Exhibition – UNCOMMON GROUND by Scott Johnson

Current Exhibition - UNCOMMON GROUND by Scott Johnson

January 13 – March 9, 2024

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of UNCOMMON GROUND, an exhibition of paintings and collages by Scott Johnson. An opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Friday, January 12, from 5-7 pm. Johnson will present an Artist Talk on February 10th at 2 pm.

Johnson is the Founding Design Partner of Johnson Fain, an international, award-winning architecture, urban design + planning, and interiors firm based in Los Angeles, and a long-time mixed-media artist. His paintings and collages chronicle his interest in the interplay between rational thinking and intuition, which translates to a visual dialogue between geometric forms and free forms, between logical pre-planning and invention and spontaneity. Added to the mix are familiar elements from our current media landscape in conversation with more personal, inscrutable ones.

The artistic persona of this multi-talented architect blossomed during the Covid months as he layered fragments of photographs, snippets of text, acrylic paint, and oil stick atop one another to create depth and texture and to bury certain meanings while allowing others to emerge. The process is both additive and subtractive, reminiscent of the evolution of cities such as Rome, Tokyo, and New York, and a fitting source of his unique artistic energy and renewal.

Johnson states: I always seem to be drawn to a process of positioning one thing against another as a way to build tension in the artwork. Life offers us a universe of choices and we constantly navigate between differences, the outcome of which is our work and who we are. In many ways, it’s an exploration of self.

Scott Johnson attended Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is a past President of the AIA Los Angeles chapter, the past Director of the Master of Architecture Programs at USC and the author of numerous books including Uncommon Ground: Notes on the Visual Arts + Architecture (2021) and Inside Art (2023). In 2018, Johnson was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and New York City and exhibits his artworks regularly.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

All Images shown:

Black + Gray Works on Paper
23″x28″
Acrylic and sand on paper 

Exhibition – Sommer Roman: Portals

Exhibition - Sommer Roman: Portals

September 9 – November 4, 2023

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce Portals, a solo exhibition of two- and three-dimensional works 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.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

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

Brain Scan A
22″x30″
Colored pencil on pape

Exhibition – A Natural Curiosity by Nadya Brown

Exhibition - A Natural Curiosity by Nadya Brown

June 3 – August 12, 2023

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception with the Artist

Friday evening June 2, 2023 from 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, A Natural Curiosity, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by Nadya Brown.

An opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Friday evening, June 2nd from 5-7 p.m. 

In this series of lush paintings, Nadya Brown creates illusory, imaginary three-dimensional spaces that entice viewers to enter, explore, and examine closely. Through realistic drawing and highly saturated colors, these highly original depictions of decorative objects, flowers, birds, domestic spaces, and landscapes (often combined in a single painting) evoke time, light, and memory in a slightly surreal manner. Brown’s travels in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, plus living and working in different cultures provided much of the inspiration.

“As subject matter, I often use objects that I own, that I have seen in museums and on my travels or photographs I have taken for specific information. This information is imported and combined in my paintings to create geometrical and aesthetic compositions.”

Brown’s work is both a celebration of nature and of civilization. An example is her large triptych, Simonetta’s Library: A Brief History of Nature, a project completed over a year’s time during the pandemic. Brown states her concerns: “As questions arise about climate change, and consequently drastic changes to our land and marine environment, I focus on nature as subject matter and what it has to offer, and also how it is abused; these are issues that have gradually entered into my work.”

Nadya Brown was born and raised in England. She has since lived in Italy and Spain and now, Santa Barbara, California. After studies in Painting and Printmaking at Goldsmiths College, University of London, she received her MFA from Ohio University. She has exhibited her work extensively in solo and group shows both in the United States and the UK and she has taught at numerous universities and colleges in the U.S.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Simonetta’s Library
48″x72″ Oil on canvas
Triptych

View of the Mountain with Tulips 
20″x30″ Oil on canvas

Exhibition – Natural Interpretations by Holly Hungett

Exhibition - Natural Interpretations by Holly Hungett

March 25 – May 20, 2023

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception with the Artist

Saturday afternoon March 25, 2023 from 1-3 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, Natural Interpretations, a solo exhibition of acrylic and gouache paintings by Holly Hungett.

An opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Saturday afternoon, March 25th from 1-3 p.m. 

In this series of semi-abstract landscapes, Hungett works within self-imposed constraints—limited colors, or monochromatic and muted palettes. Her work relies on strong compositional structure. Painting primarily on location, Holly relies on her connection to the environment for inspiration. She reduces the number of shapes and eliminates extraneous details to create engaging and calming images. For the viewer, these paintings offer a moment of respite from our overstimulated world. The influence of Holly’s yoga and meditation practice of over thirty years is evident in this work.


