Weekly critique group: Tuesday 1PM at the Santa Cruz Art League 526 Broadway, Santa Cruz.
*The first Tuesday and third Tuesday will be an open paint day and/or presentation day. These have proved to be enjoyable. Bring your supplies and join us.
Happy New Year 2015 and a reminder: Please send your SCWS annual $35 dues to Dale Johnson. Also, if you have a gallery page on this website, please remember to also send a $10 fee to take care of the annual hosting fee with Iversen Design. Also reminder: you must be a member to have a page on the website.
Plein Aire: Thursdays (Call Shirley for location and time.)
If you would like to receive the membership newsletter for contact information on Plein Aire and other membership events, please refer to ‘contact page’ and become a member. ($35 yearly)
Announcement and invitation to our annual potluck lunch, meeting: Tuesday, February 24, 11:30 AM at the home of Aimée Nelson, 229 Fridley Drive, Santa Cruz
Please RSVP for the annual meeting to Aimée waveland@cruzio.com, 831 425 5954 or 229 Fridley Santa Cruz 95060 so that we will know how many parking permits to provide.
*Please make plans to attend this important event. We will be discussing particulars of the coming annual membership/invitational show to be held at the Blitzer Gallery, November 2015.
The Blitzer Gallery is a beautiful space and we are excited to the challenges that this new venue offers. (www.rblitzergallery.com). Our reception will be on Nov.6 and part of Santa Cruz’s First Friday event.
*There is a plan to put aside space in the 2015 annual show at the Blitzer Gallery that will be devoted to a historical perspective of the Watercolor Society. There will be a narrative telling of the history of the organization. We wish to include contributions of Bernie Waymire, Bess Blodgett, Lloyd Organ, Janet Rillet, Lois Monagham, Emily Clark, Marian Goodman, Jo Juett, Jan Moss, Gail Karen, Dave Mcguire, Melita Israel and Shirley Motmans. If you have any comments or visuals of paintings or events that would be interesting within this context, please send them to Aimée or plan to bring them to the annual meeting so that Aimée can photograph them. The postcard for 2015′s show hopefully will reflect the history of our organization.
Looking forward to seeing you,
Aimée
Members exhibits:
Coastal Art Alliance: ongoing at The Hindquarter ( Linda Lord, Anne Harding, Lee Taiz, Sammy Fantham, Judy Feinman, Jere Ann Hall, Marilee Gregory, Nancy Howe)
Lee Taiz has paintings on view at Valley Heights in Watsonville and the old Avanti Restaurant in Palm Center on Mission Street through February.
Lee will also be participating in a self portrait art show at the Scotts Valley Library beginning January 24 and running for three months. (See exhibit information below under Exhibits in Santa Cruz area.)
Member News:
The Santa Cruz Watercolor Society has engaged the Blitzer Gallery (Please see photos under events): 2801 Mission St. (the old Wrigley building) www.rblitzergallery.com for our 2015 annual show for November of next year. Our reception will be on Nov. 6 which will be part of Santa Cruz’s First Friday event. It is a beautiful space and we are excited to the challenges that this new venue offers.
Classes:
Coming Soon at the Art League…
May 23 & 24, Loosen Up with Watercolor, Leslie Wilson
June 13 & 14, Plein Air Watercolor, BonniCarver
Watercolor -Thursday, Linda Lord, Santa Cruz Art League to begin January 8
This class is geared to facilitate those who have never painted and those who have advanced their skills. Most class sessions will include a demo and then time to work on the elements of the demo. Information on materials, including colors and “gimmicks”,and tools is given throughout the six-week period. The goal of this class is to encourage the joy of painting, while improving skills and knowledge.This is a “fun” class, so bring a sense of humor and whatever materials you have and enjoy. Levels: All Offered: 6 Thurs. To begin again in the new year, Time:1:00- 4:00pm Levels: All Instructor: LINDA LORD is a self-trained artist and illustrator with over 16 years teaching experience in her studio and via the SC Watercolor Society; an Open Studio artist whose exhibits include Cozumel, Mexico. Linda also publishes with a decorative art publisher.
website: mcf-art.com.
