ENCINITAS, Calif. – (April 22, 2008) – Art lovers and their families are invited to Lux Art Institute’s Family Day, a free open house event with art activities, studio tours, refreshments and live music, on Saturday, June 14, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Lux Art Institute, 1550 South El Camino Real in Encinitas.

The afternoon celebration will give visitors a chance to meet Lux Resident Artist Daniel Wheeler and view his new archival pigment prints, titled GULP (Generative Urban Landscape Project). The Los Angeles-based artist dons scuba gear, dives into swimming pools and shoots the view of the sky and greenery overhead. Each striking image results from a single breath, the water movement, and rising bubbles.

Lux Liaisons will guide tours through the studio and the exhibition of Wheeler’s photographs, which will take visitors on a journey of Southern California pools and landscapes. The “underwater” fun will continue outdoors with hands-on art projects including watercolor painting and sun photos.

For the last twenty years, Wheeler has produced installations, drawings, photographs, performances and sculptures using the Los Angeles landscape as his muse. Once called a “free-form cultural anthropologist,” he is known for enticing viewers out of their learned response to the environment into a sensory encounter of it.

Exhibited nationally and internationally, Wheeler’s work is included in private and public collections across the country.

Wheeler is in-studio June 6 through July 12. His completed work will be on view at Lux through August 2.

Family Day is a quarterly event made possible by support from the James Irvine Foundation.  Parking for Family Day is in the KinderCare parking lot and in posted parking zones along El Camino Real. 

Lux Hours: Thursday and Friday, 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. $10 for two visits. For more information about Lux Art Institute, visit www.luxartinstitute.org or call 760.436.6611.

About Lux Art Institute
Lux Art Institute, located in Encinitas, opened its doors to the public in November 2007 and is redefining the modern museum experience with its artist-in-residence program. Artists live and work on site, while producing a commissioned work of art. 

Throughout the year, Lux invites significant regional, national, and international artists to participate in the Lux residency and encourages visitors from across the country to observe and engage with them. This one-of-a-kind institution invites visitors to not only “see art” but also to “see art happen.”

Slated to be the first “green” (LEED certified) museum in California and located alongside one of Southern California’s remaining coastal wetlands, Lux’s four-acre site overlooks the San Elijo Lagoon and is surrounded by a wildlife preserve that stretches to the Pacific Ocean. In an effort to seamlessly meld the conservation and restoration of art beyond the museum walls, an array of rare native plants blends naturally into the nearby preserve.

Santa Monica, California-based Renzo Zecchetto, AIA – whose other significant architectural projects include the award-winning Church of the Nativity in Fairbanks Ranch, Calif. and the Alusa Printing Company in Santiago, Chile – designed the two-story building to utilize energy-saving strategies such as the use of natural light and recycled materials to preserve resources for future generations.