NEWS
MOJAVE | Artist Talk
Featuring artists who have participated in the The Mojave National Preserve Artists- in-Residence program, the exhibition depicts a variety of interpretations of the magnificent landscape, history, culture, ecology, and geology of the Mojave National Preserve.
Artworks include traditional and contemporary media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and installation. The exhibition includes the following artists: Gerard Burkhart, Mollie Doctrow, Dani Dodge, Christine Huhn, Natalie Larsen, Eric Merrell, Amir Moshfegh, Kristine Paiz, Britney Penouilh, Emily Silver, and Allanah Vokes.
We heart L.A. Parks
Late February/Early March 2021
We Heart L.A. Parks celebrates these important sites by featuring more than 50 public parks within the city of Los Angeles with original illustrations, personal stories, and fun activities, including two colorful fold-outs: an L.A. parks map and an L.A. Park Adventures board game.
A percentage of profits from the book will be donated to the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, whose mission is to contribute to the equity and well-being of our neighborhoods through the development of parks, gardens, and community-driven organizing.
ART IN THE TIME OF CORONA
New Museum Los Gatos
December 11, 2020
“Isolation has been difficult, but it has also been a shared experience. The artists that I selected for this exhibition have clearly been introspective while coming to terms with an unprecedented reality… employing their work as ‘a barometer of the moment.’”
— Craig Krull, exhibition juror
MOJAVE PRESERVE CONSERVANCY
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
September 30, 2020
Britney Penouilh is an interdisciplinary artist whose interest in geology and natural environments has greatly influenced her work. Penouilh’s work seeks to explore such places rather than exploiting with the benefit of preserving rather than plundering. A former artist-in-residence in the Mojave National Preserve, Penouilh’s work connects landscape to ritual, tying the spiritual realm to the scientific.
Visiting Artist Britney Penouilh
DECEMBER 2019 by PILGRIM SCHOOL
High school 3D art students will be introduced to Penouilh's interdisciplinary work. Students will go on a field trip to a mine in San Diego to collect gems and minerals from nature and bring them back to the classroom to cast them into plaster sculptures.
Mixed Media Art Exhibit by Britney Penouilh Captivates Mojave National Preserve Visitors – ‘Earth Through Time’
ON 29 March 2019 BY CALIFORNIA NEWSWIRE
Mojave National Preserve is presenting “Earth Through Time: Providence Mountains and the Mojave National Preserve,” a solo, mixed media exhibition of paintings, etchings and installation art at the Desert Light Gallery, Kelso Visitors Center, by nationally celebrated National Park Service Artist in Residence, Britney Penouilh.
Artist Britney Penouilh Makes the DSC Her Home
ON 12 JUL 2018 BY DESERTSTUDIESCENTER
From June 22 – July 7, Britney Penouilh of the Mojave National Preserve Artist’s Foundation (MNPAF) completed the first half of her artist residency in the Mojave National Preserve at the DSC. Trading the humidity of her hometown, New Orleans, for a drier heat, Britney moved to California in October of 2017 and answered the call for artists from the MNPAF.
Meet Britney Penouilh
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Being able to connect with people on a visceral and emotional level. Despite my deep thoughts and philosophies that go into creating the work, the visual experience is the first impression. I am compelled to make work that is aesthetically interesting but carries forth an idea without being too literal and too obscure.
I aim to create a visual dialogue that is accessible and engaging, and slowly pulls you down the rabbit hole from which the work was created.
Artist Profile: Britney Penouilh, A Journey from New Orleans to LA
She’s deeply drawn to the California desert by her twin pursuits, and describes in visceral terms the artistic and exploratory rush she gets from visiting there. In some ways, Penouilh is like the Indiana Jones of artists.
ACTIVISM
PODCAST
VIDEO
ARTIST RESIDENCIES
Artist Residency Summer 2018
EARTH THROUGH TIME: Providence Mountains and the Mojave National Preserve
Solo Exhibition at Desert Light Gallery, Mojave, CA
March 29 - June 30 2019
a portion of the proceeds will support the national preserve
Here you will find photographs from my stay in the Mojave Desert. I studied a variety of places within the preserve: Kelso Dunes, Sweeny Granite, Cima Road, Vulcan Mine, Morning Star Mine, Mitchell Caverns, Petroglyphs at Hole-in-the-Wall, Providence Mountains, the Lava Tubes, etc. The Mojave is extraordinary in its’ diversity. From sand dunes to Joshua Trees, ancient volcanic lava flow, limestone caverns that were once under water (millions of years ago), and abandon ore mines that were once producing copper, gold, iron, and silver. But it was the Providence Mountains that truly tugged on my heart strings. The Providence Mountains was my muse for the work created for the solo exhibition EARTH THROUGH TIME. After the show was installed, I took a couple of groups of people to camp in the desert, visit some of my favorite sites and see the art installation.
Artist Residency April 10 – 24, 2017
Camille Schafer, 75, from Normandy, France was 2 years old when a World War II device detonated in her hand. She lost her right hand, half of her forearm, and didn’t speak for 2 years. Camille spent many years of her life trying to establish normalcy with prosthetics. But Camille is a force of nature and has accomplished more with one hand than many people have do with two: Camino de Santiago, met Salvador Dali along the route, moved to Canada to teach art, married her husband in a Cessna above Toledo, Ohio, built an architectural gem in the middle of Hot Springs, North Carolina where she would later create the artist residency where I would meet her, she has sewn 8’ quilts, built monumental mosaics, and every equinox and solstice she hiked 9 miles to camp on a sacred mountain beneath the moonlight. One of the projects I created at during my time there was a cast of her hand.
September 2016
Lake Clark, Alaska is truly a special place. With a Geology background, naturally I was inspired by the land and its geomorphology, especially the glacial silt and its lovely green color. The work I produced during my residency included mobiles. Small etchings of local herbs, flowers, and plants with medicinal purposes, all strung on local drift wood and inked in white. One large etching included a Woolly Mammoth, the state fossil. Two large paintings of Mount McKinley and Glacial Silt.
March - May 2016
For six weeks, I was an artist-in-residence with the Carole Feuerman Foundation in New York City, NY. Carole Feuerman is a hyperrealist sculptor who started the movement in the 70's, working in bronze and resin. I assisted in making sculptures, learned how to live cast with both silicon and plaster, mold making, laying up the mold, chasing the sculpture once it is released from the mold, and the painting process to finalize the piece.