It's been quite a year so far. I began 2026 painting at @taftgardens and continued the work I started there in my own studio in Ojai. They will be on view in early June during the 6th Annual Art in Nature Exhibition Openings and Annual Fundraiser at the gardens.
Below is all the information you'll need to reserve your spot. Move quickly, because I hear free tickets are going fast.
My deepest thanks go to Taft Gardens for having me and for hosting the events and to Mikael Jorgensen @mikaeljorgensen for capturing these awesome photos!
Event details:
Evening Fundraiser & Exhibition Openings
Saturday, June 6th | 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
- $250 per ticket
- Meet the artists and explore seven site-specific installations throughout the Studio Garden.
- Experience roaming culinary stations by Chef Ryan Beckfeld and Seasons Catering.
- Support our non-profit through a raffle for special Taft Gardens experiences and enjoy presentations about the 2025-26 Artists in Residence.
Free Daytime Exhibition Openings
Monday, June 8th | 1:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
- Meet the artists and explore seven site-specific installations throughout the Studio Garden.
- Access is timed entry and ticketed by car (meaning you can bring as many people as can fit in your vehicle).
Enjoy this community event generously funded by a grant from the Ojai Arts Commission.
- Ticket Info: Links for both the Evening
Participating Artists in Residence:
9-MONTH RESIDENCY
Rodrigo Ormachea @rormache with Hugo Ormachea @ormacheajewelry
Son and Father, Ceramicist and Metalsmith from Ventura
1-MONTH INVITATIONAL RESIDENCY
Russell Crotty @russellcrottystudio
Visual Artist from Ojai
9-MONTH RESEARCH NON-STUDIO RESIDENCIES
Summer van Houten summervanhouten
Analog Photo-Based Artist from Ojai
Alicia Morris Soto @alislala
Children’s Book Author from Ojai
1-MONTH STUDIO RESIDENCIES
Tom Pazderka @tompazderka
Painter and Writer from Ojai
Emily Thomas MaHarry @em_thomas_maharry
Painter and Printmaker from Ojai
Carol Shaw-Sutton @carolshawsutton
Fiber Artist from Ojai
#tompazderka #art #painter #Ojai #taftgardens
Moments from hanging out with friends at the 'Textual Integration' group exhibition at @rubenstein_chan . It's an amazing show! Bonnie and Irene did such a great job curating. This gallery really is a hidden gem in Carpinteria.
#tompazderka #art #gallery #exhibition ##contemporaryart
What else is new, besides watching the slow motion train wreck that is the current US foreign and domestic policy on defense (war) and immigration, or witnessing the doom spiral of the president into madness, delusion and paranoia? Oh yes, one of my more esoteric works, 'The List of Dictators' was just installed at @rubenstein_chan for their upcoming 'Textual Integration' exhibition. For this show I am doing an update to the list, which was originally made in 2018. And no, Trump is sadly not on the list. Yet! Depends on what happens in three years.
The opening reception is this Saturday at the gallery in Carpinteria 2-5 pm.
About the show:
14 artists find creative ways to employ text as an integral part of their art., i.e. where text and poetry aren’t added elements, but essential forms within the composition.
April 18, 2-5 p.m., Opening reception Exhibit runs April 18 - May 31
May 14 , 7:00 p.m. Ekphrastic poetry reading led by Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, George Yatchisin.
#tompazderka #art #carpinteria #gallery #rubensteinchan
So I took another long break from posting. Not because there is nothing to post, but because the life and work I currently have doesn't allow for the 'free' time it takes to compose some sort of meaningful content. I'm actually exhausted, is the simple answer, and at the end of a long day spent of meetings, answering emails, listening to the barrage of notifications from the phone and staring into screens, the last thing I want to do is post. Mostly I just want to escape into the studio or somewhere outside right get my head straight.
But what have I been doing? Well, besides painting the @taftgardens residency paintings, I've been making cyanotypes. I almost nearly forgot how interesting and fun these are to make. After lots of trials and errors I've been able to make a couple of editions thus far. Formally, they are cyanotype reproductions of my paintings. This one is Ex Nihilo.
Let me know what you think or if you'd like to get one. They're reasonably priced. They'll also be for sale during the @theojaistudioartists Second Saturday tour in July.
