Art Night Pasadena

On Friday we zoomed up to Pasadena for Art Night. This is a night of art and music as tons of museums and galleries are open for free to the public with some fantastic exhibitions. We had time to hit 3 venues.

First up, the Armory Center for the Arts. Among other exhibits, we were there to see Speaking in Tongues: Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken...photographs, collages and more. This is part of the Pacific Standard Time, 6-month long exhibition throughout the Southland, celebrating art in California from 1945-1980. I REALLY appreciate the art of collage. This was an excellent exhibit!

Armory Gallery

Then, we high-tailed it down Colorado Blvd. to just west of Pasadena City College for a quick stop at Zankou Chicken for a quick and yummy dinner!

Zankou's Chicken Sandwich w/Tahini

It was a short hop to the PCC Art Gallery to see photographs from Picturing the Bomb - Rachel Fermi (granddaughter of physicist Enrico Fermi) and Esther Samra curated photographs from the secret world of the Manhattan Project. This was also, a very interesting, yet small exhibit. Seeing the relative comfort of the workers and their families for the Manhattan Project juxtaposed next to the effects of the Atom-bomb on the residents of Nagasaki, Japan was jarring, to say the least.

PCC Art Gallery

For our final stop, we drove back toward Old Town Pasadena to the Pasadena Museum of California Art. We checked out "Roland Reiss Personal Politics: Sculpture from the 1970s and 1980s"

Roland Reiss' lifesize representation of a living room, carved out of plywood,
"The Castle of Perseverance."

along with paintings by "Love Never Fails: Paintings by Edouard and Luvena Vysekal." I really enjoyed the 1920's and 1930's-era paintings of this husband and wife team. Many were reminiscent of the impressionism and plein air schools of the time.

watercolor by Edouard Vysekal, "Sunset and Griffith Park Blvds."

(notice the Van de Kamps Restaurant on the right)

It was a fun-filled evening of fantastic art. Next time the Art Night happens, I'm going to take off the day from work and try to get to ALL of the venues!