President Annaly Bennett dedicated the first general meeting of the year to Jennifer Baxter,
PAA’s 2021-2022 president, who passed away in July. She is missed terribly, and we
cherish all of our PAA memories with her and send condolences to her family.
Meeting highlights:
– During the meeting, we welcomed PAA’s newest members: Suzanne Holder, Karyn
Kohl, Betty Sargent, Toi Treister, and Olga Vanegas.
-Annaly announced that we are thrilled to have the highest dollar amount in our
history to allocate for grants and the Impact Award.
-Katy Champ and Shelley Sackett shared exciting news about our newest event,
Fringe Benefit, which is a partnership with the talented students and faculty at Art Center
the celebrates PAA’s history of supporting art and artists on the cutting edge of their fields.
We will be offering fringe-themed artwork created through this collaboration, in addition
to other pieces, at the benefit. Just as importantly, it will be a FUN night of entertainment
and activities.
-Get ready to travel with PAA again! The Education Outside of LA chairs Mary
Alexander and R-lene de Lang announced that PAA will be visiting New Orleans April 3-7,
2023 for an art and architecture tour. Stay tuned for more information.
After the meeting, we toured the Rebecca Morris 2001-2022 retrospective with curator
Amanda Sroka. Morris is one of today’s leading abstract painter “best known for her large-
scale paintings and inventive approach to composition, color, and gesture” (ICA LA
website). We heard about Morris’ response to traditions of painting and how she is situated
in relationship to formalism through her use of geometric forms and color. We discussed
the thematic elements in her work: grids as a nod to her interest in architecture as well as
her play with foreground and background, her interest in finding the perfect red,
patterning as both an everyday element and a historical reference, and framing as a
window onto the world and how we view things. We had a lovely and lively lunch at the
restaurant/barbershop/tattoo parlor Bike Shed around the corner.