Galleries On Campus

Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12:00-3:00 PM

Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 10, 4pm - 6pm
Free Parking!

J. Handel Evans and Hall Galleries

"External / Internal" - Curated by Ashley McLean Emenegger

External / Internal offers seven artists’ poetic renderings of landscape – both topographical interpretations of terra and psychological explorations of internal terrain that maps the psyche. We see the world outside as we experience it internally. What is exemplified externally lends clues to the machinations of an inner world; the result being compelling, beatific, congruous, and enlightening. External / Internal focuses on the beauty of both the external and internal, noting that while the internal, just as with its external compliment, wages storms and torrents, it also can encapsulate the beauty of the stillness found when being present to quiet observation and focused presence of mind, with duality at bay and surrender at hand.

Ashley McLean Emenegger is a Los Angeles-based independent local/national curator. She has her own art advisory firm, McLean Fine Art (www.mcleanfineart.com), and is the Director of Bandini Art in Culver City, CA. Emenegger is also an exhibiting visual artist.

The curator has invited the following artists to exhibit at SCIART: Mark Dutcher, Virginia Katz, Jeff Miller, Nancy Monk, Roland Reiss, Fran Siegel and Jennifer Vanderpool.

Mark Dutcher: Epiphany as healing, breakthrough as surrender and placid resolve, Dutcher’s “Portal” works on paper offer meditations on a stasis between the physical and ethereal. These serene mandala-like images are as complex as his traditional oeuvre of heavy brush strokes and explosive terrains of paint and vibrating colors, but their intensity and beauty has a more internal resonance and delicate patterning encapsulated within the primordial and powerful image of the circle.

Virginia Katz: Katz’s mixed-process works on paper assemble the deep layers and tracings of patterns that develop temporally and psychically in our world. The ensuing topographies contains a metaphoric stratum constituted of the new and old ways and rhythms, and it is the more ancient patterns that hold the ultimate wisdom to give rise to a better understanding of and agreement with the future.

Jeff Miller: Miller’s works on Mylar depict the mental and physical symptoms that arise from the conflict between instinct and drive and the prevailing socializing mechanisms that dictate acceptable behavior. The resulting compositions are an amalgam of explorations that utilize the language of abstraction to speak to the irrational need for self-expression, offering a visual translation of the delicate balance between the schism of neurosis and norm. The images' overall quiet nature speaks to an acceptance of the inherent extremes in which the artist is both the witting observer and unconscious participant.

Nancy Monk: Monk’s photo-collage prints are interpretive observations of natural environments, accented with light and shadow, forming poignant abstractions of landscape. Her miniature world of trees, boats, and flowers also start with photographs, of friends, family, and environment, and are painstaking layered with painted dots and complex patterning, sometimes additionally adorned with hand-stitching, buttons, and found objects. Whether distilled or obscured, Monk’s images are poetic renditions of her natural surroundings.

Roland Reiss: Reiss’ works combine his wonderful color sensibility with fine mark-making, enhanced with hints of colored paper that peak between the lines of these soothing and delightful landscapes. Created on Mylar, these works are marvelous reductions of color, light and movement, graceful and alluring.

Fran Siegel: The shifting landscape is the subject of Siegel’s work. Based loosely from her photographs taken while flying into Los Angeles, Siegel creates delicate paper relief topographies that map the cohabitation of human settlement and land contour; where one does not necessarily inform the other the result is interdependence, cooperation, and acquiescence of one or the other. The contemporary landscape is no longer taken from a fixed position but now in motion.

Jennifer Vanderpool: Vanderpool is best known for her wild, psychedelic fantasy creations and hyperbolical landscapes that act out the push-pull between the allure and repulsion of gender roles. For this exhibition, Vanderpool is harkening back to earlier work, creating more corporal-based sculptures that turn the inside out and bring physical form to the inner tug-of-war between self-expression and the alleged call of duty.

