Adventures in the Sierra Nevada

California Art Club

Pasadena, CA

626-583-9009

http://www.californiaartclub.org/

Adventures in the Sierra Nevada

The California Art Club Gallery, a nonprofit art gallery located at the historic Old Mill in San Marino, presents its latest exhibition, Adventures in the Sierra Nevada, from March 6 through June 3, 2001. This exhibit offers a choice selection of scenes of this venerable chain of peaks that make up what is virtually California's geological backbone.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, "The value of landscape painting is that it saves one the bother of having to go to the country in order to enjoy nature." For staunch urbanites who would agree with Holmes, as well as for those who don't mind muddying their shoes, but do have difficulty getting our of town, this exhibit brings the breath-taking vistas and scenic wonders of locales such as Yosemite to the Southland.

This majestic range of mountains attracted some of the finest painters of their day - Romantic Realists such as Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Thomas Hill (1829-1908), and William Keith (1838-1911) in the nineteenth century, and in the first half of the twentieth century, Impressionist-inspired plein-air artists including Edgar Payne (1883-1947) and Franz A. Bischoff (1864-1929). Today's plein-air painters continue these adventure-inspired traditions. The exhibition features California Art Club artists Alphonso Colocho, Carole Cooke, Richard Coons, David Damm, Ray Harris, Jean LeGassick, Rodolfo Rivademar, Frank Serrano, Jason Situ, and Mian Situ. As in times past, these contemporary artists regularly organize high altitude paint-outs, back-packing to camps sited among the Sierra lakes and glaciers, and trekking up mountain trails, art supplies securely strapped to the back's of mules. (left: Mian Situ, The Pyramid, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches)

Not many artists, or tourists for that matter, make it to the sequestered beauties of these rugged mountains, which still occasionally shake from active volcanoes beneath, but this not-to-be-missed exhibit is just around the corner. As artist William Keith advised, over a century ago, "Come to the mountains, for a little while at least."

California Art Club San Diego Chapter to Exhibit at Mission Trails Park

Native Splendor: Paintings of Southern California's Vanishing Open Spaces, an exhibition featuring members of the San Diego Chapter of the California Art Club, will be on view at the Visitor's Interpretive Center at Mission Trails Regional Park from March 1 through April 29, 2001. The 5,760 acre park, which encompasses Cowles Mountain (the highest elevation within the City of San Diego), Old Mission Dam, which once served Mission San Diego de Alcala, Kumeyaay Indian historic sites, a campground, and a world class Visitor's Interpretive Center, reserves a major feature of San Diego's terrain as native open space for recreation and wildlife preservation. (left: Gary Hartenhoff, Foreman's Ranch House, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches)

The park is located at One Father Junipero Serra Trail, off Mission Gorge Road, about 10 miles north-east of downtown San Diego. The Visitor's Center is open 7 days a week, from 9:00 A.M, to 5:00 P,M, daily. For more information during the exhibition, call the Visitor's Center at (619) 668-3275, or visit www.mtrp.org.

Read more about the California Art Club in Resource Library Magazine

For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

rev. 10/20/10

Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.