#tompazderka #Ojai #artist #cyanotype #print
Not everything I paint is big. This little guy fits snug into my hand. Everything else remains the same. The ash, the oil paint, the burned surface - except here it's paper as you can see from the back. I don't have this painting anymore. It was purchased a few months ago. But from time to time I get the itch to make more. Feels like that time.
#tompazderka #painting #art #candle #mood
During his residency at Taft Gardens, Tom Pazderka @tompazderka has been examining the grounds as a microcosm of the life cycle, focusing on the transition between growth and decay. This project extends his decade-long practice of using ash as a medium, expanding from wildfire remnants to include organic matter collected directly from Taft.
Pazderka gathers fallen leaves, branches, and botanical debris from the garden floor to produce his materials. He burns specific plants in batches, rubs the various ashes into a burnt wood surface, and then applies white paint in many layers to create a photo-realistic image. These botanical "Memento Mori" portraits document plants using their own remains to create a secondary life for the flora after death. In this work, Tom considers what is necessary for the circle of life and thoughtfully connects nature to the fundamental process of transformation.
Guests on a Self-Guided Tour can visit Pazderka’s studio to observe this process and learn about his practice firsthand through Saturday, January 31st.
Save the Date: Tom Pazderka’s work will be installed at Taft Gardens on June 6th for the Daytime Public Exhibition Opening and Evening Fundraiser Dinner.
Portrait by @mikaeljorgensen
Graphics by @lulusandhaus
Working at @taftgardens reminded me how much I enjoy artist residencies and how each place changes the work that gets made, sometimes it's subtle, at other times more overt, but invariably the time is worth it. I just wish there was more of it.
#tompazderka #Ojai #artist #residency #studio
After the recent rains that closed down the Taft Gardens I'm back in the Protea studio. The holiday break was good, but short, as usual. I'm now looking forward to getting as much studio time for the rest of January as possible to work on this series of memento mori images. Each painting has the ash from the dead parts of the plants I've collected from the garden and then burned, applied over the burned wood surface of the panel.
This is one of the in progress ash and oil paintings of an image of one of te striking aloe plants. It's an interesting one, because much of it and thus much of what you see, is dead plant material, dried and withered away, while only the top portion is alive and beautiful. I consider the dead parts of the aloe also beautiful, just in a different way and for different reasons.
#tompazderka #taftgardens #Ojai #art #painting
We went to see the World Ballet production of The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve in Memphis. After the show we had a few moments to meet up with my cousin @nadezda_m_v who is one of the dancers, fresh on the American tour and already had a solo in the second act.
It's amazing to see this amount of talent and level of skill and I'm extremely proud of her accomplishments! She is now on break, but returning for the second part of the tour in February where she will be dancing in Cinderella. So looking forward to that!
#art #artlife #ballet #familyreunion #dancer
This is my first update in a while. I hope folks have been doing alright out there.
Well ... it turns out this is going to be my studio for the next couple of months or so!! A little while back, must've been summertime still, I found out I was one of the lucky few who got a slot in the Taft Gardens artist residency. I didn't announce it then, so I'm announcing it now.
So far it's been an amazing experience, getting to roam the garden, meeting the staff that run it, everyone that's coordinating the program, and of course, all the other artists, finding out how their experience was. Russell Crotty was in the studio before me and he did some amazing work.
I started my work a few weeks ago, walking around the garden, collecting dead plant material and turning it into ash. It's what I pitched in my residency application. Now I'm using those ashes in the paintings, creating a kind of memento mori portraits of those plants. It's simple, but effective, I think. It's what I've done in the very beginning, just with ash clouds. That was almost ten years ago now, when I started this black and white ... erm ... 'era', for the lack of a better term. As they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
@taftgardens@russellcrottystudio #tompazderka #art #Ojai #taftgardens #artist #residency #artistinresidence #painting
Great conversation and some tough questions from @noxonart during last night's event at @carolynglasoebaileyfoundation . Thanks to everyone that came out to show support and find out more about what compels me to continue to create these, often very dark paintings. The turn out was great and the questions from the audience give me a lot of confidence that what I'm doing is resonating with people at a deeper level. Photo credit: CGBL
#tompazderka #art #Ojai #artist #painter
Spending time in the studio with one of my newest best friends Rita, an amazing black lab and German shepherd mix, during the @theojaistudioartists tour. She's been a much needed distraction from Snu's recent passing.
Photo and dog credit goes to @klara_dykast_von_steinsberg
#tompazderka #artist #Ojai #mansbestfriend
