Archive for the 'Galleries' Category

Critically Acclaimed Artist Showcases First Western-U.S. Solo Exhibit at SBMA

Published on May 15, 2012 in Galleries.

Family (Devin, John, Jason, Lewis)

The local art scene will acquire a wacky new counterpart with the ingenious works of contemporary artist Brian Bress, who will make his solo exhibition debut in the Western United States in July at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The multimedia pieces of Interventions: Brian Bress will be on display at the museum from July 15 through September 20, 2012. Bress will also present a special additional piece based on SBMA’s 19th-century European collection that will hang in Ridley-Tree Gallery.

Interventions: Brian Bress showcases five video portraits, each with a distinctive palette and visual appeal. His works, made using flat-screen monitors, initially seem comparable to the typical photograph or illustration that depicts abstract figures. Yet Bress’s costumed figures move at a virtually indiscernible pace, intentionally created by the artist to both unsettle and intrigue viewers.

Bress hand-constructed each element for his works, using wigs, collage masks, foam rubber suits and painted costumes to adorn his masterpieces. The resulting portraits at times blend in or visibly differ, mimicking the “where’s Waldo” effect and prompting spectators to ponder about individual identity and social representation.

Cowboy (Brian led by Peter Kirby)

Bress, an up-and-coming artist known for his uniquely crafted art, received his MFA from UCLA and BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited his work at prestigious museums around the country, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and Arthouse in Texas. His 2007 video Under Cover was part of the California Video exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His work has been reviewed in numerous publications, such as The New York Times and Artforum.

This exhibition speaks to the museum’s major summer exhibition, Portrayal/Betrayal, which features portraits by George Hoyningen-Huene, Richard Gordon, Steve Davis, Lola Alvarez Bravo and Natan Dvir.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St., is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about the exhibit, visit www.sbma.net or call 805/963-4364.

–Kristin Crosier

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Escape the Indoors with SCAPE’s “Art Along the Creek”

Published on May 15, 2012 in Galleries.

As beautiful and unique as Santa Barbara’s art galleries are, something must be said for experiencing art in the  very settings that help inspire its images. This Memorial Day weekend, come join nearly 100 artists with the Southern California Artists Painting for the Environment (SCAPE). who will be displaying, painting, and selling their art to Santa Barbara locals.

Over 200 works of art will be on exhibit along Mission Creek for SCAPE’s fifth annual “Art Along the Creek”, a three day art and music festival under the shading oaks and sycamores along the creek. All art styles will be represented, from painting and drawing to sculptures and new media.

SCAPE not only exhibits pieces by very talented, eco-conscious artists throughout California– the non-profit organization also helps raise funds for many Santa Barbara-based and California environmental groups, including (but not limited to) the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, and the Environment Defense Center. As of the new year, SCAPE, now in its tenth anniversary year, has raised over $100,000 for local organizations. This year, 40% of every purchase will contribute to the Phoenix House restoration project, a non-profit, residential mental health treatment agency.

Each year, SCAPE chooses to honor an exemplary artist for their work, both their art and efforts in SCAPE. Marcia Burtt will be this year’s honoree: one of the key founder’s of SCAPE, Marcia’s art canonizes the California coastline and the importance of preserving its beauty. Check out our video with Marcia here.

Whether just perusing or looking for a particular artist’s work, “Art Along the Creek” is sure to be a celebration of nature, beauty, and the eco-community. This free, dog-friendly festival is open to all, so don’t miss a chance to experience an art gallery the way nature intended.

-Taylor Micaela Davis

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Enchanting Phoebe Brunner Landscapes on Exhibit at Easton Gallery

Published on May 8, 2012 in Galleries.

"Force Field" by Phoebe Brunner

Renowned contemporary artist Phoebe Brunner will showcase her latest masterpieces at the Easton Gallery in Santa Barbara, with a reception opening the exhibit on Friday, May 11 from 6 to 8 p.m. The show runs from May 11 to June 15, and will also feature an Artist Talk on May 13 at 2 p.m.

Brunner’s latest collection consists of oil paintings celebrating some of nature’s most picturesque scenes. Sloping hills, swelling waves and swirling clouds compose Brunner’s paintings at the Easton Gallery exhibit. Her exceptional blending techniques and precisely selected palettes create multi-dimensional compositions that bring these magical landscapes to life. Brunner uniquely selects and arranges the colors within her paintings so that each work of art stands out.

