Events

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! Hollywood Magic in Pasadena highlights Pasadena’s intrinsic role in the multidimensional world of filmmaking. The Pasadena Museum of History is proud to present this exhibition curated by Julia Long, PMH’s Curator of History and Exhibitions, on view from June 8, 2024, through February 28, 2025. Focusing on the people who helped shape the industry – both on screen and behind the scenes – and locations that provide settings for their artistic pursuits. The galleries feature a wide range of objects relating to movies, television, music videos, and more, celebrating the creative process from initial concept to finished productions. 

The exhibition also explores the history of filming on the Fényes Estate. Given their wide-ranging artistic vision, it is hardly surprising that Eva and Adalbert Fényes would embrace the fledgling motion picture industry. In 1912, legendary director D. W. Griffith featured their beautiful estate in the silent film, The Queen’s Necklace. Star power seems to have impressed even a sophisticated society matron, as evidenced by a charming collection of Eva’s photographs and sketches from the various productions filmed on her property, including handwritten diary entries with captions such as, “Douglas Fairbanks on our lawn.”

Curated by Julia Long, PMH’s Curator of History and Exhibitions, LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! is made possible, in part, by the Paloheimo Foundation.

Curator’s Tour: Lights, Camera, Action! Hollywood Magic in Pasadena
Friday, June 21, Saturday, July 27, & Friday, August 16 | 11:00 am
General Admission: $15 | PMH Members: $10
Explore Lights, Camera, Action! with curator Julia Long on these special one-hour tours. Learn more about the research that went into the remarkable exhibition and the wide range of objects on display. Hear more stories about Pasadena’s role both on screen and behind the scenes from the curator. Space is limited; advance reservations are required.

Lecture: Behind the Scenes of Lights, Camera, Action!
Thursday, August 8, 2024  | 7:00 pm
General Admission: $15 | PMH Members: $10
Join PMH’s Curator of History and Exhibitions, Julia Long, for this special presentation about the Museum’s current exhibition Lights, Camera, Action! Hollywood Magic in Pasadena. Space is limited; advance reservations are required.

From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments

On view: August 9, 2024 - February 23, 2025
Public reception: Sunday, September 8, 2024, from 1:00-3:30 PM

Gallery Hours: Fridays, 2:00 to 6:00 pm, Sat/Sun, 1:00 to 5:00 pm

Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to present From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments, the Armory’s contribution to Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. Rooted in the idea of the seed as a mechanism for great change, the From the Ground Up exhibition will feature work by 16 contemporary artists and artist teams who explore histories of contested spaces, pre-colonial understandings of nature, and ancient and contemporary technologies as they imagine alternative, sustainable futures. The artists and projects included in the exhibition are: Charmaine Bee; Nikesha Breeze; Carl Cheng; Olivia Chumacero; Beatriz Cortez; Mercedes Dorame; Aroussiak Gabrielian; iris yirei hu; Lez Bats (Sandra de la Loza and Jess Gudiel); Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels; Hillary Mushkin; Vick Quezada; Sarah Rosalena; Enid Baxter Ryce; Cielo Saucedo; and Marcus Zúñiga. From the Ground Up is organized by Irene Georgia Tsatsos, guest curator and former Armory Director of Exhibition Programs / Chief Curator.

About the Exhibition

What can seeds tell us about the future? Seeds and the plants that grow from them have provided us with food, clothing, shelter, and medicine for millennia. For just as long, humans have used sciences, technologies, myths, and art to peer into an imagined future. As we stare out toward our own future, one threatened by climate change and complicated by social unrest, the From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments exhibition looks to the seed—such as those seeds that lie at the bottom of the forest floor waiting for the cyclical fire season that promotes new growth and diversity to sprout—for inspiration and guidance on how to navigate current and coming hostile environments.

From the Ground Up presents works by 16 contemporary artists and artist teams who explore diverse technologies, histories of contested spaces, and traditional understandings of nature as they imagine alternative, sustainable futures. The exhibition bridges familiar distinctions between art and science while exploring practices and traditions that predate contemporary understandings of those disciplines. In this exhibition, artworks, knowledge traditions, and histories converge in space and across time.

Presented in the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery, the exhibition features many new works and installations presented to the public for the first time.

The exhibition will extend onto the Armory's front garden, where Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels—an expansive collective made up of Indigenous farmers, plantworkers, and artists from Guatemala, the Southwest, and Northern California—will transform the area into a fiery-red and golden field of amaranth, an edible seed and Mesoamerican food staple.

From the Ground Up offers information, beauty, a sense of urgency, and tools for action. The exhibition functions as a site for learning, contemplation, and social space informed by contemporary art practices that involve the reclamation of plants for ritual, performance, and object-making; speculative futurisms, storytelling, and direct-action movements; and botanical science.

Education and Public Programs

The themes and ideas explored in the From the Ground Up exhibition will be expanded on through a series of programs for diverse audiences that will take place at the Armory and partner sites during the exhibition's run. These programs include those listed below and more to be announced at a later date.

Communal Amaranth Planting
Saturday, August 10, 2024
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Join us at the Armory and help plant an amaranth garden guided by friends from Indigenous Permaculture and gardeners from Milagro Allegro Community Garden. Qachuu Aloom gifted seeds to gardeners at Milagro Allegro Community Garden a decade ago, with the farmers returning each year to plant and harvest amaranth. We're looking forward to continuing connecting over the seed today.

Armory Zine Fest!
Sunday, August 25, 2024, 11 AM - 4:00 PM
Expect a zine filled event with vendors from across the region. Enjoy a free zine-making workshop led by Teaching Artist Rachel Curry using our Risograph printer and collage. Bring seeds to share and swap with Urban Soul Farmer's Zine & Seed Library. This all-ages event is free and open to everyone.

