Local artist, Wana Klasen, will be exhibiting select pieces of art from her collection, EARTHSONG, at the Proverbs Coffee House during the month of March. The gallery is located at Peace Lutheran Church, 71 Loma Drive in Camarillo, and will be open Fridays and Saturdays of March from 1-4PM. Admission to the exhibit, entitled "Embellished Reflections", featuring the work of four artists, is free, and all are invited to the Opening Reception on Saturday,March 13, 2010 from 1-4PM.

This upcoming 4th of July, the Museum of Ventura County will hold a free public celebration for the opening of their Martin V. and Martha K Smith Pavilion and new Front Plaza. The completion of the first part of their two-phased renovation at 100 East Main Street in Ventura also means that on Saturday, July 3, the museum will reopen at that address with a new exhibit, leaving their present temporary location on California Street.

The museum’s renovations will include a new Plaza with a water feature and open columned entrance facing Main Street, the new state-of-the-art Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Event Pavilion, a renovated tour lobby, new bathrooms, and a new parking lot. The Pavilion will be used for lectures, programs and a variety of events; it is capable of seating 200 for dinner, with the option to tent the front plaza for an additional 140 guests. The original museum building will be revitalized with reconfigured exhibit areas and the reopening of the Smith Gallery of George Stuart Historical Figures.

Phase two of the museum’s renovation, which includes new galleries, an education center, expanded library, new Museum Store, expanded collections storage, and offices, will begin when the museum has secured funding at a level that ensures completion, according to Museum of Ventura County Executive Director Tim Schiffer and Board Chair John Orr.

The Museum of Ventura County’s Farm Museum will open this fall in Santa Paula. Plans for an agricultural heritage museum have been in the conceptual stages for more than 30 years, and will soon become a reality.

Camarillo, CA. – CSU Channel Islands (CI) is pleased to announce the opening of the Condor Chocuyens Exhibit on Thursday, Mar. 11, at 1:30 p.m. in the Millennium News Center at the John Spoor Broome Library. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the CI Biology Program, the CI Environmental Science & Resource Management Program, and the John Spoor Broome Library. The program is open to the public.

Speakers for the opening program will be CI President Richard R. Rush; Amy Denton, Chair of the Biology Program; Marc Weitzel, Project Leader for the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Complex; Jesse Grantham, Condor Coordinator for the California Condor Recovery Program; and Christopher Cogan, Assistant Professor, CI Environmental Sciences & Resource Management Program. Their comments will also include information on an upcoming series offered by the University that will feature topics on the environment, conservation, and endangered species.

This program will present Chocuyens, the impressive California condor with a 9.5 foot wingspan, displayed in a plexiglass case. He was the first captive-bred condor, an endangered species, to be set free in the wild as part of the California Condor Recovery Program. Chocuyens captured America’s imagination. Unfortunately he died the following year from exposure to ethylene glycol, a property found in antifreeze.

The USFWS is lending the exhibit to CI CONTINUED »

Phyllis Solcyk’s exhibit of paintings, titled “By Land and By Sea” at the Harbor Village Gallery, will show from Wednesday, March 31 to Sunday, May 9, 2010. Artist Reception will be held on Friday, April 9, 2010 from 5 – 8pm.
Solcyk’s fine paintings offer soft and attentive details with an exquisite glow of mastery. Her realistic compositions include pristine Tall Ships, Coast Guard Cutters, Tugs, Fishing Boats and Seascapes. Each painting pulls you in for a closer look, revealing carefully crafted details.

Solcyk began her art education at the Chouinard Art Institute on scholarship. Shortly after she began work with Disney Studios! Thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Disney she assisted on the films “Lady and the Tramp” and “Sleeping Beauty” among other projects. After Disney she began illustrating for the Aerospace Industry, and her interests turned to science and space.

Solcyk was traditionally trained in oils until an allergic reaction shifted her concentration to watercolors, gouaches, acrylics and other water-based mediums. A blessing in disguise, she now thoroughly enjoys painting and teaching watercolors. Teaching for the past twenty-five years, Solcyk is fulfilled and inspired by helping other artists, from beginner to advance, master their techniques and visions. In this endeavor, she is blessed to learn just as much from them as they learn from her.

Solcyk is a member of many associations and clubs including: The National Watercolor Society (past President), The California Art Club, The International Society of Marine Painters, Buenaventura Art Association, to name a few. Her paintings are found in permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress. Recently her work has been added to the United States Coast Guard’s permanent art collection, which is on tour around the world.

This is Phyllis Solcyk’s first solo exhibit with the Buenaventura Art Association.

The Harbor Village Gallery is located at 1591 Spinnaker Dr., entrance # 3 in the Ventura Harbor Village, next to the big lawn. Open Wednesday through Monday from 12 to 5 p.m. For more information, call the gallery at 805-644-2750 or visit www.harborvillagegallery.com or www.buenaventuragallery.org

California State University Channel Islands

Camarillo, Calif., March 3, 2010 – Children all over Ventura County are invited to CSU Channel Islands (CI) Broome Library on Saturday, March 20, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., for the 5th Annual Children’s Reading Celebration and Young Author’s Fair. The event is sponsored by CI’s John Spoor Broome Library, the English Program, the Ventura County Reading Association, Target Foundation, and the Ventura County Office of Education.

The celebration is open to the community with free admission and parking. Many exciting activities have been planned for children to promote reading, writing and creativity. There will be an interactive author presentation, storytime, bookmark making, story writing and creation of concertina books. The Celebration will feature an appearance by children’s author Alexis O’Neill who wrote The Recess Queen as well as The Worst Best Friend.

CI students in the English Program, as part of their service learning component, will be reading aloud to children. Children will also receive a signed copy of The Recess Queen to take home with them free of charge. This is funded by an early childhood literacy grant from the Target Foundation.

