Arts Spring 2021
Visit Tuesday through Saturday from 9 am to 3 pm as part of a Taft self-guided garden tour. The exhibition runs through July 31st.
From Taft Gardens & Nature Preserve: Conservation Endowment Fund (CEF) is very proud to launch the first-ever Taft Gardens Art in Nature Residence launched in January 2021. Our first residency is Ojai-based remix artist Cassandra C. Jones. Her work will be on display in the Artist Cottage for an exhibition period in the spring and summer.
Working in a historical art studio on the grounds of Taft, Jones has created collage works based on plant specimens that make up the Australian and South African Gardens. The series will culminate as a wallpaper installation and framed works depicting specimens from the natural world infused with the human world.
READ ASHLEY WOODS HOLLISTER’S REVIEW OF CASSANDRA’S WORK HERE.
From Porch Gallery:
Molly Larkey is a Los Angeles-born and based artist. In her art, writing, and activism, she suggests ways to imagine a world in which beneficial structures replace ones based on alienation and control. She has exhibited widely with museums and galleries internationally, including solo exhibitions at PS1 MOMA, New York; Gallery 12.26, Dallas; Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles; Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, and Los Angeles; Dutton Gallery, New York; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, among others. Her work was featured in “The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture,” at the Saatchi Gallery in London and “The Beyond” at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. Her writing has been published with Los Angeles Review of Books, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), and Haunt Journal of Art. In 2019, she founded the People’s Pottery Project, an artist-driven initiative whose mission is to empower formerly incarcerated women, trans, and nonbinary individuals through the arts.
Los Angeles-based Brian Wills makes multimedia works that bridge painting and wall sculpture. Wills creates his works by wrapping colored thread around thin strips of wood, which he then encases in paint and polyurethane and mounts on the wall. His process has a labor intensity that the artist associates with craftsmanship; in Will’s own words, his works could be considered “minimal in nature” and “a bit obsessive”. While his compositions are frequently geometric and patterned, the simultaneously glossy and textured surface of these works is meant to reflect light differently depending on the position of the viewer. Wills has more recently begun to create freestanding sculpture using a similar process. His influences include James Turrell, Pieter Brueghel, Josef Albers, and Agnes Martin.
Opening Reception: Porfirio Gutiérrez: Continuous Line, Linea Continua – Saturday, June 5th
Free and open to the public. Artist present. Ojai Institute Member Dinner to follow for members at the Founder’s Circle level and above. To learn more about membership please visit their website.
From Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation:
Continuous Line, Linea Continua features five new unique textile pieces that will be shown for the first time. Each piece is stretched and framed and intended exclusively to hang on the wall. Some of the pieces feature embroidered embellishments that accentuate the bold lines of his highly minimal and graphic design vocabulary. This will be a very unique opportunity to experience the dynamic intersection of generations of indigenous knowledge and a contemporary artistic practice.
Art Prize Gala in Two Parts, Part 1 – Saturday, June 26th
Ticketed fundraiser to benefit the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, Margaret Bates & Scott Johnson Residence, Ojai, California. Individual tickets start at $150 per person, and tables start at $2,500. The event will feature a Porfirio Gutiérrez Studio Pop-up and a Curated Oaxacan Marketplace.
The Ojai Valley Museum presents six photographers who have lived and/or worked in the Valley. Each has greatly contributed to photography as an art form in the Ojai Valley and elsewhere.
Three present photographers, all members of Ojai Studio Artists: Cindy Pitou Burton, Joe Sohm, Donna Granata, three past: the recently departed celebrity portraitist Guy Webster, photography pioneer John Calvin Brewster, and — possibly the star of the show — Horace Bristol, whose work appears above.
Video installation by Los Angeles multimedia artist Alex the Brown. Ongoing.
PAST: On June 5th join us at the altar of pleasure and ascension and get grace pilled by high priestess @michele_shocked. With music by Maude Vôs @the_sound_sculptress and idolatry by @alexthebrown. These wizardly women gather to open a portal and gaze into the eternal, celestial bliss. A pride month coincidence? We think not. 🌈
Located in the Ojai valley 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles in Southern California, canvas and paper is a non-profit exhibition space showing paintings and drawings from the 20th century and earlier in sparse, thematic artist exhibits.
Ongoing
Porch Gallery Ojai invited seven artists to reflect on current events by each designing a table spaced a minimum of six feet apart.
Kirsten Stoltmann | Sally England | Carol Shaw-Sutton | P. Lyn Middleton | Gary Lang | Scott Daigre & Sam Hamann
Every week Ojai Studio Artists bring you a brand new video that allows you a peek into their artists’ studios — into their world! There is nothing better… except maybe the actual tour. Subscribe at ojaistudioartists.org.
View Online: Rabbit hole alert!
The People’s Graphic Design Archive is a crowd-sourced virtual archive that includes everything from finished projects to process, photos, letters, oral histories, anecdotes, published and unpublished articles, essays, and other supporting material in the form of documents, videos, audio, as well as links to other relevant archives and websites.
PAST EVENTS:
Cover: Horace Bristol courtesy Ojai Valley Museum