Botanical Art in Watercolor – Maria Cecilia Freeman
In this workshop you’ll learn a practical, traditional approach to drawing and painting a botanical subject – from study to finished work. Botanical art involves both accuracy and artistic technique, but you don’t need to be a botanist, and beginners as well as experienced artists are welcome. We’ll go through a process of observation, drawing, composing, color mixing, and techniques of watercolor brushwork particular to botanical art. You’ll get individual attention as you draw and paint. We’ll work with colorful new spring growth in live plant specimens (to be provided). Bring lunch. Offered: March 14 & 15 SCAL Classroom, 9am – 3:30pm, Level: All, Class Fee: $160 / $140 Members. Instructor: Maria Cecilia Freeman is a professional artist with 20 years of experience bridging scientific illustration and botanical fine art. Her award-winning drawings and paintings have appeared in solo and juried exhibitions across the U.S. and at Kew Gardens, London. You can see her work at her website: mcf-art.com.
Drybrush Watercolor Class.
Curtis Mothershed
Watercolor is the medium. The technique is (drybrush) My subjects are landscapes & seascapes. I take field color sketches and reference photos to have for the correct lighting and details of the area. Then I complete the painting in my studio. Drybrush watercolor effects are unique and can’t be achieved by other methods. It allows you to bring realistic details, textures and patterns to the trees, rocks, water and buildings. It takes patience to learn the techniques. You use very little water on the brush to apply the paint using crosshatching and scrubbing.The technique that can expand your love for watercolor painting.Bring a photo of your favorite landscape to work from. You may have it sketched out on watercolor paper or board to save drawing time. Level: Intermediate, Feb.21 & 22., 9:00am -3:30pm. Fee: $160 / $140 Members. Instructor: Curtis Mothershed is a watercolor artist and illustrator with over 35 years of experience in the field of traditional art and conceptual illustration & design. Open Studio Artist, Art/Graphic
Design/Illustration, AA/BAUniversity of the Pacific, Stockton, CA • Delta College, Stockton, CA • Cabrillo College.
Tom Lynch workshop : Artists and friends, coming to Sonoma County in March of 2015 from the 16th- the 20th WASCO will be hosting Tom Lynch. The overall objective of the workshop is to show the vast range and flexibility of watercolor and to put emotion and conviction into painting by exploring and experimenting.This 5 day workshop will be held at the 4-H foundation of Sonoma County on Commerce Blvd, Rohnert Park from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm daily. The cost is $450.00. Payment due with entry. Please call or email any time with questions: dianaliebe03@yahoo.com or 707-245-7512, 707-739-7285
Exhibits you might not want to miss (Santa Cruz):
R. Blitzer Gallery: The Art of Dance (13 artists) extended through January 26 paintings, sculpture, photography. http://rblitzergallery.com
Exibits in Santa Cruz area:
Scotts Valley’s ‘Art in the Library’ Celebrates ‘The Original Selfie’
Self Portraits by Area Artists Featured in Latest Installation;
Runs January 24 –April 25
January 7 , 2015 – Scotts Valley, CA – The Scotts Valley Library, through its popular ‘Art in the Library’ program, invites the community to view very original ‘selfies’ – an exhibition of self portraits by 80 Santa Cruz County artists. The installation is available for viewing January 24 through April 25 at the Scotts Valley Library. Additionally, the public is invited to an artist’s reception on Sunday, February 8 from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. at the library, located at 251 Kings Village Rd. in Scotts Valley.
“It is the goal of the ‘Art in the Library’ program to celebrate and honor the ingenuity, talent and spirit of Santa Cruz County artists, and this installation allows them to express themselves in a very personal way,” said Valri Peyser, Program Chair for the Art in the Library program. “I’m excited to see what they reveal about themselves in their self portraits – the original ‘selfies’!”
