"Poetry of Emotions" Exhibition with Artists Ben Jackel and Nellie King Solomon
Artists Ben Jackel and Nellie King Solomon in front of one of Solomon's paintings
Manhattan Beach, CA — September 2026 — Homeira Goldstein, Chairman of the Board of TIME4ART, with the support of the Manhattan Beach Art Center, is thrilled to present Poetry of Emotions an exhibition showcasing the compelling works of two notable California artists, Ben Jackel and Nellie King Solomon. Curated by Homeira Goldstein "Poetry of Emotions" marks the artists’ first two-person exhibition together in Greater Los Angeles, bringing into dialogue their distinctive explorations of material, process, nature, transformation, and the elemental forces embedded within their work. TV host Joey Zhou, founder of the Los Angeles Beverly Arts (LABA) attended the exhibition and Cynthia Penna, LABA Advisor.
Homeira Goldstein, curator and chairman of the board of TIME4ART, a non-profit art educational organization, gives a presentation about the exhibition
For Solomon, water is not merely a subject, it is an essential part of the making process. Her use of liquid acrylic, gravity, flow, pooling, inclination, and controlled release allows water to become both collaborator and force. Even when water is not literally depicted, its movement and presence remain fundamental to the creation of her paintings. The resulting works capture a sense of fluidity, energy, and transformation, moments in which chance and control converge.
Hurricane sculpture by Ben Jackel
For Jackel, the elemental connection is expressed through a broader engagement with various materials and earth, fire, water, and air, as well as the physical forces inherent in casting, forging, carving, and transformation. His work reflects a deep fascination with material and process, revealing how elemental forces can reshape matter and give it new meaning and purpose.Poetry of Emotions offers an immediate emotional and poetic point of entry through vibrant, dynamic, and often watery imagery. Yet beneath this visual seduction lies a deeper dialogue about the fundamental forces, both natural and human, that shape our world and our experience: cycles of destruction and renewal, movement and resistance, and the relationship between what exists within us and what extends beyond us. Water becomes a point of connection between the two artists, while the elemental dimension opens a broader conversation about material, gravity, transformation, nature, and purpose. Together, Jackel and Solomon invite viewers to look beyond what is depicted and consider how matter moves, changes, collides, flows, and transforms, and how these forces can ultimately become art.
Hurricane sculpture by Ben Jackel, the view from the other side that shows the motion of the hurricane as he discusses the art piece with an attendee
Ben Jackel, born in 1977 in Aurora, Colorado, received his BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has taught ceramics at California State University, Long Beach, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He currently serves as Art and Foundry Director at Starlite Originals, the family-owned and operated foundry. Jackel is also the volunteer director and curator of Gallery Alfa Romeo Tango aboard the historic USS Iowa Museum in San Pedro, California. For 25 years, he has been a member of the Denver-based international art collective Artnauts, exhibiting with the group in more than a dozen countries around the world.
Sculpture by Ben Jackel at the entrance of the exhibition
TV host Joey Zhou, founder of the Los Angeles Beverly Arts (LABA), and art curator Cynthia Penna, LABA Advisor
Through meticulous craftsmanship and inventive approaches across clay, wood, and metal, Jackel creates sculptures that investigate history, memory, conflict, technology, and natural forces in relation with the human condition. His practice is rooted in an exploration of material and form, transforming familiar objects and symbols into enigmatic works that invite contemplation and challenge perception.“I utilize the dynamic physical properties of clay, wood and metal to create a wide array of sculptures that channel layers of histories and meanings. The scale, surface and subject vary greatly, but the objects I create are always carefully chosen and constructed at the highest level of craft and material mastery. I am interested in creating the unknown and how mystery can challenge one’s perception.
Artist Nellie King Solomon
Nellie King Solomon, born in 1971 in San Francisco, California, holds a BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has taught at Stanford University and California College of the Arts, worked as an artist’s assistant to David Ireland, and participated in the architectural restoration of the Palazzo St. Polo in Venice. She also trained as an architect at Cooper Union in New York City but never became licensed, a distinction that seems to illuminate the trajectory of a practice grounded in the deliberate construction, disruption, and dismantling of order. I make what I know is there yet cannot see. I paint in the exploded field, beautiful pictures of terrible things..”Her paintings begin with the rigor of architecture: grids, rules, frameworks, and carefully established conditions. Yet within that structure, control gives way to improvisation.
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Paintings by Nellie King Solomon and sculpture by Ben Jackel
Working on expansive sheets of unmounted Mylar laid across a nine-by-nine-foot table set at a deliberate incline, Solomon allows gravity, material, time, and gesture to become active collaborators. Liquid acrylic skims, pools, and travels across the surface, following paths that no brush could predict. Rather than brushes, she employs custom tools fashioned from wood, glass, and rubber. Moving across the table with her entire body, she draws upon her backgrounds in dance, architecture, printmaking, and surfing to pull paint across Mylar in sweeping, muscular gestures. The physicality of the process is essential to the work.“I work with gravity the way a composer works with silence, structuring the conditions to release control to material, gravity, and time.”Her materials are equally intentional.
Paintings by Nellie King Solomon and sculpture by Ben Jackel
Soda ash, pulverized salt, diamond dust, silicon carbide, asphalt, crystalline matter, frozen paint cubes, distilled iPhones, a distilled Luger gun, and readymade materials enter the work not simply for their visual properties, but for what they carry and signify. The resulting paintings are large enough to operate less as objects than as place, environments to enter rather than images to simply observe. Their scale and physical presence transform painting into an experience of immersion, while the pristine architectural finish of Mylar holds the unruly, bodily process of their making in a state of productive tension.
Homeira Goldstein, curator and chairman of the board of TIME4ART, and TV host Joey Zhou, founder of the Los Angeles Beverly Arts (LABA)
"Poetry of Emotions” exhibition is envisioned and presented by Homeira Goldstein, Chairman of the Board of TIME4ART, a non-profit art educational organization in Manhattan Beach, California with the mission of enhancing cultural art awareness in the South Bay and Greater Los Angeles. “Our heartfelt thanks to Manhattan Beach Art Center for their spirit of comradery and community,” stated Homeira Goldstein.
The Beverly Arts News is sponsored by Art Hearts Fashion, Mogo, MDSUN, Shennel Trading, XAVVI, ISEGSTAR, World Peace One, Crab Grabber, InLight Foundation, Jiannan Huang Art Institute, Yi Ke Art in Beverly, Wenkang Xue Design Studio, and The Beverly Arts Foundation
