Paula Zima | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1953 |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | sculpture, painting, drawing |
| Website | paulazima |
Paula Zima (born 1953) is an American artist known for her sculptures, paintings, and etchings. She was born in Pasadena, California, and lived in Washington and the California Bay Area and Central Coast before settling in New Mexico near Santa Fe where she currently lives.
Paula Zima's life-size bronze sculpture group, "Tequski' wa Suwa", was installed September 1988 in front of the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in San Luis Obispo, California. [1] The artist commented at the time that "My intention in creating the piece is to honor the two major life forms of the region, before the influx of the European culture, the indigenous Chumash people and the Grizzly Bear." "Tequski' wa suwa" is a Chumash phrase, in the dialect of the people who lived where the mission now is, and translates to "bear and child". Funds for the sculpture were provided by the Stanley P. Von Stein memorial trust, and the Mary Jane Duval memorial trust . The work was surveyed by the Save Outdoor Sculpture! initiative in 1994 and was deemed to be "Well maintained." [1]
Other public works include two "Greeting Bears" which are two life-sized concrete castings of a grizzly bear, placed at each of the two bridges that lead to the town of Los Osos, California. [2] The castings were later painted by the artist. Her sculpture Otter Touching Its Tail, located in Santa Cruz, California is work in which "an abstract otter forms a doughnut by touching its tail and hind feet with its head and front feet. There is triangular embossing along the otter's sides that may represent a wave motif." [3] Zima's Meditation Bird is located at Sierra Vista Hospital in San Luis Obispo, California. [4]
Zima has illustrated many holiday gift boxes for See's Candies. [5]
Zima's sculpture has been influenced mainly by artists Beni Bufano, Marino Marini, Gustav Vigeland and Allan Houser, with whom she apprenticed. [5]
Zima studied natural sciences, drawing and sculpture at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri in the early 1970s before attending Los Llanos School of Arts & Crafts, sculpture and painting, in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo where she obtained a BA degree in Graphic Communication, Commercial Illustration in 1979. She has also studied printmaking, painting and drawing at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California.
Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is a Spanish mission founded September 1, 1772 by Father Junípero Serra in San Luis Obispo, California. Named after Saint Louis of Anjou, the bishop of Toulouse, the mission is the namesake of San Luis Obispo.
The Chumash are a Native American people of the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south to Mt Pinos in the east. Their territory includes three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel; the smaller island of Anacapa was likely inhabited seasonally due to the lack of a consistent water source.
San Luis Obispo is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, in the U.S. state of California. Located on the Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway between the San Francisco Bay Area in the north and Greater Los Angeles in the south. The population was 47,063 at the 2020 census.
The Central Coast is an area of California, roughly spanning the coastal region between Point Mugu and Monterey Bay. It lies northwest of Los Angeles and south of the San Francisco Bay Area, and includes the rugged, rural, and sparsely populated stretch of coastline known as Big Sur.
Point Mugu is a cape or promontory within Point Mugu State Park on the Pacific Coast in Ventura County, near the city of Port Hueneme and the city of Oxnard. The name is believed to be derived from the Chumash Indian term "Muwu", meaning "beach", which was first mentioned by Cabrillo in his journals in 1542. Mugu Lagoon is a salt marsh just upcoast from the promontory within the Naval Base Ventura County formerly called the Naval Air Station Point Mugu.
Cuesta College is a public community college in San Luis Obispo County, California.
Morro Rock is a volcanic plug in Morro Bay, California, on the Pacific Coast at the entrance to Morro Bay harbor. A causeway connects it with the shore, making it a tied island. The rock is protected as the Morro Rock State Preserve.
Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes is the largest remaining dune system south of San Francisco and the second largest in the U.S. state of California. It encompasses an 18-mile (29 km) stretch of coastline on the Central Coast of California and extends from southern San Luis Obispo County to northern Santa Barbara County.
Santa Margarita is a town and census-designated place located in San Luis Obispo County, California. It was founded in 1889 near Cuesta Peak and San Luis Obispo along State Route 58. The town's name comes from the Mexican Alta California land grant of Rancho Santa Margarita. It is home to the Santa Margarita de Cortona Asistencia site. The population was 1,259 at the 2010 census.
