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"THE CYCLE" BY Cyrus Tilton @ Crocker Art Museum
March 25 – July 15, 2018 
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STATEMENT
Tension is something I’m drawn to. Tension among subjects within a single piece, a collision of forms that you don’t usually see in nature. Tension of forms is definitely a recurring theme. I usually have an idea of the main form, then I identify what will satisfy the need I have to provoke tension. Within that tension I seek harmony between dissimilar, conflicting materials or subjects. Within I have a story, an idea in mind, or a tale to tell. Often the idea or story presents itself as I am working on the piece. Some things take more effort, but they tend to find their meaning.

BIO
B. 11/14/1977 | D. 3/28/2017
Cyrus Tilton found his place among the most innovative and imaginative American sculptors of his generation in the years before his tragic death at age thirty-nine in 2017. 

The sculptor's preparatory studies reveal his skill as a talented draftsman. Tilton worked most often in papier-mâché and often included an array of materials ranging from steel and concrete to wood, muslin, and twine some pieces he ingeniously endowed with motion. "I try not to hide the material I am using." he said, "and allow its qualities to show through in the finished piece."

Tilton was born in Palmer, Alaska in 1977. He was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to Seattle Art Institute and graduated in 1998. He moved to Oakland, CA in 1999, where he lived with his wife Lisa, and worked briefly in special-effects animation before becoming lead sculptor at Scientific Art Studio in Richmond, CA.

During his lifetime, Tilton was the subject of over nine solo exhibitions and a member of numerous group shows, many curated by his representative Lonnie Lee and mounted at Vessel Gallery, in Oakland, CA. In the year before his death he was awarded the inaugural John S. Knudsen Prize by The Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA) who also added his "Lovers" sculpture into their permanent collection. This work is part of Tilton's immersive, kinetic installation "The Cycle", which the museum exhibited in its entirety in 2018. He is represented by Lonnie Lee, and Vessel Gallery (www.vessel-gallery.com, 510-920-0126.) For more information, email info@vessel-gallery.com

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PRESS / REVIEWS
1. Cyrus Tilton's Labyrinth at Vessel Gallery, East Bay Express, May 2010
"Tilton ... uses his anatomical knowledge and expert craftsmanship to good effect, but he also knows how to use material and process poetically: 'It's about knowing when to quit ... when to keep your hands off. ... Once you start ... to mold it like life, it dies.' "     Read more >

2. The Endless Swarm, October 2011  Read review >

3. The Cycle, East Bay Express, October 2011  Read review > 

4. Cyrus Tilton, Visual Art Source, October 2011 Read review > 

5. The Curious Creations of Cyrus Tilton Art: 21 Blog, October 2011
"The Cycle, is no less suggestive in its satirizing of humankind’s conformist and consumerist instincts: we’re like locusts...."   Read more > 

6. Cyrus Tilton: "Absence", Art Ltd. Magazine, May/June 2013
"Tilton has channeled this investment in craft and form into primarily classical subjects...by recalling historical references and emphasizing material processes, Tilton expresses multiple, complex emotional...."     Read more >

7. Sculpture Magazine, September 2013 - Peter Selz
"Absence, Tilton's recent show, assembled a range of surprises. Suggesting Magrittte's paintings with a 21st-Century aesthetic, these sculptures form fantastic equivocations, prompted by the mysteries of life."  Read review >

8. Periphery, East Bay Express, Review by Sarah Burke, March 2014
[“My work is to bring the peripheral into focus,” says sculptor Cyrus Tilton in his artist statement. Indeed, Tilton’s sculptures reside in the space between the conscious and the unconscious, an area rich with the potential for imaginative play...]     Read more >

9. Art Ltd. Magazine, January 2017 - "Chief curator Scott Shields of THE CROCKER ART MUSEUM in Sacramento announced Cyrus Tilton has  won the 2016 John S. Knudsen Prize."  Read more >

10. The Sacramento Bee, Janet Vitt, April 2017 - "The Crocker Art Museum has awarded the first John S. Knudsen Prize, which supports a California artist with $25,000.  The award has gone to the late Cyrus Tilton,... Read more>

11. ARTFORUM, April 2017 - Cyrus Tilton wins inaugural $25,000 Knudsen Prize.   Read more >

12. East Bay Times, by Mark Hedin, April 2017 - Bay Area sculptor, musician Cyrus Tilton dies of cancer at 39,  Read more >

13. HYPERALLERGIC, APRIL 2017 - Accolades: The Crocker Art Museum awarded its inaugural John S. Knudsen Prize to Cyrus Tilton (1977–2017).  Read more >

14. Sculpture Magazine, May 2017 - Pacific Rim Sculptors (PRS)
Cyrus Tilton won the 2016 John S. Knudsen Prize, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento acquired his sculpture,  Read more>

15. Art Daily, May 2017 - Crocker Art Museum awards inaugural $25,000 Knudsen Prize to Bay Area sculptor Cyrus Tilton
Read more >

16. Art Opticon / Oakland Magazine + Alameda Magazine, June 2017 -East Bay Artist Cyrus Tilton: A Powerful Legacy Lives On
Read more >

17. Art Letter, Crocker Art Museum Members Magazine,
May, Jun, Jul, Aug, 2017
John S. Knudsen Prize Awarded to Cyrus Tilton
The artist’s first solo museum exhibition opens next year at the
Crocker.  Read more > 

