Galleries On Campus

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

Opening Reception:
Saturday, August 23, 4pm - 6pm
Free Parking!
Followed by the Tidawt Concert at 7pm
Please see the Events page for more detail.

J. Handel Evans and Hall Galleries

"A Retrospective" - by Dorothy Hunter

Dorothy's oil paintings bring the emotional palette of impressionism to the world of abstract art. "I am usually referred to as an abstract artist but perhaps my work should be called abstract impressionism, because the work comes from memories of things I've experienced in life. The colors and shapes I use refer to places Ive seen or music I have heard. These images dwell in my mind and haunt me like ghosts of things past until they compel me to commit them to canvas or paper," writes Hunter.

A native of Washington, D.C., Dorothy Hunter's career began in the early 1960's when she helped found a gallery in Georgetown Washington, D.C. Since then she has shown in a number of galleries on the east coast from Miami to Montreal. She has had work in the Corcoran Gallery of Art , the Smithsonian Museum, the Baltimore Museum and the Walters Museum to name a few. She is represented in a number of public and private collections and was included in the Federal Art in Embassies program.

Dorothy came to California in 1984 and joined Studio '83 and the Buenaventura Art Association. Since then she has become a member of the Buenaventura Artist's Union Gallery, Studio Channel Islands Art Center and has shown at the Carnegie Museum. She currently lives and works in Ventura, CA.

O'Keeffe Gallery

Paintings by Carlisle Cooper

Cooper's figurative and colorful paintings deal with a variety of themes such as civil rights, religion, philosophy, honor to military veterans, celebration of the arts such as music, theatre and poetry.

Carlisle Cooper became a member of the art faculty at Ventura College in 1963 and has had more than 30 one-person exhibitions in Southern California. In 1984 he was invited to exhibit fifty of his smaller works in West Berlin during the annual Berlin Festwochen, the week which opens the Fall cultural season in Berlin. The exhibition traveled to Heidelberg, Darmstadt and back to the States at Georgia State University.

Cooper, a native of Charlotte, N.C., attended Duke University for two years and then transferred to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts to study the art of cartooning. After a year and a half in Chicago, he sold an adventure cartoon strip to the Chicago Tribune / New York News Syndicate which ran for approximately three years until he went into military service. Upon leaving the Army, he used his G.I. Bill to study at the Chicago Art Institute where he earned both his BA and MA. Later, in California, he studied at UCLA and Chouinard.

"I sometimes think that all of us," writes Carlisle Cooper, "artists and everyone else, get far too blas' about the miracle of our life here on earth. We live on our tiny planet, surrounded by millions of other stars and planets occupying vast and endless space. And on this tiny planet where we exist, mankind has made unbelievable progress in developing great art, religion, philosophy, science and also unfortunately, too many wars. Since I consider man as a symbol of the above ideas, I have always been interested in portraying the human figure in a variety of situations and ideas, some old and some new. And this is why I have always been a figurative painter in my work."

Gerd Koch Gallery:

"Bronze sculpture" - by Leah Parrent

The bronze sculptures on exhibit are from a series entitle, "Organomercurial", and have been created to evoke the contemplation of universal experiences that lead to life transitions and/or transformations in thought or circumstance. Organomercurial is an organic compound containing mercury - organic: 1. of, relating to, or derived from living organisms 2. forming an integral element of a whole; fundamental - mercurial: 1. having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury 2. characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood ( from the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary). "For me," writes the artist, "sculpture represents possibility in life. I am intrigued by the life of an idea as it travels from mind, to paper, and then transforms, given strength through metal to exist fully shaped in a place of its own".

Leah Parrent lives in Los Angeles. In addition to being an artist, she also works as an Occupational Therapist at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute where she is able to help each client through a process of self discovery and healing. At times Parrent is able to use art as a vehicle for this journey.

SCIART West

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

September 14 - October 25, 2008
Brian Gill's Photography: Perspectives on the Environment

Opening Reception:
Sunday, September 14th, 1:00pm - 4:00pm

One of the most pervasive human interests is a fascination with nature. There is an eternal appeal about nature that is tied to the central truths of life itself. Today that natural interest is compounded by nostalgia. Defeated by the cities, sheltered from the elements, divorced from the earth, the urban dweller daydreams of unpolluted streams, unpopulated woods, the freedom of birds and fish. Nature photography is a postcard from and an homage to an age of innocence. In an era concerned with ecological preservation, pictures of nature are visible reminders of what is worth preserving.

Nature photography is at once an art, a science and a sport. As an art, it can make the ordinary remarkable, discovering intricate beauty in a snowflake, in a rain-silvered cobweb or in humble dandelions. A challenge to the modern day photographer is the problem of taking a new picture of an animal or a landscape that has been photographed many times before.

That is the real problem: vision. In the Seventh and Eigth Centuries a Buddist painter in China would stare at a flower or a monkey for days before lifting a brush. Finally he would dash off an ink drawing with a few strokes. The flower was not seen as an object of sentimentality; the monkey was not comical; for the first time a flower or a monkey had been focused on and fully seen on its own terms. Good nature photographers are in the same tradition: it is precisely this sort of clarity of vision that distinguishes their work at its best. BRIAN GILL is such a photographer.

About BRIAN GILL. As a young child he wanted to be an artist but, for his Irish born father, recently immigrated to the United States, that was unacceptable. A gift of a camera at the age of 12 became the outlet for Brian's creativity. For over 20 years he has covered events in Northern Ireland, Southeast Asia, El Salvador and the United States. From 1984 to 1991 Gill photographed the war in El Salvador on the ground while also documenting the struggles in the Catholic Ghettos of Northern Ireland.

In 1994 Brian Gill illegally entered Vietnam to photograph children involved in the sex trade. At the same time, he documented leprosy in Vietnam. He holds dual citizenship, Irish and U.S.. Brian says that his education began when he joined the U.S. Marines when he was seventeen years old and served from 1964 - 1967, with two combat tours in Vietnam as an explosives engineer.

Beginning in 2005 while spending substantial time in the desert in Galisteo, New Mexico, Brian Gill was drawn back to his early fascination with pure light, color, from and composition. Although he continues to photograph people in conflict, he is finally able to capture and craft images that reflect beauty and stillness.

His website is:www.BrianJGill.com.

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.