If a child’s school participates CONTINUED »

A ‘howling’ new exhibit is coming to the City of Santa Paula’s California Oil Museum! Wolves and Wild Lands in the 21st Century is opening March 14, 2010 in the Iron Room at the museum with five wolf specimens and one coyote specimen. Photographs and educational material will accompany the exhibit on this haunting and mysterious mammal. Join us at the opening reception on March 14 from 1-3pm at the California Oil Museum, 1001 E. Main Street in Santa Paula. Admission is $4 adults, $3 seniors, $1 students and free for 5 years old and under. This exhibit, as well as all the exhibits at the museum, is suitable for children and adults alike.

The story of wolves in North America takes us to many places, from the Arctic to the southwestern United States. And for every region where wolves thrive or struggle to survive cultural and economic pressures continue to shape their existence.

This exhibition provides a compelling, continental perspective on wolves today. Organized by region, each wolf is presented in its human and natural-history context.

Wolves in the Far North Can they be hunted and their populations sustained?
Wolves in the Rocky Mountains Will land development crowd them out?
Wolves in the Midwest Can people change how they live to make living with wolves easier?
Wolves in the Northeast Will wolves return to their old haunts?
Wolves in the Southeast Do coyotes threaten the survival of the red wolf?
Wolves in the Southwest When they prey upon livestock, who gets hurt, the rancher, the wolf, or both?
Coyotes in North America Will coyotes win out over wolves in the competition for food and space?
Learn all this and more at the exhibit!

For more information about the museum call 805-933-0076 or go to our website at www.oilmuseum.net.

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Reception and Awards: Thursday, March 11, 4 – 6 p.m.

2010 marks the 9th consecutive year that the annual student art exhibit, “AWESOME ART” is mounted in the changing gallery at the Ojai Valley Museum, Ojai, California. The exhibition runs March 4 through April 11, 2010 and showcases upper level student artwork from Nordhoff High, Thacher, Besant Hill, Ojai Valley, Villanova, and Oak Grove schools.

On average, the AWESOME ART group exhibition features 150 works of art, including ceramics, sculpture, drawings, paintings, photography, graphic design, digital, and mixed media pieces. PLEASE NOTE: many of the artworks are available for sale. This is an opportune time to collect new talent, purchase a special & affordable original gift, and support the Ojai Valley Museum programs.

In addition to museum exposure for the burgeoning Ojai student artists, the “AWESOME ART” show is an award opportunity for the participants. Each year since 2005, siblings Karen O’Neill and Michael Burgos have granted monetary awards to selected exhibiting students in memory of their mother, Marion E. Smith. Mrs. Smith was a longtime Ojai resident, an Ojai Valley Museum docent and a youth art supporter. The monetary awards, given in her name, are for merit and scholarship. The judges of “AWESOME ART, 2010” will be Ojai Studio Artist members: Bruce Tomkinson, Ceramicist; Shahastra, Painter; and Valerie Freeman, Photography/Digital Arts.

The O’Neill and Burgos grant also allows free admission to all students visiting the exhibit.

The Award Reception will be held Thursday, March 11, 2010 at the Ojai Valley Museum between 4 and 6 p.m. This special event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Please remember exhibited work is available for purchase, and that donations to the Museum are always welcome.

The Ojai Valley Museum is located at 130 W. Ojai Avenue and is open Thursday and Friday from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from Noon to 4 p.m. Specials tours can be arranged for Wednesdays.

Adult admission is $4.00. For more information call the museum at (805) 640-1390, email ojaimuseum@sbcglobal.net or visit the museum website at http://www.ojaivalleymuseum.org

Figures and Spaces an exhibit of fused glass and steel by Helle Sharling-Todd will be at the Buenaventura Gallery from Tuesday, March 2 to Saturday, March 27, 2010. Opening reception is on Saturday, March 6, from 4 – 7 pm.

Figures and Spaces is a collection of episodes, as Sharling-Todd titles them, depicting moments of human interaction. Her inspiration comes from observing people and the drama they create among themselves, simply by being alive. “To observe humans and their activities never ceases to amaze me, and to create little dramas between a group of figures is fascinating,” explains Sharling-Todd. By isolating the activity of a single individual, the fallen figure or the helping hand, Sharling-Todd’s linear compositions tell a story of expression and relationship. The colorful frozen narratives portrayed in glass and steel have a historical quality to them, like a psychological thesis. The theories and results of these “episodes” have been visually preserved for posterity.

Sharling- Todd is widely traveled and has studied mosaics and stained glass throughout the world. A graduate of Bauhaus School of Architecture and Design in Krefeld, Germany and the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Sharling-Todd also studied mosaics at Art Academy in Ravenna, Italy and the Mexican mural movement at the National School of Art in Mexico City.

Sharling-Todd has created well over fifty public art projects around the world and locally, including the gateways at Ventura Avenue, the tile mural at the Senior Center, the Wright Library garden mosaic, and the mosaic “Water Lines” that run throughout the Port Hueneme library. Serving on the board for the International Contemporary Association of Mosaic Artists, Sharling-Todd has spoken and shown her work in Japan, Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, and Germany.

The Buenaventura Art Gallery is located at 700 E. Santa Clara Street, Ventura, CA 93001. Hours are Tues – Friday from noon – 5 pm and Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm. Please call (805)648-1235 or visit www.buenaventuragallery.org.

California State Old Time Fiddlers, District 8, meet Sunday, February 28, 130 - 4:30 at Oak View Community Center, 18 Valley Road, Oak View.

Join the fiddlers for an afternoon of family oriented music and dancing. Free admission and parking. Refreshments available. Info: 640-3689 or 517-1131.