Made in California 2020

The Brea Gallery is moving forward with its annual Made in California Juried Exhibition and will officially open to the public as soon as the state closures for museums and galleries are lifted.

This annual juried exhibit showcases artwork from all over the state of California, highlighting artists in all stages of their careers and features artwork from an extensive variety of mediums while exploring creative movements happening in California.

The Brea Gallery has been closed to the public since Governor Newsom’s the original shelter-in-place order back in March. This extended, unpredictable closure forced the Gallery to put the Made in California exhibition on hold until it was safe to reopen again. The show’s original opening date of April 25th, 2020 has long come and gone, but the Gallery is eager to share the exhibit when it is safe to do so.

Since June 1st, Brea City employees returned to work and Gallery staff began making arrangements to take in the accepted art over the course of the month to allow for spread-out artist appointments and limited staff in the space. Once the artwork was received, the exhibit was hung and awards were picked with the guest juror joining remotely.

In addition to the pending in exhibit dates, the Gallery is also forgoing its usual large-scale opening reception. As well, the Gallery has now put a number of new operating procedures in place to ensure the safety of all staff and visitors. This will include a new, online timed ticketing system, which allows guests to purchase admission online for a specific time-slot in order to maintain social distancing. Masks will be required for all staff and guests, at all times, and new comprehensive cleaning measures are in place.

There is a virtual tour for those interested in viewing the exhibit from their home.

This year’s exhibition was juried by a panel including Gallery Director Heather Bowling, curatorial staff, and guest juror Evan Senn, curator for the Golden West College Art Gallery. In addition to jurying the exhibition, the panel will award over $2,200 in cash prizes for twelve different awards including First, Second, Third Place, Mayor’s Choice, Staff Picks, and more. Awards will be announced online and on the Gallery’s social media. Voting for the Popular Choice Award is open online.

This year the highly-coveted solo show was awarded to Laguna Beach-based painter Perin Mahler. His exhibition, titled Likely Story, is an impressive collection of eight of his most recent large-scale works exploring contemporary narrative painting. This fantastic mini exhibit runs concurrently with Made in California and can be viewed with the rest of the exhibit.

Returning exhibiting artist Vojislav Radovanovic, who has a large-scale installation piece in this year’s show, shared previously, “Being a new resident of Los Angeles, I was unfamiliar and uncertain about submitting to Brea Gallery because of the distance, but I was pleasantly surprised by the professionalism and friendliness of everyone involved and greatly impressed by the gallery exhibition conditions (its contemporary design, clean walls, museum quality lighting). Everything from start to finish of Made in California was a great experience [...]"

  When talking about putting on this annual show during such a challenging time, Director Heather Bowling says, “The Gallery has made a number of adjustments as we move towards re-opening to the public, but from the very start we knew we wanted to move forward with Made in California. The jurying process had already taken place and acceptance letters had just been sent out a week prior to Shelter in Place. It was important to us to honor the commitment to share this incredible work.” She goes on to say, “Our previously scheduled summer show, Taking Up Space, has been rescheduled for 2021 and we’re excited to continue with that exhibition in January.”

Visitors can find out about future exhibitions, events, and workshops at breagallery.com or by following the gallery on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @breagallery.

The Brea Gallery is located in the Brea Civic & Cultural Center at 1 Civic Center Circle, Brea, CA. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12pm – 5pm. General admission is $3, with timed ticketing required for visits. Guests may schedule their visit at: www.breaartgallery.com. For more information, call (714) 990-7731 or visit www.breaartgallery.com.