Arturo Gomez Molina
Assistant Editor
The Inland Empire Museum of Art located in Upland hosted an open reception for its new exhibit, “A Conversation in the Woods,” Saturday.
The exhibit showcased 35 different artists with various artistic mediums.
“We really wanted to display and begin a dialogue between the artist who created the piece and the audience who is viewing it,” museum owner Gene Sasse said.
“I really hope the people here today are inspired by all the different mediums the artist took for the subject matter,” he said.
Sasse is also a photographer who showed some of his work as part of the exhibit.
The reception began at 2 p.m. sharp and was quickly filled with artist and museum goers.
Soft ambient music played in the background as small crowds of people gathered around different pieces scattered.
Much of the art depicted actual locations that the artists have either seen or been to before, but some of the abstract art looked as though it was taken straight from a dream.
“I wanted the colors to seem as if they were flowing from the bottom all the way to top and dancing around in the whole painting,” abstract painter Renee Matter said.
Matter’s abstract painting had a brightly colored tree with soft blended colors seemingly swirling and moving behind it.
“I really thought about what it would look like if you dreamt about being in the woods,” Matter said. “I am a tree hugger and I’ve visited the mountains and woods my whole life, and I really wanted to bring something different.”
Much of the other abstract work depicted actual locations, some looked a little darker than others.
“I was teaching a class about how to make a new painting from an old one and when I finished I came up with this,” abstract artist Jan Wright said. “I submitted other work I didn’t love, but this one came much more organically and unintentional.”
Wright’s painting featured dark wide trees with deep reds blotted around them with a subtle stream of white flowing downward behind them. She said she had been trying to find the right painting to depict a trailhead in Bishops Canyon and feels like she finally has one that represents it.
Although many of the pieces in the gallery depicted forest landscape and trees, one stood out as different compared to the rest because it was just a single branch from a tree.
“This is actually a branch from my neighbor’s tree,” artist and secretary for the museum, Linda Garcia laughed. “Everyday when I got home from work the sunset would hit this tree at a specific angle and the colors were just so vibrant.”
Garcia brought the branch to life with an array of deep colors on and around the branch. She said it took about a month to layer and complete the painting.
The exhibit will run through Dec. 24. For more information, visit iearts.org.
Arturo Gomez Molina can be reached at arturo.gomezmolina@laverne.edu.
