Camarillo, CA. – The Art Program at California State University Channel Islands (CI) announces “David Kiddie: Ceramic Sculpture” currently on exhibit through September 24 in the Art Gallery in Napa Hall, CSU Channel Islands (CI) campus. A public reception for the artist will be held Thursday, September 23 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The ordinary yet intangible becomes physical and extraordinary in recent ceramic sculpture by David Kiddie. The work is an outcome of his interest in interpreting the ordered structure of biological cellular elements seen only in the microscopic realm. Through a microscope, simple formed organisms such as bacteria and viruses can be seen in the act of mitosis and clustering as they build larger patterned masses.

On a macro scale, Kiddie clusters multiples of basic forms that inform his exploration of structural possibilities. The resultant clustered structures imply conceptual underpinnings related to chaos theory, offense, defense and infiltration. As photographs of cell clusters are color enhanced for clarity, Kiddie embellishes his work with many colored layers and drippings of viscous glass bolstering the notion that these things are foreigners in the world of human dimension.

David Kiddie’s work is included in national and international collections and exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including the American Museum of Ceramic Art, Orange County Museum of Art, Cal Poly Pomona University and Western Project in Culver City. He holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University and currently resides in Orange, California. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Chapman University.

CSU Channel Islands is located at One University Drive, Camarillo and the exhibit is open Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. For additional information, contact the CI Art Program at 805-437-8570, Email: art@csuci.edu or visit the web site: http://art.csuci.edu/gallery.

Limited parking is available on campus. A daily permit is $6. Free parking is available at the Camarillo Metrolink Station/Lewis Road parking lot in Camarillo with bus service to and from the campus. Riders should board the VISTA Bus to the campus; the fare is $1 each way. Buses arrive and depart from the Camarillo Metrolink Station every 30 minutes from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday. For exact times, check the schedule at http://www.goventura.org.

CSU Channel Islands is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

CI Mission Statement
Placing students at the center of the educational experience, California State University Channel Islands provides undergraduate and graduate education that facilitates learning within and across disciplines through integrative approaches, emphasizes experiential and service learning, and graduates students with multicultural and international perspectives.

Join an evening celebration of Day of the Dead at the Museum of Ventura County on Friday, October 29, from 6:00-9:00 p.m. Que Viva La Noche! Long Live the Night! is for adults 21 and over, and features music, dancing, arts & crafts for adults, a silent auction, and “decadent delights” in food and drink. Revelers can see the new exhibition Art & Altars for Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos), and all museum galleries are open throughout the event.

Que Viva La Noche, a fundraiser for museum programs, is $50 for general public, $40 for museum members, and includes food stations and one drink ticket. Reservation deadline is October 24. To attend, call (805) 653-0323 x 315.

The museum also holds its 10th annual free Day of the Dead Community Celebration on Saturday, October 30 from 11:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. This family event gives visitors a chance to experience traditional arts and crafts, music, and dance that celebrate Day of the Dead. The Museum of Ventura County is located at 100 East Main Street in downtown Ventura.

Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) honors the departed who are said to come back to walk among the living on November 1 and 2. Celebrated in many parts of Mexico and Latin America, Día de los Muertos is now popular in the United States among Latinos and non-Latinos alike. Humorous skulls (calaveras), and skeletons blithely going about worldly business are the dominant symbols of the celebration, which has roots in pre-Columbian as well as Spanish religious beliefs.

THOUSAND OAKS, CA. – California Lutheran University’s free French film festival will return for a fourth year from Sept. 22 through Oct. 20.

The Tournées Festival: French Films on the CLU Campus will feature five movies shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Preus-Brandt Forum. All films are subtitled in English. They explore the themes of integrity, compassion and diversity.

“Coco avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel)” - Sept. 22
Anne Fontaine’s exploration of the world’s greatest fashion designer focuses on Coco Chanel during the Belle Époque. The 2009 film, which won a César award in 2010, opens in 1893 when 10-year-old Coco and her sister are unceremoniously dumped at an orphanage and ends a few years before the Chanel empire is launched.

“Lili et le Baobab (Lili and the Baobab)” - Sept. 29
In this 2006 film, freelance photographer Lili is documenting new infrastructures in her town’s sister community in Senegal. The village turns out to welcome her. As she focuses her camera on the villagers and their profoundly communal existence, her photography becomes a means of communication and a salve for her own isolation.

