Cal Lutheran hosts Shakespeare art show

The exhibit will include “Rhyming Couplet,” a collagraph by Corinna Button.

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – May 23, 2017) William Shakespeare-inspired art will be exhibited this summer at California Lutheran University while the annual Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival takes place on the Thousand Oaks campus. 

“Shakespeare: A Celebration” will be on display from Thursday, June 1, though Thursday, Sept. 28, in the Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture.

Bankside Gallery in London displayed the first version of this exhibit in 2016 in collaboration with the Globe Theatre to mark the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death.

At the Kwan Fong, a range of paintings and prints by artists from the British Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers will relate to Shakespeare’s life and plays including “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Twelfth Night”, “The Tempest,” “Winter’s Tale” and “Antony and Cleopatra.”

The featured artists include Corinna Button, who incorporates printmaking techniques into her paintings and ceramic sculptures, which can be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum and Ashmolean Museum in England and the Jiangsu Art Gallery in China; David Brayne, whose textured paintings of abstracted figures are about open spaces and expanses; and Veta Gorner, a Russian-born printmaker who works from studios in England and Sweden.

The exhibit also features works by Hilary Adair, Jim Anderson, Margaret Ashman, Mychael Barratt, Jo Barry, Richard Bawden, June Berry, Dennis Roxby Bott, Liz Butler, John Crossley, Hilary Daltry, Anne Desmet, John Duffin, David Firmstone, Roger Harris, Julie Held, Frank Kiely, Anita Klein, Linda Landers, Sasa Marinkov, Anne Marlow, Mike Middleton, Julia Midgley, Bridget Moore, Sumi Perera, Simon Pierse, Richard Pikesley, Geoffrey Pimlott, Neil Pittaway, Trevor Price, Peter Quinn, Mark Raggett, Denis Ryan, Peter S. Smith, Richard Sorrell, Sandy Sykes, Bren Unwin, Roy Willingham, Judy Willoughby and Joseph Winkelman.

All of the works will be for sale and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the gallery.

This year, the Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival will run from June 30 through Aug. 6 and feature “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and “Julius Caesar.”

The exhibit is free. The gallery is located in Soiland Humanities Center at 120 Memorial Parkway. It is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday. 

For more information, contact Rachel T. Schmid at 805-493-3697 or visit CalLutheran.edu/kwanfong.