Cheerful chatter and live music filled the Brea Civic Center plaza as Brea Gallery celebrated the opening ceremony of their 41st annual\u00a0\u201cMade in California\u201d juried art exhibition on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The exhibition featured over 90 artists from all over California, ranging in different artistic mediums including traditional oil paintings, sculptures and mixed media pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gallery Director Katie Chidester explained how the gallery gets around 5,000 submissions for the exhibit annually. Their selected jury plays a role in not only narrowing down the submissions, but helping choose a vision for the exhibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially what happens is the jurors make their selections from the submissions and they get to actually pick the show, which is fantastic,\u201d Chidester said. \u201cWhat that does for us, the gallery, is it brings a different perspective in every year\u2026 We have their vision for what the show, what they feel like California art is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition\u2019s jurors and gallery staff also take into consideration what is happening in Californian society when curating the exhibition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking at current trends, like what is it that a lot of people are talking about right now in this current climate? What are people gravitating towards?\u201d said Gallery Coordinator Kennelyn Deloach.<\/p>\n
Because the jury changes yearly, the exhibition\u2019s overall theme changes as well. This year, the selected pieces carried overall themes of identity and social justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Artist Angel Lesnikowski talks about her submission, a mixed media painting titled \u201cOthered Existence.\u201d The piece uses imagery of a young girl in mourning to explore the theme of being othered and dehumanized because of one\u2019s identity, specifically Arab identity \u2014 and highlights current conflicts in Palestine, Iran and Lebanon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of the piece came from a (Edward) Said theory essay I read about the idea of \u2018othering,\u2019 \u2018othering\u2019 referring to someone not being part of the group, so you shun them from the group,\u201d Lesnikowski said. \u201cIt was calling out how orientalism, which is now a bad term, was created in order to other the orient, other the Asian or the Middle East cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Artist Adam Singer\u2019s oil painting \u201cBig Feelings\u201d was another of the featured pieces in the exhibition focusing on the theme of identity. The artwork portrayed a surrealist visual representation of how aging and mortality are in conflict with the commodity of youth in a modern society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say that it\u2019s my attempt to capture the general vibe of living in Los Angeles these days and reaching middle age and feeling that dread of mortality, along with the intensity of the city,\u201d Singer said about his painting. \u201cAlso this kind of feeling of trying to express ourselves and these very intense feelings through these narrow little channels of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibit also highlights one solo show. This year\u2019s installation, titled \u201cThis must be the place,\u201d was put on by multidisciplinary artist Lorena Molina. The installation featured photography, woven installations and videography.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Molina\u2019s solo show is inspired by her Salvadoran heritage, the immigrant experience and her own personal definition of home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While each individual piece holds a different meaning and importance to their respective artist, the exhibit is connected through how it showcases Californian identity and what modern citizens hold dearest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to me because it is such a snapshot of what\u2019s going on in our state right now artistically,\u201d Chidester said. \u201cI think it speaks a lot to what people are responding to culturally, current events-wise, politically, socially and that\u2019s why I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMade in California\u201dwill run until June 28. The Brea Gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cheerful chatter and live music filled the Brea Civic Center plaza as Brea Gallery celebrated the opening ceremony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,2308,8233,9734,6612],"class_list":["post-288234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-art","tag-brea","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}