When: January 14 through March 28th, 2010.

Where: Galleria at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts

403 W Hillcrest Drive

Thousand Oaks, CA 91360

For more information, please visit The Art Council Exhibit event page.

Recently, Computer Graphics students were challenged to create a portrait of themselves as they might appear as eighty-five year olds. Demonstrating their compositing skills in Photoshop and their knowledge of the aging process, they created a series of amazing, aged portraits. Our special guest judge for this challenge was CLU’s Dr. Robert Meadows E.D., Ph.D. Professor of Criminal Justice. Our thanks to Dr, Meadows, who after years of service in law enforcement, brought a trained and experienced eye in determining which student did the most visually convincing portrait of themselves as a senior citizen.

The winning portrait was created by Sophia Naranjo. You can visit the Aged To Perfection Show in the Spies Borman Building right next to Media Services. Try to identify participating students before checking their names on the tags below their pictures. It’s fun!

3.oo pm Saturday afternoon 26th April. Kwan Fong Gallery.

Works upstairs by Krista.

Bret Bays loads in his sculpture.

Works line the stairway. 

Another article sings the praises of Brian Stethem’ s photography exhibition. And it is the cover story of the Time Out supplement of the Ventura County Star! Dated Thursday, March 20, 2008 and written by Karen Lindell the article is enitled: “A melancholy mood permeates Fillmore photographer’s new exhibit”

The article highlights the quality of the work presented in this exhibition and the importance of documenting places of personal, historical or mythical significance. California’s history is in the making under our very eyes with these pictures. Acting as a witness, Brian’s camera records places in Ventura County, just before these landmarks are being erased.

Brian also recounts the extraordinary stories surrounding his photographs, like the circumstances of his shot of Area 51. ” “It took us a long time to find it,” Stethem said of the unmarked but well-maintained dirt highway. After a 13-mile drive down the road, Stethem said, he encountered a gate with a menacing “turn around, don’t pass this point” sign. Lights flashed, and he heeded the sign’s warning when military guards started to move toward him. By that time, it was dark and he couldn’t photograph the sign, but did manage to snap a photo by using his car’s headlights to illuminate the highway.”

To read the full article click here: http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/mar/20/uncommon-vision/

The previous article was entitled: Strong lines, shapes dominate Fillmore man’s photographs http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/feb/15/strong-lines-shapes-dominate-fillmore-mans/

If you haven’t seen the exhibition yet you have a few more days :

Uncommon Places by Brian Stethem at the Kwan Fong Gallery
Thursday, Feb. 21, through Thursday, March 27
Admission is free. The Kwan Fong Gallery, located in Soiland Humanities Center, is open to the public 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Congratulations Brian! 

CLU student Karli Watland has been quietly breaking ground as a successful artist. She told me that she has now sold two of her recent series of paintings. 

Karli and her colleague Bret Bays have begun the run of solo shows by our senior students by installing their excellent exhibit into Overton Hall, so come and see why her work is selling. The two artists have worked hard to make their exhibit a great success and I’m very impressed. Their show includes paintings, photography, prints and drawings. Closes 24th March.

Overton Hall is opposite the Humanities building near the flagpoles on Memorial Drive. 

Michael 

On Friday evening the gallery was heaving with people who had come to see Brian Stethem‘s work. That was the biggest opening the gallery has ever had and it was all due to the strength of Brian’s show, “Uncommon Places”. Not only was there a full page in the Ventura County Star, but also in the Fillmore Gazette, which this exhibition deserves.

 
Photographer Brian Stethem answering questions from the audience. 

Curator Michael Pearce introduced Brian’s work and invited the audience to ask questions to Brian Stethem. He was very happy to share his “secrets”, the technical side of photography, his travels, the genesis of his pictures, and his quest for these “uncommon places”. Click here to read the Kwan Fong Gallery’s page on this show: http://www.callutheran.edu/kwan_fong/exhibitions/uncommon_places.php

Curator Michael Pearce introducing Brian Stethem. 

Each picture told a story, and obviously the audience was taken with the beauty, the eeriness of the pictures.

 The crowd on Friday evening at the Kwan Fong Gallery.

We were often surprised by the subjectivity or the universality of the work, and it triggered in each one of us other memories. We remembered the day of this particular event, a trip we took to that place. Through Brian’s work we were taken in a maze of stories, the web of human memory.

Area 51 by Brian Stethem

Everyone at the Kwan Fong Gallery is very proud to present such a strong show and invites the public to travel with Brian to “Uncommon Places” before March 27, 2008.

Mr Stethem senior admiring Brian’s photographs.
 
Click here to read Brian Stethem’ s profile on the university website: http://www.callutheran.edu/schools/cas/programs/art/faculty/?profile_id=174

By Laurence Pons

More than 30 incredible photos by Brian Stethem will take you to “Uncommon Places” in our next show at the Kwan Fong Gallery. Brian and Michael Pearce were hanging the photos today and already creating a stir.

