Optimism in Ojai
Joel Fox's spinners at The Mega Gallery are my drug of choice
Video above depicts Intermission at The Mega Gallery, featuring the colorful, kinetic spinners of multi-hyphenate artist Joel Fox.
The Mega Gallery
We all love an out of the box thinker, but how about rebel creativity inside a box? That is how I’d describe my otherworldly experience at The Mega Gallery. I’d been aware of Ojai artist and art-community sorceress Cassandra C. Jones’ work for a while when I was tipped-off at Christmas about her latest project. Unlike a typical art gallery — a white-walled architectural vessel that visitors walk through to experience and buy art — The Mega Gallery functions 24 hours a day via a large picture window in a mid-century shopping complex a block from The Ojai Playhouse; in this new paradigm, you don’t go inside, but rather view the work from the sidewalk outside (art is illuminated after dark via timed lights). The art sells itself — sans gallerist — via a QR code linking interested buyers their online shop. Jones explained that her idea arrived in the middle of the night in an extraordinary 2:00 am epiphany. The name, Jones explained, came to her all at once and fully-formed as good ideas on occasion just do. This compact space, featuring local artists, achieves mega impact — kind of like a haiku. The website is spare, with effervescent identity by Ojai graphic designer, author, and AIGA medalist Lulu Sandhaus — a logo that immediately made me want to drive there to check it out. The first show I made it to, Intermission by Ojai artist, filmmaker, inventor Joel Fox, transmitted something quite grand for me personally. A trance-like trip through the gallery’s singular pane of glass.
Intermission
The show was entitled Intermission for a banal reason. The gallery walls, which had just been replastered, would need to dry for a few weeks without being nailed into right away for the next show. In lieu of an empty gallery, a solution was sought that could offer something while the walls dried. I’d argue that this intermission/ interregnum/ intergalactic interlude was the precise manna that our damaged world needs right now. There is an childlike optimism to the spinners that recalls another, loveable side of humanity — our ingenuity, whimsy, and technical how-how. Intermission in 2026 reminded me in spirit of the Whole Earth Catalog’s c.1970 reminder that we are way way more beautiful than the domestic turmoil suggested by Vietnam’s atrocities and Kent State .
Joel Fox’s Spinners are Optimism in Motion
I love that a physical constraint (drying walls) begat Intermission. Joel Fox’s kinetic sculptures, which he calls spinners, are chipper and colorful and made on a 3D printer. Designed to be hung from above or placed on a surface, each element of the whole is carefully woven together with opposing magnet force and strung like jewelry. Each device has been through a rigorous boot camp of ergonomics, shape testing, and magnet hackery that is the technical aspect of Fox’s prowess. Apparently it’s not easy to make something this charming, innocent, and seemingly effortless: Fox shared a video on Instagram that humbly addressed (with poignance and humor) the design failures that brought him to the final design edit. This is the kind of honest, wry BTS film that makes me want to hug the artist and say thank you for pointing out that art is iterative work. Once completed, Fox’s spinners aren’t done, but they are ready to dance with gusts of air: inside The Mega Gallery space they spin in different speeds, in different colors — all in reaction to two big fans on the ground and a ceiling fan.
Fox’s Studio is Wonka meets Eames Laboratory meets The Flaming Lips
Where is this kind of magic coming from, you may ask. Well, the way I felt stepping into Joel Fox and his partner Jennifer Day’s studio reminded me of the first time I heard the Yoshimi album by the Flaming Lips — a little speechless, a little verklempt with the childlike tenderness, a little in awe of the originality. The couple collaborate on client work and art mischief in a way that echoes Charles and Ray Eames’ Santa Monica design laboratory. Jones kindly arranged for me to come meet Fox and Day at their studio before creating an illustration and prose piece in support of the Intermission show, below.
I Am a Spinner
We too are like Fox’s spinners: directly impacted by the forces around us — the folks whispering in our ear, CNN, traffic, the anxious mood at the DMV. I admire Jones’ new gallery for championing her singularly joyful, hyper-local form of activism. If you are like me you sometimes find yourself raw — weary of the sound of ugly voices spewing ugly ideas. As Jones and Fox surmise, there is a prescription for that. When you have reached your limit, just stand in the dark on a cold Ojai sidewalk at 10pm and press your face against the glass of an illuminated candy-colored window. And allow the spinners to cast a hypnotic, medicinal salve.
Today’s feature from the Studio
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Thank you so much for sharing this. I love it!
Ooh, those are wonderful! To beam myself to that window. 💛