18. Art Letter, Crocker Art Museum Members Magazine,
Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, 2017
Announcement for The Cycle by Cyrus Tilton. View here > 

19. Art Letter, Crocker Art Museum Members Magazine,
Jan, Feb Mar, Apr, 2018
The Cycle by Cyrus Tilton: This March, a swarm of muslin and steel locusts will inhabit one of the Museum's third floor galleries as part of The Cycle by Cyrus Tilton...  Read more >

20. Squarecylinder, June 2018 by Julia Couzens.
Cyrus Tilton @ Crocker Art Museum: If ever an artist’s work embodied the paradox of attraction and repulsion, it is Cyrus Tilton’s accomplished and disturbing three-part installation, The Cycle. Read more >

21. Airtime coverage on CBS local, July 2018
Locusts Art Installation | Cyrus Tilton at Crocker Art Museum:
Ashley Williams is at the Crocker Art Museum which is proud to present The Cycle by Cyrus Tilton, an immersive and kinetic exhibition of sculptures that tell the story of the locust's mutation, breeding, development, and swarm... View the coverage >

collect artworks by Chantal Hildebrand >

STATEMENT

Woke Women
This piece exhibits with patterns from fabrics Chantal has come across in her travels, plants that she grows in her own home, and books that she wants to read or already has read, all surrounding three Black women in different moments of rest and peace.

Messy
Messy is a piece that touches on body dysmorphia and the heaviness of bodies in space.

Lazy Sunday
One of Chantal's best selling pieces, Lazy Sunday is an homage to bath time and the act of melting into a tub.

Here and Now
Here and Now celebrates presence.

Anchor
Anchor exhibits the peaceful chaos of the artist workspace.

Woke Women II
A part two to the original "Woke Women" piece, Woke Women II continues the imagery of Black women at rest.

BIO

Chantal Hildebrand is a African-American linocut printmaker based in Oakland, California. Her intricate prints and carvings depict Black bodies at rest in hyper-detailed surroundings.

Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Chantal draws from years working for racial and gender justice in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States. Her art engages with themes of imperfection, embodiment, and self-love, as well as memories of her mother.

Chantal’s art emphasizes varied human forms amidst African patterns, lush flora, and revolutionary Black literature. Her prints play with dynamics of stillness and motion, detail and void, line and texture.

Her art depicts what happens behind  closed doors, when Black bodies are at rest: free from being perceived, assessed, or categorized. It manifests a world where Black bodies are honored, valued, and admired.

PRESS

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collect artworks by Walter James Mansfield >

STATEMENT
What creates the notion of a landscape? Of a figure? This body of work is part of an ongoing series of experiments exploring how structure, material, and process affect or create meaning. I observe myself in the act of painting and watch how the process of making a painting affects its meaning.

BIO
One day, Robert Arneson, looking at a painted ceramic that Walter James Mansfield had brought to class, turned to his student and said, in effect, that though Mansfield might be an artist, he surely wasn't a sculptor. He might, however, be a painter. If Arneson's remark helped turn Mansfield toward painting, other teachers had already encouraged him to find his way to becoming a maker of some kind, to stick with the hard work of learning a craft and perfecting technique. "Artists have a real work ethic," says Mansfield. "They are workers. They put a lot of work into making something of value." He had gone to UC Davis to study photography, and it was under the tutelage of Harvey Himelfarb, then head of the art department at Davis, that Mansfield first felt confirmed in his vocation as an artist. Later, Wayne Thiebaud and others revealed to him the openness and range of expression available to the artist who works in paint. Thiebaud's talks on art and the history of art also inspired in him a respect for the "long, long tradition" of painting.

 Mansfield was born in the Tidewater region of Virginia in 1964 and spent his childhood years there. He moved to San Jose with his family when he was 12. He discovered his love of the visual arts when he picked up a camera and began photographing his parents and two sisters. UC Davis awarded him an undergraduate degree in fine art and psychology in 1987. His education continued at the California State University of Sacramento, where he got a Master's degree in studio art in 1999. In 1997, he received an Artreach grant from the Nelson Gallery ARTfriends organization to develop a community art project in collaboration with mental health clients.  He completed his studies in 2001 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he got his MFA in painting and drawing.

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PRESS /REVIEWS
1. Walter James Mansfield's Material World | East Bay Express | September 2010
"Mansfield fuses 1950s Abstract Expressionist painterly gesture and 1970s post minimalism to create complex contemporary landscapes and portraits."  Read more >

2. Face Time at Vessel Gallery | East Bay Express | July 2011 
"...the capturing of likeness and personality remains an open question for artists even in the digital age, with its controversies over identity and representation. Six local artists take on the challenge."     Read more >

3. Portraits at Vessel Gallery | Art Enthusiast | July 2011 
"Exploring pertinent, but disparate issues of the genre, artist Walter James Mansfield’s paintings simply entitled “Heads…”   Read more >

4. Oakland, "Portraits" at Vessel Gallery | Art Ltd. Magazine | September 2011 Review
"...the airy multi-story space—once a stable for Oakland fire department horses—was packed with an engaging array of paintings and sculpture, as well as photo and video. The result was an unusual…"     Read more >

5. Here and Now and Then | East Bay Express | September 2011 Review by DeWitt Cheng
"Emergent Behaviors comprises figurative wall-mounted wire sculptures by Pamela Merory Dernham and paintings by Walter James Mansfield that they..."  Read more >

