The newest exhibit at the Xela Institute of Art in Long Beach uses the relationship between a retired professor and her former student as an entryway to explore the artwork of both women.
“She mentored me. I’m a total fan of her work,” said Cynthia Ona Innis of her former teacher, Katherine Sherwood. “She’s just a total hero to me. I feel so lucky to be showing side by side with somebody I have looked up to for a good part of my life.”
Sherwood taught both Innis and Walter Maciel over 30 years ago, at the beginning of her time as a professor at UC Berkeley. According to Maciel, Sherwood was middle-aged at the time, while he and Innis were around 19 to 20 years old. He eventually grew to professionally represent both Sherwood and Innis, and was the one who came up with the concept for the “Inside – Out” exhibit.
“She really was very invested in teaching and spent a lot of time with us as students,” Maciel said of Sherwood. “Just the influence a mentor or teacher or professor can have on a student, I think that’s important.”
Though Sherwood had an early influence on Innis, the two artists’ styles differ greatly, as Innis focuses on creating abstract work inspired by nature using paint and cloth.
“They both work in really unique ways with unusual materials and techniques,” said Maciel. “So even though Cynthia’s work is very abstract, and Katherine’s work is extremely figurative and representational, there’s still a really nice dialogue between the two artists.”
Innis used two techniques to create the seven different works she contributed to “Inside – Out.” For a number of her artworks, fabric was painted, air dried, cut and sewn to other pieces of fabric, before being stretched into a canvas. For other pieces, swatches of painted fabric were applied to a wood panel.
The exhibit is called “Inside – Out” because while Innis’ work focuses on exterior surroundings and locations, Sherwood’s work focuses on what happens within her own body.
Sherwood was still working as a professor at Berkeley in 1997 when she suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage that paralyzed the right half of her body. She refused to let this prevent her from making art, and not only adapted to her disability, but used her experiences as inspiration.
After losing the use of her dominant right hand, Sherwood taught herself to paint with her left. She eventually began including images of her own brain scans in her artwork. In her series titled “Brain Flowers,” Sherwood digitally manipulated images of medical brain scans to look like flowers and other plant life before embedding them in still-life paintings.
“I think one thing everybody should know is that in America, one in four adults has a disability,” Sherwood said. “For years, people hid themselves or their parents hid them. I was very, very privileged to work at UC Berkeley. That was the home of the disability rights movement. […] But now, disability arts are finally on people’s radar. And I think that is an extremely productive thing for the art world.”
Sherwood said her work is reminiscent of the vanitas paintings created in 17th-century Europe by women artists who were barred from studying nude figures. These still-life paintings often depicted objects that symbolize mortality and other metaphysical concepts.
“They talked about the brevity of life,” Sherwood said. “And they had ornate symbolism that people from the 17th century understood, like butterflies represented redemption, sunflowers represented turning your face towards God. And so that was a theme that really appealed to me.”
In Sherwood’s painting “After Josefa de Obidos,” an intricate vase of flowers sits on a patterned surface against a black background. The bouquet seems to depict regular flowers at first glance, but looking closer viewers can see that the petals of several flowers are small, overlapping scans of Sherwood’s brain.
“It’s very subtle. People are like, ‘Oh, it’s beautiful flowers,’ which it is, but then brain scans are in the middle of all the flowers,” said Alex Alexander, founder of the Xela Institute of Art. “It’s really cool. It’s very unique and original.”
“Inside – Out” will be the second exhibit to ever show at the Xela Institute of Art. Alexander opened Long Beach’s newest museum with an inaugural exhibit in Sept. 2022. The space is known as a kunsthalle, a museum that does not have a permanent collection.
Alexander said she opened the space “because it’s important for artists to have a beautiful space to show their work.”
“Inside – Out” will be on display from Feb. 2 to May 27 at the Xela Institute of Art, located at 2176 Pacific Ave. Members of the public can view the exhibit by appointment Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. To make an appointment, visitors should email their name, phone number, and email address to info@xela.art. Admission is free.
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