Noted Santa Barbara artist and teacher Libby Smith, comments: “Holly Hungett is a painter who likes to experiment. She changes media, subject matter, points of view, and pushes personal boundaries. I like that.” 


Garrett Speirs, another revered Santa Barbara artist and teacher, adds: “Holly Hungett’s work is a wonderful balance between the specific and the general. Her work captures the essence of her subject without feeling overly beholden to her topic. Her color palette is both rich and subtle.”

An active member of Southern California Artist Painting for the Environment (SCAPE), The Goleta Valley Art Association (GVAA), and The Abstract Art Collective (AAC), Holly has participated in group and solo exhibitions since 2003. Her works enrich private collections in California, Washington, South Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Poland, and Australia.  Holly received her BFA from the Maine School of Art in Portland, Maine (1981) and her MFA from UCSB (1987).  Starting in (1995) she taught Yoga at SBCC’s Adult Education program for 25 years.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Solar Variation
8″x10″ Acrylic on Panel

Confetti Fields 
6″x6″ Acrylic on Birch Panel

Exhibition – Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper by Mayela Rodriguez

Exhibition - Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper by Mayela Rodriguez

January 14 – March 11, 2023

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present the exhibition, Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper, a solo exhibition of photography, video, text, and installation art by Mayela Rodriguez.

The exhibition expands upon Rodriguez’s prior explorations of her lineage and her father’s family, whose members are from Cananea, Mexico where the Buenvavista del Cobre mine is located. For this exhibition, she uses the theme of copper as a lens into her own evolving identity.

In 2017, when Rodriguez was an MFA student at the University of Michigan, she wrote to the Buenavista del Cobre mine requesting information about her distant uncle, Aurelio Rodriguez. She had grown up hearing intriguing stories about this uncle who, allegedly, pitched rocks into the mine as a child and later in life became a professional baseball player for the Detroit Tigers. After many months, Rodriguez received a package from the Buenavista del Cobre mine that contained a 13″ x 18″ sheet of copper wrapped in plastic.

Carrying the copper with her, Rodriguez then embarked on an ambitious pilgrimage to sites that she and her family have called home. She explains “I was interested in discovering what it meant to simply exist with my copper. How could our pilgrimage both transform it and me? By developing a relationship with my copper in this way, I realized that the copper was not just a slab of metal excavated from the depths of Mexican earth but a vessel to hold all my concentrated questions, thoughts, and insecurities about my identity as a Mexican American.”

Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper expands on recent work by contemporary artists who use globally traded commodities as visual metaphors for ways that personal identity inhabits and is shaped by sociopolitical contexts: Minerva Cuevas, Kara Walker, and Minga Opazo whose AFSB exhibition, Siempre Más/Always More (2020), featured weavings and textiles made of found and recycled clothing.

Mayela Rodriguez is an artist and educator who positions art as a collective, inclusive, and healing process. By facilitating the production of community-made collections, she seeks to remind participants and students of the inherent power of their creative voices in making change. Most recently, Rodriguez has worked on collaborative projects with Latinx communities in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor in Michigan and New Cuyama and Santa Barbara in California. Rodriguez received her BA from UC Berkeley (2015) and MFA from University of Michigan (2019). Rodriguez was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. (mayelarodriguez.com)

An Artist Talk will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Saturday afternoon, February 11th from 2-3 p.m. 

Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Copper from the Buenavista del Cobre mine

Artist’s collection of Aurelio Rodriguez professional baseball car

Exhibition: Prayer Flags & A Tale of Longing by Mary Heebner

Exhibition - Prayer Flags & A Tale of Longing by Mary Heebner

September 10 – November 5, 2022

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception September 9, 2022 from 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Prayer Flags & A Tale of Longing, an exhibition by Mary Heebner. This exhibition is three-fold and consists of two-sided Prayer Flags, a spiral-bound artist’s book, A Tale of Longing and a booklet, Elemental Offerings, all originating with Heebner’s travels to Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India to see how prayer flags were made.

An opening reception with the artist will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, September 9, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Mary Heebner has distinguished herself in Santa Barbara and beyond as a multi-media artist, published writer and book artist. Her artworks are held in numerous public and private collections, including Santa Barbara and San Francisco Museums of Art, The US Library of Congress, The National Gallery of Art, The New York Public Library, and UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, and its Special Collections Library. Mary Heebner earned her B.A. and M.F.A at UCSB and has long been a noted member of Santa Barbara’s art community.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Top
Prayer Flags & A Tale of Longing

Bottom
Elemental Offerings

Exhibition – Malka’s Place: A Journey into a Surreal World by Joyce Wilson

Exhibition - Malka's Place: A Journey into a Surreal World by Joyce Wilson

July 16 – August 27, 2022

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception July 15, 2022, 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of Malka’s Place: A Journey into a Surreal World, a solo-exhibition of photographic montages by Joyce Wilson. The photographs were inspired by a visit to Malka’s Place where Joyce stepped into a world of unearthly delights. An opening reception with the artist and Malka Belzberg, the inspiration for this exhibition, will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, July 15, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Joyce Wilson’s career spans over half a century. She served on the faculty of Brooks Institute and has lectured and taught workshops throughout the world. Joyce is active in the Santa Barbara Art community as a board member of the Abstract Art Collective.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Love

