There is a family group art show happening through Nov. 21 at the La Jolla Art Association Gallery, located at 8100 Paseo del Ocaso in La Jolla Shores. Three generations of artists from the same family are involved. This is a very fun, clever, colorful and inventive show with everything from masks to mandala art to Leonardo Da Vinci-like inventive sculptures to a new breakthrough in the use of materials in mixed media. One is sure to be entertained and amazed by this artistic family — rocket scientist-turned-artist Edward Hujsak, his niece Lee Lisevitz and her daughter Elizabeth Zaikowski. Edward Hujsak, an obvious creative and inventive genius, is a graduate of chemical engineering from the University of New Hampshire. He was one of 12 children in a poor family during The Great Depression, but went on to become a rocket scientist at General Dynamics. He helped build the Atlas and Centaur rockets, which both put astronauts into space, and was the propulsion engineer on John Glenn’s historic orbital flight. Hujsak, now 85, took up art after he retired. Besides painting, he makes musical instruments (including some for former UCSD professor Robert Erickson), designs furniture, makes metal sculptures and scale models which he calls marquettes, and is the author of seven books including, “A Pig in the Rumble Sea: A Collection of Short Stories,” and the children’s book, “Who Rang The Church Bell,” both of which are on sale at the gallery. Some of his pieces in the show include: “The Great Crankshaft,” a 6-foot-high motor-driven silvery oversized bicycle chain that rotates; a 6-foot-tall red metal model of one of hypothesized DNA strands that was proven to be wrong; a desk-sized colorful flower bouquet sculpture called “Explosion in a Lollipop Factory;” a Shetland pony-sized figure of a cactus called “Rainbow Cactus,” and a scale model of a space-age mortuary monument. “They are mostly whimsical,” said Hujsak. “I lean toward art that causes the observer to see things from a different, unexpected and often comical perspective.” Hujsak’s niece, Lee Lisevitz, was born in Philadelphia and attended New York University in Farmingdale. She has worked for CBS and was a former art director at the Vista Press, a newspaper serving Vista, Calif. Lisevitz lives part of the year in Mission Beach and the rest in West Hoboken, New York, where she has an art studio. She commutes to the Big Apple to show her work and is considered to be one of NYC’s top contemporary artists. Lisevitz is a pioneer of a new form of mixed media art work in which she fuses stained glass to painted canvas and back lights it in a light box. “I fuse shattered pieces of glass on the canvas, much like we try to fuse the shattered pieces of our lives back together into something whole,” Lisevitz said. Lisevitz also makes one-of-a-kind dramatic clay masks. She said her technique “is very complex and it took a long while to develop.” Lisevitz’s daughter, Elizabeth Zaikowski, is a San Diego native who attended Mesa College and graduated from San Diego State University in art education. She works at the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland, where she trains the comical portrait artist vendors. She has several mandala-like and fantasy paintings in the show, which are of Disney quality. “With my mother an artist and my father an astrophysicist, I developed a strong interest in art from early childhood,” said Zaikowski. “I credit their influence on the nature of my work.” It’s All Relative WHAT: A wine-and-cheese reception for the artists WHERE: La Jolla Art Association Gallery, 8100 Paseo del Ocaso WHEN: Friday, Nov. 19 from 6 to 8 p.m. For further information about the artists: visit www.LeeLisevitz.com or call (760) 612-6060 or e-mail [email protected]; www.THE ARTOFELIZABETHZAIKOWSKI.com or call (619) 723-8587; e-mail [email protected].
