Our Art Gallery

Current Exhibitions

In partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara we proudly present our latest exhibition entitled Core Memory featuring recent works by Hương Ngô.

a woman in a white dress painting on a wall

Experience the Unveiling of In Motion – A Dynamic Spring/Summer Art Exhibition

Join us on Friday, March 28th, for an unforgettable evening as we proudly unveil In Motion, our latest Spring/Summer art exhibition, celebrating the works of renowned local artists Marlene Struss and Marie McKenzie.

Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, this special event offers an exclusive opportunity to explore the vibrant and thought-provoking works of these two visionary artists.

Mark your calendar and join us for this celebration of artistic movement and expression!

Experience the Unveiling of In Motion – Marlene Struss

Marlene Struss, a Northern California native, has pursued art since childhood. She earned a BFA from UCSB in 1973, studying under esteemed instructors. Her work spans representational to abstract, using various media, with a current focus on acrylic paintings. Her unique style blends biomorphic abstract expressionism with Asian influences.
Struss has exhibited widely, including in Russia and Korea, and has been active in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles arts communities. She has received several awards, including Best in Show at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum (2019) and a "Woman to Watch" honor (2020).

She is represented by 10 West Gallery and Marina Kieser, with her work featured in numerous TV shows and films. Struss is also a member of Western Edge, a collective promoting museum exhibitions. The “In Motion” Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit at the Riviera Beach House with Marie McKenzie will be her first semi-solo museum exhibition.

a woman with curly hair and red lipstick smiling

Experience the Unveiling of In Motion – Marie McKenzie

Marie McKenzie, originally from Kansas and now based in California, creates art deeply inspired by nature, especially kelp forests. In 2021, after learning about the decline of kelp ecosystems, she shifted her focus from traditional seascapes to underwater visions, even overcoming her fear of the ocean through freediving. This transformative experience led to her 'Prism' series, where she captures the abstract beauty of kelp forests.
In addition to her paintings, McKenzie incorporates steam-bent wood sculptures that evoke the organic forms of nature, including tallgrass and kelp. She is committed to environmental conservation and partners with SeaTrees, a nonprofit focused on restoring kelp ecosystems. McKenzie donates 10% of proceeds from her kelp-inspired artwork to support these efforts, blending her art with activism to promote ocean preservation.

Core Memory

Core Memory is an exhibition of works exploring the Southeast Asian refugee experience, through the lens of Hương Ngô’s parents and siblings’ experiences. It begins with the artist’s desire to learn about her parents’ labor as assembly line workers in electronics factories, where they created capacitors, resistors, and motherboards – components which modulate tempo, pitch, and memory in electronics. Using these vintage components, she creates circuits as sculptures that gesture towards her parents' creativity, efforts not legible in the output of their wage labor.

The project also examines the larger meaning and collective memory of Southeast Asian refugees working in racially integrated electronics factories, a career path quite common amongst this demographic. How was the representation of this migrant body both mobilized and erased in the radicalization of technology and labor from the last few decades? To what extent was the technology industry built upon the collective trauma and labor of Southeast Asian refugees?

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