The artist’s reception is open to the public and provides the opportunity to view the self-portraits and meet all of the artists. Additionally, local musicians will perform including Minor Thirds Trio, an engaging, multi-layered musical convergence featuring Brian Fitzgerald, Jesse Elias and Patrick North in the Main meeting area and pianist Howie Kimel in the Fireside room. The reception, taking place February 8 from 2 – 5 p.m., is free. Refreshments, hosted by Laureen Yungmeyer of State Farm, will be served.
For more information on the Friends of the Scotts Valley Library and the Library’s ‘Art in the Library’ program please go to: http://www.fsvpl.org/ or visit Friends of the Scotts Valley Library on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfTheScottsValleyLibrary)
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Exhibits in the Bay Area:
Botanical Art Exhibit at UC Berkeley Julia Morgan Hall
A year after it was sawed into four parts and hauled piece by piece from UC Berkeley up the narrow two-lane road into Strawberry Canyon, Julia Morgan Hall has opened at the UC Botanical Garden.
The debut exhibition is a group show by 40 botanical artists from all over the world, yet it looks like they were painted specifically to hang in this 104-year-old room of redwood and paned glass, with a vaulted ceiling 20 feet high.
“This is a show that has been traveling up and down the East Coast, and it only chose one West Coast exhibit space, and we are it,” says Paul Licht, director of the UC Botanical Garden
Julia Morgan Hall: The opening exhibition, “Following in the Bartrams’ Footsteps,” runs through Feb. 15 at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley. Free with garden admission. www.botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu.
Asian Art Museum: 200 Larkin St. San Francisco, CA 94102 415.581.3500
-Tetsuya Ishida (1973-2005)
A melancholy man opens his shirt to reveal a detailed map drawn or tattooed upon his torso. Behind him, a line of bright fire stretches across a blue stream. Later, a remarkably similar face appears in the seat of a baby’s stroller, a toddler in red overalls guiding it through the grass. Next, the head is transported into the cab of a backhoe, an open beer tilted from its bucket, filling a glass extended by someone out of frame. This is the world of Tetsuya Ishida.
Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke is the first U.S. exhibition of paintings by the Japanese artist, who died in 2005. Ishida blended dreamlike realities with everyday life and melancholy isolation with bizarre wit, producing a body of work that triggers strong emotions but actively resists easy explanation.
Ishida once said he wanted his paintings to “depict the world as [he felt] it and let other people feel it freely.” The Asian Art Museum is proud to introduce eight remarkable paintings that exhibit the range of Ishida’s themes, including the pressures of academic and office life, social dislocation, the dulling effects of mechanization and the search for identity.
Ishida noted being drawn to artists who “feel the pain of all mankind” and who “truly believe that the world is saved a little with each brushstroke.” Ishida’s desire to use humor as a way of dissipating the tension inherent in difficult themes amplifies the darkness and lightness in these paintings. Their highly personal subject matter is sure to resonate a little differently with each viewer. Whether the paintings provide insight—or even salvation—is left for you to decide.
Explore Japan’s “floating world.”
In Edo Period Japan (1615-1868), the “floating world” was a phrase that referred to both the pleasure quarters in major cities and a pleasure-seeking way of life. The most famous of these pleasure quarters was the Yoshiwara—a walled and moated district in Edo (present-day Tokyo) where one could abandon the rigors of daily life in pursuit of sensual delights.
Like Las Vegas today, the Yoshiwara was a destination that traded in sex, excess and fantasy, and its reputation as such—spread by the stories and artworks it inspired—was critical to its economic success and hold on the popular imagination.
Enter this complex world through more than 60 works of art, including paintings, woodblock prints and kimonos, and featuring a spectacular 58-foot painted scroll by Hishikawa Moronobu (d. 1694). Purposefully excluding the harsh realities of the sex trade, floating world artists created an idealized realm of high style and exquisite beauty. Produced by some of the most talented artists of their time, these artworks afforded vicarious pleasure to the many who could not access the Yoshiwara directly, while luring others to spend more freely. Seduction offers you the opportunity to explore the intersection of art and desire, and to consider how fantasy can attract and obscure.
