Laguna Beach Art Walk: Linda Serrao Showing At Artist Eye Gallery

LAGUNA BEACH, CA—Coast Highway was enveloped in fog on the August 5 First Thursday Art Walk. Still, all was bright and colorful inside Artist Eye Gallery. The featured artist Linda Serrao appeared in person, casually speaking with art walkers who ventured into the gallery.

Her influences are evident at first glance: "Classic Greek sculptures provide stylistic inspiration, although Bernini (17th century Roman) is my favorite sculptor," she says in her artistic statement. "Specializing in realistic figurative sculpture, I concentrate on expressing the mood or inner spirit of my subject. My bronze sculptures offer a comment on our shared human condition, illustrating universal experiences and concerns common to all cultures."

The UCLA graduate grew up in California’s central valley, where she "borrowed every book on drawing from the Bookmobile, mastering functional anatomy of people and animals before high school.”

Patch asked how she came to work in such a lasting—and expensive—material as bronze. Serrao told us she wanted to learn to make her own armatures, the internal structures that keep clay sculptures from collapsing under their own weight. This quest led her to Fullerton College’s poured bronze foundry. It wasn’t long before she learned not only to make armatures but to switch to using metal as her primary medium.

Some of Serrao's pieces embody creatures that reign in the sea or cavort joyfully in the air. Among these is Medusa 2.0 in cast resin, which sits on watch in the gallery window.

Others have a soaring power, such as the winged “Sentinel,” and “Zephyr,” which is compelling to view from all angles.

There was one piece that stood out from all the others. It depicts the world climate crisis in no uncertain terms. A polar bear stands on a rapidly dwindling piece of ice. The creature hunkers into itself to shrink along with its melting habitat. “Precipice” is lit from below, and the bronze has been tinted with a color patina to a haunting effect. The animal stares down into its own demise.

Linda Serrao brings a masterful, compassionate touch to each of her bronze works. Check them out, along with all the other artists represented at Artist Eye's packed gallery.