With the Museum of Art and History’s stellar multiple-show exhibition Forest for the Trees closing this Sunday, it’s time to take a second look at all the exhibiting artists, and to enjoy an artist’s talk by Sant Khalsa (above), whose solo show includes contemplative, luminous work from a period of over 40 years. Khalsa will be holding an artist’s talk to discuss her work, which shimmers with light and motion.
As with each of the shows that comprise the museum’s exhibition, her work presents the natural environment and man’s interaction with it. Khalsa’s perspective is contemplative, as she opens a portal to viewers in order to examine their relationship with both nature as a place and as a part of our society. While documentary in style, her works none the less reveal an inner richness, a devotion to the prayer that is water and the dream that is light. Reflective and immersive, Sant Khalsa invites viewers to step inside her special visual window on nature and experience it. Her talk begins at 1 p.m.
Afterwards, be sure to take a look at the main gallery show, Tree Fiction from LA-based artist Greg Rose, who presents beautiful, narrative gouache works are based on his hikes through the San Gabriel Mountains.
Constance Mallinson’s Me, Me, Me offers a visceral depiction of the detritus of man, presenting what others may view as post-apocalyptic trash as jeweled, vast wastelands of monumental scale. Her vivid images are both horrifying and beautiful, seductive and dismaying.
And don’t miss a look at Revised Maps of the Present, from muralist and oil painter Timothy Robert Smith.
His interactive installation gives us sound and video projects, sculpted figures, and painted walls in a wonderfully involving, multi-dimensional work that takes personal experience and makes it both communal and transcendent.
With High & Dry: Land Artifacts, photographic artist Osceola Refetoff and writer/historian Christopher Langley create their own immersive work, an exploration of their regular KCET Artbound feature exploring the California Desert and those residing there. Lush and evocative infrared images from Refetoff reflect the intensely human and revealing text from Langley; the show also includes historical objects from MOAH’s permanent collection.
Last but not least, explore the assemblage art doll houses of Treasured Again from artist Gilena Simons, who works with collections of discarded objects to form mixed-media sculptures that riff on family and home.
With her Prana: Life with Trees, Sant Khalsa offers viewers a wide range of evocative images to explore from her early landscapes to images of trees to beautiful, zen-like sculptures and installations that reflect her passion for nature and her research on air quality and the planting of trees. Activist and artist, Khalsa makes a terrific choice for the artist’s talk that closes Forest for the Trees.
The museum is open until 5 p.m. Sunday; Khalsa’s talk begins at 1 p.m.
MOAH is located at 655 W. Lancaster Blvd. in Lancaster.
- Genie Davis; Photos courtesy of MOAH