"Wild Wave" by Phoebe Brunner

Phoebe Brunner has had other solo exhibitions at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang, the Rovzar Gallery in Seattle, the Hespe Gallery in San Francisco and numerous other locations throughout California. She has also participated in selected group exhibitions, the latest of which included Edge: Santa Barbara County Artists Respond at Channing Peake Gallery, A View From Here: A Group Exhibition of Contemporary Landscapes and Cityscapes in Los Angeles and the Berkus Family Collection at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Brunner studied at the California Institute of the Arts (Chouinard), Universidad de Guadalajara, Otis College of Art and Design and UC Santa Barbara. She was the recipient of the John E. Profant Foundation for the Arts Individual Visual Artist Grant in 2002 and the Gold Award from the Art of California Magazine in 1992.

The Easton Gallery, 557 Hot Springs Rd., has featured contemporary landscape artists for 20 years. Recent shows have included works by Whitney Brooks Abbott, Chris Chapman, Tom Henderson and Bjorn Rye. The Gallery is open weekends from 1 to 5 p.m. and by appointment at 805/969-5781. For more information or to view the entire exhibit online, visit www.eastongallery.com.

–Kristin Crosier

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CAF Presents Headgear for Tony and Bloom Projects

Published on May 1, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

Contemporary Arts Forum will present the exhibition Headgear for Tony from MFA students at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tim Brown, Untitled, 2011

The opening reception will be Saturday May 19, 6:30-8 p.m. at Santa Barbara’s Contemporary Arts Forum. The exhibition will be open to the public with free admission from May 20 through July 8.

 

Susanna Vapnek, Tea Fire, 2011

Headgear for Tony presents fresh work from artists who are receiving their MFAs. These artists include Tim Brown, Jared Flores, Emily Halbardier, Bessie Kunath, Jae Lee, Nick Loewen, Ruby Osorio, Rimas Simaitis and Van Tran. The artists work is shaped by their experiences in the UCSB Department of Art’s Graduate Program, which emphasizes interdisciplinary and innovative approaches to art-making and the utilization of campus resources.

The exhibit will also feature paintings inspired by California’s wildfires in Bloom Projects by Susanna Vapnek. These projects are titled Sundowner, a reference to dangerous and uncontrollable hot winds that descend from the mountains to the sea fueling fires into raging infernos.
For more information on this exhibition please visit, http://www.sbcaf.org/exhibitions/upcoming/upcoming.html. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Two Mediums Combine with Leslie and Lily’s Oil and Water Exhibition

Published on April 24, 2012 in Galleries.

First Thursday isn’t the only night celebrating exquisite art in Santa Barbara. Second Friday, where the Santa Barbara Tennis Club exhibits new artists every month, has two brilliant local artists on display for the month of May.

Santa Barbara natives Leslie Lewis Sigler and Lily Guild join together to create Oil and Water, a compilation of Leslie’s oil paintings and Lily’s watercolors. The cohesion between the two artists’ pieces despite their differing mediums is both surprising and refreshing, with the depth of the oil perfectly balancing the delicacy of the watercolors.  The everyday items depicted by these artists are given new color, with hidden oranges and pinks amidst the whites, grays and beiges of the backgrounds.

The Oil and Water exhibition aims to display the “natural beauty” and “personality of everyday things”, as Leslie and Lily respectively state on their websites.

Oil and Water will be on display from May 11 to June 2. For more information on the artists, please visit Leslie and Lily‘s websites.

 

-Taylor Micaela Davis

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“3″ on Exhibit at SBTC

Published on April 12, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

The works of Martha Ensign Johnson, Amber O’Neill and Michele Zuzalek will be on display from April 13 through May 5 at the Tennis Club of Santa Barbara. The club, which features new artists on the second Friday of every month, will host an artist reception April 13 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Martha Ensign Johnson’s featured pieces capture the aftermath of the Tea and Jesusita fires in an area that she wanders through daily. She gathered plants and other natural elements affected by the fire as inspiration for the series. Neutral hues and natural materials draw spectators’ attention toward to the unanticipated splendor of leaves and plants left in the wake of the fires. Johnson grew up around artists in her native state of North Carolina. She started working with printmaking in 1972, and her work has been showcased in galleries across the United States, as well as in the National Gallery of Printmaking in Oslo, Norway.

