Art Gallery

Monday through Friday from 8am – 5pm. View art work from our own Tustin seniors as well as local community artists. For more information contact the Tustin Area Senior Center at 714-573-3340.

Larry Adkins Photography
Monday, January 4 through Friday, January 29
I was born in Sherman, Texas in 1939, grew up mostly in San Antonio, and received a PhD in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968. I moved to Southern California to work for Rockwell International immediately after graduation and have lived here ever since. Throughout most of my career I taught astronomy on a part time basis at Santa Ana, Santiago Canyon and Cerritos Colleges. I became interested in photography at an early age, setting up a darkroom in my parents bath room when I was ten years old. My first pictures were taken with a Kodak Baby Brownie and gradually worked my way up through Ansco, Pentax, Nikon and Canon film cameras and then through various Canon point-and-shoots and DSLRs.
I have published photographs in Popular Photography (First Place, 5th Annual Compact Camera Photography Contest), Photographers Forum (Honorable Mention, Best of Photography Annual 2002), Sky and Telescope, the Los Angeles Times, and Apogee Online Photo Maga¬zine (Honorable Mention, Cityscapes Contest). Recently I have become interested in putting my images in book form. My collection of pictures from a Yosemite workshop in March, 2009 received a Staff Pick citation from Blurb publications.

Irvine Valley College Emeritus and Tustin Area Senior Center Drawing Classes
Monday, February 1 through Friday, February 26
Reception: Friday, February 5, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.
In Spring and Fall 2009, IVC instructor Elizabeth Knox taught Advanced Sketching, featuring classic sketching mediums used in still life, landscapes and life drawing. During the same period, Tustin instructor Erika Brown introduced students to a variety of drawing and painting tools and techniques using graphite, conte crayon, char¬coal, pen and ink, colored pencil and watercolor. Work from both classes is featured in this display.

Tustin Area Senior Center Painting Classes
Monday, March 1 through Friday, March 26
Reception: Friday, March 5, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m.

This month features work by students enrolled through the City of Tustin Parks and Recreation Department, led by instructors Carolyn Westfall and Erika Brown. Westfall teaches Oil Painting where students of all levels learn about composition, color mixing, and a variety of painting approaches and subject matter. Brown teaches Watercolor Painting combining instruction in color theory, technique and composition and development of personal style and creativity.

Denise Zellner
January - February
Hi, my name is Denise Zellner. I was born and raised in Orange, California and except for a few years residing in Tustin Ranch, I have found myself back in Orange.
I had no formal training in painting of any kind until I came here to the Tustin Senior Center and took my first water color painting class under Erika Browns instruction. That was in September of 2007. I have only just begun my journey. I’m a complete novice, but I absolutely love it. As you can see by the diversity of my paintings, I am experimenting - many are class projects while some are my own. I hope you enjoy what you see. I’m enjoying sharing it with you.

Sharon Adele
March - April
Sharon Adele started painting as a hobby while pregnant with her second child in 1968. Oils were her first medium where she dabbled in multiple areas…landscape, seascape, portraits, animals, flowers and scenery. Catching beauty through this medium was a challenge while raising her two sons and working as a teacher full time in Orange Unified School District. She became a school administrator in 1981 and put aside her art work for 20 years. Retirement from being an Elementary School Principal in Irvine Unified School District inspired her to set goals and renew her desire to dabble in paints once again. This time, her new found expression became watercolor, which created its own challenges as she struggled to create loose, transparent dreamy quality images using water and paint to blend thoughts into colorful displays. Keeping those whites was always the hard part! Sharon had taken art lessons from Yaro’s Gallery, Saddleback College and the Adult Senior Centers in Orange and Tustin. Erika Brown has been inspirational in teaching the watercolor and drawing class here at the Tustin Area Senior Center.