My inbox has been flooded with articles and press releases recently. This latest one is for a show of Rembrandt etchings in conjunction with a show of contemporary photographs by South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa. These extremely rare etchings have been touring the country for a while and make their next stop at the Reynolds Gallery at Westmont College. It is a remarkable exhibit to have at a small private college and pairing the etchings with these photos seems wonderfully ambitious. Make sure to mark you calendars for the opening on September 3rd. I hope to see you there.

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Etched in Time

Rembrandt’s Mastery Displayed in Santa Barbara

"Beggar Seated on a Bank" Image courtesy of the John Villarino collection.

“Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt’s Etchings” will be on display in Reynolds Gallery at Westmont Thursday, Sept. 3, through Saturday, Oct. 31. Featuring 35 of Rembrandt’s etchings from the John Villarino Collection, the exhibition opens with a reception 4-6 p.m. Sept. 3 in the gallery, located at 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara, which is free and open to the public.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) created this series of etchings between 1629 and 1654. A common subject for the Dutch master throughout his career, beggars often informed his images of saints and other subjects, including himself. One well-known etching in the series is his self-portrait, “Beggar Seated on a Bank” from 1630.

Work by South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa, also on display, complements the theme of Rembrandt’s etchings. Mthethwa’s Contemporary Gladiators series depicts the lives of the urban poor in his homeland, providing a contemporary perspective on poverty.

This exhibition is the first that Director Judy L. Larson has organized for the gallery. Most recently the director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., she joined the Westmont faculty in June 2008 and holds the R. Anthony Askew Chair in Art.

Zweletha Mthethwa, "Untitled" (Contemporary Gladiators series) (c) Zweletha Mthethwa

Reynolds Gallery is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. For information call (805) 565-6162. On Saturday, September 26, the gallery will participate in Smithsonian magazine’s Annual Museum Day, which invites Smithsonian subscribers to museums across the country.

A nationally-ranked liberal arts college, Westmont provides a rigorous academic program set in a Christ-centered community. Founded in 1937, the school enrolls 1,200 students on a wooded, ocean-view campus in Santa Barbara. For more information, visit www.westmont.edu.

It’s been a while since I reported back after attending any of the exhibits that I’ve tried to publicize on this blog. Today, I’d like to fix that.

To begin with, I couple of weeks ago I headed down to Carpinteria to check out the Anderson Collective Art show. The exhibit was housed in one unit of a beautifully remodeled old Henry Fish Seed Company. Apparently, there was a new kind of Lima bean developed there and up until recently these beans were the chief agricultural product of the area. Who knew? Anyway, I was happy to see that the exhibit was very well attended. The space was beautifully utilized and gave ample space to each artist’s varied output of work.  While the brothers, Benjamin and Sean, worked the crowd, Ron was hard at work gluing together the odds and ends that attendees were asked to bring in. The first of four of these collaborative pieces was on display that night and was a wonderfully, chaotically beautiful thing. Each of the four collaborative pieces is being auctioned off and the proceeds will be used to help victims of the Jesusita Fire.

The generous nature of this family makes them hard not to like, but if you needed more convincing their art only adds to the appeal. This family is obviously brimming with talent.  In particular, Ben’s epic “7 girls”, which I first saw at the Rumble Art Fair, reaffirmed it’s position as one of my favorite paintings in recent history. The young Sean and Ben have also obviously benefited from the wisdom and experience of their elders. Their motivation, organization,  and ambition  make it easy to believe that successful art careers (however they choose to define that success) is just a matter of time.

The show runs through June 14th, as does the silent auction for the four collaborative pieces. The gallery, located at 410 Palm Ave, in Carpinteria,  is open three days a week, Friday/Saturday/Sunday from 1pm to 6pm or by appointment.

The second show I wanted to mention was the juried show at Westmont College’s Reynolds Gallery, but that will have to wait for another post. So stay tuned…

Lastly, I discovered earlier this week that the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has a new blog. It currently only has one post, so it remains to be seen how often it will be updated. But for those of you who keep up with what goes on at the museum, it is worth keeping an eye on. You can find the blog by clicking here.