The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum focuses its attention on the college’s art faculty in Sight & Insight: Westmont College Studio Art Faculty Exhibition Sept. 2-Oct 30. The public is invited to a free, opening reception, 4-6 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 2.
“Our art faculty are all accomplished working artists in their own right, and this show displays the wide range of ability and media that makes our department so creatively diverse,” said Judy L. Larson, Askew professor of art history and museum director.
The exhibit features paintings to watercolors, sculptures to prints, ceramics to photography. Westmont’s studio art faculty work in genres ranging from conceptual art to photorealism to graphic design.
Featured faculty artists include Scott Anderson, Nathan Huff, Chris Rupp and Meagan Stirling, as well as adjunct faculty James Daly, Brad Elliott, Ryan Ethington, Jenna Grotelueschen, Pecos Pryor and Katie King Rumford.
The museum is open weekdays 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more, call the museum, 805-565-6162 or visit westmont.edu/museum. Guests will be required to wear face masks while inside the museum. If you are experiencing any of COVID-19 symptoms, please do not visit.
Anderson, an acclaimed freelance illustrator, shares works from his “Play“ series, including action figures, LEGOs and wind-up tin toys, to blur the line between childish things and the passage into adulthood.
Huff, whose installations and exhibitions have been shown throughout the West Coast and internationally, uses wood and paper to open vistas and explore ways we might reach across divides.
Rupp specializes in sculpture and ceramics; he uses the Westmont exhibit to examine the increase in surveillance activity in our day-to-day lives.
Stirling’s artwork has been featured in solo and group shows throughout the U.S. She allows control and chaos in her prints of children’s clothing to explore connections and relationships.
Daly, whose work follows traditional genres of landscape and still life, portrays the sensations of becoming a part of the landscape while riding a bicycle in the Santa Barbara foothills.
Elliott, Westmont staff photographer for more than 35 years and owner of a photography freelance business, explores the unpredictability of life using decades-old black and white negatives to make unique “wet prints.”
Ethington, an art educator, has turned the meditative practice of drawing concentric circles into artwork that reflects the texture of tree rings, reminding us of the trauma and growth we have overcome.
Grotelueschen, a painter with interdisciplinary proclivities, blurs numerous boundaries in her painting that resembles bedsheets folded, cut, stitched and stretched.
Pryor, whose “Attention to Loss” will be in a solo show at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara in January, uses the dark spaces of traffic cones to draw the viewer into the murky places, which demand that something be given back.
Rumford is a creative director, design director and designer. She shares the inspiration and process behind her successful Grow with Google illustration campaign.