Shirley Waxman will visit the Ojai Library at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 14, to deliver a talk entitled “Puja and Piety: Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist Art from the Indian Subcontinent.” Ms. Waxman is from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Community Speakers Program.
The Puja and Piety exhibition, on display at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, presents more than 160 objects of diverse media created for temples, home worship, festivals, and roadside shrines to celebrate and illuminate the complex relationship between puja—devotional practice—and religious imagery created to meet spiritual needs. This presentation will offer an overview of these vibrant traditions of private worship and public rituals and the spiritual connection between the images and the divine.
This event is free and open to the public
The City of Ojai Arts Commission is pleased to announce that they are sponsoring an open photography contest to select photographers for a book on the architecture of Ojai. Proceeds from the sale of the book will be used for the Arts Commission’s mentor/student intern program. Entries from photographers able to shoot both black-and-white and color photographs of Ojai architecture are sought.
The Commission’s goal is to produce a high-quality, coffee-table book that features important Ojai public buildings, places of worship, and residences. The final selection of architecture will be determined by the Arts Commission. A panel of judges, selected by the Commission, will select one or more photographers for this important one-of-a-kind project.
The contest will run from April 15 until July 31. For a complete description of contest rules and submission information, please visit http://ojaiphotoclub/apc_submit.html. If you have questions, please contact Bobbi Balderman at 798-2403.
From Friday, April 29, to Sunday, May 1, the Ojai Library will be taking part in WordFest 2016, a festival of words, ideas, and stories. WordFest is a literary nexus that encourages readers and writers of all genres, skill levels, and ages to partake in an extravaganza of events in and around the Ojai Valley. The mission of WordFest is to introduce Ojai to the world as a literary destination, to nurture aspiring writers as well as inspire seasoned authors to further develop their craft, and to celebrate the wealth of literary talent in the Ojai area.
On each of these days the library will have programming running all during our open hours, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. On Friday the library will host free writing classes, run by five esteemed writing instructors, with a different writing class every hour, on the hour. Saturday will feature book and magazine authors along with an open mic session for attendees. On Sunday they will have more author readings to wrap up the weekend! More specific schedule information can be found at www.ojaiwordfest.com.
All library events are free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Ron Solórzano, City Librarian, at 218-9146. The Ojai Library is located at 111 East Ojai Avenue
Throughout the Ojai Studio Artists’ Angles: Best of OSA exhibit, the Ojai Valley Museum will host Art Talks every Saturday morning from 11 am – noon. Saturday April 30, Pam Grau, Jeffery Crussell and Carol Shaw-Sutton will be the featured artists. For further information, call 640-1390.
The Ojai Studio Artists mission is to create an environment where artists thrive ― professional and student alike — and fulfill the potential of the arts to enrich lives and build community.
One-act plays, dialogues, letters and songs from any period? We’ll provide the directors, actors and props. “It just happens that a Fifth Monday coincides with Memorial Day this year,” said Producer John Hankins. The three or four Fifth Mondays in any given year spark Ojai ACT’s “Theater of the Imagination,” in which a variety of unusual and crowd-pleasing performances are produced.
“This is a great chance to showcase the wide variety of performance art that deals with the military throughout the ages, which includes drama, humor and music. Life and death conflict often reveals the human spirit in all its variety, and it ripples through to civilians,” said Hankins, a Vietnam War veteran.
“Soldier On” promises to unearth a gold mine that will be both entertaining and thought-provoking.
Submissions will be accepted until May 5; contact Hankins at 452-2885 or send to
