Elizabeth Herring in Conversation: Saturday, January 2, 2021

Announcing our first virtual event of 2021!

Ojai Institute: Elizabeth Herring in Conversation
Saturday, January 2, 2021, 5:00 pm PST
Zoom

RSVP HERE

You are invited to join us for a live recording for the Ojai Institute podcast, an ongoing series of conversations with artists available on our website and wherever you get your podcasts. This conversation with Frederick Janka, Executive Director, will explore Herring’s trajectory, current projects, and include both of their art world predictions for 2021 – not to be missed!

Elizabeth Herring’s current project, Ojai City Gift, is currently on view at The Basic Premise (918 E Ojai Ave, Ojai). Ojai City Gift is an installation that turns The Basic Premise gallery into a hypothetical gift store in the Ojai Valley, where Herring currently lives. Having grown up in Ojai, Herring is well-suited to take up the eccentricities of the place and reevaluate their meanings. Similar to other work by Herring, the installation is enigmatically confrontational. Prominently visible from the street on Ojai Avenue, the city’s only main boulevard, it holds up a mirror and asks tourists and locals alike to consider the consequences of Ojai’s shift from an agricultural economy to a primarily tourism based economy.

Born in Los Angeles in 1991, Elizabeth Herring is a graduate student enrolled in the CalArts MFA Photography and Media program. Working with issues in contemporary media and culture, Herring’s practice involves photographing and collecting memorabilia to build installations which reflect her personal experience coming of age during the era of social media and the internet. Herring’s work has been shown at the International Center of Photography in New York as well as PLU 41 and Cashmere Radio in Berlin. Her photography has been published by Esquire, VICE, Sleek Magazine, Electronic Beats, and The Editorial Magazine.

Cave Painting, Painted Cave at The Gallery at Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara

Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation is pleased to share works from the exhibition Cave Painting/Painted Cave currently on view online and at The Gallery at Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara. The exhibition includes works by Alison Andersson, Porfirio Gutiérrez, Cole M James, Linda Karshan, Deborah Kerner, Muna Malik, Yassi Mazandi, P.Lyn, Tom Pazderka, Cole Sternberg, and Richard Waxberg. Additional works are on loan from the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Collection by Bob Branaman, and Sharon Louden

Artists have looked to the enigmatic world of cave paintings for centuries, and perhaps even more so during times of fear and doubt. This exhibition explores the inherently human need to make marks, share knowledge and community, and look to the past for answers about our current realities. We are working with the assumption that Modernism owes a huge debt to non-western and indigenous cultures and the works in this exhibition celebrate mark making and gesture through a raw yet highly sophisticated use of material and form. In no way does this attempt to depict, replicate, or pastiche the past, but imagines an aesthetic exploration that draws threads of thought and inspiration through personal vocabularies of marks and signs. This is an attempt to underline art making as multi-generational knowledge of land, flora, fauna, and cosmology that unites us as humans around the world.

In deciding to produce this exhibition the desire was also to draw attention to our own regional connection to the vast global network of cave painting. Alaxuluxen, the Chumash name for the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park is situated on the edge of the traditional Barbareño Chumash territory, which ranged from the Pacific coast to the foothills and southern slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains. With a population of over 15,000 before European contact, the Barbareño Chumash were one of the largest and most influential tribes in California. Today’s modern city of Santa Barbara, at the base of the Santa Ynez Mountains, was the capital city of the Barbareño, then called Syukhtun. A 3D digital presentation of the site is now available online thanks to CyArk in partnership with the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School. (www.cyark.org/projects/chumash-painted-cave). 

We acknowledge that we are on unceded ancestral lands of the Coastal Band of the Chumash people. In honoring the past, present, and future generations of Chumash people who have stewarded this land for thousands of years, we also acknowledge the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.

The Gallery at Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara is a hybrid model of public-private partnership between the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation and the Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara. Previously the site of a five year partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara as a satellite exhibition space, this current partnership builds on this artistic legacy while raising critically needed funds for operations for the foundation and direct artist support. Proceeds from the sale of select works are shared between the artists and the foundation. Special thanks to the artists, the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Board, the team at Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara, Laurie & Marc Recordon, Grazka Taylor, John Connelly, and TwoFish Digital. 

Works are on view online, as well as in person to hotel guests and by appointment. To schedule an appointment please email [email protected], appointments are highly limited at this current time and require following covid safety protocol.

Image: Deborah Kerner, Motif for a Nighttime Journey, 2020

Year One: Ojai Institute Family Art Experience Kit – free download

Introducing the Ojai Institute Family Art Experience Kit!

We are pleased to share this new effort to continue to provide free art experiences during these unprecedented times. Learn things, get free stuff, dream big.

Visit the exhibition,
interpret the constitution,
be a mail activist,
go on a poster scavenger hunt,
and for extra credit, draw a map…

Each individual or family receives free merch each time they complete a project! Free buttons, stickers, posters, yard signs and t-shirts!

Please click here to download PDF.