“Les Plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnes)” - Oct. 6
This 2008 film is a cinematic and poetic autobiography of Agnès Varda’s life through locations she fondly remembers. The director feels that inside every human being is a landscape. “If you open me up, you’d find beaches inside,” she comments before our journey to beaches and neighborhoods from her native Belgium to Venice, Calif.

“Paris” (2007) - Oct. 13
In Cedric Klapisch’s 2007 love letter to the City of Light, the action focuses on a former dancer, his sister and her children. “There are enough intersecting characters from different classes and backgrounds …to evoke the city as a complex, healthy organism, whose parts are all connected,” The New York Times said.

“Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (The Flight of the Red Balloon)” - Oct. 20
Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien and based on the French short “The Red Balloon,” this 2007 film tells the story of a French family through the eyes of a Chinese student. Suzanne, played by Juliette Binoche, hires the student to care for her son. Soon, the student and son share an imaginary world in which a red balloon follows them.

The Tournées Festival: French Films on the CLU Campus is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture. The Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation and highbrow entertainment are sponsors of the free festival.

The forum is south of Olsen Road between Mountclef Boulevard and Campus Drive.

For more information, contact Karen Renick of the French Department at renick@callutheran.edu or go to http://www.callutheran.edu/events .

A power point presentation, with commentary by Craig Walker, Tom Moore, and David Mason will be hosted by the Ojai Valley Museum on September 12. Craig Walker and Tom Moore are co-authors of the recently released book “Ojai”, from Arcadia Publishing’s Postcard History Series. David Mason served as a consultant for the book. The book project was organized by the Ojai Valley Museum, with many of the postcards coming from its own extensive collection. Collectors living in the Ojai Valley donated other cards to the project.

The slide show will feature full-color scans of many rare and beautiful vintage postcards covering the last 100 years of Ojai Valley history. The authors will provide descriptions, stories, and interesting facts relating to the places and events pictured on the cards.

After the slide show, the authors will be available to answer questions and sign copies of their book. Several postcard donors will also be on hand to answer questions about their collections.

Those wishing to have a signed copy of the book may bring their own copy or purchase one from the museum at the event. The book is also on sale at various locations around Ojai.

The event will be held on Sunday, September 12, at 4:00 pm in the museum gallery at 130 W. Ojai Avenue, Ojai. Contact the museum at (805) 640-1390 for additional information.

Camarillo, CA. – CSU Channel Islands (CI) will host, “Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964”, a bilingual exhibition organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and CI’s local exhibit called “The Braceros of Ventura County”. These exhibits will be on display at CI’s John Spoor Broome Library September 9 through October 31, 2010.

For residents of Ventura County, the exhibit serves to illustrate the impact of the Bracero Program on the region. The program, begun in 1942 as a Mexican guest-worker program, brought Mexican men across the border to supplement the labor shortage created during World War II. The braceros signed work contracts that could range from three to six months and be renewed at the end of the term. Once in the United States they were housed in labor camps. The largest of these camps was located in the city of Oxnard, the Buena Vista Labor camp, which housed 5,000 men during the 1950’s. Twenty percent of all braceros who came to Ventura County worked in the citrus, fruit, and vegetable fields.

As Jose Alamillo, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies, explained, “The Bracero Program has had a major impact on the county in economic, cultural and political terms”.

When the program ended in 1964, many of these same braceros returned to Ventura County because they had established local roots and had made contact with potential employers. It was not uncommon for various agricultural enterprises to follow their workers back to Mexico requesting that they return to live in company housing and work under enhanced terms of employment.

In 2008, CI joined the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, along with other universities and museums, to document and preserve the bracero experience. The Bracero History Project has collected over 700 interviews. CI students have added to this effort by conducting and collecting 71 interviews. Dozens of photographs, documents and artifacts have been recovered to tell the story of the largest guest-worker program, involving between four and five million men, in U.S. History.

Alamillo noted that the Bracero History Project helped him to understand his family better. “As a child growing up in rural Mexico, I lived without my father and grandfather for long periods of time. The program had a very significant impact on the families these men left behind so they could come to the States and work. Mothers had to be both mother and father to their children.” He added, “I resented their absence and was never able to be very close to them, knowing they would soon be gone again. I am sure my dad felt guilty about his absence and must have wondered what it would have been like if he had been able to remain in Mexico.”

Alamillo said that the local part of the exhibit was designed and created entirely by CI Chicana/o Studies and Art students. However, many students from Spanish, Library, and History courses contributed by conducting interviews with former braceros and/or transcribing and translating the interviews. Some of these same students were amazed to find out that some of their relatives had been braceros.

