BEVERLY, MA.- The Montserrat College of Art Gallery’s new exhibition, Electric Wasteland: Urban Art from L.A., blurs the boundaries between fine and street art, folk and contemporary, and illustration and design. The exhibit includes five artists who all live and work in the Los Angeles area: Date Farmers (an alias created for the artists Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez), Dave Kinsey, Jeff Soto, and Aaron White.

“This art is exuberant and eclectic and seems to be characterized by chaotic compositions and gritty graphics,” says exhibit curator, Leonie Bradbury, who viewed this unique style of art during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “The main influences are graffiti, street art, Mexican murals, folk art and cartoons, and most of it centers on Los Angeles, a city that continues to assert itself as a hub of creativity and visual culture.”

Bradbury’s trip to Los Angeles was made possible by a generous travel grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. While there, Bradbury visited many local galleries and was able to secure the participation of Dave Kinsey, Jeff Soto, and Aaron White in her budding exhibition. Upon her return, she came across the work of Date Farmers in Juxtapoz Magazine and felt they would be the perfect addition to complete the exhibit.

Artists Kinsey and Soto will travel to the Montserrat campus in a few weeks to create site-specific installations of their work, with the help of Montserrat students, and they will also give artist talks that are open to the public. “Since West Coast art is seldom shown at New England exhibit venues, I hope this will greatly benefit not only the Montserrat community, but the greater Boston metro communities as well,” said Bradbury.

DATE FARMERS, an alias created for the artists Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma, have collaborated since 2001, when they met on a date farm 50 miles outside of Los Angeles. Lerma lives and works in Echo Park (Los Angeles) and Ramirez resides in Brawley, (a small town near the Mexican border). While Date Farmers’ work is often created in Caochella Valley desert just North of L.A., their paintings possess the hard-edged, gritty quality attributed to urban art. Inspired by low riders, murals and native Mexican folk art, their work demonstrates a distinct Chicano influence, reflecting the prevalence of Hispanic culture in and around L.A. Visit www.newimageartgallery.com to view Date Farmer’s work.

DAVE KINSEY is a fine artist and founder of BLK/MRKT, a creative agency and art gallery in the Culver City Arts District of Los Angeles. Through BLK/MRKT Kinsey has designed advertising campaigns for such high-profile clients as Absolut Vodka, Heineken, Mountain Dew, Adidas, and the MacIntosh I-Pod Nano. His gallery features numerous contemporary artists and supports them through exhibits, programming and publications. Kinsey’s unique artistic vision is informed by street art and graffiti, and characterized by heavily outlined figures who, despite their distilled, graphic forms, wear soulful facial expressions. Visit www.blkmrkt.com to view Kinsey’s work.

JEFF SOTO is best known for his work as a commercial illustrator, but his reputation is rapidly shifting toward that of a gifted fine artist. Based in the Los Angeles suburb of Riverside, he recently launched his own company, an online store called www.Potatostamp.com , which offers Jeff Soto merchandise such as books, limited edition prints and collectible toys. Soto’s distinct color palette, subject matter, technique and bold themes resonate with a growing audience. Inspired by toys such as transformers, the colorful lifestyle of skateboarding and graffiti, hip-hop and popular culture, Soto’s representational work is simultaneously accessible and stimulating.

AARON WHITE applies his professional skills as a painter, designer, and commercial animator, to the streets of L.A. where he creates his art. He lives and works in Silver Lake, Los Angeles and has exhibited widely in the California area, most recently at The Lace Gallery and the Don O’Melveny Gallery in Beverly Hills. His large-scale mixed media works on board feature cartoon-like characters set in fantastical urban landscapes with intense colors and rich layers. The characters’ bodies are often marked with scars, bandages, and stitches and mournful facial expressions, resulting in a complex portrayal of the urban inhabitants and their spaces. Visit www.aftermodern.com to view White’s work.

The work by Aaron White in this exhibit has been generously loaned by AfterModern Gallery in San Francisco; the work by Date Farmers has been generously loaned by New Image Art Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.