FROM KEVIN WALLACE, Founding Director of Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts & Happy Valley Cultural Center: “The Center has been exhibiting work by Ojai Studio Artists since we first opened in 2005, yet I'm still amazed by the vision, talents, and myriad approaches of the artists. Our exhibitions feature plein-air painting, abstraction, sculpture, and works in craft media, representing wide-ranging art historical approaches. Part of the pleasure of presenting our annual OSA exhibition is seeing this wonderful community come together in person. It's an experience that is rewarding on every level."

canvas + paper’s latest exhibition is a mesmerizing journey through the evolution of landscape art from the 17th to the late 19th century. This show features a remarkable collection of works by renowned artists, each piece a testament to the unique styles and techniques that defined their eras. Jan de Bisschop's "A Hillside and Trees, Near the Hague" from the 1660s opens the show with its intricate pen, ink, and wash composition. The journey continues with Joseph Mallord William Turner's "Merton College, Oxford, from the Meadows" (c. 1798-1801), showcasing his mastery of watercolor over pencil. John Constable's "The Vale of Dedham" (1805) captures the essence of the English countryside with a similar medium.

Moving into the 19th century, Théodore Rousseau's "Cottages under the Trees" (c. 1842) and Jean-François Millet's "The Path Lined with Trees, Vichy" (c. 1866-67) reflect the French landscape tradition with their use of watercolor, pen, and ink. Eugène Delacroix's "A View of Eaux-Bonnes in the Pyrenees" (c. 1840s) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "The Lake" (c. 1890) demonstrate the transition into more fluid and expressive watercolor techniques. The exhibition concludes with Camille Pissarro's "Éragny" (1890) and Paul Cézanne's "Trees" (c. 1890), where the exploration of light and color prelude the advent of modernism. This collection not only showcases the mastery of each artist but also illustrates the evolution of landscape painting, marking significant milestones in art history.

Featured: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) “The Lake,” c. 1890, watercolor over pencil on paper 9¼” x 11”

Ojai Mystique: Paintings by 21 Nationally Renowned Artists will feature large and small-scale paintings of the Ojai Valley. This special exhibition by some of today’s most notable landscape painters will be on view from October 20, 2023, through February 4, 2024.

Award-winning artists from California, Nevada, and Colorado, each with an Ojai connection, are painting scenes of the Ojai Valley for this exhibition. A few live in the valley; the others have painted Ojai over the years. All share an appreciation for the beauty of this valley.

Hugh Steers (1962-1995) was an American Painter whose work is in many museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Walker Art Center, The New Museum, The RISD Museumin Provincetown, The Tacoma Art Museum, The Bronx Museum, and The Denver Museum. Recently, his work was shown at David Zwirrner in Paris (2021) and ANOTHER SPACE in NY City (2023). He died from AIDS-related complications at the age of thirty-two. Hugh was trained as a painter at Yale University and Parson's School of Art and Design.

Hugh said he was "sometimes mistaken for a gay painter or an aids painter, but he was a humanist." 

According to the New York Times, "Hugh Steers illuminated corners of human experience and imagination that, without his paintings, we would have never seen."

Join us at the Santa Paula Art Museum on Saturday, November 11, 2023, for the premiere of “The 15th Annual Art About Agriculture Exhibition,” featuring 55 fresh works of art by 55 exceptional artists. “Art About Agriculture” is a group show presented annually by the Ag Art Alliance, a collective formed in 2007 by Santa Paula artists John Nichols and Gail Pidduck. The purpose of the exhibit is to promote awareness of agriculture by exploring its many facets through art—from workers to water, from machinery to fields, to the food that goes on our plates. Admission to the premiere party is $5.00 for SPAM members and $10.00 for non-members. All of the artworks in the exhibition are available for purchase. “Art About Agriculture” will be on view from November 11, 2023, to March 3, 2024.

