Area Artist exhibiting at Vista City Hall

"A Celebration of Diverse Artistic Expressions" will be on display May 27th through June 27th at Vista City Hall. An Artist reception is planned May 27th, 2025, 4:30 - 5:30 pm (before Council meeting), 200 Civic Center Drive, 2nd floor, Civic Art Gallery. Artist Lori Escalera will be among the artists featured, exhibiting 20 oil painting works of area neighbors, scenery and local color, in a retrospective of work spanning 20 years of paintings on canvas, panel and paper. Other artists include Richard Armstrong, Angelina Berg, Howard Smith, Mats Dykstra, Gail Hallemeyer, Haley Kerwin, Shelby Nance, and Joshua Tremain. Work will be available for viewing during City Hall business hours and open to the public.

Escalera is a native Los Angeleno and has centered her artistic life in the suburbs of Southern California. In the 1990s, Lori shifted away from commercial art interests to focus on community arts. Her artistic interests are figurative and revolve around the study of the figure. Lori questions the artist's place in the continuum of art history and questions cultural beliefs about history. Lori is a cross-media artist whose primary work is done in oil paint and chalk. In 1994, Lori began Chalk Art Street Painting and became one of the world’s top-recognized Street Painters in Madonnari style chalking. Her love of Baroque artwork over the years developed into her reproducing Baroque and Academic Classicism in the street. Now, Lori is not sure about her pavement art future after 30 years (as she says "it was a good run!") and she is looking forward to focusing on painting, a life long desire which she says "I put off and delayed for life's other necessities."

Escalera has been painting her local neighbors, scenery, flowers, cooking, and lifestyle over 20 years. The exhibit features a small selection of her local paintings in which color and "The Artist's Eye" are evident. "Eva, Having Tea" and staring reflectively out her dining room window, "Little Miss Elliott" sitting in her favorite chair on the neighbor's driveway, enjoying the neighbors' routine Saturday socializing; "Marc and Janet having Brunch" is another neighbor doing something routine, which stood out to the artist. Escalera made Marc and Janet promise to stay put while she ran home to grab her SLR camera and reurn, to stand in their bushes to take a "just the right photos." She was so inspired, she ran home and knocked the painting out in a few hours. "It all fell into place like clockwork!" she exclaimed. "Either paintings work or they don't, and there's lots of agonizing when they don't. I can go months or even years without a really great painting. No one realizes the number of "outs" and arduous hours, before we hit the ball out of the park and make that homerun, being inspired by the painting coming alive in front of our eyes!"

All of the neighbors live on Clear Crest Circle in Vista. There are other works of Escalera enjoying her favorite tea and cup, flowers grown at Escalera's residence, a view out the backyard towards Camp Pendleton, for a total of 20 paintings. Escalera lovingly reframed the work especially for this show in Vista.

Escalera has had a full career as a corporate graphic designer. In 1995, Lori founded "The Culver City A.R.T. Group” and served four years as its President, coordinating a variety of public art exhibitions (1995 – 2000); and has instructed hundreds of SoCal children, adults, and seniors on her ideas about art history, drawing, painting, ceramic tile painting, and cultural arts through classes, camps, and private lessons. In 1995, she began creating murals with community groups and serving underserved sectors; later moving from Los Angeles to San Diego and working with the community in art before becoming a traveling Madonnari (pavement artist).

The exhibition will be up through June 27th, and the public can view the work anytime the Vista City Hall is open at the Vista Civic Art Gallery on the second floor.