From Indoek: This physical space serves primarily as an art gallery and creative hub that both celebrates local creative talents and inspires the community with unexpected programming and events.

Frederick Hammersly (1919-2009) was an American abstract artist renowned for his contributions to the Hard-edge painting movement. His work is characterized by geometric precision and vibrant colors. Hammersly's compositions often featured meticulously arranged shapes and lines, creating a sense of order and balance. He explored the interplay of color and form, with a particular focus on the subtle nuances of hue and tone. Hammersly's art transcended the boundaries of traditional painting, offering viewers a visual experience that engaged both the intellect and the senses. His legacy endures as a testament to his mastery of abstraction and his ability to evoke emotion through meticulous abstraction.

From Leslie Marcus:

Born and raised in New York, Leslie maintains a cutting edge: continually pushing her artwork to greater heights. 

After attending The Academy of Art College in SF, Marcus immersed herself in the fashion world of Los Angeles, creating hand-painted, exclusive textile designs for apparel & home furnishings. Leslie’s unique textile designs appear throughout her contemporary fine art paintings of vibrant female figures and women draped in embellished decorative designs. 

From Ojai Studio Artists:

A dazzling exhibition of new work by artists across the Ojai Valley including paintings, sculptures, fiber arts, collages, jewelry, glass, prints, mixed media pieces, and all manner of artworks made by members of the Ojai Studio Artists (OSA), the community-based nonprofit that has been celebrating Ojai arts and offering scholarships to local students for 38 years. This year’s show, “Turning Corners,” features works inspired by the theme of “a new beginning, a new direction, a new path in life.”

The show runs through October 9 and features work by artists included in the OSA studio tour, the three-day, self-guided art extravaganza that features more than 70 open studios all over the valley, from secluded canyons near Lake Casitas to backyard wonderlands right in town. This exhibit offers a one-stop preview of works by all participating artists.

Featured Image: I Need Space by Joce Aucoin

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.

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.

Cover: Richard Amend’s Reclining Nude Under Tree, on view at Ojai Valley Museum

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Cover: Richard Amend, Reclining Nude w/ Tree