a mark. Then make another. I allow each mark to inform the next move. I build up the surface by overlapping lines, shapes and spontaneous gestures. Through this process of overlap, repetition and movement, the compositions suggest the act of being present. Here and now, time and memory.  The new work reveals states of both being and becoming that echo the contradictions of everyday life: the real and the imagined, control and letting go, strength and vulnerability, stability and instability." About the artists: Linda Arreola was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the hills of El Sereno, a suburb northeast of downtown Los Angeles where she continues to reside in the home she grew up in. As a child, Arreola was quiet and introspective, not really active in art making, but interested in art for the emotions it stirred in her. Arreola credits her father as the greatest influence on her career as a painter, and her studies in architecture. Traveling to Mexico for the first time at the age of nineteen, and then again in the early 1980s, Arreola became fascinated with ancient Mesoamerican urban centers and temple pyramids. Her visits to the archaeological sites of Teotihuacán, Tula, Chichen Itza, Palenque, and Monte Albán marked the beginning of a heartfelt connection and artistic bond with Mesoamerican architecture, which has informed her work throughout her career. After returning home, Arreola embarked on a mission to recreate the sensations and emotions she experienced while viewing the architecture, sculptural forms, and geometrics found in ancient Mesoamerican art. She began by building wooden structures, using unfinished wood and steel cables to study suspension and how forms can be held in space with tightened cables. As she later came to understand, these were exercises in manifesting energy by the control of tension in these three-dimensional forms. They are beautiful sculptural forms, echoing both Mesoamerican and Japanese aesthetics in their built simplicity. She titled the work of this period, Parts of the Whole and with this series and other built paintings and sculptures she would complete her B. A. in 1980 and her M. A. in 1985 at Cal State University Los Angeles. Parts of the Whole would also be the pivotal work in her portfolio that gained her admission to the school of Architecture at U.C.L.A. where she would earn an M. A. degree in 1991. According to Arreola, she’s always been a builder, and that the study of architecture with its line drawings of plans and sections had a big impact on her. Rather than painting, she works by building and layering her works with paint, thinking of her work as architecturally inspired built constructions. Her influences have been diverse and many, including Japanese architect Tadao Ando, Minimalist sculptors Donald Judd and Agnes Martin, abstract expressionist sculptor, Louise Nevelson, and painter, sculptor, mixed media pop artist, Jasper Johns. ~ by Sybil Vanegas Rochelle Botello is a Los Angeles based visual artist working across mixed media, sculpture and site-specific installations. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, extending Japan, Berlin and South Korea. She has exhibited with Holter Museum of Art, Torrance Art Museum, Bakersfield Museum of Art, Coagula Curatorial and Durden and Ray to name a few. Her exhibitions have also been reviewed in the LA Times, The Huffington Post, Whitehot magazine, Artillery Magazine and Coagula Art Journal. Botello holds a MFA from Claremont Graduate University and a BA in Sociology with an emphasis in Social Psychology from University of California, Santa Cruz.