Online event series: Bio/Mass: Summer Artist Talks
Tuesday, August 24, 4 – 5 p.m. | Wednesday, September 1, 4 – 5 p.m.
Register online at: www.wildlingmuseum.org/news/2021-summer-artist-talks
Suggested donation: $5.00
SOLVANG — The Wildling Museum of Art and Nature is pleased to announce its upcoming discussion series, Bio/Mass: Summer Artist Talks. The three-part Zoom series will highlight six artists from the Wildling’s current exhibition, Bio/Mass: Contemporary Meditations on Nature, in conversation with one another – Karen Kitchel and Catherine Eaton Skinner, Scott Chatenever and Dorothy Churchill-Johnson, and Maria Rendo?n and Sommer Roman. The three scheduled discussion dates are:
Wednesday, September 1, 4 – 5 p.m. | Artists Maria Rendo?n and Sommer Roman — Moderated by Holli Harmon, Bio/Mass Exhibition Co-Curator
The artists featured in the Wildling’s current exhibition, Bio/Mass: Contemporary Meditations on Nature, utilize a diverse range of media – including sculpture, found materials, ceramic, encaustic, mixed media, and painting. Through this series, participants are invited to learn more about each artist’s individual practice and their process as observers and interpreters of the natural world around them.
Whether examining patterns in nature, studying landscapes, or combining and recombining singular elements that accumulate into a revealing larger work, these artists have translated their deep observation and fascination with their individual environments into works that beckon viewers to find beauty in the details of our world, celebrating both quiet and dramatic moments in nature.
The suggested donation for each of these virtual programs is $5.00. To register and learn more about the participating artists, visit: www.wildlingmuseum.org/news/2021-summer-artist-talks. Please email info@wildlingmuseum.org or call (805) 686-8315 with any questions.
The Wildling Museum’s ongoing Zoom programming is sponsored by Montecito Bank & Trust.
About Karen Kitchel — Karen Kitchel’s environmentally resonant works embody a deep and sustained effort to extend our definition of landscape painting. Unconventional combinations of image, material, and form conspire to energize and subvert this traditional genre. Kitchel’s oil paintings and installations have been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout the U.S., and are in private and public collections worldwide, including the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum, the Pomona College Art Museum, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Nicolaysen Museum of Art, the University of Colorado Art Museum at Boulder, the National Museum of Poland, and the U.S. State Department, among others.
Karen Kitchel was born in Battle Creek, Michigan and graduated from Kalamazoo College and Claremont Graduate University. She has exhibited professionally for over thirty years, and is represented by Robischon Gallery of Denver, CO, and Gerald Peters Gallery of Santa Fe, NM and New York, NY. She lives and works in Ventura, CA.
About Catherine Eaton Skinner — “We live in a world where it may be difficult to feel a part of the whole, but we continue trying to find ways to connect to place and to each other.”
Skinner’s creative sensibilities stem from growing up among old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Working in Seattle and Santa Fe, she incorporates multidisciplinary media with exploration in painting, printing, sculpture, glass, and photography.
Skinner’s monograph 108 (Radius Books) showcases her investigation of this symbolic number. Publications include Monk, LandEscape Art Review (London), ARTfolio2020, Artists on Art, Magazine 43 (Berlin, Hong Kong, Manila), The Woven Tale Press, and Apero. Public collections include: The Embassy of the United States, Tokyo and Papua New Guinea; Henry Art Gallery; Tacoma Art Museum; Seattle University; Museum of Northwest Art; Swedish Orthopedic Institute; Virginia Mason Medical Center; and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
About Scott Chatenever — Scott always liked making things and was good at math, so the grownups told him to be an engineer. Fortuitously, he discovered the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Craft Center where he took a pottery class after learning that engineers only get to make things by committee. Over 30 years on, he still finds clay a compelling medium for the exploration of nature and human perception, ritual and relationships. Craftsmanship continues to be an important element in his work. His studio is in Ojai, California.
About Dorothy Churchill-Johnson — A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Dorothy Churchill-Johnson has been a working artist in Santa Barbara, CA since 1976. She is known for her mural-size contemporary realist oils on canvas in which she seeks to synthesize hard-edge realism with other contemporary influences like Pattern & Decoration; Neo-Pop; Op – Art; and abstraction. By finding beauty in the ordinary details of our everyday surroundings and blowing them up to visual extremes, she hopes the viewer will feel as if they are seeing something familiar for the first time.
Churchill-Johnson’s work has been collected by museums, major corporations, five-star hotels, hospitals, and many private collectors nationally and internationally. She recently exhibited a retrospective of her work at The Butler Institute of American Art in spring 2021.
About Maria Rendo?n — Maria Rendo?n, a Mexico City native, received a BFA from Universidad Ana?huac. She received her second BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and completed her MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2014.
Exhibitions include: But Only So An Hour at HeyThere Projects, Joshua Tree, CA; Espacio Entre / Entre Espacio, SUR Biennial at Rio Hondo College; Two by Two at PØST, Los Angeles; Shift, Stretch, Expand: Everyday Transformations at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara; Missing Rib at Atkinson Gallery; Alter at Art Design and Architecture Museum UCSB; Rock Paper Candy at Gallery 1328 UCSB; and Unholy Mess at Santa Barbara Museum of Art – McCormick House.
Her work is featured in New American Paintings #123 and Graphis #355. She lives and works in Santa Barbara, CA.
About Sommer Roman — Sommer Roman was born and raised in California. She received her BA from University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2004, and her MFA from University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2014. She maintains a multi-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, painting, and drawing. She lives on the Central Coast of California with her husband and two young children and occasionally teaches at local universities.
Her recent projects and exhibits include: Left Coast; Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art, a group exhibit at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2014); Out of the Great Wide Open, a group exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2015); Artist Residency and solo exhibition, Passage at UC Santa Barbara (2015); Artist Residency at The Squire Foundation (2017), and In the Woods, Perpetual Youth, a solo exhibit at Ventura College (2018).
About the Wildling Museum — The Wildling Museum of Art & Nature, where art and nature meet, offers visitors a unique perspective on the importance of preserving our natural heritage. Through the eyes of artists, and education and field experiences, guests can renew their relationship with the wilderness and understand its fragile nature – hopefully leaving more committed toward ensuring those spaces remain for future generations. For more information, and to volunteer or join as a member to support this important local arts and nature institution, please visit www.wildlingmuseum.org.
Additional digital resources are available at www.wildlingmuseum.org/virtual-visit, including online galleries from all current exhibitions, links to art activities, videos, and more to help online visitors experience the museum from home.