Jae Carmichael Modernist Theater Blue and Yellow Study 1960s Watercolor P2623

This feels like a performance is taking place in the auditorium simultaneously with the audience coming in through the lobby... it could very well be a conflation of architectural and decorative elements of that most 60s of LA theaters, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a sleek impression/abstraction. It is certainly very elegant.

Measures 17" x 22".

Jae Carmichael, painter, sculptor, photographer, writer, and independent filmmaker, was born in Hollywood, California in 1925. She studied at Mills College and earned a BFA from the University of Southern California as well as a PhD in cinematography and art history.

From the 1950s, she was an active art teacher in southern California in Pasadena and served as cinematography professor at the University of Southern California. She was a founding director of Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum.  She staged more than 200 solo exhibitions in galleries in Los Angeles, Japan, and Europe and had works included in permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

In 1953, she became a member (and subsequently a director) of the California Watercolor Society and exhibited in the annual shows since that time. From 1962-66, she was Director of the Wooden Horse Gallery in Laguna Beach.  Her 1976 film Heritage of Hope was nominated for an Emmy. She was a member of the American Watercolor Society. She studied art with Francis de Erdely, Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Dong Kingman, and William Gaw.

She died in Pasadena, California on November 5, 2005.