Palette or palate, Art About Agriculture exhibit is a feast to the eyes

November 14, 2014
Santa Paula News

Whether palette or palate agriculture is sure to please at the 7th Annual Art About Agriculture exhibit, where the scenes of how and what people put on their plates is a true feast to the eyes.

The exhibit is sharing display venues at the Santa Paula Art Museum and the Museum of Ventura County Agriculture Museum through January 25, 2015.

The exhibit by the Ag Art Alliance - co-founded in 2007 by gallery owner, curator and prize winning photographer John Nichols and acclaimed artist Gail Pidduck - features art by over 60 artists inspired by Ventura County’s agricultural heritage and contemporary agriculture. The exhibition explores all of the facets of agriculture, from workers to water, machinery to soil, to the food that goes on our plates. 

Carol and Logan Hardison were visiting both opening receptions held Saturday, reflecting many who have enjoyed the partnership between the two museums that are within easy walking distance.

“We have a wonderful collaboration,” said Agriculture Museum Docent Linda Kimbrough.

While enjoying the Art About Agriculture and other exhibits at the Agriculture Museum, Carol Hardison said she and her husband would soon be taking a stroll down the street to the art museum.

“Our son Michael has a photograph in the exhibit,” displayed at the art museum that shows the agriculture along Highway 126 that cuts through the agriculturally rich Santa Clara River Valley.

The Agriculture Museum has the Art About Agriculture exhibit in different areas of the cavernous building: head west and when you come face to face with an exhibit featuring life size Kansas City Mules and Bolivar, Missouri Teamsters - apt for Santa Paula, where many Bolivarians settled - it’s time to turn around and look at the wall for Art About Agriculture.

The about face reveals a good example of what the show is all about with traditional and modernistic renderings of various subjects, all with ties to agriculture and portrayed in different mediums.

The greens, pinks and lavenders are lovely in watercolor and make “Artichoke Flowers’ true works of art as rendered by Debbie Abshear, while you can almost smell the fresh outdoors with a tractor with a umbrella “Left in the Field” waiting for its farmer, an oil on board, by Virginia Beale.

Photographer Robert Diehl has a nice mixture with “Fresh from the Field” that depicts green squash and red, what? Tomatoes, pomegranates, both? No matter, they look good enough to eat... 

“The Working Breed” by Gina Niebergall, is an oil on canvas showing an often forgotten equine worker enjoying some grass while being observed by cows.

And atop this horn of plenty is the Ag Art Alliance’s very own citrus label-ish poster, Photoshop designed by John Fielder, as well as “Barnucopia” by Lynda Gruber, photos and photos of barns from the gloriously restored to those teetering on the edge of distinction. 

From orchards and hay piles to a girl clutching an orange cat with a farm in the background and pickers, whether the art is contained in frames made of rustic wood to those appearing to be elaborate gold gilt Art About Agriculture offers stunning images celebrating both the historical and the contemporary. 

And perhaps the time yet to come: Dolas Tubbs adds her usual fascinating touch with “Colliding,” a collage that includes pencil and gesso and printed paper interspersed with images of trees... it’s only later that you wonder at Tubbs’ message and if the documents are related to the future of agriculture.

For more information about the Museum of Ventura County Agriculture Museum (926 Railroad Ave.) call 805-525-3100 or visit www.venturamuseum.org 

For the Santa Paula Art Museum (117 N. 10th St.) call 805-525-5554 or visit www.santapaulaartmuseum.org 





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