6. Landscapes: Near and Afar | East Bay Express | June 2013 Review
"The works are varied, deep, and often stunning. Sanjay Vora creates marvelously textured seaside landscapes consisting of painted canvas veiled with a thick layer, ..."     Read more >

7. Notions of Romance | East Bay Express, Review by Sarah Burke | January 2015
"Curating an art show around the slippery idea of love will always be a risky endeavor for those hoping to avoid cliché. But with Notions of Romance, Vessel Gallery...."     Read more >

8. WJM: Portraits | Looking Back Looking Forward | DeWitt Cheng | 2015
The contemporary art world, in its pur- suit of the new for the past fifty years, has reached the end of the “shock and…” Read more >

9. Wide Perspectives on Landscapes | Oakland Magazine | by DeWitt Cheng | December 2017
Sculptor Pamela Merory Dernham and painter Walter James Mansfield, who showed previously together six years ago, are reunited for This Land We Share, exploring landscape, in the broadest sense…” Read more >

collect artworks by Pamela Merory Dernham >

STATEMENT
I have always been attracted to making figurative sculpture because of my love of the human form and my fascination with physical, intellectual, and emotional interactions.  For much of the history of art, the figure has been used to tell the stories of a culture.  Among the most compelling sculptures for me are the Pre Columbian and Egyptian tombs, Indian temples, and European churches.  Though I can never have the direct experience of these cultures, their figurative art draws me through its power to evoke reactions, feelings, and memories of my own.
In my own art what I desire to create are figurative sculptural works that do not have specific narrative intent and yet evoke meaning for the viewer.  We live in a world of innumerable cultures, languages, and beliefs.  What we ultimately share is our humanity, and my goal is to reach others across our particular belief systems.  
To make my sculptures I begin with individual figures “drawn” with steel wire.  Wire is an excellent medium for me to create expressive gestures in a direct and rapid way.  I group the figures until I achieve a formal balance to the composition, refining the overall look of the piece rather than what story it might be telling.  At the same time, I think about each figure as a person making a gesture, and how the figures appear to interact.  This includes the beauty of a line or a curve in a single body, as well as the progression of the hands or feet through the whole composition.  My sculptures communicate on these multiple levels and invite viewers through these points of entry to find the meaning of the work to them.

BIO
Pamela Merory Dernham is an Oakland, California-based artist who exhibits nationally and whose work is collected internationally. Currently, she is in the exhibition "Migration" curated by Lonnie Lee at Vessel Gallery in Oakland, Ca. Vessel Gallery is one of the attention worthy galleries of the "Oakland Renaissance" and Merory Dernham is proud to have been included in numerous exhibits there.

Last year, she was thrilled to participate in the exhibition "Personal Structures" organized by the European Cultural Center at the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy. It was one of the collateral exhibitions during the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Before that Merory Dernham was in the two-person exhibit "This Land We Share" at Vessel Gallery in Oakland, Ca. and as well as the group shows "Motive," in 2017, "Artists: Women/Making Art" in 2015, "The Human Form as Vessel" in 2013, "Ensembles & Orchestras" in 2012. She had a solo exhibit "Body Language" in 2011.

"The Joy of Arrival," a large-scale outdoor sculpture which is a reflection on the themes of exodus and immigration is currently on long-term exhibition at the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, Ca.

Further public works placed by Vessel Gallery include four large scale sculptures at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation in Oakland, Ca., two of which had previously been on display at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, Ca.

Merory Dernham has exhibited extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, including solo exhibits in 2008 at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art and the di Rosa Preserve in 2004; and group exhibits at California College of the Arts (2006), the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (2005), and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey (2004).

Merory Dernham’s inspiration has always been the human figure. Her current work takes the human figure in 2 directions: first, as an allusion to landscape, and second, as a performative presence directly engaging the viewer. While based on the figure, her steel wire sculpture continues to evolve in the direction of abstraction. The figures are "stripped down" to the minimal requirements for expression through gesture.

Merory Dernham earned her Master of Fine Arts Degree at the California College of the Arts (CCA). She is an active member of the Pacific Rim Sculptors Group and was also active in the Alumni Council of California College of the Arts.

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The de Young Open presented by de Young Museum >
de Young Open - Datebook, SF Chronicle >

PRESS / REVIEWS
1. Here and Now and Then | East Bay Express | September 2011 | DeWitt Cheng
"Emergent Behaviors comprises figurative wall-mounted wire sculptures by Pamela Merory Dernham and paintings by Walter James Mansfield that they..."  Read more >

2. Wide Perspectives on Landscapes | Oakland Magazine | December 2017 | DeWitt Cheng
”Sculptor Pamela Merory Dernham and painter Walter James Mansfield, who showed previously together six years ago, are reunited for This Land We Share,…”   Read more >

collect artworks by Michael Hyun Gu Kang >

STATEMENT | INVINCIBLE I was chasing the invincibility that comes with innocence. It's a carefree jump in the air. A leap with no intentions, or a moment of childish pure existence.

STATEMENT | RECORDER
It is a self-referential painting. It shows a painter in a feedback loop of inspiration and decision-making. It reminds me of how the process of making art can be just as important as the outcome.

