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Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara

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The variety of programs we offer range from experiential to educational to artistic. It can be a solo endeavor or a group activity, from visiting our new online gallery or our art gallery in person to attending an art opening. Or perhaps you want to attend a lecture or take part of a historic walking tour, there is something for everyone!

Exhibition - Sommer Roman: Portals

September 9 - November 4, 2023

Opening Reception September 8, 2023

Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present the exhibition, Portals, a solo exhibition of two- and three-dimensional work by Sommer Roman.

Portals is a solo exhibition that brings together various works from three different threads of Sommer Roman’s larger body of work: new textile-based wall sculptures and “Brain Scan” colored pencil drawings are paired with “Cell Portrait” ink drawings.  This grouping of work sheds light on themes and forms that appear and reappear in Roman’s work repeatedly: namely, the biological cross-section and the circle. 

In bringing these threads of her work together, Roman re-examines and re-envisions them as portals, portals that draw us into places of deep knowing and innate wildness within ourselves.  Through evocative color, organic forms, materiality, and the universal circular form these unique, multifarious configurations invite viewers back to the realm of interconnectedness, playfulness, the wild feminine, and the body as potent sites of knowing and knowledge. 

Sommer Roman was born and raised in California and has lived in France and on both East and West Coasts of the US. She received her BA from UC Santa Cruz (2004) and her MFA from UC Santa Barbara (2014).  Roman maintains a multi-disciplinary art practice and exhibits regularly in group and solo exhibitions.  She currently lives on the Central Coast of California with her two children and teaches in the Art Departments at Cuesta College and Cal Poly.

Gallery hours are Saturdays 1:00 – 4:00 pm and weekdays by appointment.

Images:

Internal Portal II, 8″x8″x3″ Post-consumer clothing, paper clay

Brain Scan A, 22×30″ Colored pencil on paper

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