UPCOMING DORTORT EVENTS
Fall 2026
Fall 2026 Art Opening
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
The Theory of Everything
Bonita Helmer
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
During graduate work at Otis College of Art and Design, Helmer worked with Mitsumi Kanemitsu who became a strong influence in the use of abstraction in painting. Helmer also met and studied with Francoise Gilot at University of Southern California/Idyllwild campus. Gilot introduced Helmer to the use of universal symbol in art. At that time other influences included a friendship with Dr. Jonas Salk who brought to Helmer, awareness of the relationship between science and art. Helmer studied the origins of the universe via physics and astronomy at UCLA and has continued in her personal research into physics and mystical studies. Helmer taught at Otis College Art and Design 1998-2018. Helmer received her BA in painting, UCLA, Antioch and did graduate work at Otis College Art and Design
Artist Statement
My space explorations actually started when I was a child and I was seriously studying ballet. I was well aware when I was leaping and turning through space that there was something there. I thought I could sense moving molecules. Since that time the relationship between objects and space has fascinated me. However, the actual and concrete study of physics and space started after I became an artist. I studied theoretical physics at UCLA to try to understand that which I sensed intuitively and then apply it to my work. I had also been simultaneously studying several mystical philosophies including Buddhism and Kabbalah. Between the spiritual studies and physics research, I began to see the connections in space and physics exploration as well. I began to voraciously study quantum physics and look at images from the Hubble telescope and now the Webb telescope.
The desire to understand that which is not obviously seen and the desire to discover the missing link is a driving force in mystics and artists as well as scientists. I am fascinated with symbols that connect all people. As human beings we all share basic needs and emotions. I express this through the beauty of exploring that which is not obviously seen but is nonetheless there; the unseen structures of nature, society and human response. I continue to study physics, images from space laced with universal symbols and references to ancient spiritual beliefs.
Fall exhibits run through December 11th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Da’at: Bearing Light
Zhenya Gershman
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
Ansiktet, 48 X 60 inches, oil on canvas, 2025
Da’at: Bearing Light is a series of intimate portraits that reflect a distinct way of seeing, one shaped by awareness, reflection, and renewal. The title draws from Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, where Da’at (דעת) refers to a form of deep understanding that is internalized, lived, and spiritually felt. Often translated as “knowledge,” Da’at describes the moment when perception becomes consciousness, when what is seen is fully absorbed into the self.
In this exhibition, light functions not only as illumination, but as presence, attention, and revelation. It becomes a means of bringing what is hidden into view, both within the subject and within the viewer. Through layered surfaces, quiet radiance, and moments of psychological stillness, these portraits explore the discipline of seeing clearly and the conviction of action that such clarity can inspire. The exhibition invites viewers into a mode of perception grounded in empathy, insight, and reflection: to see with greater awareness, to know with depth, and to move forward with renewed purpose.
Zhenya Gershman
Zhenya Gershman is known for her dramatic monumental portraits. Born in Eastern Europe, she held her first solo exhibition in St. Petersburg at age fourteen. She was selected as a subject of the TV Documentary Film Our Generation, a project dedicated to searching for the five most talented teenagers in Russia, showing hope for the cultural future of the country. The youngest student to be admitted to Otis Art Institute, Zhenya graduated with Honors and later received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Art Center College of Design. Today, Zhenya’s work is featured in preeminent private and public collections, such as Donald Simon, Richard Weisman, and Arte Al Limite Museum in Santiago, Chile. She participates in important international exhibitions including Art Aspen, Art Miami, and Art Chicago. She was selected to create iconic portraits of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan for the MusiCares GRAMMY Foundation.
Zhenya is a recipient of numerous awards including the ALEX Award in Visual Arts, presented nationally to honored scholars and artists, and the Power List of Manhattan given by the NY State Assembly. She was featured by Entertainment Tonight, NBC 4 New York Live, Extra Television, and The New York Post. Zhenya was announced as Ambassador to Royal Talens worldwide and Blick Art Materials. In 2022, she launched the art movement Brushes Over Bullets after her portrait, “First Face of War”, was sold for $100,000 at Heritage Auctions to benefit Ukraine.
Zhenya worked for over a decade in, The J. Paul Getty Museum, bringing her passion and unique understanding of art to thousands of people. Her scholarly work is dedicated to uncovering new perspectives regarding the life and work of Rembrandt and Dürer, and she has contributed to exhibitions, including Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits and Rembrandt: Telling the Difference. Zhenya’s first-hand knowledge of traditional oil painting techniques has led her to a Rembrandt discovery. Her groundbreaking finding of a hidden Rembrandt self-portrait was published by Arion, Boston University, and was brought to European audiences by Le Monde. Zhenya is a co-founder of the non-profit organization Project Awe, the founder of Zhenya’s Art Academy, Invisible Museum Tours, and the Brushes Over Bullets Art Movement.
She currently resides, teaches, and paints between her two studios in Los Angeles and New York City.
