"Environment"

Addressing Your Surroundings
Permanent online exhibition beginning August 21, 2020

In these wacky times of Corona Virus, we have an opportunity to reflect on ourselves and our surroundings. How have you been creative during stay-at-home orders? How have you spent your time where physical distance from others is needed? Has it resulted in communing with nature? How have you been impacted by the virus? "Environment" is an opportunity to think carefully about how we can create artistically and support our community through these trying moments as we modify our behaviors to protect ourselves and others.

Body and Soul

Laura Jespersen
acrylic on canvas panel, 16 x 20 inches
$400

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

La La Land

1st Place

Laura Jespersen
acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Sold

Twilight at Ortega Adobe

Laura Jespersen
acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
$500

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Pandemic Pandemonium

Honorable Mention

Jackie Ringhof
acrylic, 24 x 24 inches
$500

The last number of years Jackie Ringhof has worked with one-of-a-kind wearable art. In the past she has worked with ceramics. The quarantine motivated her to paint again.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Imaginary Travels

Melanie Roschko
arylic, 48 x 36 inches
$1,900

Melanie Roschko is inspired by exciting music and beautiful landscapes that she intuitively expresses as colorful abstract paintings or prints. The lines allow her to explore spaces as they dance and spin and the colors and textures create depths to examine. Her work is lyrical and elusive, inviting the viewer to delve into her inner world.

Painting is a means to create whatever comes to her. It is a creative process that becomes a conversation with herself. The paintings sometimes resolve immediately and other times with a struggle. However the process unfolds, hopefully it will be honest and valid.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

My Imagination Travels Where I Can't

Melanie Roschko
acrylic, 36 x 36 inches
$1,500

Melanie Roschko is inspired by exciting music and beautiful landscapes that she intuitively expresses as colorful abstract paintings or prints. The lines allow her to explore spaces as they dance and spin and the colors and textures create depths to examine. Her work is lyrical and elusive, inviting the viewer to delve into her inner world.

Painting is a means to create whatever comes to her. It is a creative process that becomes a conversation with herself. The paintings sometimes resolve immediately and other times with a struggle. However the process unfolds, hopefully it will be honest and valid.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Montenegro

Deni Weeks
acrylic, 11 x 14 inches
$475

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Friendpecked

Rich Boyd
colored pencil, 12 x 18 inches
$5,000

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Looking At Myself

Robin Ossentjuk
yarn, monk's cloth, 20 x 20 inches
$500

Robin Ossentjuk is an interdisciplinary artist based in Southern California with a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Scripps College in Claremont, California. She works mainly in tactile mediums that allow her to have a physical and intimate relationship with her work. The process of creating is cathartic to her. Her anxieties, curiosities, and passions manifest themselves in images of disembodied anatomy and abstract shapes. In combining process and subject, she creates vulnerable work that invites the interpretation of the viewer.

A receiver of the Lucia Suffel Crafts Award, Robin has participated in several group shows in the past few years including the 2017 senior art exhibition “Forming the Immaterial” at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and the 2020 fiber arts show “Live Wire” at Form & Concept Gallery. She had her first solo exhibition, “Vague Communication”, at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2017.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

The Place In Between

Robin Ossentjuk
yarn, monk's cloth, 24 x 24 inches
Not for Sale

Robin Ossentjuk is an interdisciplinary artist based in Southern California with a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Scripps College in Claremont, California. She works mainly in tactile mediums that allow her to have a physical and intimate relationship with her work. The process of creating is cathartic to her. Her anxieties, curiosities, and passions manifest themselves in images of disembodied anatomy and abstract shapes. In combining process and subject, she creates vulnerable work that invites the interpretation of the viewer.

A receiver of the Lucia Suffel Crafts Award, Robin has participated in several group shows in the past few years including the 2017 senior art exhibition “Forming the Immaterial” at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and the 2020 fiber arts show “Live Wire” at Form & Concept Gallery. She had her first solo exhibition, “Vague Communication”, at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2017.

Open for Business

Lois Freeman-Fox
gouache, 9 x 12 inches (framed 11 x 14 inches)
$400

Lois Freeman-Fox states: "This has been an interesting time to go through. I feel it is a time of reinvention. Talk about Covid-Hair--I have lost her hair, all of it and so I am trying to come to terms with looking completely different as well as not being able to see and touch all of the people I normally relate to except my husband and pussycats. Being completely covered up no one can see anyone anyway. Maybe by the time we have a vaccination my hair will have grown back and you will recognize me. Stay safe everyone."