Opening reception walkthrough of the exhibition with curator Irene Georgia Tsatsos
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 1:00 PM

Free all-ages art workshop with an Armory teaching artist
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 2:00 PM

Tarot Readings with Enid Baxter Ryce
Sunday, September 8, 2024, 2:00 PM

Exhibiting artist Enid Baxter Ryce and her family will be doing free tarot readings for visitors using Ryce’s Devil’s Half Acre Tarot (2024), a bilingual tarot deck created by Ryce in collaboration with Luis Camara. The deck, which features hand-painted illustrations of flora and fauna made using natural pigments, is a follow-up to Ryce and Camara’s The Borderlands Tarot, which will be released this fall.

Amaranth Seed Sharing
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 3:00 PM
The Armory invites you to experience and share in the amaranth garden planted by Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels, a collective of individuals and organizations that come together around the sharing of amaranth seed and knowledge, in front of the Armory. Together, we’ll harvest amaranth and practice a Campesino a Campesino (Farmer to Farmer) philosophy of reciprocal action with Cristóbal Osorio Sánchez, founder of Qachuu Aloom Asociación Madre Tierra; Maria Aurelia Xitumul Ivoy; Vasquez Chun; and Sabrina Sosof from Guatemala, along with Indigenous Permaculture and the Garden's Edge.

Collective Visualization with Hillary Mushkin
Saturday, October 5, 2024 ~ 1:00 - 2:30 PM

Mushkin leads a conversation delving into her practice that offers paths for artists and scientists to work together in impactful ways. Mushkin is joined by Heather Williams and Olivia Chumacero, collaborators in her recent project, Groundwater (2024), an artist’s book and installation analyzing and representing the intricate web of water rights legislation, discriminatory cartography, and their effects on Central Valley communities. RSVPs are appreciated. RSVP Today

Gold Bug Gallery presents the exhibition “Recently Discovered Artifacts”  and invites you to the artist’s opening reception on Thursday, November 21, 2024, from 6:00-9:00 pm. Spend the evening delighting in this collection of mysterious art with drinks and hors d’oeuvres  provided by neighboring restaurant, Bone Kettle, during the opening reception of the exhibition. The artist will be present during this event, discussing the techniques used to imagine and construct the objects on display.

ON VIEW: November 21, 2024, through January 12, 2025
Gallery Viewing Hours: 11 am - 5 pm. Check for Holiday Hours online before visiting. No appointment necessary.

“Recently Discovered Artifacts,” is a site-specific art installation presenting a cache of hidden “artifacts” from a purported secret antiquarian society once active in the historic building at 38 E. Holly Street.

Gold Bug Gallery is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition of “Recently Discovered Artifacts,” a site-specific installation by Pasadena-based artist, John Griswold. The display adopts the form of an early twentieth-century museum display of enigmatic ritual objects, ephemera, and paraphernalia purportedly discovered during the recent renovation of the Gallery’s back room, an evocative and intimate space now hosting a range of occasional bespoke experiences. The scope of the retro-museological installation includes forged archaeological documentation and scholarly discourse accompanying the enigmatic fragments at their rediscovery, prompting visitors to conjure their own scenarios of context and meaning. A lesser-known oracular cult shrine in ancient Greece, the Cave of Trophonios, inspired the clandestine rituals and divination practices purported to have taken place here. While at least some of the objects may survive from the nineteenth century, they appear to have been in use shortly after the opening of the brick building in 1910. Evidence suggests they were re-hidden several times within the 38 E. Holly Space.

This installation seeks to tap into the enduring fascination we share with the ancients to allow ourselves to be coaxed and primed into a more receptive, insightful state to satisfy our deeply human need to find a sense of wonder, marvel, and connection “beyond the veil”. The Roman travel writer Pausanias tells us about several shrines in the ancient Greek world, including the Cave of the Oracle of Trophonios at Levadia in Boeotia, laying bare the deception and trickery involved in inducing a terrifying yet ultimately thrilling and satisfying experience for the seeker of divine insight. We have the uncanny ability to suspend disbelief, even when we are presented with the prosaic underpinnings and theatricality of ritual practice, allowing for epiphanies and reveries. We have always drawn upon both highly personal and shared rituals, ceremonies and practices to strike a connection with forces and energies of personal growth and revelation. They certainly resonated with the burgeoning fraternal societies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and bear resemblance to contemporary metaphysical practices today.

ABOUT JOHN GRISWOLD
John Griswold’s work dissects mythological classicist tropes, fragmenting and recombining them, with all their latent meaning, within a surrealist frame of reference. He has amassed a lexicon of symbolic devices from ancient classical sources, antiquarian emblem books, baroque mythological and devotional iconography, and alchemical treatises. Griswold’s fascination with the persistence of neoclassical and romantic allusions and symbolic devices, injected throughout 19th and early 20th-century secret societies and fraternal organizations, and their relationship to changing frameworks of modern authority and power, permeates his work. Griswold’s training as an art conservator informs his archaic painting techniques.

ABOUT GOLD BUG
Gold Bug is a retail/gallery space located in Pasadena, CA, with the atmosphere of a Wunderkammer museum, welcoming its visitors to respectfully explore and inquire about the collections of hand-made art pieces, distinctive decor, coveted collectibles, and exquisite, sustainably sourced natural specimens available for purchase. Established in 2007, it has become an international destination for designers, artists, and travelers looking for a unique experience in Los Angeles and the perfect discovery to bring home.