Art Encounter: June Edmonds

Curator and collage artist Chelle Barbour discusses June Edmonds' painting, "Silence," 2020, which was welcomed into the permanent collection of Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in 2023.
Art Encounter season 3 presents examinations of the museum's recent acquisitions by contemporary artists, scholars, and curators.
See the making of this work in an earlier video!
Art Encounter S1, June Edmonds Studio Visit: • Art Encounter Artist S...
Image Credit:
June Edmonds
"Silence"
2020
acrylic on canvas
48 inches x 60 inches
2023.1
museum purchase
collection of Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum
Art Encounter features artist on artist explorations, studio visits, collection tours, and other personal experiences with contemporary art.
June Edmonds was born in Los Angeles, where she lives and works. Edmonds received her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and a bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and is the recipient of the 2020 Aware Prize for Women at the Armory Show. Edmonds is a 2018 City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant (COLA) and Exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; a California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant; Paducah Artist Residency in Kentucky; Helene Wurlitzer Foundation artist residency in Taos, NM; and Dorland Mountain Community artist residency in Temecula, CA.  
Chelle Barbour is a California native, who began her foray into the arts as an actress in community college theatre. Barbour was a stage manager, president of the Thespian Club. Working with director, Dr. MaryEllen Kazmark, Barbour landed lead roles in Summer and Smoke, Show Boat, The Sound of Music and For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Barbour moved to Los Angeles and continued her studies in theatre, fine art, and design, and ultimately completed her education at UCLA and USC. Today, Barbour has refined her interdisciplinary art practice to include assemblage, collage, digital video, painting, photography, independent curating and writing. Barbour’s extensive collage work re-imagines the body of the black female through the lens of Afro-Surrealism and Afro Futurism. Her characters cast a wide net in terms of how they perceived. Whether the image reflects chameleons, agent provocateurs, goddesses, muses, warriors or spies, Barbour’s college portraiture conveys notions of allegory, desire, fantasy, femininity, fragility, tension, and the inherent complexity within the black female imaginary.