June Edmonds in her studio. Photography by Chris Warmald.
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is proud to announce that June Edmonds has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts."
June Edmonds uses abstract painting to explore how color, repetition, movement, and balance can serve as conduits to spiritual contemplation and interpersonal connection. Of critical importance is her interest in redefining traditional Western color theory. Color associations can be connected to culturally symbolic imagery, trauma, and emotion, and are thus able to communicate about power and systemic disenfranchisement.
Edmonds' Energy Circle paintings, begun in the early 2000s and ongoing, draw on various cultural and art historical references to sacred geometries. She uses the circle as a doorway to memory, to identity and to connection to the highest and most mysterious parts of the inner self. Exploring the psychological construct of skin color or tone through pattern and abstract painting has proven to be a revealing gesture. These ideas are explored in Edmonds’ Flag series (2017- present) which explore the alignment of multiple identities including race, nationality, gender, and/or political leanings. A more recent series of paintings, started in 2020, explore the history of early Black female property owners in Southern California. The shapes in these paintings allude to streets, geography, and the Great Migration. In 2021, Edmonds completed a monumental mural for Murals of La Jolla about one of these historical figures.
June Edmonds was born 1959 in Los Angeles and earned her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and BFA from San Diego State University. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned a certificate in education from UCLA. Solo exhibitions include a 40-year survey exhibition, June Edmonds: Full Spectrum (2021-2022), organized and presented by Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles; June Edmonds (2021) at the University Art Gallery, California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, CA; and a forthcoming solo exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, CA (opening September 2022). Edmonds has also exhibited at the California African American Museum, Davis Museum of Art/Wellesley College, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, David Owsley Museum of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Luckman Fine Art Gallery at California State University Los Angeles, and Watts Tower Art Center in Los Angeles, CA, among other venues. Recent awards include the Vermont Studio School Residency (2022), the Paris-based AWARE Prize (Archive of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) for best solo presentation by a female artist at The Armory Show 2020; a 2020 Harpo Foundation Grant; 2018 Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant (COLA) and Exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; and a California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.