O'Keeffe Gallery

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow? " - Paintings and installation by William Solomon

William Solomon, a resident of Newbury Park, intends for his paintings to engage the viewer, to make them stop, focus and pay attention to the details. Solomon paints what is personal and pleasant to his eye. In the tradition of the Dadaists, Solomon aspires to alter the way people think about art; to change the aesthetic of what art is and can be, and where it can be found. He cites inspiration from a cactus flower after its bloom struggling to hold onto the larger plant, the fruit displayed at a farmer’s market or the nuances of body language amongst a group of people.

Through his narrative paintings based on photographs he has taken of people and landscapes, William Solomon hopes to communicate a vision that is enriching to the soul.

Gerd Koch Gallery:

"Shreds" - by Arlene Mead

Arlene Mead, a resident of Thousand Oaks, makes art from shredded documents. At a glance the artwork may be taken as a new form of geometric abstract painting but, upon close inspection, the viewer realizes the surface is comprised of thousands of strands of shredded paper. Shredded bank checks, tax returns, medical records and more.

“Daily, we make the effort to shred and dispose of sensitive personal information in order to protect our identity and our privacy. Unfortunately, this is only perpetuating the illusion of personal privacy. So much of our data,” writes the artist, “is readily available to anyone with a computer and a few dollars. I have taken these shreds of paper that were once made private and made them public again.”

It should be noted that no documents are actually reconstructed. The bits of shredded paper hold an intrinsic beauty to the artist and she uses them as a formal element of art making.

SCIART West

Gallery Hours: Thur-Fri, 1:00-4:00 PM

Bob Privitt is a Ventura County artist living in Thousand Oaks. He has recently retired after a 40-year art teaching career, spending the last 25 years serving at Pepperdine University. He was Artist-in-Residence at Pepperdine from 2002-2004, and also served as director of the Pepperdine University Art Gallery from 1981-1991.

At Pepperdine, Privitt was the Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellow for the 1992-93 academic year and the 1995 Faculty Member of the Year. He was selected for the 1996, 1998 and 2005 editions of Who's Who Among America's Teachers.

Bob Privitt's works have been chosen by jury for inclusion in over 100 national and regional exhibitions and received awards in over one-third of them. His drawings and sculptures are in many public collections, including those of Pepperdine University, Westmont College, University of Tulsa, Indiana University, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Oklahoma Art Center, and the City of Thousand Oaks, CA.

The artist is the recipient of many national, regional and private grants, and was sponsored by the Borchard Foundation to be a Scholar-in-Residence at Brittany, France in 1989.

It is also fun to report that Bob Privitt is a former motorcycle racer!

Privitt has been chosen to be the subject of the June 3rd "Tuesday Talk" for Focus On The Masters (FOTM), a Ventura County non-profit art appreciation program that documents, preserves and presents the works and lives of accomplished contemporary artists.

SCIART West is a non-profit organization that is working to provide the community with a cultural hub offering first-class art exhibitions of both local as well as national artists, Meet the Artist programs, four studio spaces for working artists, and workshops for all ages. In keeping with our Mission Statement, as a charitable contribution to the community, all programs are offered free of charge to students.

This exhibition and the Meet-The-Artist programs have been made possible by a generous grant from the Martin V. & Martha K. Smith Foundation.

The Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Foundation was established by Martin V. "Bud" Smith and his wife Martha with the mission "To enhance the quality of life for the residents of Ventura County." Bud, the leading land and business developer in Ventura County for more than 50 years, and his wife Martha hoped that the Foundation would involve future generations of their family in continuing their appreciation of Ventura County and their care and concern for strengthening the community. Bud and Martha Smith's four daughters serve on the board of the Foundation, with Marjorie Tegland currently serving as Chair. Joining the Ventura County Community Foundation as a support organization in 1994, the Martin V. & Martha K. Smith Foundation funds nonprofits in Ventura County through an annual grant program, with an emphasis on organizations serving the Oxnard plain. Further details may be found on the VCCF website, at www.vccf.org.

The creation of SCIART West was made possible in part by The Downtown Center for the Arts, a nonprofit organization involved with the redevelopment of downtown Oxnard and the support of Handel and Carol Evans.