STATEMENT | RUNNING THROUGH MUD This painting is part of a series that acknowledges existing between past, present, and future. I wanted to show a figure wrestling through time and space. It hinges on the idea that my identity doesn't only exist in the past, but also in the present. It is this simultaneous existence that made me understand that my identity isn't about being more Korean or more American, but instead, it is about being both and creating an entirely new definition.

STATEMENT | PIGGY BACK
I painted this figure when Asian hate started to be televised more openly during the pandemic. It depicts a figure running in place while looking over their shoulder. It's a figure carrying fear but attempting to move forward.

STATEMENT | HELP ME
The past couple years have been a difficult time for me and others and the painting "도와 줘", comes from that place. I wanted to paint a figure trapped, trying to run away, while simultaneously protecting himself from harm. It's a reaction to helplessness, doing what I can, but still needing support.

STATEMENT | SPECTATOR During 2020 I painted many figures dancing. I was chasing the feeling of freedom that we all lost limited by the pandemic. This is one of those figures having an out of body experience as they're dancing. You see one figure falling to the ground as its soul leaps forth.

STATEMENT | SHELTER
I created this collage after the first few months of shelter in place. I created a figure protecting itself from everything. I felt the need to protect my health, physically and mentally. I draped this figure in Korean fabric and watched the wind blow through the piece. It reminded me of Han and how our ability to survive suffering was a part of what made me who I am. I found solace in the cold and the difficulties the past 24 months have held for me.

BIO
Michael Hyun Gu Kang is a Korean American artist based in San Francisco, California. He has shown work internationally and locally. This has included showings at Land and Sea, Paolo Meija Fine arts, and the Salesforce Tower. Born and raised in Southern California to immigrant parents, his work is informed by resourcefulness and the processing of day to day events. He uses mixed media to create sculptural, textured paintings.

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collect artworks by Cheryl Calleri >

STATEMENT
I am fascinated by questions about how things work, the unknown and the un-seeable. My work is a personal response to nature that is informed by science. Subjects range from the subtle and dynamic forces at work in the human nervous system to the structure and movement of planetary systems and recently the behavior of reflected and refracted light. —Cheryl Calleri

GATHERING LIGHT SERIES STATMENT
Light itself is the subject and medium of GATHERING LIGHT.
While working with light, my studio has become a place of experimentation. I set parameters and introduce combinations of mirrored shapes from various sources while testing the quality of the reflections. Shadows add a three dimensional effect. Natural light filters through the room, adding more reflections. The behavior of light under these conditions has an intellectual explanation, yet the feeling is visceral and mysterious. Each sculpture is a contemplative encounter that entwines subjectivity and logic. —Cheryl Calleri

BIO
For many years Cheryl Calleri has employed experimental methods in several mediums, color, printmaking, assem- blage, sculpture, digital photography, video, and video installation.

A native of Northern California, she received her BFA in printmaking from San Jose State University and studied painting and drawing at the Academia de Bellas Artes, Valencia, Spain. Calleri has had numerous museum exhibitions and her works are included in public and private collections in the US, Europe, and Asia.

CV >

CATALOGUE > Gathering Light

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STATEMENT | HEREAFTER
my daydream of
looking beyond
our human mess

STATEMENT | BEACH WALK 1, 3, & 4

sometimes
i feel like
we happy people
here in this place
are not aware of
the mess we created
is surrounding us and closing in
on us

STATEMENT | NURTURED BY NATURE
One day, in the back of a small temple, I saw a thousand and eight miniature Bodhisattva statues sitting outside, row after row, each in more or less the same color, size, shape, and expression as it’s neighbor. I imagined these stone idols of the Bodhisattva as they began life many years ago. They were probably all created from a single ideal to convey that perfect expression of peace, serenity, and enlightenment and nothing else.

When I see them as they are today, I realize that something has happened. They have acquired beautiful imperfections on their faces and bodies from nature and time. I also see other emotions sitting on top of their expressions of peace, serenity, and enlightenment. I now see these stone idols as individuals expressing other emotions like sadness, pleasure, jealousy, joy, suffering, regrets, anger, disappointment, etc. They even remind me of people I know in my own life.

Who is this Bodhisattva to you?

STATEMENT | SELF, REFLECTING
“The me sitting here and the image of me I have are out of sync.” — Excerpt from Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

STATEMENT | BODY, SEWN
BODY, SEWN is a part of my ongoing self-examination/reflection series. For this work, I used a common flatbed scanner to record portions of myself piece by piece. I then took those individual pieces and sewed them back together. The result is a visual distortion, but a true representation of how I sometimes feel about myself. The process and result were an attempt to work out questions I struggle with about personal identity and purpose in life.

BIO
Growing up in Korea, Hyeyoung devoted her youth to studying classical music; cello. After graduating from an art and music high school in Seoul, she attended the Konservatorium Der Stadt Wien in Vienna Austria for 3 years. In 1994, she moved to San Francisco and earned a BFA in Fine Art Photography from The Academy of Art. From 2001 to 2013, she lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, loving the ocean and surfing and being active in making art and participating in exhibitions. Since 2013, she has been living in Oakland, CA and continues working as a visual artist.

