The Main Event Gallery is offering a rare opportunity to view an assembled collection of art by prominent 1940’s California artist Babette Fickert Dowell, a former Red Bluff resident, May 9-July 6. The exhibit of the late artist’s works put together by her daughter Barbara Dowell Lancaster will feature over 25 of Fickert’s paintings, some graciously loaned by local friends. Included are paintings by two of her instructors, famed artists Millard Sheets and Arthur Hill Gilbert. Meet daughter Barbara Dowell Lancaster at the reception Friday May 10, 5-8 pm and attend a power-point presentation by Lancaster on Saturday, May 11, 12 noon, honoring the life and art of her mother. Lancaster said, “Although the Fickerts came to Red Bluff during the gold rush, it was Babette Fickert who struck gold as she captured the light of Tehama landscapes on canvas five generations later. Born in 1920, she won an award at the California State fair in 1933 at age 13 and went on to show her oils at Crocker Gallery in Sacramento, Stendhal and Pasadena in Los Angeles, Carmel Gallery, Gumps, Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the California State Fairs of 1935, 1936, and the Golden gate Exposition for the Worlds Fair 1939.” Fickert’s father made frames and shipped her pictures to galleries in custom crates from his furniture store, which was located in the building that still exists at 623 Main Street. Known for the light she captured in her paintings, the Sacramento Union newspaper called Babette, “California’s girl of the golden sunshine,” in describing her show at the Crocker Gallery in 1939. Abandoning her own art career during WWII, she went to teach art to Japanese children at the Manzanar Relocation Center. There will be a silent auction of two of Fickert's original paintings donated by her daughter and greeting cards of some of her paintings available in the Gallery's gift shop.
