Artist Statement

I have been creating art for the last 66 years in different media—ceramics, bronze sculpture, drawing, painting, photography and public art. Most of my work evolves in series that sometimes take many years to accomplish.

Education

1972 Santa Monica Community College, CA (Welding)
1955 Alfred University, Alfred, NY (Ceramics)
1952 BA Seminar Hakibutsim, Tel Aviv, Israel

Bio

Bruria Finkel creates works of art in a variety of media. These take the form of both temporary and permanent installations. She has participated in over 86 solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Her work is also found in many private and public collections, including the archives of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Getty Research Institute (Otis interviews), Luce Foundation, Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, Phoenix Museum of Art and Rutgers University.

Finkel is one of the pioneers of the Los Angeles feminist art movement. She not only helped found the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists (LACWA) to protest gender discrimination at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1968 but also served as a board member of the groundbreaking alternative institution, Womanspace, founded in 1970.

She has been curating exhibitions since the 1970s. The most recent shows include Women Artists of Southern California: Then and Now at Santa Monica-Track 16 Gallery in 2007, Emphasis Santa Monica at the Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery at Santa Monica College in 2008 and Breaking in Two at Arena 1 Gallery in Santa Monica in 2012.

Finkel has also had an active public service career as a founder and board member of the Santa Monica Arts Commission (1982-1996) and an elected official of the Santa Monica Rent Control Board (1995-2002). As a long time leader in making Santa Monica a vibrant center for artists as well as the arts, The Bruria Finkel Award award was created by the Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Department in 2013 to annually honor an artist activist in the community. In January 2014, Bruria received the Global Visionary/local leader award from the City of Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. In March 2018, she was one of four honorees who received a Nevertheless She Persisted 2018 award from the League of Women Voters. Today she serves on the Board of Directors for Downtown Santa Monica, Inc.

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