In Due Season
Encountering the Innate Wisdom of Trees
What can we learn from a tree? Perhaps this question can only be answered by looking at these everyday objects more deeply. Trees have stood as symbols of strength, resilience, and wisdom for thousands of years. They have inspired rich metaphors which still saturate the languages spoken throughout the world, yet we rarely recognize them as more than ornamental artifacts.
“In Due Season: Encountering the Innate Wisdom of Trees” invites you to contemplate trees—objects both extremely ordinary and complex. These giants are not only pillars of our ecosystems, but also foundations of human thought and culture. Trees are often referred to in Jewish thought as conduits of wisdom and metaphors for a successful life. For Tu BiShvat, the Jewish birthday of trees, we celebrate and reflect on God’s provision, generously given out of what has been first given to us.
As our city recovers from the devastating fires, we hope these works serve as an inflection point towards a future of hope and new possibilities. In the Hebrew Bible, the ancient writer Job wrote “there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.”
What hopes do you have for this new season?
Featuring artists: Ronit Joy Holtz, Shannon Kim, Max Huang, Yogev Abutbul, Leah Devora, Zoë Solís, Noy Finer, Alexandra Harris, and Zemeira Walker
All proceeds for tickets and coffee donations will go towards organizations helping with Los Angeles reforestation.
Max Huang
I'm Max and I am a photographer and recent UCLA grad from Pleasanton, California currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As someone who easily forgets moments sometimes, my personal work centers around my travels and little moments of daily life I find interesting—a visual journal of sorts. Since moving halfway across the world nearly a year ago, I've continued to document my journey but my photos from California also serve as a feeling of comfort as I navigate life so far from home.
Featured Artists
Zemeira Walker
Zemeira Walker is an illustrator and emerging artist from Northern California. Her educational background is in Communications and she has a masters in Theology and the Arts from the University of St Andrews. Her work explores the challenge of expressing the unseen in the seen, the complex in the simple, and the beautiful in the mundane.
Leah Devora
It has always been my mission to give people back their sense of self with creative expression. Art is the greatest healer and I've volunteered throughout the years with homeless and at risk youth, foster kids and families in homeless shelters by teaching art as a way to give back their self esteem and feeling of self worth.
Today I work with women like myself who are struggling with a health condition and going through recovery. I create their personal journey in a one of a kind work of art, like the work of art they truly are inside and out.
Yogev Abutbul
I am a painter, working with various techniques and styles, with a special focus on the ancient egg tempera technique.
This method creates depth, rich textures, and a unique interplay of colors.
I swim between fantasy and reality, drawn to the contrast between the real and the unreal—the world of pain and hope.
My work explores the fragile balance between nature and human influence, depicting landscapes in decay, wildlife in struggle, and a vision for coexistence.
Lastly, I hope to see us living next to nature, not abusing it, and to show through my work that there is another way to exist with our planet.
Ronit Joy Holtz
Ronit Joy Holtz (b. 1997, United States) traveled throughout North America and numerous European countries before moving with her family to Kadima, Israel when she was ten. She later received a B.F.A in painting with academic honors at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Ronit resides in Tel Aviv as a studio artist and art educator. Her past artwork has been featured in galleries and private collections in the United States, France, Switzerland, England, and Israel. She has exhibited internationally and has had several solo exhibitions, including one held at the 3rd oldest synagogue in the United States. Ronit's recent studio work is about healing through trauma, loss, and grief. In the studio, she explores ways to tap back into pain and trauma and cope with it creatively using mixed media and found objects infused with nostalgia and personal sentiment.
Alexandra Harris
I am a Michigan-based artist who has studied at the University of Michigan, Art Students League, School of Visual Arts (NYC), and at BBAC; and would say (along with G.K. Chesterton, who said it first):
”The Arts exist to show forth the glory of God; and to awaken and keep alive the sense of wonder in man.”
Noy Finer
Noy Finer is a New York City-based photographer, originally from Moshav Yarkona, Israel. Growing up around nature and community life, her upbringing deeply influenced her work, which explores themes of family, emotional landscapes, and the connection between Self and Home. Her background in drawing, painting, and literature shapes her multidisciplinary approach, blending fine art and storytelling. In 2023, Noy completed the One-Year Creative Practices Program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in NYC. Her work has been showcased in galleries in NYC and Israel and featured in The Guardian, Vogue, Der Greif, and Prix de la Photographie de Paris.
Shannon Kim
Shannon Kim is an abstract painter who lives in Los Angeles, California. She has attended the University of California, Berkeley and has shown her art across California, Ohio, and abroad, and her work is privately collected. Her work has most recently been shown at the Fullerton Museum Center's James F Ranii Gallery. Currently, she is continuing her body of work entitled "Maedup Arrangements" which uses a blend of traditional materials to create an abstracted portrait about one's intricate identity. She also intermittently hosts workshops both in person and online to encourage people into engaging with their creative potential.
Zoë Solís
Zoë Solís is a 23-year old Mexican American visual artist currently based in Menifee, California. Many of her previous works have been done exclusively with oil paint, but she is in a new season where she feels most inspired by oil pastels alone. It is the coarse, unpredictable, and impressionistic fabric of their pigment that she’s learned to embrace a new balance in her work that represents being in and out of control. It is through this process she proudly created Casita, now on view for Upside Down’s Tu Bishvat exhibition.