Pilar Pacheco, Assistant Director for the Center for Community Engagement, said, “It is an honor for us to host this national exhibit and to showcase our own local bracero exhibit. In doing so, we are able to celebrate and preserve the legacy of these hardworking individuals who gave so much to help grow and shape the identity of United States and Ventura County.”

For information about the many special events that will take place during the course of the exhibit, visit http://www.csuci.edu/bracero-exhibit/events.htm or contact Pilar Pacheco at 805-437-8851 or pilar.pacheco@csuci.edu.

CSU Channel Islands is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

CI Mission Statement
Placing students at the center of the educational experience, California State University Channel Islands provides undergraduate and graduate education that facilitates learning within and across disciplines through integrative approaches, emphasizes experiential and service learning, and graduates students with multicultural and international perspectives.

Festivities for the 10th annual free Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) Community Celebration, the Museum of Ventura County’s most popular event, will be held in their new plaza and pavilion at 100 E. Main Street in Ventura, on Saturday, October 30, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Amid music and dancing, children and adults of all ages can transform themselves into skeletons at the face painting booths, have their pictures taken, and try traditional crafts, such as decorating sugar skulls and creating papel picado banners, paper skeletons, and tissue paper flowers. The focus of the museum’s celebration is the importance of the arts, and creating art that celebrates the memory of those the living have lost.

The entire museum is free that day and open until 6 p.m. Inside the galleries, the exhibition Altars & Art, created by local artists, schools, and community groups, will be on display. Traditionally, colorful Day of the Dead altars (ofrendas) are built to honor departed relatives and friends, and include objects they enjoyed in their lifetimes. Altars & Art runs October 26 through November 5.

The festival of Día de los Muertos honors the dead who are said to come back to walk among the living on November 1 and 2. Celebrated in many parts of Mexico and Latin America, Día de los Muertos is now popular in the United States among Latinos and non-Latinos alike.

Humorous skulls (calaveras), and skeletons blithely going about worldly business, are the dominant symbols of Día de los Muertos, which has roots in pre-Columbian as well as Spanish religious beliefs.

For more information go to www.venturamuseum.org or 805) 653-0323.

Camarillo, CA – The Art Program at California State University Channel Islands (CI) has announced an upcoming exhibition by Douglas Alvarez entitled, “The Basic Nature of Things” at the CI Exhibitions Art Gallery located in old town Camarillo. The public is invited to an opening reception to be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 9. The exhibition will continue through Sept. 30.

Douglas Alvarez received his BA in Art from California State University, Northridge and maintains a studio in Studio City, CA. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in Los Angeles and the Southern California area, New York City, and Berlin, Germany.

Daily life is Doug Alvarez’s muse. Beauty seems to emanate from decaying walls, strange people, old cars, strip malls and endless advertisements. In a world, which at first glance seems bleak at best, nature and sunlight manage to overcome negativity. Having grown up in Southern California during the 70s and 80s, Alvarez captures the sensibility of a simpler time and place, a counter balance to the evolving complexities of 21st century life.

Utilizing a pallet knife to apply his paint, Alvarez creates distressed surfaces as a foundation for his stylized subjects. Exploring images of human contact with inanimate objects, the artist invites the viewer to ponder these strange interactions. Commonplace objects such as an ice cream cone or a skateboard or serve to represent positive solutions to the human dilemma. Regardless of the bleak situations depicted in his thought-provoking paintings, a metaphorical rainbow of happiness and sunlight seems to prevail.

The art gallery is located at 92 Palm Drive, Camarillo and is open Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For additional information, contact the CI Art Program at 805-437-8570, e-mail art@csuci.edu, or visit: http://art.csuci.edu/gallery.

CSU Channel Islands is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

CI Mission Statement
Placing students at the center of the educational experience, California State University Channel Islands provides undergraduate and graduate education that facilitates learning within and across disciplines through integrative approaches, emphasizes experiential and service learning, and graduates students with multicultural and international perspectives.

OXNARD, CA. - Hundreds of classic cars are heading to the Channel Islands Harbor for the Ventura Vintage Rods Harbor Run 20. Shiny muscle cars including 57 Chevys, T-Birds, GTOs, Mustangs, and Camaros, to coupes from the 1930s with rumble seats, along with an array of pick-up trucks ranging from the 1950s to mid-1970s are some of the classic cars that will be on display from 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. Sept. 12 at Harborview Park in Channel Islands Harbor.

