Joyce Rudolph, Weekend
Thumbing through a selection of postcards featuring images by Dory
Grade, one can almost feel the breeze ruffling through the lacy flower
petals. Using cool, light watercolors, she creates a calm serenity in her
landscapes.
The Eagle Rock artist says she is comfortable whether the media is
drawing, watercolor, oil or acrylic painting, portraiture, silkscreen,
etching or lithographic printmaking.
Not surprising for someone who has spent 30 years practicingher work.
She has taken classes at Jepson Art Institute in LosAngeles and
scholarship study at the California School of Art.She was also an
award-winning designer at El Camino College.
She studied with noted Czechoslovakian master painter Josef Sihavy and
other outstanding private teachers including watercolorist Robert E.
Wood.
Printmaking training came at Loma Linda University, Otis-Parsons
School of Design and Glendale Community College with additional methods
learned at UCLA.
Grade's beautiful works of nature can be seen in her 26th show at
Descanso Gardens through May 4 titled "Art and Soul." The exhibit is in
the Boddy House, which is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. everyday. It is
part of the gardens' "Tulipmania: Spring Festival of Flowers" series
continuing through Easter Sunday.
Her display features watercolors of forest, mountain and seacoast
scenery with florals of spring. She captures thoughtful moods in her
orginal designs that combine ink drawings on rice paper collaged on
acrylic paintings of familiar landmarks. Charcoal drawings, prints and
greeting cards are also for sale.
Ceramic pieces by Claude Hulce, Barbara Rog and Judy Springborn, all
associates of the Creative Arts Center of Burbank, complement the Grade's
watercolors. Hulce has created vessels with leaves and faces, colorful
bowls and platters of multiple glazes and other pieces with natural
themes.
Rog focuses on wheel-thrown pieces including pots with handles, lidded
vessels and pitchers. Springborn shows a new series of garden totems,
composed of faces stacked on a pipe to be sunk into garden soil. She has
also made scarecrow heads to be perched on straw-stuffed figures.
Also at Descanso today is a Sprouting Gardeners Festival from 9 a.m.
to 4:30 p.m. There will be plant vendors and experts, a display of new
plants from around the world, Bonsai and floral demonstrations and a
planting table for children.
Admission to Descanso Gardens is $5 for adults; $3 seniors and
students; $1 ages 5 to 12; and free for those under 5. There is free
