Selected Curiosities

Monica Furmanski, Janet Neuwalder, Michael Pearce, Jennifer Tenace with Mr. Pearce's Cabinet of Alchemical Wonders On View: May 16 - June 19, 2009 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 16, 6-9 p.m. Postcard Return to Brand Library Art Galleries Schedule page Photos from the Opening Reception

Selected Curiosities showcases the work of four Los Angeles area artists working in a variety of media to create pieces that promise to pique the viewer’s curiosity. Using clay, mixed media, and digital photographic prints Monica Furmanski and Janet Neuwalder will collaborate on an installation that speaks to both the micro and macro aspects of the natural world. Their collaborative effort is based on the "use of similar imagery that investigates the poetic and complex structures of natural and industrial systems, networks, and matrices." With nature as her starting point, Jennifer Tenace uses oil, acrylic and mixed media on panel to create lush abstract landscapes in which the mercurial aspects of process are evident. Michael Pearce will show his installation Mr. Pearce’s Cabinet of Alchemical Wonders for the first time. This installation includes many mixed media pieces and large scale paintings and reflects Pearce’s interest in the philosophy of alchemy, the base elements of air, water, fire, and earth, and humankind’s longing to understand the phenomenon of the universe.

Monica Furmanski (Ventura, CA) received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University and her BFA from Scripps College. She has taught art at Ventura College and Oxnard College and is the director and co-curator of 643 A Project Space, an alternative exhibition space located in Ventura, California dedicated to showing the work of early career artists. Furmanski’s photographic site-specific installations are reminiscent of the work of conceptual artist photographers such as John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler. Her rectangular landscapes are based on the cropped and fleeting views of the world seen through the car window as a child. Landscape imagery in puzzle like pieces is affixed to walls or printed on transparent vinyl and adhered to windows, transforming interiors and creating a space in which the viewer must participate in re-envisioning the whole. Furmanski has been exhibiting her work in the Los Angeles area since 2001 and is the recipient of the Millard Sheets Fellowship at Scripps College and the Ahmanson Fellowship at Claremont Graduate University. More information about Furmanski’s work can be found on her website: www.monicafurmanski.com.	Monica Furmanski Untitled (a study) archival ink on paper
Janet Neuwalder (Camarillo, CA) has an MFA in ceramics from Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute. Neuwalder has taught ceramics at Pitzer College, Pomona College, and Long Beach City College and is currently teaching at Oxnard College and Cerritos College. Her work has been highlighted in publications such as The Studio Potter and Ceramics Monthly. Her visiting artist lectures have been well received at a variety of institutions, including The Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. Neuwalder describes her artistic process as that of a “choreographer of action and conductor of process, approaching the material from the viewpoint of investigation and experience.” To create her pieces she uses earthenware, porcelain clay and raw materials like branches, leaves, straw, fibers and paper that act as armatures for the clay. The process involves coating, dipping and layering these materials and the resulting works present their own mysterious topography: beautiful, seemingly fragile and highly textured. Neuwalder has exhibited nationally and internationally, and most recently in the Los Angeles area at Angeles Gate Cultural Center and Barnsdall Park Municipal Art Gallery.	Janet Neuwalder Flood and Flow porcelain clay 11" x 12 ˝"
Michael Pearce (Thousand Oaks, CA) is chair of the art department at California Lutheran University and curator of its Kwan Fong Gallery. Born in Great Britain, Pearce has an MFA in theatrical design from the University of Southern California and a PhD from England’s Plymouth University where he wrote his dissertation on Neolithic ritual art and architecture in Britain. His childhood experience of stone circles and barrows inspires his intellectual pursuits and his artwork. A painter as well as a performance and installation artist, Pearce’s work is marked by symbolism, male and female imagery and celestial references. His mixed media work makes use of natural elements and materials such as beeswax, pebbles and plant fibers. His work is at once strange and familiar, moving the viewer to imagine and reflect. Pearce’s recent exploration of the philosophy of alchemy is the inspiration for the installation on view in this exhibition: Mr. Pearce’s Cabinet of Alchemical Wonders. The alchemists’ desire to isolate the matter from which the universe was created by combining the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water, is, in Pearce’s view better described as “the quest to find God by understanding the phenomena of the universe…because according to the philosophy of Pythagoras the stuff of which the universe is made must be the material of God himself.” Pearce has exhibited extensively in Southern California including a recent installation at Studio Channel Islands. He was also the featured artist at the 2008 Alchemy Conference in Las Vegas. More information about Pearce’s work can be found on his web blog and gallery: http://gildedraven.com/.	Michael Pearce The Aviator’s Dream oil on canvas 48” x 84”
Jennifer Tenace (Long Beach, CA) studied at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and earned a BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design. Working primarily on wood panel with acrylic, oil, and mixed media, Tenace creates lush, richly colored and evocative abstract landscapes. Her art is about the process of painting and how that process is in itself like the living landscape; always undergoing change and always evolving. For Tenace, her “actions through painting are an outlet…to let go and play in [her] own created landscape.” She has exhibited throughout Southern California at a variety of galleries, including Infusion Gallery in Los Angeles, Rainey Fine Art Gallery in Newport Beach, Sol Art Gallery in Santa Ana, and E Gallery, Pomona. More information about Tenace’s work can be found on her website: www.jennifertenace.com.	Jennifer Tenace Untitled Landscape mixed media and oil on panel 24” x 10”

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