 The local press has published an article about Brian’s work and this exhibition: “Strong lines, shapes dominate Fillmore man’s photographs” by Nicole D’Amore, click here to read the article:

 http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/feb/15/strong-lines-shapes-dominate-fillmore-mans/

 Photographer Brian Stethem preparing the opening of his exhibition.

Last week Brian told me more about the subject of this exhibition.

“This show is my biggest show in a long time. I took these pictures over a huge span of time, from last summer to a few years ago, during different trips, from China to Europe, to the US to Mexico.

“I had a collection of pictures, from different places and I found myself searching out where something special had happened or places that affected somebody’s life.

The pictures fell into 3 categories:

– Historically important places, the Great Wall of China, the Parthenon in Athens, which have become popular tourist destinations.

– Some places that don’t have that historical reach, although that are important to individuals, these places represented smaller events. Yet to these people, these are important events.

– Places that are mythical. It is fascinating to see how we have created history for these places, for instance Loch Ness in Scotland. We have created myths and legends. Only few people have seen these places, and so we have created images in our minds.

What interested me is the reality of a place versus the imaginary images on our minds.

 The other thing is getting feedback from viewers, watching people watching images, seeinghow we see the images and see them after we read the description. Does perception change? We seem to bring our own emotional perception to a place.

 One of these pictures represent a backyard, where Nicole Simpson was found murdered. Our knowledge changes, our enjoyment, our understanding of the picture. This is an extreme example, but I found that this place had changed names twice since that event, to keep tourists away, I imagine. We can always rename a place but we can’t change what had happened.

“Pilgrimage to places is something we do, seeing a concert, being in a place, attending a sporting event, stepping foot in that place has a special significance. Connecting with the ground, this adds a psychological dimension. It was uncomfortable and different seeing the place in a book. I didn’t try to guide people, or manipulate anyone. The photographs are processed in a way that they are interpretative of a place rather than just representing or documenting. A bit like our memory works, we loose details, we only retain certain things.

“Some of the pictures are in black and white, some of them are in color, they have different styles but I have chosen to portray the interaction between places and visitors.”

 Brian Stethem and Michael Pearce hanging photographs in the gallery on Wednesday.

As ever Brian is dazzling us with his strong lines and textures, bringing life to his photographs. And I heard people ask: “Why isn’t the National Geographic publishing your photographs, Brian?” Someone should tell them.

This exhibition at the Kwan Fong Gallery is running from Thursday, February 21 to Thursday, March 27, 2008.

The opening reception will be on Friday, February 22 at 7 pm.

February 21 – March 27, 2008 

Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture

Uncommon Places                     

The opening reception for “Uncommon Places: Photography by Brian Stethem” will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, in CLU’s Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture.

Brian Stethem has lived and worked in Southern California for more than two decades. 

The camera provides him with a tool with which to explore the world, at home and abroad.

This exhibition presents one area of thematic concentration of Brian’s oeuvre: landscapes.

Brian happened upon these landscapes during his travels in the United States, Mexico, China, Ireland, Scotland, Greece, and Germany. Thirty photographs survey a variety of sites: from spacious, rural areas to edgy urban locales; from popular tourist destinations to Hollywood suburbia; and from hallowed cultural landmarks to historical monuments haunted by violent tragedy.

Certain photographs study the aesthetics of decay and renewal: in California, an abandoned, skeletal farmhouse stands in dust and dry brush as nature slowly reclaims its territory. Other images suggest different kinds of renewal: in a seemingly random view of a city street in south Los Angeles, new construction takes place– the site where the 1991 police beating of Rodney King occurred, sparking the L.A. riots. Is this manmade gesture of renewal an attempt to heal civic wounds or to conceal painful memories?

These images show us how memories and myths shape our perceptions of place. A misty vista of a Scottish land – and waterscape is a case in point. Once we realize that this is Loch Ness — home to the fabled monster – the curvilinear forms of the topography offer new interpretive possibilities.

Brian notes incongruities or ironic juxtapositions: the ancient Parthenon at the Acropolis, Athens, built of pristine marble and once used for sacred worship, now adored by busloads of tourists; the posse of fancy automobiles parked in front of the notorious Playboy Mansion – an eerie, ‘David Lynch-like’ quiet pervades. Meanwhile, somewhere inside, yet another wild party is taking place.

Places have biographies, these photographs insist, and each landscape has a story to tell. While landscapes are the ostensible subject of this exhibition, these images simultaneously tell us about ourselves – of our evolving relationship with ‘place’ and the inherent ‘politics’ of viewing. Brian’s landscapes suggest how we might revisit the places and locales in our own lives with fresh eyes.

Christine Sellin PhD 

Ventura County Star article on Brian here. 

 Terry Spehar-Fahey and her self-portrait, Anniversary

Another great opening on Saturday! Barry Burns, Michael Pearce, John Storojev, Larkin Higgins and Terry Spehar-Fahey were at the Kwan Fong to welcome all the friends who came. Digital art, paintings, mixed media, drawings, sculptures, photography, printmaking are on show until February 16, 2008.

Michael Pearce and Terry Spehar-Fahey

Lynn Creighton, Barry Burns and Michael Pearce