“The 14th Annual Art About Agriculture Exhibition” features art by Ramona Andrews, Arthur Barrett, Liz Blum, Kathy Bodycombe, Carlos Briceno, Gary Campopiano, Bob Carson, Harvey Cusworth, Linda Dark, Karl Dempwolf, Michael Kenneth Depue, Stephen Edwards, Lynn Fonkalsrud, Anthony Forzaglia, Carolyn Fox, Hilda Freyre, Merry Nell Colborn Fullmer, Susan Gardner, Pei-Tse Goh, Jessica Haggard, Patti Handfinger, Ray Harris, Michael Hause, Kristen Hendricks, Gabriel Islas, Chuck Kovacic, Beverly Lazor, Karen Leoni, Renate Lichter, Eileen Maloney, Lisa Skyheart Marshall, Yolande McAlevey, Andrea Vargas Mendoza, Pj Mills, Martha Moran, Marcia Morehart, Jem Morris, Vanessa Morrow, Marnie Piuze, Daniel Raminfard, Lisa Sachs, Becky Savell, Bonnie Smith, Jules Smith, Libby Smith, Pamela Strautman, Patricia Prescott Sueme, Bonnie Taylor, Lindsay Thomson, Elisa Torres, John von Buelow, Trevor Walker, Nina Warner, and Jim Wilson.

IMAGE: “Vineyard” by Hilda Freyre, 2022, Oil on canvas, 18 x 36 inches

Duel, a combat between two persons, a conflict between antagonistic ideas or forces. Consisting of dual parts, at the center lies an aggravation to be resolved by force. Antithetical to the notion of singularity, which can also refer to something peculiar standing out from the lineup of similar ideas matching alongside each other.

For his solo exhibition at Spore Space, Ian E. Newman has presented six new works completed between the years 2021-2023, three paintings and three sculptures in dialogue with constructed realities, group think, group action, and adversarial biases. Neon connects the paintings and sculptures, the attention-commanding quality highlights the mindless activities of watching, buying, consuming, and losing in the traditional form of the Vegas delusion.

Each work contains a symbolic intention circling around the center pillar of two-sidedness, urging the viewer to proceed with caution. Mimetic desire pervades the room as notions of reduced agency and polarization are represented as unidirectional woes, difficult to reverse. One sculpture stands out as a leading motif, a tower of upheaval coupled with liberation, its tarot symbology undergirding the body of work.

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Newman attended Pratt Institute Brooklyn, New York, graduating in 2002. An itinerant artist, Newman's work is informed by time spent in New York City, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Philadelphia, harboring a unique signature integrated within his work. He currently lives and works in Ojai, California.

"Life lies within the in-between. The process and mystery of things are life in itself. Point of interest is merely information, whereas the undefined asks and evolves. Separate remaining benign. Unified revealing viability.”

From Tom Pazderka:

It has finally happened. A Secret Plot has moved into the streets with a variation on the ‘micro gallery.’ These boxes will hold temporary artist ‘installations’ in a semi-anonymous manner in the streets of Ojai for the foreseeable future. The mission of the project is to move challenging art into semi-public spaces where art is not expected to exist. The idea is to generate chance encounters with the strange, uncanny, and radical notions of art outside of galleries, museums, and institutional spaces and to give artists a chance to create work, exhibit, and communicate concepts in non-traditional ways.  

The idea for Micro Plot came to me in the beginning months of the Pandemic; it just took a while to materialize in concrete form. But the story of how it came about goes back years. When we still lived in Santa Barbara, I used to walk past a house that looked as though it was abandoned. It wasn’t, but it had the ‘look’, overgrown vegetation, an unkempt yard, peeling paint, and dingy windows. The last paint job seemed like it happened sometime in 1976. In the evenings, a single light could be seen through the front window, betraying the presence of the occupants. But outside was another ‘tell’, a small white box perched on a four by four staked into the ground in the middle of the front yard, two or three feet away from the picket fence. Inside the box were displayed random newspaper clippings and notes, presumably from the owner(s). The clippings and messages would change with time, but the whole concept of this ‘message board’ was ultimately intriguing. I never understood any of the clippings that were cut out of decades-old newspapers or the messages. The messages may have been unclear, but the idea wasn’t

We’re all familiar with the tiny library concept – small wooden boxes, usually near mailboxes, filled with random and cast-away books – and the  ‘take a book, leave a book’ idea. Micro Plot is something along the lines of ‘leave an idea, take an idea,’ and so far, the feedback has been mostly positive, although Bart’s did apparently receive a complaint that the first box made someone ‘uncomfortable.’ I’d venture to say that even that can be seen as a positive development, especially if the whole notion of the project is to put out challenging ideas.

PAST EVENTS:

Cover: Shelter, by Jules Weissman