around town Art Scene
Pam Dixon A Benicia Original Long-time Benicia resident Pam Dixon will be the featured artist in an exhibition that opens on Saturday, July 23, in the Showcase Gallery at Arts Benicia. The
in the 1980s. Born in San Francisco, she was raised in Carmel. She moved to Benicia in the 1970s, just as the art scene was beginning to flourish here. Having been brought up by parents in showbusiness who traveled constantly
exhibition will include paintings, mixed media, and ceramic works, and run through August 28, concurrent with I Figure: Contemporary Figurative Art, which includes works selected by juror Randall Sexton. An opening reception for both exhibitions will be held on Saturday, July 23, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm. Dixon began her career in free-lance commercial and industrial art, later becoming a serious exhibiting artist
along a theatre and vaudeville circuit, Benicia appealed to her as a cozy place to raise children. After the passing of her husband, she stayed and became involved in the emerging local art community, eventually founding Gallery 621, a co-op for contemporary artists in Benicia. Dixon describes herself as a Bay Area figurative artist whose art developed during the California funk
n Jean Purnell
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movement, which pushed back against the established non-figurative forms of abstract expressionism. “It was a most exciting time in the arts, and for Benicia, with its vacant industrial buildings right on the water, just waiting to be turned into studio live-work space.” Benicia benefited from a close commute to UC Davis, where the Art and Sculpture departments attracted Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley and others. She considers her association with Arneson and Neri, who became a long-time partner, to have been major influences. “They were spontaneous, bold, creating outside the box, fun.” Painting and drawing dominated Dixon’s work in earlier years; only during the last decade has she turned to ceramics after it was suggested that her artistic content would translate well into that medium. Her work is edgy, colorful, uninhibited, and unpredictable, even to herself. Looking for a way to place her work in context, Dixon reflects on contemporary artists and the parts of their work that resonate with her own: the movement in Alice Neel’s portraits; the splash and imprecision of Joan Brown’s paintings; Viola Frey’s expressionist narratives; the collage of ideas of Squeak Carnwath. Informed by a worldly sense of other places and people, she freely incorporates objects and fragments, cartoons, words, characters and action into the storyboard of her vibrant and often whimsical artwork. “As a young girl, I created a stage in my closet with my dolls and animals. My art continues to give life, energy, and motion to the characters I create. You can’t really pigeon-hole my work, it’s hard to describe. I never know what I am creating until I am already into it.”