Close to 300 classic cars will be entered in Harbor Run 20 – all dating before 1975. “The cars we have are all American made and there will be a wide variety of cars on display,” said Charlie Roark, Ventura Vintage Rods’ president. “It’s our 20th anniversary and we’re really hoping for a great crowd, like we’ve always had.”

Event attendance is free to the public; there is a $20 fee to enter a vintage car in the event. Several trophies will be handed out, along with raffle prizes and a 50/50 drawing. All proceeds benefit local charities. The event raised nearly $11,000 last year, according to Roark, and they’re hoping to top that amount this year. Year-round, Ventura Vintage Rods helps raise money to donate to local charities, such as Oxnard Police K9 Unit, Victory Outreach and local food banks.

For more information on the Ventura Vintage Rods Harbor Run 20, visit the Ventura Vintage Rods website at www.venturavintagerods.org.

Channel Islands Harbor serves as a center of recreation, boating, shopping and watersports activities. The harbor is home to three yacht clubs and nine full-service marinas that provide berths for 2,150 boats. It also hosts the Ventura County Maritime Museum. Located at Fisherman’s Wharf, the museum is a cultural center dedicated to the interpretation of maritime history through interactive exhibits and educational outreach. For more information on the Channel Islands Harbor, visit the website at www.channelislandsharbor.org.

THOUSAND OAKS, CA. – Realist painter Michael Lynn Adams will present a collection of 20 still life, genre and landscapes inspired by Southern California light and the beauty of Paris and Provence from Sept. 2 through Oct. 8 at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

A reception for “Paris • Provence • California: Recent Paintings by Michael Lynn Adams” will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11, in the Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture.

This is the premier showing for most of the paintings.

Adams’ works are in private collections throughout the United States. Maggie Kruger, owner of M Gallery of Fine Art in Sarasota, Fla., noted in American Art Collector Magazine that his work “has a luminous quality; emanating a quiet glow on the gallery wall. Collectors are mesmerized and drawn to each of the works, moving from each jewel-like painting, basking in the reflected light.”
A former student at the California Art Institute, he was accepted as an associate in the Oil Painters of America (OPA) in 2006. Adams is a member of the International Guild of Realism. His paintings have been exhibited in national and international shows, including Salon International, OPA National and OPA Western Regional.
Adams graduated from CLU with a bachelor’s degree in art in 1972 and is the director of the university’s Creative Media Center. The Woodland Hills resident has won dozens of awards as a designer and illustrator.

He grew up surrounded by the arts. His father was a longtime drama professor at CLU and prominent member of the local arts community. His greatest influence was his grandfather, an architect and painter.
The CLU Art Department is sponsoring the free exhibit. A portion of all sales from the exhibition supports the Kwan Fong Gallery.

Located in Soiland Humanities Center, the Kwan Fong Gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Visitor parking is available in the parking lot on Mountclef Boulevard south of Olsen Road.
For information on the exhibit, call Michael Pearce at (805) 444-7716 or visit http://www.callutheran.edu/kwan_fong. For more information on Adams, visit http://www.michaeladamsgallery.com.

The 17th Annual De Colores Art Show will run from September 5 – January 2, 2011. It has found a permanent home at the new Santa Paula art Museum located at 117 N. 10th, in historic downtown Santa Paula. The art show contains over 40 paintings and sculpture by Southern California artists. The mission of the De Colores Art Show is To bring together the community of professional artists, promote Santa Paula, to recognize diversity and to remember the plight of the farm worker. Museum admission: Adults $4, Seniors $3 and students free with ID.

The first De Colores Art Show was created in March 1995 in Santa Paula by artist, Musician and activist Xavier Montes. Ever since then Xavier has collected and presented contemporary art created by Latinos which expresses the Latino experience, culture and history in its traditions, pain and sorrow, controversies through art.

An important inspiration for the De Colores Art Show was the work of Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta. It was their commitment to the improvement of the lives of the Campesino, or the migrant worker. In addition, Mr. Montes seeks to generate community involvement with local businesses and motivate young aspiring artists.

What: De Colores Art Show
Where: Santa Paula Art Museum, 117 N. 10th Street, Santa Paula
Dates: Opens September 8, exhibit runs through January 2, 2011
Hours/Cost: Wednesday - Sunday 10 – 4
Daily Admission: Adults $4, Seniors $3, Students free with ID

www.santapaulaartmuseum.org