Both SPARC galleries will be open for Saturday’s Arts Crawl from 3-6pm. At the SPARC Centre Gallery at the Fremont Centre Theatre building will be an exhibition featuring works by mixed-media artist, Karen Steen, entitled “Celebrating Nature”.
Inspired by a natural environment under threat, Steen says she views her vibrant, buoyant works “as ecosystems, a group of diverse elements and forces that have settled into a balanced and dynamic system.” These are interpreted through an amalgamation of painting, drawing, and paper shapes laser-cut from images of life forms in the natural world. “I attempt to imbue my pieces with qualities of the biological world: diversity, repetition, intricacy, rhythm, balance and interconnection,” she states.
Steen’s interest in nature’s diverse ecosystems began in a childhood fascination with tidepools—“small worlds filled with life.” In addition to academic degrees from ArtCenter College of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Steen, based in Pasadena and a South Pasadena native,…