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A Gallery of Neighbors: The Village Art Group’s Group Show

On a warm Friday afternoon, July 10th, the Community Room at 236 W. Mountain St. transformed once again - this time into a gallery bursting with the talent of Pasadena Village’s own artists. Rather than spotlighting a single villager as past shows have done, the Art Group chose to celebrate several members at once, and the result was a joyful reminder of just how much creativity lives among us.

Art Group leader Kären Bagnard welcomed the crowd and invited each artist to speak briefly about their work. “I had no idea there were such good artists in the Village,” one attendee, June Cullen, remarked as she took in the room.

Arline Golden’s contribution - eighteen black-and-white caricatures inspired by the legendary Broadway sketches that line the walls of New York’s Sardi’s restaurant - drew special admiration. A singer and devoted lover of musical theater, Arline said she has long admired those portraits for the way they “captured the soul or essence” of the performers. Even though she’s never actually visited Sardi’s herself, she worked from images in the New York Times and art books. Asked to pick a favorite among her own pieces, she pointed to her sketch of Jack Lemmon, hoping it honored his aching performance in “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

Bill Wishner, known in the Village as “The Visual Hunter,” showed photographs of striking images he’s found on walls around the world - a fitting subject for a man with deep roots in the jazz and photography worlds, including published books of jazz photography. Multimedia artist Maureen Kellen-Taylor displayed “Mother Earth,” a piece that is part painting, part construction, that stems from her concern for environmental damage. Rita Silverman showed seven canvases, all studies of the same view from her kitchen window, capturing how the light shifts on a vase of flowers in water throughout the day - a first-time public showing that she admitted felt a little daunting.

The show also carried echoes of loss and resilience from last year’s fires. Kären Bagnard, who lost her home of 51 years, has continued making art despite losing most of her sight, now working in decoupage, patterned paper, and line drawing guided largely by feel. Virginia Merriam - “Virgi” as Kären affectionately calls her - and her husband John also lost their home. Virgi’s drawings and paintings traced a moving arc: the joy of city life, the wildness of the outdoors, and finally a stark black, white, and gray landscape of Altadena’s destruction.

Other contributors rounded out the show’s range. Gary Smith, who with his wife Anne Regan-Smith regularly hosts Art Group meetings at their Old Town Pasadena home, exhibited a new painting on canvas. Gary has worked with computer generated images in the past. Lorrie Gray brought pottery, including organic, leaf-patterned platters shaped and glazed by her. Joyce Wedseltoft, a recent addition to the group, showed two oil paintings - an interior view of Stirling Castle and a vivid color study. And Gina Frierman-Hunt, who hosts the monthly Sketch and Painting Gathering, exhibited a muted, spacious coastal scene watercolor, part of her ongoing exploration of the San Gabriel foothills that now includes digital drawing tools, which she’s begun teaching to fellow villagers. I brought two photographs, images I captured of teenagers at the skate park behind La Pintoresca Public Library and Park. I had wandered to the far end of the park after hearing laughter, strange noises and the constant rumble of wheels. Standing beside the skateboard perch, I began photographing the skaters as they prepared to launch down the slope. Two images eventually found their way into the show.

Perhaps what made the reception so enjoyable was that every artwork had a story, and every story sparked another conversation. Our wonderful Hospitality Team had beverages and snacks - some healthy - on hand at the art reception.

Kären closed the afternoon by thanking everyone for making the show such a rich representation of the Art Group’s spirit. The Village Art Group welcomes any Villager working in any medium and meets monthly, usually on the fourth Saturday, to share artwork, ideas and the ways our lives are unfolding through creativity. Watch the Village calendar for the next gathering.