2010 promises to be a year full of exhilarating art by women artists. Happy New Year!

Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart are still on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Gearhart (1869-1958), a Pasadena native played an important role in the American Printmaking movement during the Arts and Crafts period. These beautifully colored landscapes capture the ethereal beauty of California and the Western United States, and demonstrate her extraordinary contribution to woodblock printmaking. Thru 1/31.

Otero Plassart gallery features the work of New York based mixed media and installation artist E.V. Day. Known for her integration of costumes and fashion into exuberant sculptures, Day does not disappoint in this exhibit. Her feminist sensibilities abound in works such as Mummified Barbies with the familiar icons swaddled in fabric reminding us of the oppression of women around the world. These works are provocative, unexpected and address a variety of questions about beauty, class, etc. Thru 1/16.

A Girl’s Got to Do What a Girl’s Got to Do features new work by video artist Michele O’Marah at Kathryn Brennan Gallery in Chinatown. O’Marah recreated with multiple actresses sexually explicit scenes from Barb Wire to exam the way femininity was represented in this 1996 cult film with Pamela Anderson. Added text-based works on paper culled from the original film’s dialogue and lyrics highlight post-modern issues of authorship and authenticity. Runs 1/9-2/6.

Work by women photographers grace the walls of New Image Art Gallery. Put Your Finger on the Button features work by Alex Prager, Alma Márquez, Amanda Marsalis, Ashira Siegel, Brandy Eve, Cheryl Dunn, Deanna Templeton, Jeaneen Lund, Kassia Meador, Laura Flippen, Lauren Dukoff, Rebecca Wright, Susanne Melanie Berry, and Taylor Brittenham. Runs 1/9-2/6.

Sweet Subversives is the title of a group drawing show at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Over thirty Southern California artists express their personal vision of what a drawing means to them with results that are quite varied and wonderful. On exhibit are works by Margaret Lazzari, Alison Foshee, Margaret Griffith, Holly Boruck, Jennifer Celio and Adonna Khare among others. Thru 2/14.

Landscape is the theme of Edenistic Divergence, a four-woman show at the Riverside Museum of Art. Lisa Adams’ paintings recall fantasy landscapes from Ancient Pompeii, Kimber Berry takes an abstract approach more reminiscent of Monet, Hollis Cooper creates vines that permeate the exhibition space and Rebecca Niederlander magically transforms the gallery with an intricate metal wire cloud sculpture suspended from the ceiling. Thru 2/20.

Curated by Yasmine Mohseni, the five artists in The Women of Women: The Female Form at Taylor Cordoba Gallery interrogate the tradition of the male gaze. Includes paintings by Kimberly Brooks and Alika Cooper, photographs by Susan Anderson of child beauty pageant contestants that boldly look back at the viewer while Danielle Mourning, and Roya Falahi offer self-portraits that turn the gaze on themselves. Runs 1/16-2/20.

Food for Thought at 57 Underground in the Pomona Arts Colony features ceramic work by Desirée Engel, nature inspired imagery by Janet Adams and mixed media works by Janice DeLoof and Kathy Breaux. Runs 1/9-2/28.

JK Gallery on La Cienega presents Chicago based artist, Judith Mullen textural paintings on plaster. Her processes and imagery relate to her “sense of home, personal space and introspection.” The artist feels a connection to the cultural icons in early Paleolithic cave paintings. The results are astonishingly beautiful. Runs 1/16 - 2/20.

The first museum retrospective of drawings by Turner Prize winning artist, Rachel Whiteread will be shown at the Hammer Museum. Well-known for her sculptural installations such as House in London, and Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, her works evoke a sense of absence and presence. Key sculptural works accompany Whiteread’s drawings. Don't miss the walkthrough with Rachel Whiteread and curator Alegra Presenti on 1/31. Runs 1/31-5/2.

The Getty Center's Urban Panorama: Opie, Liao, Kim upcoming photographic show features Catherine Opie's inkjet prints. They were scanned from negatives of mini-malls that characterize Los Angeles's automobile culture. Runs 2/2-6/6.

SMMOA features Between Science and Magic, a film about the history of cinema by artist Diane Thater and Sabbath 2008, a video that documents the closing down of the ultra-orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem by Israeli artist Nina Pereg in a project room. Runs 1/16-4/17. Shoshana Wayne Gallery is simultaneously hosting work by Pereg.

The program calendar for the Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years exhibit feature women arts professionals including: MOCA Director of Publications Lisa Mark offers a walkthrough of language-based works on 1/21; Artists Laura Owens and Judy Fiskin give Artist Talks on 2/11 and 2/28 respectively; Curator Alma Ruiz leads a walkthrough of works at the Geffen on 3/18; Curatorial Asst. Christine Robinson hosts a walkthrough of film and video components on 5/20 and Curatorial Asst. Lily Siegel leads a walkthrough of the installation on 6/17.

The Latin American Museum of Art in the Pomona Art Colony presents Collector’s Choice curated by Armando Durón. The exhibition includes works by Yolanda Gonzalez, Esther Hernandez, Pattsi Valdez, and Linda Vallejo. Thru 2/17.

New paintings in oil and watercolor by Miriam Nöske are currently on exhibit at Kristi Engle Gallery. In Double Feature, Nöske responds to the representation of the female form and the use of language found in supergraphic ads that often fill public space. Artist Talk on 2/7. Thru 2/20.

Up from the Ashes is an exhibition of new sculptures by Jean Cornwell at the Women’s History Museum in San Diego. Opens 2/5.

Embracing Ambiguity: Faces of the Future features works by multicultural artists investigating identity. Includes oil paintings by Loren Holland, charcoal portraits by Laura Kina, photographs and prints by Delilah Montoya and work by Toni Scott at Cal State Fullerton.

A large-scale exhibition of work by artist Ann Preston, Four Forms will fill the Rosamund Felsen gallery. Two enormous and complex steel sculptures are the centerpiece of this show. Her work “lures you in, speaking through objects of guilty pleasures, of the allure of beauty and its manipulative power.” From 2/12-3/13.

From Here to There is an exhibition of new paintings by Claire Chene at Fig Gallery at Bergamot Station. Chene’s “empty” and exquisite landscapes provide contemplative views of bridges, cranes and overpasses that invite introspection. 2/10-3/13.

Work by artist Veronika Constantine will be on view at JK Gallery in Culver City. Bipolar opposites of daily life such as dark and light and sad and happy become themes in her abstract gestural images. 2/20-4/3. Opens 2/2.

Large-scale gestural and mysterious paintings inspired by Bonita Helmer's studies of Buddhism, Kabbalah and new physics are on exhibit at George Billis. 2/27- 4/10.

American Jewish Univerity’s Platt and Borstein Galleries presents Body and Soul, an exhibition of paintings by Kathyrn Jacobi, Margaret Lazzari, and Galya Pillin Tarmu. Thru 4/28.

The Pomona College Museum of Art features a Helen Pashgian retrospective. Helen Pashgian: Working in Light draws on 40 years of artistic practice and "reveals a life’s work that balances the immaterial and the physical, and conjures the palpable presence of light while dissolving geometry in color.” An illustrated catalogue features a foreword by James Turrell and essay by Kathleen Stewart Howe. Thru 4/11.