TALENTED TRIO
JRB Art at The Elms is set to feature works from three solo artists.
JRB Art at The Elms will present three solo shows in August, featuring work by Behnaz Sohrabian, John Brandenburg and Janet Massad.
The exhibitions will open with a reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Aug. 5, during Paseo’s First Friday Gallery Walk, and continue through Aug. 28.
Sohrabian was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, where her lifelong relationship with art began. This passion drove Behnaz to complete her bachelor’s degree in art and applied chemistry and a master’s in art studies.
As a young woman, Behnaz moved to Oklahoma to be closer to family.
“My work is about me, my life — about being a woman,” Behnaz said in a news release. “I paint women as people, strong people with depth and power. They are delicate and sensitive, sure — but not weak.”
Brandenburg is a highly regarded Norman artist working in acrylic, collage, charcoal, ink and pastel. His work is included in the permanent collection of the state of Oklahoma and has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the state.
In addition to being a painter, Brandenburg is a poet and playwright and longtime arts and theater reviewer for The Oklahoman. His work for The Oklahoman has made him a recipient of a Governor’s Arts Award for his journalistic arts writing.
“I am calling this show of my paintings and mixed media drawings ‘Noble Figures,’ because most of them contain figurative as well as semiabstract and organic or landscape-like content, and I worked on them at the studio-house that my wife, Janet Massad, and I own in Noble,” Brandenburg said in the news release.
Many of the drawings on paper were begun in a life drawing group Brandenburg coordinates at Firehouse Art Center in Norman, or at Geatches Studio in Oklahoma City.
Massad received her master of fine arts in ceramics from the Claremont Graduate School in California. She was also technical assistant to Colin Pearson in his London studio in 1988. Massad received an individual artist fellowship from the city of Pasadena for her work in clay. She has taught at, among others, Pasadena City College, Goddard College in Vermont, New Mexico State University and The Chautauqua Institute in New York as resident ceramics faculty. Massad has exhibited her work nationally. In addition to being a ceramist, Massad is a painter and writer.