Color Notes: Painting Workshop
Join the artist Jimmy Miracle for a fun adventure in painting at the AFSB Art Gallery grounds. You will learn the techniques to create your own oil painting. You bring the art materials you specifically want to use to make your painting uniquely yours. Get to see your local community in a new way. Seek neither picturesque nor unsightly subjects, but freely paint your immediate surroundings with an open mind.
NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.
AFSB Art Gallery – NEW SHOW
OPENING RECEPTION TONIGHT!
Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday, March 15, 5-7 pm
Abstract Trompe L’oeil
September 20 – November 14, 2019
Abstract Trompe L’oeil highlights Wilson’s deep interest in the interplay of colored surfaces. Her previous paintings were conventional still life paintings depicting recognizable objects with reflective, transparent surfaces that appear as small abstractions. Creating these paintings led her to the idea of creating purely abstract still life paintings. At first glance, her new work appears to be flat, hard edge, geometric and abstract. Upon closer observation, viewers are drawn in by the illusion of depth.
To create these unusual paintings, Wilson first constructs an abstract “still life”—a three-dimensional composition of opaque, translucent, and transparent papers, and colored gels. After arranging lighting above to create a kaleidoscope of reflections, she paints the “still life” from direct observation, challenging herself to create the illusion of three dimensions and transparency using only opaque pigments.
Although the paintings are formal compositions, they evoke futuristic cities, outer space, and science fiction settings. Surface flatness and the illusion of depth coexist simultaneously, creating spaces where the interplay and fusion of saturated colors, abstract shapes and imagination magically coexist.
Wilson received her BA in 1979 from San Francisco State University where she studied with Robert Bechtle, a photo-realist painter. She completed her MFA in 1982 at UCSB where she studied with Ciel Bergman and William Dole. She has maintained a studio and residence in Santa Barbara for 40 years and has participated in many group exhibitions and several solo exhibitions. She currently teaches art classes at SBCC School of Extended Learning.
Through-line: Brooks Institute, a culture for photographic education
January 24 – March 6, 2019
This exhibition looks at the experience of the school through the art of three alumni who became educators, bringing with them pieces of the Brooks’ legacy to be passed on in their own classrooms.
For over 70 years Brooks Institute provided a visual arts education to an international gathering of students in Santa Barbara. Brooks was unique in its immersive focus on imaging arts – photography, film, photojournalism – and in its educational philosophy of hands-on learning provided by practitioners in their field.
Christopher Broughton, Christy Gutzeit and Ralph Clevenger came to Brooks with a passion for the art and craft of photography. What they encountered was an intangible mixture of location, pedagogy, and mentoring which fueled their unique professional paths.
Through-line showcases moments from each photographer’s career. Christopher Broughton’s photographic black and white series, “Anhydrous – Our Unquenchable Thirst”, explores the anthropogenic landscape shaped by our endeavor to control water in the west. Ralph Clevenger exhibits a selection of work that demonstrates the connection between the photographer, the subject, and the viewer. In this case the subjects are animals from around the world, each animal’s portrait revealing a story in a single frame. Christy Gutzeit’s personal work is inspired by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s energy, calm one moment and forceful the next. Using multiple layers of materials combined with photography, she explores the transient nature of the waves of water and the power they have to imprint and erase.
Each of these image-makers has continued the legacy of their education by becoming educators themselves, teaching craft and professionalism while imparting their passion for photography to new generations of students. Currently, they are all part of a new collaboration established by The Ernest Brooks Foundation called “Brooks at UCSB” which is hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s Professional and Continuing Education department.