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Grace

Peter Maivia
graphic, 24 x 30 inches
$400

Peter Maivia is a classically trained artist but now making a transition to graphic art. He has also worked on various animation shows doing design and concept work.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Mercy

Gibraltar Hill

Barbara Tabachnick
digtial art

Barbara Tabachnick’s art training began at UCLA in the late 1950s, as a break from her pursuit of a major in psychology. She was ready to return to the grind after a few painting courses and, while working in various research jobs, finally received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology. She continued to paint while in graduate school and in the first few years of her full-time appointment in the Psychology Department at California State University, Northridge, where she taught perception, statistics and research design.

Designing and making belly dance costumes (and dancing, of course) supplanted painting while teaching and completing two advanced statistics books. Since her retirement from teaching, she continues to be involved with consulting in research design and statistical applications as well as in writing and updating her books. A set of editions of the books was completed in 2000, at which time the urge to return to art became overwhelming.

A member of Collage Artists of America, California Art League, Lantern of the East Los Angeles, and Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art, she has exhibited in a variety of juried shows in the San Fernando Valley, winning some prizes along the way. She also has been exhibited in juried shows in downtown Los Angeles, San Diego, Thousand Oaks and Monterey Bay. She has exhibited internationally in the Philippines, Japan, Armedia, and China. She has had shared solo shows at the Orlando Gallery in Tarzana and the Council Art Gallery of the National Council of Jewish Women Los Angeles, and was twice invited to exhibit at the Ontario International Airport.

Japanese Garden

Barbara Tabachnick
digital art, 20 x 16 inches
$275

Barbara Tabachnick’s art training began at UCLA in the late 1950s, as a break from her pursuit of a major in psychology. She was ready to return to the grind after a few painting courses and, while working in various research jobs, finally received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology. She continued to paint while in graduate school and in the first few years of her full-time appointment in the Psychology Department at California State University, Northridge, where she taught perception, statistics and research design.

Designing and making belly dance costumes (and dancing, of course) supplanted painting while teaching and completing two advanced statistics books. Since her retirement from teaching, she continues to be involved with consulting in research design and statistical applications as well as in writing and updating her books. A set of editions of the books was completed in 2000, at which time the urge to return to art became overwhelming.

A member of Collage Artists of America, California Art League, Lantern of the East Los Angeles, and Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art, she has exhibited in a variety of juried shows in the San Fernando Valley, winning some prizes along the way. She also has been exhibited in juried shows in downtown Los Angeles, San Diego, Thousand Oaks and Monterey Bay. She has exhibited internationally in the Philippines, Japan, Armedia, and China. She has had shared solo shows at the Orlando Gallery in Tarzana and the Council Art Gallery of the National Council of Jewish Women Los Angeles, and was twice invited to exhibit at the Ontario International Airport.

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Blueberry Bliss

Patti Kunstadt
mixed media, 18 x 24 inches
$700

Patti Kunstadt studied art and design at the University of Kansas earning a BFA degree in Graphic Design.

She has a particular fondness for mixed media, mostly using various kinds of papers as a medium to paint. Color, light, and darkness allow her emotions to meet the canvas. Every piece of paper, torn or cut, is her process of creating and manipulating elements to produce a reconstructed and transformed whole. Her greatest pleasure is working the puzzle.

During this unusual and unprecedented time, she has been working on a COVID comfort food series, specifically "Carbs."

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.

Pile of Pancakes

Patti Kunstadt
mixed media, 18 x 24 inches
$600

Patti Kunstadt studied art and design at the University of Kansas earning a BFA degree in Graphic Design.

She has a particular fondness for mixed media, mostly using various kinds of papers as a medium to paint. Color, light, and darkness allow her emotions to meet the canvas. Every piece of paper, torn or cut, is her process of creating and manipulating elements to produce a reconstructed and transformed whole. Her greatest pleasure is working the puzzle.

During this unusual and unprecedented time, she has been working on a COVID comfort food series, specifically "Carbs."

For sales, contact gallery@vcarscouncil.org.