Dianne Bennett Bio

Growing up in the 1960’s San Fernando Valley when orange trees outnumbered houses I watched as meadows, ranches and groves disappeared to housing tracts, parking lots and shopping malls and developed a passion for preserving open space that influences my work to this day.  My early education in the L.A. City school system left me lost in the masses of the baby boom era. I found refuge in creating art as a way of making order of the  banality and chaos of overcrowded schools and displaced community and culture.  Raised Catholic, we attended mass in the San Fernando Mission where I fell in love with the religious iconography and the mixture of colors and patterns painted on the pews and walls.

Although encouraged by my parents after leaving high school to become a dental hygienist, I had neither the aptitude nor the temperament.  A friend offered me a job in advertising where I worked for many years while attending night school at Otis/Parsons and Art Center College of Design studying graphic design and illustration.

In the early 1980’s I began a career in Los Angeles as a graphic illustrator and logo designer doing nationally published work for publications and advertising clients including; Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, Wall Street, McGraw Hill Bantam/Doubleday and other book publishers.

At the end of my illustration career and a move to Ventura County, I devoted myself to creating art informed by my inner process and inspired by my personal experience.

In 2008 I began creating a body of work celebrating birds, trees and other species threatened by loss of habitat and global climate change as a way of provoking questions about what we as a society hold sacred and to raise awareness of what is disappearing before our very eyes.

Exhibits/Grants/Residencies

2012 "Night of the Living/Day of the Dead", Museum of Ventura County

2012 "De Colores" Santa Paula Art Museum, October 27, 2012 – February 17, 2013

2012 Grant Recipient, "Gerd Koch/Carole Milton Grant"

2012  "one time one place", Museum of Ventura County (solo exhibit) June 9 - August 31

2012  "hear + now" solo exhibit, Logan Gallery, Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts (solo exhibit) May 12 - June 29

2012  "birds i view", Coastal Communities Cancer Center, Ventura, California (public art exhibit) January 15 - April 15

2012  Artist in Residence, Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts

2011 "Be a saint" Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura, California

2011 "Artists in Residence group show" Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center

2010 “before our very eyes”, Beato Gallery, Beatrice Wood Center, Ojai, California

2010 “March”, Vita Art Center, Ventura, California First place honoraium for jurored show.

2010 “Love thy earth”, Vita Art Center, Ventura, California

2010 "time stand still" Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center (solo exhibit)

2010 Grant Recipient, Ventura County Artists in Community Partnerships Grant

2010 "De Colores" exhibit at the Santa Paula Art Museum

2010 "eye wonder", Ojai House, Ojai, California (solo exhibit)

2009 "Human Botany", Julie Rico Galley, Los Angeles, California

2009 Artists in Residence, Joshua Tree National Park, California

2008 “ Entre Cielo Y Tierra, Between Heaven & Earth", Ventura County Museum, Ventura, California

2008 “Made in Ojai”, Ojai Valley Museum, Ojai, California

2007 “Small Works” Group Exhibit, Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts

2007 "Bennett, Norton, Bennett", CSUCI Exhibitions Gallery, Camarillo, California

2006 Featured Artist, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura Art Walk (solo exhibit)

2006 “New Work” Group Exhibit, Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts

2005 Buenaventura Gallery, "Appearances & Prophecies" (solo exhibit)

2004 “Best of the Best”, Buena Ventura Artists Union Gallery, Ventura, California

2004 “Tradition and Technology”, Studio Channel Islands, Camarillo, California

2004 “Buddha Abides” Caruso/Woods Gallery, Santa Barbara, California

2004 Ventura Chamber Music Festival Violin Competition, Ventura, California

To see more work:

Human Arts Gallery, Ojai, California

Beatrice Woods Center for the Arts, Ojai, California

Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California


 

Articles and Publications

download Ojai Quarterly Magazine, Winter 2011 issue: "Art and About" by Anca Colbert

download Spirituality and Health, March 2010 issue: "Openings" by Stephen Kiesling

click here Santa Barbara Independent, October 9, 2010  by Linda Harmon

click here for The Sun Runner magazine, October 2010  by Caryn Davidson

click here to a view a youtube video about my grant project with Ventura Arts Live