Abyss

Exhibition: A.BOD.E by Cara Lasell Bonewitz

Exhibition: A.BOD.E by Cara Lasell Bonewitz

May 14 – June 25, 2022

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception May 13, 2022, 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of A·BOD·E, a solo-exhibition of recent paintings and papier-mâché sculptures by Ojai-based artist Cara Lasell Bonewitz. An opening reception with the artist will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, May 13, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Cara Lasell Bonewitz received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and her BA in Studio Art and History from Yale University.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Images shown:

Fourth Morning

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (unidentified drug shelf)

Oh My Goshi

Impossible Objects: Screen Prints by Ed Lister

MM Rainbow by Ed Lister

Impossible Objects: Screen Prints by Ed Lister March 13 – May 8, 2021 Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery

The AFSB Art Gallery at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of Impossible Objects, an exhibition of vibrant, abstract silkscreen prints, or serigraphs, by Ed Lister.  

Ed Lister, known in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara as a skilled scenic artist, created this series of “impossible objects” in the early 1970s while teaching printmaking at the Chelsea School of Art in London.  After teaching art for twelve years, Lister moved to California.  Starting in the mid-70s he worked for ten years as the lead scenic artist for the Center Theatre Group at the Taper and Ahmanson Theaters in Los Angeles. Subsequently, he painted backdrops and installations as wide as 400 feet for TV, movies, and destination resorts, hotels, and casinos.  

More recently Lister was commissioned to paint a 60 feet-wide mural encircling the Bisno Schall Clock Gallery of the Santa Barbara Courthouse that depicts our perception of time and various ways of recording it (http://www.bisnoschallgallery.com).  Although he loved working on such a large scale, Lister now paints more modest-sized images concerned with iridescent and reflective seascapes and skies. 

Created fifty years ago, these striking, hand-pulled prints play with our contemporary sensibilities and logical brains in their resemblances to imaginative digital images. Of all the printing techniques, Lister most relished executing screened images with areas of pure color put down in a clean and direct manner.  In this series, he created improbable, mind-bending objects that cannot exist other than on a flat surface.  Intrigued by their bold colors and shapes, our eyes are lured in, then our assumptions of reality are challenged.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara has been dedicated to expanding our community’s appreciation of the built environment since 1983. The AFSB Gallery is located in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Regular gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 pm and weekdays by appointment.

Historic Preservation Series by Patrick McGinnis

Vanishing Behemoths of Industry Star in Bold New Photographs by Patrick McGinnis

November 7 – December 19, 2020
Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery

Detail of Sloss Iron Works #45, 16×16

patmcginnisart.com

patmcginnisart.com

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce Historic Preservation Series, an exhibition of industrial photographs by Pat McGinnis. Visitors are invited to view the exhibition on Saturdays, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm, November 7 through December 19. The artist will be present on November 7 & December 19. (Self-screening, masks, and social distancing are required.)

Following a career in engineering, Patrick McGinnis turned to creating semi-abstract, biomorphic sculptures in marble, bronze, and metal, inspired by natural forms. Then, during a family trip across the country, he visited a rusty old factory, the Sloss Iron Works in Birmingham, Alabama, and his interest in photography was piqued. Attracted by the dramatic interplay of light on the tall, solid forms of these massive, industrial structures—vanishing monuments to America’s once vibrant iron and steel industry—McGinnis felt compelled to photograph them.

Most blast furnaces built in the United States are now dormant or on their way to demolition and becoming scrap metal—only a few, like the Sloss Iron Works, survive as historical landmarks. Energized by studying the photographs of Bernd & Hilla Becker and paintings by Charles Sheeler, McGinnis discovered new subjects closer at hand, notably the large Vulcan plant at Ellwood Station in Goleta, which he was able to photograph just before it was torn down. He has also made photographs of an obsolete, wood-waste burning electric power plant, Soledad Renewable Energy, whose future is uncertain.

McGinnis’s transition into making art is a continuation of being a design engineer in the nuclear, aerospace and semiconductor industries and his own business, Prime Technology. Aesthetics played a vital role throughout that work, whether creating an aerospace component or an analytical instrument. He is currently a member of Santa Barbara Art Association, Abstract Art Collective, Gallery 10 West (board member), and the LA Art Association. He has exhibited his work at 10 West Gallery, Elverhoj Museum of Art & History, Gallery 113 (Santa Barbara), Gallery 825 (LA), Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, and San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.