Janna Ireland in Conversation: Saturday, October 24, 2020

You are invited to join us for a conversation with Los Angeles based photographer Janna Ireland this Saturday, October 24, at 5:00 PM PST / 8:00 PM EST.

Please click here to RSVP for this Zoom event

Janna Ireland was born in Philadelphia, but has chosen Los Angeles as her home. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Chicago, and in group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. She has been published in ApertureThe New YorkerHarper’sArt PapersVice, and The Los Angeles Times. Her first monograph, Regarding Paul R. Williams, was published by Angel City Press in 2020.

The Ojai Institute will present a solo exhibition project with Janna Ireland opening January 8, 2021, and on view through April 3, 2021. 

Janna Ireland’s first monograph, Regarding Paul R. Williams, is now available for purchase from The Ojai Institute Bookstore. Click here to learn more

Year One By Cole Sternberg: October 16 – December 31, 2020

The Ojai Institute will present Year One starting October 16, 2020, an exhibition project by artist Cole Sternberg that will feature an installation on the exterior of our building and within the front window gallery, the launch of our new digital Family Art Experience Kits with a digital event program, and a site specific outdoor installation throughout the Ojai Valley using yard signs and poster interventions.

The Ojai Institute is the official education partner for The Free Republic of California, and the platform will offer first hand actionable engagement with the ideas and history presented by The Free Republic of California. Learn more by visiting www.TheFreeRepublicofCalifornia.com

We invite you to support Year One by making a purchase or by making a donation in any amount.

The Free Republic of California website launch: Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Tuesday, September 8, 12:00 pm PST

Join a conversation with artist Cole Sternberg and Executive Director, Frederick Janka and celebrate the launch of The Free Republic of California website.

www.thefreerepublicofcalifornia.com

The site is complete with the plan for the nation, including a new structure of government, a historical review, a modern constitution, an entire national budget strategy, event information, visual presentations, and the Free Republic clothing line, featuring limited edition pieces hand-screened by the artist. The site also contains a digital library of newly drafted policy papers, agreements and treaties, as well as a historical archive. One can download Sternberg’s new California Constitution or read about the massacre of Indigenous people by Junipero Serra’s band of marauders. The website will function ahistorically to simultaneously take into account the gravity of California’s past, the absurdities of today, and the possibilities of tomorrow. It will exist as its own digital-being so that the Free Republic may live online as a blueprint for a movement.

Muna Malik in Conversation: Friday, August 7, 2020

You are invited to join us for a live recording for the Ojai Institute Podcast. This virtual event will feature Los Angeles based artist Muna Malik in conversation with Frederick Janka, Executive Director, this Friday, August 7, at 5:00 pm PST / 8:00 pm EST.

Click to register!
Please note this will be a ZOOM meeting, not a typical webinar, and will be closed captioned.

Muna Malik is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. Malik’s art practice is grounded in a pursuit to create cultural awareness and understanding. Her current work focuses on capturing poetic imagery and narratives of women of color and refugees. Malik lived in Minneapolis and started her art career at MCAD and the Northern Spark art festival. Her work has also been exhibited at Artworks Chicago and The University of Minnesota—Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She was the billboard artist for North Carolina for the “For Freedoms 50 State Initiative.” She recently completed exhibitions at the Band of Vices Gallery LA, Annenberg Space for Photography LA with Photoville, the International Center for Photography with “For Freedoms”, Soomaal House of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles, California. Her latest collage series was featured on vogue.com and i-D Magazine. Her ongoing series Blessing of the Boats, large scale and site responsive sculptures of origami shaped boats, will be unveiled this month in Battery Park, New York City, as part of LMCC River to River Festival, River To River 2020: Four Voices, and will then make its way to Governor’s Island after that. A forthcoming installation of Blessing of the Boats will take place with the Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College this fall. 

Sunday Salon: Sunday, July 5, 2020

You are invited to a Sunday Salon with the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation

Join Frederick Janka, Executive Director and special guest Lila Glasoe Francese, Foundation President, Carolyn’s sister, and author of the best selling new book The Situation: A Radical Journey Through Sisterhood.

Saturday, July 5, 4:00pm PST on Zoom (click here to register)

We encourage everyone to stay home this Holiday weekend! Pour your favorite beverage and join us for a conversation on Zoom about the founding and current goals of the organization, Lila’s new book about her sister’s battle with cancer and their journey as sisters. Lila will read a few short excerpts from the best selling new book, a portion of proceeds benefit the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation.

 

Ojai Institute Members (Virtual) Breakfast in Rome: Saturday, May 30, 2020

FOR OJAI INSTITUTE MEMBERS!
Members (and friends) are invited to join us for a special Breakfast in Rome, Italy
Saturday, May 30, 10:00 am
ZOOM Webinar (Click to register)

Join Frederick Janka, Executive Director, and Carl Stibolt, Board Member for a special dispatch from Rome. We’ll check in about current stage two status as the cosmopolitan city starts to reopen, as well as some of Carl’s favorite picks for cappuccino, markets, food, and art in the Eternal City.