Fall exhibits run through December 11th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
What We are Made of! - The World of Piven
Hanoch Piven
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
The name of Israeli artist Hanoch Piven has became a synonym of Creativity in Israel. Piven has had a long-running column of his illustrations in the daily Haaretz, has created TV programs for Israel’s Educational TV, and has developed a method of creation implemented in kindergartens and schools.
for All, The iCenter, The Schusterman Foundation, The Jewish Agency for Israel and many Federations throughout the USA.
Fall exhibits run through December 11th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Jewish Traces
Hillel Smith
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
Hillel Smith is an illustrator, designer, and muralist originally from Los Angeles and now based in Washington, DC. He focuses on pushing the aesthetic boundaries of Jewish art by fusing modern techniques like digital graphics and spray paint with ancestral texts and rituals. His Parsha Posters series is on display at UCLA Hillel on the ground floor. He has painted dynamic Jewish murals around the world and is the founder of the Jewish Street Art Festival. Through his large scale public projects, he advocates for placemaking and visibility in multicultural environments. He is fascinated by Hebrew typographic history and teaches about the interaction of technology, identity, and design.
Fall exhibits run through December 11th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
"Wabi-Sabi"... Nothing Is Perfect
Beverly Bialik
Thursday, October 22nd, 7-9 PM
Beverly Bialik was born in the South Bronx at the end of World War II. She was raised by Yiddish-speaking parents highly suspicious of her artistic tendencies. She attended New York public schools and Hunter College, earning a BA in English. She taught public high school in Harlem, the Bronx, and Manhattan, participating in the civil rights movement and helping integrate the New York City public school system. She and her late husband, Barry, traveled the country for seven years, protesting the war in Vietnam while producing and directing anti-war documentaries and social commentary independently as well as for PBS’ “The American Dream Machine.” Their film, “White Grease,” took an award at the Lincoln Film Festival in 1970. Bialik moved to Los Angeles in 1975 and raised two children in Hollywood while teaching preschool and directing the nursery school at Temple Israel of Hollywood. She managed her daughter’s career from 1988-1994 and took up painting after her husband’s death in 2015. Bialik currently lives in Toluca Lake and enjoys walking, being with her two grandsons and spending time in her art studio.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I started my painting journey late in my life as an attempt to tell the story of where I’ve been and where I am now. My work comes to me in a dreamlike state, fully formed in my mind’s eye. My paintings are stories, bringing images to life from my memory using acrylic, and sometimes collected fabric and photographs. I seek to present images wherever whimsy and memory might land, holding space for imagination to alter a reality that no longer brings forth joy. I hope to convey a sense of optimism by focusing attention on simple objects, using visual curiosity to attempt a physical representation of meditative consciousness. Inanimate objects pulsate and move with little spatial awareness and people no longer stand on solid ground, nor do they follow the conventional rules of gravity, as if to announce that perception is not always reality.
Fall exhibits run through December 11th. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Winter 2027
Winter 2027 Art Opening
Thursday, January 21, 7-9 PM
Ed Buttwinick
Artist’s Statement
I see through the lens of an artist fascinated by nature, art history, and the heritage and culture of Jewish identity. My work focuses on Judaic themes drawn from my upbringing and the well of our religion and its multifaceted past. The Jewish People have historically valued narrative and literacy, two vehicles of storytelling that are deeply woven into my art.
Duchamp and Rauschenberg influence the constructed assemblage techniques I use, in which relationships among eclectic, unrelated, and mundane materials express ideas and emotions. I speak the language of symbolism, paradox, and metaphor.
The path of my creative process is guided by walking the elusive edge between the real and the imagined, the serious and the playful. Striving to give meaning and significance to items that once lived in one form and now exist in another, a dialogue begins with drawings and coalesces with found objects. Line becomes shape while image and form become subject and theme. A particular moment or concept in our history is then revealed and the story is told.
Artist Bio
Ed Buttwinick is a Judaica themed assemblage artist in Los Angeles, California. He began his art education at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, and earned a B.A. in Art at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After teaching in L.A. City Schools for a decade, Ed, with his wife, Linda, co-founded the Brentwood Art Center (BAC) in 1971. The BAC is a school of fine art for children, teens, and adults, and has become a cultural landmark in the art community of West Los Angeles. During his 34 years as the BAC’s Director, Ed’s community service included working with the West Regional Advisory Council of the Cultural Affairs Department; A Window Between Worlds, a non-profit organization benefiting abused women and children; and the Board of the Los Angeles County Art Education Association. He was presented California’s Outstanding Supervisor of Art Education Award in 1987, and a City of Los Angeles Certificate Tribute Award in 2005. Ed’s work is held in the permanent collection of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. He was a repeated guest lecturer at the Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College on the subject of art and spirituality, and his work was exhibited at American Jewish University. Ed passed away on October 9, 2025 leaving behind a unique body of Judaica work and the legacy of the Brentwood Art Center.