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collect artworks by Jos Sances >

STATEMENT
For 8 months I joyfully and manically was able to focus on this very large scratchboard drawing. Inspired by Moby Dick and the history of whaling in America. The whale's skin is embedded with a history of capitalism in America, images of human and environmental exploitation and destruction since 1850. The whale is a metaphor for survival, immortality and a reason for optimism

BIO
Jos Sances was born John Joseph Sances in Boston, attended Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. For over the past 40 years he has made his living as a Printmaker and Muralist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jos is founder of Alliance Graphics, begun in 1989, a successful, union screenprint shop. Previously he co-founded Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center in 1980 and worked there until 1988. All the while maintaining a steady output of art which address issues and ideas which concern him. In 2010 and 2016 the Library of Congress acquired 490 prints from Sances which represented a broad overveiw of his printmaking.

As an artist and community collaborator for the past 25 years, murals and public art have been Jos's passion. He has painted murals at the Oakland Coliseum and tile mural commissions at the new Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro, CA; AMTRAK/BART Station, Richmond, CA, the Sixteenth Street BART station in San Francisco. Two tile murals were completed in 2009, at the Castro Valley Library and Arnett Watson Apartments in San Francisco with Art Hazelwood. In 2010 with Daniel Galvez, Jos completed a huge 7000 sq.ft Mural for a new Recreation Center at Ira Jenkins Park in Oakland. In 2011 Sances and Galvez completed a tile and etched metal artwork for Skyline College in San Bruno, CA. In 2015 and 2016 three screen printed tile murals and workshops were done in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico. Shoruq Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine and with students at Berkeley High School in California.

The most recent projects completed grew out of workshops given with invested community participants. This aspect of the projects—working with community to help guide and create the artwork—is of particular interest to Jos. "Building community through artistic practice has been some of the most satisfying work I’ve done. Interacting with people who will use the facilities and helping them to express their values and experience, has enriched the process. The artwork begins by meeting with community stakeholders, asking them to contribute images and ideas for the piece. We then use my skills and knowledge of ceramic and screen printing to make these ideas concrete. I am eager to share what I know with the community through hands-on workshops. Thus the broader community is engaged and connected to the artwork we create together."

Jos is proudly a founding and lifelong member of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy. A political performance group that produces satirical edible art screenprinted with chocolate on tortillas.

PRESS / REVIEW
1. Jos Sances’ Great White Whale and High Time to Get to the Sea | East Bay Express | May 2019 | Janis Hashe
”For years, Berkeley printmaker John Joseph “Jos” Sances was fascinated by Herman Melville’s Epic novel…” Read More >

2. The whale Tries to Save Us | San Francisco Chronicle | May 2019 | Charles Desmarais
”Perhaps it was a coordinated campaign. Or maybe several readers were independently moved to share…” Read More >

3. Nel Ventre Della Balena USA (In The Belly USA’s Whale) | II Venerdi di Repubblica (Rome, Italy) | April 2019 | Enrico Diaglio
”I visitatori entrano, per il vernissage, nella sala grande
dell’Art Center…” Read More >

4. ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now
Smithsonian American Art Museum | November 20, 2020 – August 8, 2021
”In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. Many artists came of age during the civil rights, labor, anti-war, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and channeled the period’s social activism into assertive aesthetic statements that announced a new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent…” Read more >

collect artworks by  David Burke >

 STATEMENT
For the last several years his work has been exploring the intersection between manmade and natural worlds. Burke’s recent ink drawings are equal parts hybrid farm animal and genetic experiment gone sideways. At a moment when scientists are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with genetic cloning and 3-D printers are programmed to print everything from food to firearms, there are bound to be missteps and deviations that result in surprising mutations that stray from the intended outcome. These pieces depict what some of these miscalculations might yield in the form of mutated animal forms with body parts that grow into and out of one another in a way that renders the creature virtually helpless. The paintings illustrate man’s complex and often convoluted relationship to nature and depict instances in which theses forces both compliment one another and collide in destructive ways.

His process involves equal parts control and chaos, and echoes tenuous socio-ecological relationships depicted in the imagery. The use of synthetic material reinforces the commentary on man’s impulse to consume, contain and modify the earth’s resources in order to accommodate our own needs and desires. His work celebrates man’s desire to build, innovate and create, while acknowledging the fact that our impulse to grow and consume is eroding the ecological framework that we depend on to sustain our wasteful habits.

BIO
David Burke is an Oakland based painter and educator whose work has been exhibited his work both nationally and internationally. He is the art director for the Super Heroes Mural Project in West Oakland and co-founded the Autobody Bridge Program for emerging Bay Area artists. Most recently he was selected by Zero1 to be a part of the flagship American Arts Incubator program that sends artists abroad to collaborate with youth and underserved populations on community-based new media and mural art projects that bolster local economies, influence public policy, and further social innovation.

collect artworks by Peter St. Lawrence >

STATEMENT
Peter St.Lawrence is an Oakland-based ceramic artist who earned his BFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts. His early work focused on figurative sculpture, dolls, and marionettes. As he started engaging more with the interior design world, contributing eventually to the design of several Bay Area restaurants, he started creating simpler forms in his studio, which were applied to vessels and lighting. In his most recent body of work, St.Lawrence has shed all ornament and function, focusing on pure form, with a series of table-top sculptures that feel minimal, contemporary, classic, organic, serious, and playful all at the same time.

Iconographically, the work references human shapes and ancient sculpture, while stylistically leaning toward mid-century modernism. Certainly, the work’s simplicity brings it toward minimalism and a serious kind of formalism-a realm where the grace in the arc of a curve, the play between form and negative space, and the beauty of the pure material, are poetic and engaging enough to give the work a compelling presence.

