Cool to the touch

With its storied past as a bastion of high-class fine art, Pasadena has earned a reputations as both a wellspring of creative brilliance and, to some, a bit staid. There could perhaps be no better way of shaking things up than with the vibrant theme of the city's Arts & Ideas Festival: “Skin.”

Held once every three years, the Pasadena Arts Council's three-week citywide festival in October will bring together more than two-dozen Pasadena-area arts and cultural organizations to collaborate on projects of great public interest under the single theme.

“Skin” is a provocative idea to begin with, and it has provided an opportunity for local arts institutions to present works and programs that — like skin itself — are compelling and connective while aiming to draw viewers in and under the surface of things.

Of the many shows being created in association with “Skin,” the one at the Pasadena City College's art gallery might be the most visceral. Mary Beth Heffernan's "The Soldier's Skin: An Endless Edition" shows Heffernan's photographic images of freshly-inscribed tattoos on the bodies of US Marines. Many are memorials to fallen comrades, the loss physically inscribed upon the skin of a soldier who, in many cases, is about to be sent back into action. It's a poignant examination of the toll war takes, as well as the marks life can make on each of us — marks most of us wear every day, only beneath our skin.

More soothing will be “Clay: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth” at Xiem Clay Center — a meditative exhibit of ceramic works selected by artist, teacher and author Paulus Berensohn. The mater potter doesn't sell or exhibit his own work, but he'll be presenting the work of others here, showing clay as a mutable “skin” that's equally sublime regardless of the form imbued by its sculptor.

Dealing less with the theme of skin specifically but still grappling with ideas of identity and image, “Body Double" at Cal State LA's Luckman Gallery is a selection of photographs and videos by 16 emerging female artists who incorporate the use of their own images in staged acts and performance art, depicting mental and emotional states as powerful images. Keep an eye on local artist Carlee Fernandez, whose large body of work is included in this show.

At the Armory Center for the Arts, the “New Images of Identity” exhibit presents artwork that grapples with issues lurking just below the skin: mixed racial identity (a burgeoning subject in the global art scene as our world becomes more interconnected), Diaspora, war (which we're all seeing too much of), immigration, ancestry — it all comes to the surface in these works by artists of color.

At the same time, the Armory Northwest will host “NewTown's SKIN,” a collection of installations, imagery and performances that address the fetishization and commodification of skin — what we do to it and why.

Over at Art Center College of Design, "in the Dermisphere," is an exhibition surveying the art, science and culture of skin. Expect fur, shells, armored animals, human armor and exoskeletons all employed as metaphorical ways to examine ideas about identity and security.

The Pasadena Museum of California Art, in the meantime, will vault beyond the museum itself, enlisting LA-based conceptual artist Susan Silton to create an installation that covers the exterior of the museum in gigantic, colorful stripes — a striking, inescapable “skin' applied to the building itself that will permeate the entire neighborhood with brilliant color and energy. Wear your sunglasses for this one!

At the Huntington, “Legacy and Legend: Images of Indians from Four Centuries” presents a photographic survey of rare lithographs, portraits, illustrations and artifacts depicting Native Americans. Here skin served as a tool for separating the westerners from the people whose land and identity they were stripping from them, a justification of “difference.” The exhibit serves not just as a powerful time-capsule of early American life, but as a cautionary tale.

At Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park, contemporary artists dissect identity in “Nightmares and Landscapes” — identity that transcends skin and expands to occupy dreams, memory and talismanic imagery.

Also part of the Skin festival, the Pacific Asia Museum's "Rank and Style: Power Dressing in Imperial China" is an intriguing exploration of clothing as a second skin that lovers of fashion, history and art will enjoy. Costuming from Imperial China will be on display, illustrating the ways in which attire was employed in navigating a complex system of rank and privilege, identity and status.

While not quite in time for this season but still on the fashion theme, next year the Pasadena Museum of History offers "The Purse & the Person, A Century of Women's Purses," developed from a private collection of more than 3,000 purses and accessories! Go crazy, ladies. This exhibition looks at purses from the inside out, examining day-to-day life reflected in a very personal, very female artifact — a woman's handbag.

This fall also offers arts opportunities unrelated to the skin theme that warrant a visit. The Armory's "Stephen Berkman: Between Two Worlds" shows the dramatic, astounding works by the photographer, whose tableaux vivants (posed photographic subjects that take on the look of a painted portrait) and portrait ambrotypes (positive photographic images on glass) elevate the art styles from the 19th century into a tool for understanding the present. The past, he recognizes, is a work in progress.

Alhambra's Gallery Nucleus pulls in the hipsters and Lowbrow fans on Sept. 8 with a show featuring the works of rising art stars Audrey Kawasaki and Fuco Ueda, whose ethereal, color-rich images of delicate-yet-mysterious young girls, flora and fauna draw on anime, graphic novels and ukiyo-e Japanese prints.

Then step out of the past and into the immediate with "Beyond Ultraman: Seven Artists Explore the Vinyl Frontier" at the Pasadena Museum of California Art — the first museum show to examine the current wave of artist-designed vinyl toys and the Japanese toys that inspired them. Check out the work of Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, David Gonzales, David Horvath, Sun-Min Kim, Brian McCarty, and Mark Nagata — many of whom live in the LA area.

Finally, the Southwest Museum's Centennial Day Open House offers music, entertainment, refreshments and some great behind-the-scenes tours of this now-elusive museum, an Arroyo Seco gem in the area's crown of historic edifices.