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VENTURA — ArtWalk Ventura’s pop-up PODS® Mini Art Galleries are a new addition to the local art festival this year, PODS reported in a media release. Artists are actively transforming 16 PODS® containers from plain white boxes to artwork, art installations and mini art studios.
ArtWalk Ventura, Ventura County’s weekend celebration of the area’s thriving arts community, returns for its 20th year on July 20-21.
The first one is now placed at the CVS parking lot on Victoria and Telegraph and has already garnered interest from the public. Fifteen more will be placed throughout downtown and Ventura’s West End, connecting the mini galleries with more than two dozen traditional galleries.
Patagonia, the high-end outdoor clothing company, is celebrating its milestone 40th anniversary and its PODS® container will pay homage to its history by transforming the inside into a Patagonia museum, sharing company photos throughout the years, mannequins dressed in the first clothing styles the company produced to current-day Patagonia trends, and rare outdoor sporting equipment sold by the retailer when they first opened its doors in 1973. The outside walls of the PODS® container have been adorned with original Patagonia photography.
Ventura Artist and asthmatic John White has titled his artwork as the “Breathe Easy Project,” which he has designed on behalf of Community Memorial Hospital. A regular patient of CMH over the past few years due to his asthma, White will dedicate the artwork to his fellow asthmatics by designing the PODS® container with drawings that pertain to breathing, including a lungs, inhalers, fish gills a giant 3D nose and more. The walls inside the PODS® container will be plastered with more than 100 poems by local poets who have written about their breathing issues as well.
Muralist MB Hanrahan, in partnership with the City of Ventura, painted the outside of a PODS® container with the help of community and youth volunteers that focuses on honeybees, pollination, interdependence of Ventura County’s agriculture, foliculture and bees, as well as the underlying threat of hive collapse. Hanrahan said she sees a direct connection between art studios and beehives — art studios as a hive of creativity and a place for the pollination of ideas.
Local photographer Chris Jensen is working on photos of all the artists. His PODS pop-up gallery will be situated at Bell Arts Factory.