Sespe Creek is a stream, some 61 miles (98 km) long, in Ventura County, southern California, in the Western United States. The creek starts at Potrero Seco in the eastern Sierra Madre Mountains, and is formed by more than thirty tributary streams of the Sierra Madre and Topatopa Mountains, before it empties into the Santa Clara River in Fillmore.
The Cuyama River is a 118-mile-long (190 km) river in southern San Luis Obispo County, northern Santa Barbara County, and northern Ventura County, in the U.S. state of California. It joins the Sisquoc River forming the Santa Maria River. The river's name comes from an Indian village named for the Chumash word kuyam, meaning "clam" or "freshwater mollusk".
Cerro Romualdo is a 1,300-foot (396 m) mountain in San Luis Obispo County, California. The mountain is the fifth in a series of volcanic plugs called the Nine Sisters. Until 1964 the mountain was officially known as Romualdo Peak.
Chumash Peak is a 1,257 ft (383 m) mountain in San Luis Obispo County, California. It is just northwest of San Luis Obispo, on the south side of California State Route 1.
Arborglyphs, dendroglyphs, silvaglyphs, or modified cultural trees are carvings of shapes and symbols into the bark of living trees. Although most often referring to ancient cultural practices, the term also refers to modern tree-carving.
George Nidever was an American mountain man, explorer, fur trapper, memoirist and sailor. In the 1830s he became one of the first wave of American settlers to move to Mexican California, where he made his living in fur trapping. In 1853 he led the expedition that rescued Juana Maria, the last member of the Nicoleño people, from San Nicolas Island where she had been living alone for eighteen years. Toward the end of his life Nidever wrote a memoir, Life and Adventures of George Nidever, which was popular at the end of the 19th century.
Chumash rock art is a genre of paintings on caves, mountains, cliffs, or other living rock surfaces, created by the Chumash people of Southern California. Pictographs and petroglyphs are common through interior California, the rock painting tradition thrived until the 19th century. Chumash rock art is considered to be some of the most elaborate and plentiful rock art tradition in the region.
The Burro Flats site is a painted cave site located near Burro Flats, in the Simi Hills of eastern Ventura County, California, United States. The Chumash-style "main panel" and the surrounding 25-acres were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, with a boundary decrease in 2020. The main panel includes dozens of pictographs in a variety of colors. The cave is in the mountains, near the bi-lingual Chumash/Fernandeno village of Huwam/Jucjauynga. The Burro Flats painted cave and the rest of the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory are not accessible to the public.
Painted Rock is a smooth horseshoe-shaped marine sandstone rock formation with pictograph rock art about 250 feet across and 45 feet tall near Soda Lake within the Carrizo Plain National Monument on the southwest side of the northern Carrizo Plain, west of Bakersfield and about 70 miles (110 km) east of San Luis Obispo and 45 miles (72 km) west of Taft, in California, United States.
Katerina Lanfranco is a New York City-based visual artist making paintings, drawings, sculptures, and mixed media installations. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario. She studied art at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she received her B.A in Visual Art and in "Visual Theory and Museum Studies". She also attended the Sierra Institute studying Nature Philosophies and Religions while camping in the California wilderness. She received her M.F.A from Hunter College, City University of New York in Studio Art, with an emphasis in painting. In 2004, she studied at the Universitat der Kunst (UdK) in Berlin, Germany on an exchange scholarship. During this time, she also received a travel grant to study Baroque and High Baroque painting in Italy.
Rosario Cooper (1845–1917) was a yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini woman who was the last known speaker of tiłhini, though she had rarely spoken or heard it since her early childhood. During the last years of her life, Rosario worked with the linguist J.P. Harrington to recover what she could recall of her native language, and the pair were able to document some grammatical structure, place names, songs, and cultural knowledge before she died in 1917. Cooper is considered to be the last known speaker of Obispeño, though there has been some recent revitalization.
