Local Exhibit Celebrates Vision and Influence of Roland Reiss

“No two are alike,” David Pagel wrote in the Los Angeles Times about works featured in a 2016 show by Roland Reiss, an influential artist in the Southern California art scene.

A professor of art theory, Pagel celebrated Reiss for the “sensuality of materials, the slipperiness of images and … the maximization of visual impact” in his works.

A new exhibition of Reiss’ work, “Roland Reiss: Unapologetic Flowers and Small Stories,” is now open at the Claremont Museum of Art. The exhibition celebrates the artist, who has served in many roles during his career—as mentor, colleague, and professor/chair of CGU’s Art Department from 1971 to 2001—and continues to influence lives as a practicing artist today.

Sponsored by university Trustee Emerita Peggy Phelps and by 1996 MFA alumna Jane Park Wells and Bill Wells, the exhibition features selections of Reiss’ sculptural tableaux and recent floral paintings. It gives people from Claremont and surrounding communities an opportunity to view, up close and personal, the works of an artist whom CGU alumna Lisa Adams once called in the Huffington Post “a seminal figure” in her life and “a driving force” at CGU

What Pagel said of Reiss’ 2016 exhibition is also true of the experience of the new exhibit, in that attendees are sure to come away from it exhilarated by “the sense that anything is possible.”

The exhibit runs until July 8. For more information visit the Claremont Museum of Art.