Beatrice Wood: Career Woman - Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, and Objects 

September 10, 2011-March 3, 2012

A comprehensive survey and new assessment of the work of Beatrice Wood, a seminal artist who made a remarkable body of ceramic lusterware until just a few years before her death in 1998 at the age of 105. This monographic exhibition offers a scholarly, commemorative evaluation of Wood's extraordinary life and career that traversed and contributed to the cultural and artistic highlights of the 20th century.

Beatrice Wood: Career Woman is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980.        

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Image: Beatrice Wood, Luster Chalice with 10 Handles,
1982, Permanent Collection, Beatrice Wood Center
for the Arts and Happy Valley Foundation,
Photo by Tony Cunha 

Project Room 1:

Kelly Barrie: Mirror House  

September 10-December 10, 2011  

Created especially for the space of SMMoA's Project Room 1 for his first U.S. museum exhibition, Kelly Barrie started with a found photograph of a flooded house and tree from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In this work, Barrie navigates between photography, performance, drawing and digital collage. While most of Barrie's raw materials are images of the after effects of traumatic events, in this work, the ghost image of the house and tree and the slightest hint of water is more evocative of a dreamscape than a pictorial representation of the tragic event. The resulting work: a poignant mural that creates a disorientation of a Surrealist image made from a real disaster. 

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This exhibition features a collection of 39 rare, abstract drawings, jewel-like in color from India, where they were made by adepts and used in private spiritual practice. East and West, spiritual and aesthetic, and the ancient and modern converge in this exhibition.

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Image: Anonymous, Samode, 1998, 8 x 13 inches