“Furious Garden,” an exhibition of paintings and sculptures focusing on the power and beauty of natural flora, opened Sept. 3 at the Claremont Museum of Art and will run through Nov. 27.
The exhibit features new paintings by Karen Kitchel and Deena Capparelli and ceramic sculptures by Cj Jilek, in which the artists re-envision and reconstruct familiar pastoral metaphors.
Deena Capparelli, a professor of drawing and sculpture at Pasadena City College, grew up in Rancho Cucamonga. Her interests in California native plants and garden design have merged with her work as a painter, sculptor and interdisciplinary collaborator.
Her recent sabbatical research took her to England, Germany and the Atlantic coast of the United States, studying transatlantic relationships among historical gardens and 18th-century landscape paintings influenced by the picturesque. These activities and influences have fueled what she refers to as her pseudo-imaginary landscape paintings, according to a news release.
Cj Jilek, an adjunct professor of ceramics at Chaffey, Saddleback and Mount San Antonio colleges, usesbotanical forms, with their openly displayed reproductive elements, as a metaphor for human sexuality. Her biomorphic forms are designed to lead the viewer to a subconscious association between nature and the human instinct of attraction, according to the news release.
Karen Kitchel lives and works in Ventura. Her paintings in the “Furious Garden” exhibit draw upon her own gardening practice, surviving the 2017 Thomas Fire and contemplating issues of environmental sustainability.
An essay by art historian Betty Ann Brown accompanies the exhibition.
The Claremont Museum of Art is in the historic Claremont Depot at 200 W. First St. It is open noon-4 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
For information, go to claremontmuseum.org.