David Kassan

VENTURA, CA - Artists, critics, academics, collectors and students will come together in Ventura in October to discuss representational art’s place in the 21st century.

California Lutheran University is presenting TRAC2012: The Representational Art Conference from Oct. 14 through 17 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Representational art portrays recognizable people, places and objects and captures natural phenomena while demonstrating the artist’s skill. The rise of postmodern art pushed representational art to the shadows both in academia and the art world. CLU faculty members Michael Pearce and Michael Lynn Adams organized the conference to address the lack of critical appreciation of representational art and explore the new directions it might take.

The keynote speakers are art critic Jed Perl with The New Republic and artist John Nava, whose major commissions include the tapestries in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Perl will discuss “Re-Imagining Representation: On the Challenges of the Real and the Ideal.” Nava will present “Representing by Hand: Painting in the Digital Age.” Featured presenter Virgil Elliot, a painter and writer, will speak on “The Concept of Quality in Art: Inspirational and Practical Concerns.”

Panelists include Elaine Adams, CEO of the California Art Club and director of American Legacy Fine Arts LLC; Peter Adams, one of California’s most recognized landscape and figurative painters; David Kassan, a teacher at the Art Students League in New York best known for his life-size realist portraits; Sadie Valeri, an internationally recognized still-life oil painter from San Francisco; and Ruth Weisberg, a drawing and printmaking professor at the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts whose work is exhibited internationally.

Studio art demonstrations will be presented by Béla Bácsi on sculpting, Jeremy Lipking on figure painting, Tony Pro on portraitpainting, Alexey Steele on Russian academy drawing and Mia Tavonatti on mosaics. Kassan will give a demonstration during a Ventura Limoncello tasting.

American Artist magazine just named Kassan and Lipking among the Top 25 Great Artists of Tomorrow.

Academics from throughout the United States and foreign countries including Australia, Iran and Nigeria will present papers. Exhibits and presentations organized in conjunction with the conference will take place at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard and Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture and William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art on CLU’s Thousand Oaks campus.

For more information and registration, visit TRAC2012.org or email info@TRAC2012.org.