Amber O’Neill created a collection to reflect the style, colors, and lighting of some of her favorite locations on the California coast. With picturesque visions of sloping coastlines and a natural palette, her works highlight the state’s environmental beauties. She received a BA in Fine Art from the University of Caifornia, Santa Barbara with an emphasis in oil painting.

Michele Zuzalek painted pieces that represent the beginning of a story, one whose entirety is up to the viewer to imagine. She hopes that her collection will be a space for contemplation, a space for both remembering and imagining. Her vibrantly colored paintings construct an undiscovered world for viewers to explore. She graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and has paintings in private collections around the world. She is also a member of the Santa Barbara Art Association and Southern California Artists Painting for the Environment (SCAPE).

Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. To learn more about 2nd Fridays Art or the artists being featured, click here.

–Kristin Crosier

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JOSEPH GOLDYNE: WATERFALLS at Sullivan Goss

Published on March 30, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

 

JOSEPH GOLDYNE Waterfall IV Mixed media on linen | 72 x 18 inches

Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery presents JOSEPH GOLDYNE: WATERFALLS, the international debut of a breathtaking new body of paintings by the critically acclaimed artist, with an opening reception on 1st Thursday, April 5 from 5-8 p.m.

For centuries, the waterfall has been an important symbol for innumerable cultures and religions. In Zen Buddhism, the waterfall represents changelessness vs. impermanence–a constancy of form despite a perpetual change in content. In China, the falling water symbolizes femininity and the upward climbing rocks, masculinity–a yin and yang, if you will. Influenced as much by the abstract painters of the 1950s and 60s as by the Kyoto school scroll painters from 18th century Japan and the 19th century landscape sketches of artists like Frederic Church, Goldyne mines the traditions and styles of the East and West to create heroic new waterfall paintings. These six foot tall by eighteen inch wide images immediately convey intense height, weight, and magnitude, yet their reality exists only in Goldyne’s mind and on his canvases. His work will be on view through July 1.

 Also on view: Dynamic Duos through April 29, In Search of the Source: Paintings by Lockwood de Forest and Anya Fisher through June 7, and Anders Aldrin: The Red Line through July 1, 2012.

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ALICE HUTCHINS: magnetic force at Jane Deering Gallery

Published on March 29, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

Don’t miss the opportunity to see ALICE HUTCHINS: magnetic force, early works from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, on view at Jane Deering Gallery from April 3-29, with an opening reception on Wednesday, April 4 from 6-8 p.m. featuring an introductory talk by Anette Kubitza, PhD.

Hutchins’ work emerged from a defining moment in the development of 20th century art. She has appeared in more than 50 group exhibitions through the U.S. and Europe and her work has been widely published and is the collections of many major national and international museums.

She began her artistic career as a painter and critical to her artistic development was her inclusion in a group of avant-garde artists, musicians and poets in Paris in the 1960s. In 1967, she began experimenting with three-dimensional magnetic work and involving the viewer as a participant. She brought her magnetic pieces to New York and quickly became involved with the Fluxus movement, eventually abandoning painting to devote her full attention to the magnetic, transformable, interactive work for which she is best known.

Hutchins lived in Santa Barbara for many years before passing away in 2009. Prior to her death, Santa Barbara Seasons was fortunate to have published this exclusive interview in our Winter 2008/09 issue. (Double click on layouts to view them full size).

 

 

 

Also in association of this exhibit, Jane Deering Gallery will host three additional events:

Transformables: a presentation of the magnetic force by Merrily Peebles, Curator, Alice Hutchins Collection. April 13, 6-8 p.m.

People Magnets: an interactive human installation and performance, created by artists Elizabeth Folk and Patrick Melroy, Lecturers, College of Creative Studies, UCSB. April 20, 6-8 p.m.

A Closing Happening, with a viewing of Try It Out, animation by John Houchin and music by Dick Dunlap. April 27, 6-8 p.m.

All events will take place at Jane Deering Gallery, 128 E. Canon Perdido St., 805/966-3334, www.janedeeringgallery.com.

 

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ANDERS ALDRIN: THE RED LINE on view at Sullivan Goss

Published on March 29, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery presents Anders Aldrin: The Red Line with an opening reception on 1st Thursday, April 5 from 5–8 p.m.