At the same time, and in contrast to categorical and canonical minimalism, there is also something very human about St.Lawrence’s work, that brings a warmth and honesty to it. This humanity can be found in the occasionally anthropomorphic forms, in the quirky sense of humor and play, and in the physical tactility of the objects, whose raw and glazed surfaces show just enough hand to remind the viewer of the physical process of making that brought them into the world.

BIO
Peter St.Lawrence has been contributing to the arts community in Oakland since he received a BFA in sculpture from California College of the Arts in 2001. He works as a stylist and as an interior design consultant while maintaining a robust studio practice. He is also a founder and former director of FM; a fine art gallery and community of artist studios in Oakland.

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The de Young Open presented by de Young Museum >
de Young Open - Datebook, SF Chronicle>

collect artworks by Cherisse Alcantara >

STATEMENT
Seemingly ordinary people and events contain strange and incomprehensible elements which interest me greatly. To explore the significance of these everyday observances is what drives me. I am drawn to contemporary figures, involved in their complex internal world, caught unawares and doing ordinary things. 

The characters I incorporate in my paintings are anonymous strangers, sourced from both self-made and found imagery. In most cases, these characters are minorities and women. My art is rooted in my personal experiences of being a woman, a minority, and Asian American immigrant. Thus, I am drawn to these figures because of my sense of connection to them. To not see oneself in mainstream culture and media, be made invisible, and be seen as an outsider or ‘the other’ is disempowering. The importance of seeing people you can identify with, portrayed as complex and complete human beings is liberating. It brings a sense of validation to one’s unique experiences.

I carefully stage, create scenarios for and isolate these figures in both familiar and equivocal spaces. They become suspended between the real world and the dream world or between two boundaries and places. Thereby, reflecting the experiences we have of belonging and not belonging; of the connection and dislocation between our selfhood and society; and lastly, of our uncertain and fragile identities and relationships. 

I spend a lot of time and find the most pleasure in constructing the abstracted space surrounding the figure. Atmospheric elements and shadows recur in my works often and I build layers of paint and marks to achieve these effects. Human beings are temporal, and light and atmosphere are eternally in flux and ever-changing. I am highly in tune with the light, color, space, and mood as they serve an integral component in my paintings. They become a continuation of the figure’s state of being and condition.

What I seek are the ambiguities and the question marks in the imagery. It is the very act of painting with its slowness, labor and thinking through the paint, which allows for this reflection. Through suggestive narratives, I want to leave room for the viewer to enter into and engage with the painting.

BIO
Cherisse Alcantara (b. Nueva Ecija, Philippines) is a Filipina-American painter based in San Francisco. She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2021) and her BA Arts from the University of California-Berkeley (2013). Her practice is anchored in the familiar and reimagines the spaces of the everyday. While engaging with the observed world and the formal language of painting, she conjures imaginary abstract spaces. Drawn to light, luminosity, saturated color, abstraction, and the particularities within her subjects, she works with thinly layered paint and iridescent pigments. Inspired by areas she lived or frequented which includes the built environment and nearby landscapes, her art reflects upon transience and the need to dwell longer..

collect artworks by Ron Weil >

STATEMENT
The objective of my art is to create shapes, spaces, and textures that have the look and feel of unmediated natural forms. Towards this end I use a drawing process in which I apply forces, like flowing air and liquid, to granular material, such as powdered charcoal and bone black. This is analogous to natural processes at all scales. The resultant images are not reflections of objects and environments actually found in nature, they only appear so because they are constructed with the same multilevel stochastic processes that underlie the universe we inhabit.

While I utilize randomness on the micro level, on the macro level my images are guided by formal structural considerations. I look for and try to nurture certain qualities: textural complexity within images of apparent simplicity; multiple possible focal points where shifts of attention lead to unexpected transformations of meaning or foreground-background transpositions; potentially jolting variations in scale; surfaces that arouse haptic sensations; and depth that implies hidden space. I search for the fresh and unfamiliar, the difficult to name, visual mystery and its concurrent tension. My desire is to create visual excitement with an emotionally complex aftertaste. My drawings are not a representation of my internal fantasy world or a romanticization of the natural world, rather they are impressionistic fields of potential discovery, where the physical and emotional nature of the worlds they depict are not just left open to, but are absolutely dependent upon the viewer’s engagement and interpretation.

BIO
B. 8/24/1944 | D. 7/25/2019
Ron Weil (1944–2019) was born in New York and grew up in Detroit. He studied economics at the University of Michigan followed by graduate work at Berkeley in both economics and in a self-developed interdisciplinary study in urban geography. He has been a teacher at the high school and college levels as well as a real estate developer, urban planner, and community worker. He has made a living as a laborer, cab driver, and poker player.

Weil has been drawing since childhood, and his creative impulses have frequently caused his career plans to jump the track. While studying economics in grad school at Berkeley he took a year off to devote himself exclusively to black-and-white photography (he’s always trying to figure out where his love of gray came from). He experimented with double exposure and printing techniques like solarization. After finishing school he spent a few years using silkscreen to make political posters (some of these got favorable notice in Mother Jones). “Art kept popping up like a mushroom in the woods,” he says.

