The act of self-disclosure is an intentional revelation of one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings to another individual; it is part confession and part declaration. The 11^th Biennial Ontario Open Art Exhibition at the Ontario Museum of History and Art was an aesthetic self-revelation by established and emerging contemporary artists. The widely varied works were both two and three-dimensional and employed a variety of media and subject matter, from textile to photography to clay and metal. Contemporary portraiture kept company with cat paintings and wide-angle photography was side-by-side with optical abstraction. With Kathy Ervin, Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Cal State San Bernardino as the juror, this show is truly an example of a collective community voice.

Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, Ancestral Reclamation, 2020

Of particular interest is Ancestral Reclamation (2020), a photomontage/assemblage by Dr. Patricia Jessup-Woodlin, a retired art education professor. On a narrow wooden panel, a portrait of a woman of color is elegantly rendered in fragments of torn collage. She is crowned with a pyramid of ascending cowrie shells and her mahogany eyes are proudly confrontational and penetrating. This work is suggestive of the recent Black Panther film and the woman portrayed—a fragmented portrait of all African women—appears to be reimagining a Black future. It is no coincidence that using cowrie shells extends the meaning of this work’s title. In Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania dating back to the 14^th century, cowrie shells served as currency for goods and services. Ultimately, these shells constituted power and were used by Africans for protection. The significance of this work is twofold. First, it resists erasure the glorious past before African enslavement. Second, it illustrates the message of Haile Gerima’s 1993 film, Sankofa; the lessons learned from past function as a roadmap for actualizing a powerful future.

Lady Day’s Lyrics (2019) by Annie Toliver, an exhibition prizewinner, puts a fresh spin on the idea that relationships range from the toxic to transformative. In this portrait of Billie Holiday, rendered with fabric and ink embellishments, complementary hues jigsaw a profile. Holiday’s face is centered in the composition, floating above a background of sheet music that makes reading the titles of her greatest hits an irresistible pleasure.

Rick Cummings, Aluminum Dreams, 2021

Rick Cummings captures a hurried desperation in his mixed media Aluminum Dreams (2021) where a woman is depicted pushing a shopping cart filled with aluminum cans. Additionally, her yellow star (five pointed, not six) designed shirt alludes to an exploitative, capitalist America limping along economically amid a push to reopen the country immediately after a global pandemic has ravaged the planet.

This exhibition offers a glance into a talented community of artists. Professionally trained or self-taught their willingness to reveal themselves creatively encourages a reciprocal viewer response—actions that foreshadow a change in one’s thinking, not only about art but about ourselves. In Parable of the Sower (1993) Octavia Butler expressed it best by writing “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”

11^th Annual Biennial Open Art Exhibition

Ontario Museum of History and Art

225 S. Euclid Ave. Ontario, CA 91762

May 6-August 15, 2021