BC Space

BC Space Gallery, Laguna Beach celebrated its 37 year anniversary as a contemporary fine art photography gallery on April 1, 2010. To commemorate that occasion an exhibition (and accompanying book), BC Space: Mything in Action was held at California State University, Fullerton's Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana.

The show featured artwork by 45 artists who exhibited at the gallery over the years. These artists helped BC move forward in its mission to define and exhibit contemporary fine art photography while provoking our opinions and understanding of sex, politics, economics, war, race relations, environmental concerns and other controversial issues.

In turn, many artists shown at the gallery have gone on to recognition and fortune; owning galleries worldwide, exhibiting in galleries and museums, featured in major publications, and chairing university art and photography departments.

In keeping with the BC Space mission, the Grand Central show also documented environmental art projects that BC sponsored and promoted in Southern California, including the Laguna Canyon Project, The Tell and the Legacy Project.

Soka University

A concurrent exhibition, Reflections of an Armchair Arteologist, was at Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, California. This 40-year retrospective covered the photographic, assemblage and environmental artwork of BC Space co-founder/proprietor, Mark Chamberlain. The show ran from January through May 14, 2020.

Chamberlain adopted the "arteologist" alias years ago, defining his term as, "an artist exploring life unfettered by conventional concerns. While actively engaged in the present, shooting pictures or curating, I am often referencing the past and hope my work will allude to the future...What began with the curiosity of a stranger in a strange land (a military tour in Korea during the Viet Nam War during which he extensively photographed the local people and landscape) eventually led me to an appreciation of the power of the photograph to convey much more than just impressions of what was being shot.”

Peter Clothier wrote about the show, “Finding the beauty in everyday reality, Chamberlain brings his meticulous craftsmanship to the creation of images that convey that reality in its smallest, most intimate detail. His pictures engage us not only in the phenomena his keen eye selects, but in the enduring mystery of their presence in the world. In his assemblage work--not widely represented in this exhibition--that same fascination with the mystery and temporality of objects leads him to extricate them from their original, mostly superannuated context, and invent for them a new, often whimsical new life in art.

“It's this same embrace of the world's reality, I believe, that leads this artist to his broader concerns for the natural environment and for a more harmonious co-existence with the planet. He has been a fierce leader in the defense of the natural surroundings of the small jewel of a city in Southern California where he has lived and worked for many years, against the predatory assaults of suburban developments and the highways built to service them."

Clothier adds, “Chamberlain's activism, as Lagunatics well know, has not been restricted to environmental and civic concerns. His gallery, BC Space has also long been a feature of the Laguna Beach landscape. Modest in scale--though not in vision--and almost anonymous in its lack of store-front appeal, this gallery has provided continuing, active support for artists of the region; not those beach artists,’ I hasten to add, whose work attracts the eye of summer tourists, but serious working artists devoted, for the most part, to the kinds of issues that Chamberlain addresses. I tend to see it as yet another realization of the artist's vision, an act of aesthetic generosity that extends his embrace of what he loves.”

History

A long stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean, BC Space has been quietly making waves for 37 years. Located in an 80-year-old building of a former Masonic Lodge, replete with small stage, ancient lavatory and three darkrooms, the upstairs gallery was one of the first in the country to exhibit contemporary fine art photography in the front room.

Born from the fervent but not widely accepted belief in photography as a valid art form, Chamberlain and former partner Jerry Burchfield supported the venue by shooting and processing film for museums, galleries, artists and print publications.

Over the years, BC Space has generated standing room only photographic art shows, many with a politically liberal emphasis, as well as groundbreaking environmental artwork and installations that have helped preserve the bucolic face of Laguna Beach while attracting major press nationwide.

Employees, artists and supporters have come and gone, Burchfield left for more lucrative pastures in 1987, then passed away in 2009, while Mark Chamberlain has continued to man the helm and reinvent the space physically and metaphorically over the years.

Today, BC Space, as one of the longest running venues of its kind nationwide, has dramatically influenced our appreciation for photographic art.