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California September 20, 2014–April 12, 2015- Oakland Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California illuminates local histories and social forces that changed the face of art in—and beyond—the Golden State. Weaving together art and ephemera from the collections of the Oakland Museum of California and SFMOMA, the exhibition tells the stories of four creative communities at decisive moments in the history of California art: the circle of artists who worked with, influenced, and were influenced by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in San Francisco in the 1930s; the legendary painters and photographers associated with the California School of Fine Arts in the 1940s and 1950s, including Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Minor White, and Imogen Cunningham; the free-spirited faculty and students at UC Davis in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley, and Bruce Nauman; and the streetwise, uncompromisingly idealistic artists at the center of a vibrant new Mission scene that took root in the 1990s through the present, including Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Amy Franceschini, Ruby Neri, Alicia McCarthy, and Rigo 23, along with many others. Focusing equally on the artworks and the contexts that fostered their creation, Fertile Ground presents an intimate and textured history of personal relationships, artistic breakthroughs, and transformative social change.
Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California is jointly organized by the Oakland Museum of California and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Portraits and Other Likenesses from SFMOMA
May 08 – September 27, 2015
On view at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco Featuring approximately 45 artworks, Portraits and Other Likenesses will demonstrate how artists from the early 20th century to our own time have negotiated a vast array of European, African, and American visual-cultural forms to redefine what it means to make a portrait. On view in the newly renovated galleries at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), Portraits and Other Likenesses will feature paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos from SFMOMA, many of them recently acquired and on view for the first time as part of the collection. The exhibition situates key historical artworks by Romare Bearden, Sargent Johnson, Seydou Keita, and Wifredo Lam in dialogue with recent works by living artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Dawoud Bey, Nick Cave, Mildred Howard, Glenn Ligon, Rodrigo Moya, Chris Ofili, Paula Santiago, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Jack Whitten, Fred Wilson, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others. Portraits and Other Likenesses is curated by Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, guest curator for MoAD and Caitlin Haskell, assistant curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA.
Monterey Museum of Art–Pacific Street 559 Pacific Street, Monterey, CA 93940 831.372.5477 http://www.montereyart.org
Monterey Now: Warren Chang
October 23, 2014 – April 6, 2015 MMA La Mirada
Artist Warren Chang, born 1957, is nationally recognized for his realist paintings of biographical interiors and local field-workers of the Monterey County area. Influenced by masters such as 17th-century artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), and 19th-century artists Jean-Francois Millet (1814–1875), and Winslow Homer (1836-1910), among others, Warren Chang creates subtle narratives that celebrate the human spirit. A native of Monterey, his work is also inspired by the novels of John Steinbeck and the magnetic beauty of the region.
From Dawn to Dusk: Gottardo Piazzoni’s Final Murals
Ongoing MMA La Mirada
Gottardo Piazzoni (1872-1945) moved from Switzerland to his family’s ranch in Carmel Valley in 1887. Subsequent study in Paris and San Francisco exposed the young Piazzoni to the revolutionary artistic developments of modernism and the muted symbolic pallet of tonalism which infuses his paintings of the California landscape. Piazzoni’s most ambitious project was a series of fourteen monumental murals commissioned for the San Francisco public library—now the Asian Art Museum. The murals were removed and conserved when the building was renovated in 1999. Ten murals are on permanent display at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The final four—entitled Dawn, The Forest, The Mountain and Night—were completed the year of the artist’s death in 1945. These magnificent murals have been generously lent from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to the Monterey Museum of Art.
Sponsored by Peppy Garner and Darnell Whitt, Carver + Schicketanz Architects, The S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, Dr. and Mrs. Eric J. Del Piero, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Osterkamp, Mr. and Mrs. John Wilkinson, Janelle and Johnny Apodaca, Sherrie and Tom McCullough, Alyce Nunes, Tom and Margo Nunes and Dee Sala.
View the Behind the Scenes video
Image: Gottardo Piazzoni, The Forest from the Mural Suite, 1945, oil on canvas mounted to aluminum honeycomb panel, collection of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Transfer from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Asian Art Museum through the joint Committee to Site the Piazzoni Murals
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