The Santa Monica College (SMC) Emeritus Art Gallery will present a free exhibition of works by USA Today bestselling, award-winning author, poet, artist, and Emeritus student Uvi Poznansky.
The exhibition opens Thursday, Sept. 19, with a free, live Zoom Virtual Launch Event from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at smc.edu/emeritusgallery, where a link will go live at event time and take guests directly to the exhibition's opening reception. The online opening reception will feature the artist speaking about her work and will be hosted by Emeritus Associate Dean (interim) Guadalupe Salgado and Emeritus Gallery Curator Jesse Benson.
The exhibition will be presented as a hybrid show, with artwork on display in the Emeritus Art Gallery at 1227 Second St., Santa Monica, as well as online at smc.edu/emeritusgallery.
The exhibition in Gallery runs Sept. 19 - Nov. 1.
The solo exhibition presents a significant survey of Poznansky's interdisciplinary art practice, highlighting her range and mastery across multiple aesthetic and intellectual disciplines.
The powerful and versatile collection of works on display includes paintings, videos, and sculptures in materials ranging from bronze to paper. Her remarkable - and unforgettable - video animation shorts are loosely based on her poetry and other writings, and showcase the artist at her most inventive. Within the playful animations, her sculptures come to life to dance and love and express profound hope and vulnerability, all through poetic language and dry wit.
Poznansky studied architecture in Haifa, Israel, then moved to Troy, NY, where she received a Fellowship grant and a Teaching Assistantship from the Architecture department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, guided teams in a variety of design projects, and earned an M.A. in Architecture. She was working as an architect when she developed an interest in computer science and returned to school, earning an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Poznansky worked as a software engineer, software team leader, and software manager, then as a software consultant with a focus on developing user interfaces for medical instruments and devices. All the while, she wrote and painted constantly, exhibited in Israel and California, and taught art appreciation classes. Her versatile body of work includes bronze and ceramic sculptures, oil and watercolor paintings, charcoal, pen and pencil drawings, and mixed media.
Poznansky is also a poet and prolific writer. "I paint with my pen," she says, "and write with my paintbrush." Her poems often accompany her art and form the basis for many of her videos, such as this one for "Eyes Fallen Shut":
If my eyes fall shut, there's no darkness around me
Walls tumble away... I'm not locked in a box
If my ears turn deaf, there's no suffering. I'm free
Of this incessant ticking of silenced blank clocks
Cursed to wait, wait, wait still longer to dart
When someone out there releases a grip
Now I sense a slight spin... A hinge, stirring... A start
As my lid cranks, cracks, creaks open, out I slip
Ready or not, here I come... What a loud Pop!
Do I strike fear? Make your heart freeze?
Held up ever-so-briefly, how soon shall I drop
Back into oblivion, back into a squeeze?
Till I'm found again, forgotten, confined
I'll be dreaming of you, your eyes fallen shut
Poznansky's romantic suspense box set, Love Under Fire, made the USA Today bestselling list, as did her medical thriller box set, Do No Harm. Her romance box set, A Touch of Passion, was the 2016 winner of The Romance Reviews Readers' Choice Awards. Poznansky also wrote and illustrated two children's books, Jess and Wiggle and Now I Am Paper.
Poznansky has created animation videos for several of her poems and books. Several of the videos are posted on YouTube, including Tango; A Diamond Short, A Decade Late; Dust; Shred; Now I Am Paper; and Jess and Wiggle.
In-gallery viewings are available through Nov. 1 during gallery hours, which are 9 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Viewers who would like to see the artwork online at any time after 5 p.m. on Sept. 19 may go to smc.edu/emeritusgallery and click the exhibition link, available 24 hours a day. The link takes viewers directly to the exhibition album on a Facebook page that is open to public viewing (Facebook account not necessary).
SMC's widely praised Emeritus program - founded by Santa Monica College in 1975 as a noncredit program to serve the lifelong learning interests of older adults - offers more than 120 noncredit adult education classes and special programs that serve more than 3,000 students each year.
More information is available by visiting smc.edu/emeritusgallery or calling 310-434-4306. Exhibition and reception subject to change or cancellation without notice.
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