Celebrating the National Parks of California

June 17, 2016 - October 3, 2016

Celebrating the National Parks of California explored nine national parks located within the state of California through a juried exhibition: Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Redwood, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Lassen, Pinnacles, Death Valley and Channel Islands (there are a total of 27 monuments, parks, seashores and more administered and preserved by the National Park Service. The show celebrated and discussed wilderness, nature and preservation of the parks and provided an opportunity for artists to display and sell their work. Fifty-one artworks in a wide range of mediums and styles were included in the diverse show which were created by 42 artists from 5 different states! The exhibition was timed to also bring awareness to the Centennial of the National Park Services system. The Wildling was delighted to add two of the prize winners to our permanent art collection.

Participating Artists:

Robert Bassler, Susan Belloni, Stephen Berry, Peggy Brierton, Rich Brimer, Sue Britt, Lorraine Bubar, Tonya Burdine, Chris Chapman, Pamela Claflin, Francis Dumont, David Gallup, Kevin Gleason, Devin Grady, Susan Guy, Debbie Haeberle, Fran Hardy, Patricia Hedrick, Carolyn Hesse-Low, Christine Huhn, Conrad Hunziker III, Larry Iwerks, Andre Janitzky, Barbara Lavery, Teresa McNeil MacLean, Michael Miner, Penny Otwell, Craig Rademacher, Kathleen Robison, Lu Ross, Julia Seelos, Jeffrey Skelly, Libby Smith, Alan Sonneman, Nicole Strasburg, Louis Tremblay, Loraine Veeck, Juliane Vowinckel, Cheyne Walls, Pamela Zwehl-Burke

Our esteemed panel of judges include:

Judy Larson, R. Anthony Askew Professor of Art History and Director of Westmont Museum of Art.  With thirty years of museum and gallery experience, Larson was most recently the director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where she is credited with completing a 25 million dollar endowment campaign and enriching the museum's exhibition schedule to include thematic exhibitions and new artistic fields. She was active in the formation of new national and international committees, which advocate for women in the arts.

Larson previously directed the Art Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke, where she coordinated the acquisition of multi-million dollar American art collection. She served as curator of American art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, where she organized national touring exhibitions on American artists such as John Twachtman and Norman Rockwell. Larson worked at the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art while earning undergraduate and master's degrees in art history at UCLA. She completed a Ph.D. at the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University, Atlanta, in 1998.

Marc Muench,  As a third-generation photographer, it would be easy for Marc to fall under the shadow of his talented parents and grandfather. Instead, Marc has emerged as one of the nation's premier photographers in his own right through a combination of innate ability and a unique style that blends landscapes, action, and other photographic genres, depending on the scene and the assignment.  Like his father before him, Marc was immersed in America's landscapes. Both his grandfather, Josef, and his father, David, specialized in landscape photography. His mother, Bonnie, is also a photographer and painter. A keen eye for color, light, and composition is second nature to the Muench family.

Marc has collaborated on and published several landscape photography books with his father, and has had a number of solo landscape photography books published, in addition to extensive publication of his work inside and on the covers of magazines like National Geographic, Skiing, Outside, Time, and Reader's Digest.

Thomas Paquette, Paquette's landscape paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions in prominent galleries in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Maine as well as in solo exhibitions at the Evansville Museum of Art, Erie Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, The Rockwell Museum, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Wildling Museum of Art and Nature, American Academy in Rome, Bennington Center for the Arts, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, Quick Center for the Arts and Roger Tory Peterson Institute, among other museums and art centers.

Paquette is the recipient of several fellowships and honors, including artist residencies at the American Academy in Rome, at the Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange (Greece), and at three U.S. National Parks (Acadia, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain). He was awarded a three-year residency-fellowship from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Miami, from 1989-91. From his studios in Maine and Pennsylvania, he completed several large commissioned works for government, corporate, and private collections. His paintings have also been selected to hang in sixteen U.S. embassies on five continents. He has lectured in the U.S. as well as in Greece, Wales and England.

A large traveling solo exhibition of Paquette's paintings, titled On Nature's Terms: Paintings by Thomas Paquette commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, traveled in 2014 and 2015 to museums in California, Indiana and New York. Concurrent with this run, the Rockwell Museum [Corning, NY] organized another large solo exhibition of his paintings,Touching on Water.