Contemporary Art Exhibitions
Located in Ventura, CA and home to 4 galleries Vita Art Center’s exhibits bring museum quality contemporary art to Ventura.
Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday, 12–4pm. Free to the public.
Stone Bodies/ Cuerpos De Piedra
Saturday March 28, 3-5pm, free event
Stone Bodies
Stone Bodies is a performative installation centered on a chain of 1,500 ceramic stones created collaboratively by 13 women over eight days (32 hours). Activated through the collective carrying of the chain by the artist and participating women, the work foregrounds the weight of shared labor, care, and interdependence. Developed with Hispanic community members from Ventura County, the installation uses the body to engage questions of endurance, memory, and belonging, holding connection in both material and symbolic form.
Cuerpos de Piedra
Cuerpos de Piedra es una instalación performativa centrada en una cadena de 1,500 piedras de cerámica creadas de manera colaborativa por 13 mujeres a lo largo de ocho días (32 horas). Activada a través del acto colectivo de cargar la cadena por parte de la artista y las mujeres participantes, la obra pone en primer plano el peso del trabajo compartido, el cuidado y la interdependencia. Desarrollada con integrantes de la comunidad hispana del condado de Ventura, la instalación utiliza el cuerpo para abordar cuestiones de resistencia, memoria y pertenencia, sosteniendo la conexión tanto en su dimensión material como simbólica.
SHE PERSISTS: 12 Ventura Women Artists
On exhibit February 28 - April 19, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Exhibit Artists Include: Carol Shaw Sutton, Cassandra C. Jones, Cheryl Ann Thomas, Jenchi Wu, Jennifer Wolf, Karen Kitchel, Lynn Hanson, Maria Adela Diaz, Marianne McGrath, Monica Furmanski, Susan Petty, and Susan Stinsmuehlen Amend
She Persists honors women artists of Ventura County whose creative practices have spanned two decades or more. Presented in recognition of Women’s History Month, She Persists acknowledges the women whose sustained commitment to their craft has shaped the artistic identity of this community. Through works that are thoughtful, experimental, expressive, and rooted in lived experience, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the vital role of women’s perspectives in contemporary art and the lasting impact of their creative legacies.
Crystalline Atmospheres:
Landscapes by Hilary Brace
on exhibit February 28 - April 19, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Hilary Brace is celebrated for charcoal drawings that are modest in scale yet expansive in feeling—moody waves, drifting clouds, and richly theatrical weather rendered with quiet intensity. Writing about her work, The New York Times observed that “once in a while you come across an art of such refined technique that it seems the product of sorcery more than human craft…” Brace begins on a smooth sheet of polyester film that she darkens with charcoal, then works reductively—lifting and carving light out of the surface with erasers and custom-made tools. As Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight noted, the resulting imagery “conjures ephemeral poetics of light and space.”
Brace’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Drawing, grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a California Arts Council Fellowship. Her solo exhibitions have been reviewed in major publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Art in America, and The New Yorker. Her work has been exhibited widely in museums and academic galleries in California and nationally, including venues such as the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, the Riverside Art Museum, the Bakersfield Museum of Art, Scripps and Pomona Colleges, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Boise Art Museum, Real Artways, and the Frye Art Museum.
Vessels of Clay:
Silent Connection & Transformation
on exhibit February 28 - April 19, 2026
Gallery Hours: Saturday/Sunday 12-4pm
Participating Artists: Amy Bernard Bryant, Jennifer H. Cheh, Cirilo Domine, Grace Potter
Curator: Jennifer H. Cheh
Vessels of Clay: Silent Connection & Transformation brings together four artists whose distinct practices in clay converge in an exploration of relation—linking self to lineage, sorrow to regeneration, earth to spirit, and absence to presence. Each artist engages with clay not only as a material but as a conduit for transformation, reflection, and communion. Clay, ancient and mutable, becomes a shared language by which the artists navigate memory, spirituality, and collective experience. The exhibition weaves together sculptures, organic forms, tactile surfaces, and resonant voids, forming a quiet yet powerful meditation on what binds us: to our ancestors, to the earth, and to the unseen forces that shape our existence. “These artists approach clay as both vessel and voice,” says curator Jennifer Cheh. “Through their works, we encounter moments of reverence, loss, and renewal—each gesture in clay an act of connection.
GWYNN MURRILL
Panthers
The Oasis at Vita Art Center
Experience the power and grace of Gwynn Murrill’s large-scale cast bronze panthers, on view at The Oasis at Vita Art Center streamlined forms that capture the essence of movement, Murrill’s felines invite close looking and quiet contemplation as they prowl across the outdoor setting.