In 2011, after the death of his wife, he dropped other pursuits and gave his full attention to art. His first effort was an enormous drawing on paper, a phantasmagoria expressing his feelings at the time. He created pieces that made use of the materials of his wife’s sickroom. He took up pastels again, as he had often done in the past; but as had also happened before, he found himself lured away from color by the challenge of monochrome—gray, black, and white. 

One day, while shopping for charcoal sticks, Weil discovered powdered charcoal and powdered graphite. He experimented with both but dropped graphite because it was too easy to make something pretty: “Graphite has its own inherent beauty that has nothing to do with me, only the material” he says. “It felt like cheating, a way to create beautiful stuff without soul.”

So he opted to work with the more challenging powdered charcoal. He developed a set of tools and discovered for himself a repertoire of techniques using natural forces (air and water) to produce images that, though produced rapidly, seem the result of slow natural processes. He works outdoors and has even tried to use the rain to assist in image-making. He says, “I like the patterned randomness created by natural forces, but what really thrills me is the magic of discovery and surprise that comes from making work with this medium."

PRESS / REVIEWS
1. Oakland Artist Ron Weil Evokes Immersive Worlds with Peculiar Techniques in his Vessel Gallery exhibit, Discovering Uncharted Territories | East Bay Express | Sarah Burke |September 2014
"He developed an artistic technique using charcoal powder through which he now builds abstract dreamscapes on paper, producing works that appear remarkably tactile, and..."     Read more >

2. Ron Weil / William Schwob: Critic's Pick | Visual Art Source | September 2014
"Pairing artists is tricky: their work is usually related in theme or material, and aesthetically on the same wavelength; but also different enough so that they speak to each other."     Read more >

3. Bella Feldman: New works at Vessel Gallery | East Bay Express | Sarah Burke, January 2016
Bella Feldman's recent work includes a sculpture that resembles a menacing underwater mine. Two glass orbs are outfitted with sharp steel spikes and anchored to...”   Read more >

4. Persistence of Light: Staff pick | East Bay Express | January 2018
With a new calendar comes new possibilities. Whether you decide to make New Year’s resolutions or actually stick to them, the mere concept proves our innate optimism...”   Read more >

5. Bella Feldman and Ron Weil | Artillery Magazine | February 2016 | DeWitt Cheng
”Two Bay Area artists, the sculptor/painter/collagist Bella Feldman and the draftsman (for lack of a better term) Ron Weil, show that intelligence,” Read more >

view more artworks by William Harsh >
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STATEMENT
From imagination and memory I wrestle familiar objects to expose the real presence and power of physical, tactile imagery. I work by improvisation, redrawing and re-configuring my constructions.  Mix-ups in 'representation' occur as forms get entangled in paint, when fortress-like assemblies begin to emerge, solid and abstract, 'set' in ambiguous spaces. Intensities of color, movement, and organization arise at this stage. A sense of estrangement, a pull away from the familiar, compels the final images. The whole ensemble must become a curiosity to me, like an unexpected monument, the way driftwood piled high on a beach or junk in a studio corner suggests a drama. A finished picture must feel at least this real.

BIO
William Harsh was an artist who maintained a committed and dedicated studio practice of nearly 40 years.  Primarily an oil painter, he also worked extensively with other painting and drawing media and with monotype printmaking.  Raised in Europe and the US, he studied with Philip Guston and James Weeks at Boston University, and for many years taught studio art at colleges in New England and California. His work is included in numerous collections in the US, Canada, and Europe, including UC Berkeley Art Museum's permanent collection.

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PRESS / REVIEWS
1. First Friday Oakland Art Openings | ArtBusiness.com | May 2010
"Cyrus Tilton presents his surreal kinetic (and static) sculptures, beautifully engineered as well as…"     Read more >

2. Painter William Harsh has Important Showing  | Benicia | November 2010
"William Harsh’s “Powerful and Cryptic Oil Paintings” at Oakland Gallery."  Read more >

3. Aftermath at Vessel Gallery | East Bay Express | November 2010
"William Harsh makes a forceful case for aesthetic seriousness in Morphologies, a show of some three dozen… "     Read more >

4. William Harsh: "Morphologies" at Vessel Gallery | Art Ltd | January 2011
"Morphologies," with its echoes of the surrealist Roberto Matta, suggests a similar preoccupation with the mental states and metamorphosis. These works, however, have even deeper roots…"     Read more> 

5. William Harsh's Inner States | East Bay Express | November 2012
"Vessel Gallery mounts a final retrospective of the admired expressionist painter....Unfortunately, Harsh would not live to see his final exhibition; he passed away the night his works left Benicia for…"     Read more >

6. William Harsh taps the tangible but unnameable |San Francisco Chronicle | Review by Kenneth Baker | November 2012
"Vessel Gallery in Oakland has given Benicia painter William Harsh the sort of retrospective that his work has merited for years.  Sadly, though he was intensely involved in preparing the show,…"     Read more >

7. William Harsh review: Painting, drawing for keeps | San Francisco Chronicle | Kenneth Baker | December 2014
"Looking at many of Harsh’s paintings induces discomfort. You can feel the struggle in them, the effort of improvising something into fictive being and trying to make it credible in the way that only the delirium of heartfelt painting can...."     Read more > 

STATEMENT
I am intrigued by the symbiotic relationships of ecology. Living creatures, while fragile and vulnerable, are constantly challenged by their surroundings to evolve and hybridize.  My recent series of work, ‘Wildwood” creates forest-like landscapes that embed the energy, beauty, and mystery of nature. These works are created with an imaginary and futuristic sense that directs us to the responsibility of seeking a peaceful co-existence within our world.

