Hi,
For more information, images or if you are interested in
attending the opening reception, please contact me at 310.857.6994 or via
email.
Thanks!
~Jeannine
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Contact: Jeannine Schechter Jacobi
FreshPR
(310) 857-6994
Night
Travelers and Other Waking Dreams on Exhibit at the Fresno Art Museum September
10, 2010 to January 7, 2011
Kathryn Jacobi Unanimously Named 2010
Distinguished
Woman
Artist
Opening Night Reception September 10 from 6:00 to 8:00
p.m.
(LOS ANGELES) August 26 2010 – The Fresno Art
Museum Council of 100 Distinguished Women Artists has chosen painter and
photographer Kathryn Jacobi as the Distinguished Woman Artist of 2010. The
museum will celebrate [UTF-8?]Jacobi’s career with an extensive exhibition of
her work entitled [UTF-8?]“Night Travelers and Other Waking [UTF-8?]Dreams,”
which explores the imaginative forces of dreaming in a collection of more than
30 works in oil on paper, wood panel and canvas.
[UTF-8?]Jacobi’s paintings will display in the Fig Garden Gallery.
“The Council of 100 has
persistently chosen women artists of great distinction [UTF-8?]– it has been
patient in waiting for Kathryn Jacobi to come of age, that is, to celebrate her
60th birthday. Unanimously elected as the 22nd Distinguished Woman Artist by the
Fresno Art [UTF-8?]Museum’s Council of 100, Jacobi joins the prestigious
company of the twenty-one California women previously honored by this annual
award including June Wayne, Helen Lundeberg, Ruth Weisberg, Viola Frey, Nancy
Genn, Olga Seem, Junko Chodos, and Joan [UTF-8?]Tanner,” explained curator
Jacquelin Pilar. [UTF-8?]“Long awaited, this exhibition spans the 40 years of
[UTF-8?]Jacobi’s life spent as a professional [UTF-8?]artist.”
The exhibit,
[UTF-8?]Jacobi’s fourth at the museum and fifth in Fresno, will open the
evening of Friday, September 10, 2010 with a special event from 6:00 to 8:00
p.m. Admission to the opening reception is free for museum members and the
[UTF-8?]artist’s guests; other patrons will be charged a $10 entrance
fee.
In addition, the
Council of 100 will host an invitation-only luncheon on Saturday, September 11,
2010, after which Jacobi will present a slideshow lecture, open to the public,
at 1:00 p.m. in the [UTF-8?]museum’s Bonner Auditorium.
“The Fresno Art Museum has long been a
haven for California's [UTF-8?]artists,” said Kathryn Jacobi. [UTF-8?]“I am
delighted to have been selected for this honor and look forward to sharing my
work with the [UTF-8?]museum’s [UTF-8?]patrons.”
About the
Exhibit
Assembled by veteran curator Jacquelin Pilar,
this unusual exhibit promises to open a door into the [UTF-8?]viewers’
personal unknowns, freeing both their angels and their demons. Most of the
exhibit comprises paintings completed from the mid 1990s through 2008.
The centerpiece of the show
is a group of 12 paintings, collectively called [UTF-8?]“Night
[UTF-8?]Travelers,” which has never before been exhibited together. Its
subject matter is raw and uncensored. Moving quickly through emotional
[UTF-8?]states— from gentle and humorous circus imagery to the brutality of
[UTF-8?]“The Burning [UTF-8?]Hand,” the stuff of [UTF-8?]nightmares—Jacobi
explores what it means to be fully human and vulnerable in a very dangerous
world. Better known for her realist paintings and portraits, Jacobi has rarely
shown pieces from this challenging and thought-provoking body of work.
“The Night
[UTF-8?]Travelers” is complemented by exhibitions of related works.
Six smaller paintings and
one large panel, collectively called [UTF-8?]“The Minor [UTF-8?]Pantheon,”
explore the life stages of birth, youth, adulthood and death and are dedicated
to the memory of [UTF-8?]Jacobi’s friend, writer and musician Barbara Karp.
“Sleepwalking
Through the [UTF-8?]Apocalypse,” a series of paintings that Jacobi has been
very intentionally planning and executing these past ten years, is her response
to the terrorist attacks on New York [UTF-8?]City’s Twin Towers.
The final collection in
this show is a series called [UTF-8?]“Headshots,” which the artist considers
to be alternatives to traditional portraits. In these works, Jacobi
[UTF-8?]“mines the [UTF-8?]image” to explores up to ten variations of a
single visage.
Three
additional paintings, [UTF-8?]“Boneyard,” [UTF-8?]“Twins,” and
[UTF-8?]“Woman Turning Into a [UTF-8?]Tree,” round out the
exhibition.
“When
I begin a painting, it is an instinctive act. The paintings in this show emerged
without my understanding their meaning. Analysis comes later, usually when I am
far into a series. Other [UTF-8?]people’s projections onto my paintings often
lead them to draw entirely different [UTF-8?]interpretations—all valid in
their own right, as would be true of any interpretation of [UTF-8?]dreams,”
explained Jacobi. [UTF-8?]“It is my goal that this exhibit will deliver both a
left hook and a [UTF-8?]caress.”
About the
Artist
Born in New York, Kathryn Jacobi has spent
most of her life in California. Classically trained, she counts the early
Northern European Renaissance painters Durer, Hans Holbein the Younger and Roger
Van der Weyden among her greatest influences. Jacobi studied painting, drawing,
graphics and photography at California State University, Northridge where she
earned a B.A. in 1978 and an M.A. in 1980.
A prolific artist in many mediums including
etching, printmaking, drawing and watercolor painting, Jacobi has focused her
most recent efforts in oil painting and digital photography. She has shown her
work in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Canada,
Germany, Denmark, the former Czechoslovakia and Spain. [UTF-8?]Jacobi’s works
of art belong to the public collections of the Centrum Judaicum (Stiftung Neue
Synogogue) in Berlin, Germany, the San Francisco Cultural and Civic Center, the
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Cornell University, the New York Public Library,
the Fresno Art Museum, California State University, Northridge, the National
Watercolor Society and the Skirball Museum among many other cultural
institutions.
Jacobi
has published illustrations in the London Times Literary Supplement, Westways
Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, among other publications.
Through her own small publishing company, Waxwing Editions, Jacobi has released
two books: [UTF-8?]“The [UTF-8?]Bride’s [UTF-8?]Chamber,” a recently
discovered story by Charles Dickens, and [UTF-8?]“The Popsicle [UTF-8?]Moon”
by Sean Stratton, both of which are accompanied by her original
illustrations.
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