Artists Republic 4 Tomorrow – contemporary art gallery in Laguna Beach, CA – is proud to present for the first time at any Laguna Beach art gallery new work from female artist collective Splendor Device. With over 70 members strong and growing, Splendor Device brings together young women artists from across the globe, sharing gallery walls, friendship, and artistic inspiration. These ladies are influenced by themes of the natural and supernatural, mythology, history, science and the occult, and they are often introspective about what it means to be a young woman blazing a path in the world today.

With the help of Splendor Device Founder Kelly Castillo, Artists Republic 4 Tomorrow has invited 18 members of the collective to create work for a new show titled “This Wilde Abyss.” The roster of artists contributing work to the art gallery:

Kelly Castillo, Amy Kaplan, Sara Haase, Jennie Cotterill, Allison Peairs, Kristi Bockrath, Elizabeth Caffey, Jennifer James, Jasmine Worth, Tyoni Aragon, M, Jel Ena, Amy Hood, Jennifer Hood, Valerie Lewis, Irene Garcia, Cory Benhatzel, Cody Raiza

The theme comes from the relationship of a quote in John Milton’s Paradise Lost to the Phillip Pullman Trilogy His Dark Materials. In the Pullman trilogy, the protagonist of the story is a young female adventurer who’s travels through parallel universes allude to questions of physics, philosophy and theology. While new worlds are being created around her, she navigates the undulating landscape between good and evil, each chapter more tightly tying the bonds that Pullman seeks to make with Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost — Book 2, lines 910–920:

Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.

In “This Wilde Abyss” 18 artists from Splendor Device examine Pullman and Milton and inject them with female energy and a modern twist. The ladies are adventurers standing on the edge of a new world, breathing in fire, shore, sea & air, navigating the chasm between good and evil, while using their own materials to create new realms and beyond.