Great Looking: The Athenaeum’s 32nd Annual Juried Exhibition

 By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt.  Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

Opening Night: The Juror at the entry to the exhibition.

If you haven’t been to the Athenaeum in La Jolla for a while, now is a good time to drop by. Their just-opened juried exhibition, which received 900 submissions, is full of delights, and Armando Pulido, the young juror who chose the 51 pieces on view, spent days going through all the images.
 
A writer and curatorial assistant at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, founded by filmmaker George Lucas to feature all forms of visual storytelling, Armando will be working along with the team curating the museum’s grand opening in 2025.
 
At the Atheneum, he was not just interested in showing a variety of media and styles. He also focused on the different emotional responses the artists were trying to evoke, and visitors are invited to do the same as they walk through the exhibition.  
 
Awards were announced at the July 19^th opening, and the First Prize winner was Luis Alderete, whose mixed-media tree “Welcome Home PAISANO” is the most
eye-catching piece in the main gallery. Alderate, born and based in Tijuana, is an architect and visual artist whose work has been shown around the world. Armando particularly liked the caged bird as an image of the piece’s theme.

 

“Welcome Home PAISANO” by Luis Alderete

It was great to walk around the sculptures and admire them from different points of view.

Here’s the attractive backside of “Melting Brick” by Yeba Kim, who works with ceramics and textiles. Born in South Korea, she is currently a pursuing an MFA in Furniture Design and Woodworking at SDSU School of Art and Design. 

“Melting Brick” by Yeba Kim.

 A colorful view of another side of the main gallery.

“Toreo de Tijuana” by Rodrigo Angel Jimenez, a bullfight portrayed in a style not usually seen in museums. The artist was raised on both sides of the border and has exhibited in both Mexico City and New York.

There was more to see on our way to the Rotunda, where the exhibition continues.

We were struck by Lee Puffer’s acrylic on canvas “Andromeda”- a powerful portrayal of the mythic Greek princess who was chained to a rock by her parents as a sacrifice to Poseidon but happily rescued by the hero Perseus. The multimedia artist, who has exhibited widely, is also an educator, currently on the faculty at Palomar College.

 

“Andromeda” by Lee Puffer 

“The Ruler” by Evie Maher - a brilliant piece by a young, self-taught San Diego artist.

“Altar to the Sacred”- a striking black-and-white print by mixed media artist Gaby Espina.

We couldn’t just walk past “Seven Suns” by Wills Howard, who besides being an artist is also a semiconductor engineer. When Armando first saw and admired the image of this piece, he had no idea that it was three-dimensional: a nice 3-D surprise for the juror.

“Seven Suns” by Wills Howard

 

“Ekstasis en Helio Kardia” - a contemporary take on transcendental painting by Francesca Isabella Towers, who combines art with her work in conflict resolution.

 

“Pattern Formation” - an inventive triptych by Annalise Neil, combining cyanotype, watercolor, and woven pine needles on Japanese paper mounted on wood panels.

 At the end of our walk-through, Armando Pulido mentioned how much he had enjoyed working with the Atheneum’s installation team: Executive Director Christie Mitchell, Jocelyn Saucedo Larson (Assistant Director of Exhibitions), Andrew Alcasid (Exhibition Consultant), and Adrian Diaz (Facility Assistant).

“It has really been a wonderful experience,” he said. 

Here’s wishing all visitors to the exhibition a wonderful experience too. And there’s time enough for several visits, since the show goes on through September 28.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library  1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA, 92037.
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. 

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net