City View c. 1941 by Anders Aldrin, oil on canvas, 20 x 26"

Swedish born Anders Aldrin (1899-1970) moved to Los Angeles in 1923 with a passion for painting that had been suppressed for most of his life. An artist with limited financial means, Aldrin could only paint when he had spare time. Without a car in a famously unwalkable city, he would hop on the Red Car Line and paint the cityscapes, people, and bridges of the modern wonder that was Los Angeles. As the glamour of Old Hollywood gave way to the power plants and steam stacks of the imminent future, Aldrin succeeded in preserving a historic record of this shift in industrialization through his expressive and boldly colored paintings.

Clearly inspired by Matisse’s early Fauve paintings like “The Red Room (Harmony in Red),” even though we was never able to see such seminal works in person, Aldrin was 15 to 30 years late and 7,000 miles away from the birth of the French movement, Aldrin should be considered one of the truest Fauves. Like Matisse, Aldrin’s use of red is both prominent and crucial to his compositions. The Los Angeles art critic Arthur Millier noted that “to Aldrin the world is dominantly red and green, but how he makes these colors sing!”

The work will be on view through July 1 at Sullivan Goss-An American Gallery, 7 E. Anapamu St. 805/730-1460, www.sullivangoss.com.

 

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April’s 1st Thursday Honors National Poetry Month

Published on March 27, 2012 in Galleries and Web Exclusives.

Let Your Words Escape You at April’s Poetic 1st Thursday.

Here’s what the Downtown Organization’s Kim Mercado has to say about some of the highlights of April’s 1st Thursday:

Visit Downtown Santa Barbara for 1st Thursday, an evening filled with FREE art, culture, music and fun! The April 5th event will include more than 30 cultural art venues eager to show off exciting new exhibits, welcoming artist receptions, intriguing demonstrations and energetic live music.

Poetry is not only for the young or old, nor big or small. Poetry comes in all shapes and sizes and is a perfect outlet to let your imagination run wild. Get inspired at this month’s art walk as many venues highlight poetry in honor of National Poetry Month.

Embark on your stroll throughout Downtown at Lola Boutique to explore the work of Dan Levin who gravitates towards materials extracted from beaches, streams, mountains and deserts as he comments on the mysteries of the natural world. He is driven to orchestrate relationships between objects, forming a singular composition or metaphorical device. Walk on over to the Channing Peake Gallery where the Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Paul J. Willis will host a poetry reading that will include an array of poets that is a must see. Cross the street to visit the Faulkner Gallery East at the Santa Barbara Public Library where Loree Gold invites you to enjoy a visually poetic and colorful body of work that explores the collective memory of road trips past. Get into the poetic spirit and write your own words that will be collected at the end of the month.

Continue your 1st Thursday trek as you stride over to Artamo Galleries to meet artist Janet Bothne while her Driving Force exhibit will be on display. Bothne layers scraps of paper from divorce papers, wrappers, personal documents and paint sample chips as the work becomes an unintentional journal like map pins plotting out her recent experiences.

Next, walk through La Arcada Court to Santa Barbara Arts to explore artist, Christopher Clark’s Amused exhibit that features his edited images of an amusement part outside the city limits of New Orleans, abandoned after Katrina, which is poetic in itself. Make sure to stop at Jodi House to for live music and to support a local non-profit and local artists, surrounding the theme of poetry.

While 1st Thursday offers extraordinary exhibits and paintings indoors, be sure to check out the demonstrations, performance art and live music outdoors. Stop by the corner of Anapamu and State Street to experience The Lexicon of Sustainability Exhibit which is a unique pop-up art show of visually packed collages created by the students in the SBCC Projects in Sustainability class that gives the tools and knowledge necessary to create a healthier safer food system in America.

Want to join in the poetic fun? Visit The Poetry Booth on the Marshall’s Patio at 900 State Street where you can contribute to an interactive public art installation and collaboration space for experiencing and creating poems. The poetry booth provides all the resources, all you need to do is sit down and share some words.

Carry on and venture over to the El Presidio Chapel at 123 East Canon Perdidio Street for a viewing of the next installment of The Travelbooks series, Paris. These films are poetic chronicles of world capitals and their citizens projected onto a wall-sized screen. Draw a close to your evening at the Paseo Nuevo Center Court to listen to The Wha Wha’s who are growing quickly as Santa Barbara’s newest upcoming teen band.

All of these attractions and many more are FREE during 1st Thursday on April 5th. With over 30 stops on this month’s 1st Thursday map, there is sure to be something for everyone. For more information and a complete listing of the specific programming offered at each gallery as well as all public performances and interactive exhibits, go to www.santabarbaradowntown.com.

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