My recent work, ‘Wildwood’, relies on my own methodology, complexity (the process) within simplicity (the final surface). Digital processes (photograph and digital processing) are interplayed with conventional artistic medium (painting, hand cutting, and drawing). Multiple images of trees are digitally manipulated for further transformation. Subsequently, the digital images are drawn (and layered) onto drafting film and transformed into multiple layers.  I encapsulate many different elements to re-create the forest for the painting, ‘Out of the Blue’.  For example, the organic structural images, the animal-like creatures, and the trees in the paintings are driven from my previous series of work. I oscillate between the virtual and physical steps to amplify the images. These stepwise processes are vital to precisely eliminate, build on, layer, simplify, and hybridize the forms to generate the complexity (the process) within simplicity (the final surface) in my work. 

BIO
Kyong Ae Kim works predominantly in the medium of painting and drawing.  Kyong completed her MFA with a merit scholarship at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005.  Her work was exhibited in the Bay Area, Boston area and many others including OHT gallery, Judi Rotenberg gallery, Watson Fine Art at Wheaton College, Korean Cultural Center in LA, and Aqua Art Fair in Miami.  Her work has been reviewed in The Boston Globe, New American Paintings, Providence Journal, and Times-Herald. Kyong is a recipient of the Emerging Artists of the Bay Area 2015 from Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship from San Francisco Foundation and Korean Honor Scholarship from The Embassy of Korea, Washington, D.C.  Her public collection includes the National Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea and Wellington Management Company LLP and Fidelity Corporate Art Collection in Boston.

Her works are represented by Vessel Gallery in Oakland, OH projects in Boston and consigned with the SFMOMA artist gallery in San Francisco and Sabina Lee Gallery in Los Angeles.  Kyong was born in Gyeongju, South Korea in 1976.  Currently, she lives and practices in San Francisco.

collect artworks by Edith Hillinger >

STATEMENT: BOTANICAL SERIES
With this series of works, I continue to explore my connection to nature, especially botany. Plants are living maps of time and change marked by activities hidden from our eyes. In the body of the plant, I see its newest growth and its oldest, the impact of the sun, the rain, soil conditions, scars left by injury and healing, genetic inheritance and spontaneous mutation. A plant is imprinted by its environment, and it, in turn, leaves its imprint on the environment. As with all living organisms, the seemingly solid body hides the ceaseless, fluid motion that lies below the surface. Painting gives form to concepts arising out of memory and the imagination. Paintings arise out of all that is ephemeral--memory and feelings--and memory retains only what is essential. The paint resonates with the emotions and memories provoked by the original encounter with the subjects. I engage with the visible aspect of my subject, in order to penetrate as deeply as possible into the invisible.

STATEMENT: COLLAGE SERIES
The living room of the old wooden house on the outskirts of Istanbul was a time capsule of our past and current life and it was the incubator of the artist I was to become. Sitting on the newly acquired, richly patterned Turkish carpets, I was surrounded by the spare Bauhaus furniture from the land we had just fled. The glass front bookcase housed the inherited Japanese treasures; paper fans with gold decorations, lacquer boxes, opium pipes with tortoise stems, paper toys. On the wall hung a Japanese scroll depicting bamboo and a bird.

I was attracted to these objects and spent a lot of my time playing in the living room. I did not know it at the time but seeing the spare, geometric forms of the Bauhaus furniture and weavings against the calligraphic and tribal forms was building my vocabulary as an artist.

What brought this all back for me in a way that I could then work with, was a very small photograph I took of a high window in the Alhambra, in Spain. The window was pierced and ornate in the style of Moorish architecture. I drew these patterns with a Japanese brush pen on Gampi paper. The pattern was that of a pierced window, but it also reminded me of the weave of a burka and the lattice covered windows of the women’s quarters I saw as a child in Istanbul.

As I draw, and later as I cut the drawings apart and reassemble them, one pattern meanders into the next and memories rise to the surface again: I remember sitting next to my father, an architect, as he drew the plans for buildings in strong black India ink lines. When I was a little older, I was given a pen and tried my hand at drawing straight black lines in ink. My drawings now incorporate architectural notations for stairs, bricks, flooring materials etc. expressing my love for the small visual notations in architectural dictionaries.

Blank Gampi paper is set off against line drawings, brush paintings, oil stick, and acrylic. The patina of age and decay rubs up against the new, not yet embellished, and barely envisioned - as Berlin contrasted with Istanbul in the 1930’s.

In my mid-teens, we left Istanbul and moved to New York. Daily life unfolded once again in an unfamiliar environment. The work brings together all I have gathered from these very different cultures and the circumstances of my personal life and restores once severed connections.

BIO
Edith Hillinger was born in Berlin, Germany, and spent her formative years in Turkey. She came to the United States as a young adult.

STATEMENT
My work is an exploration of identity through looking into the past at my native Korean culture, examining my Los Angeles upbringing (the formative years), drawing inspiration from my present home in West Oakland, and looking into the future at how the human condition strips away everything and lands us at a place of common humanity.  Ultimately, my work is premised on the idea that we are all on a journey looking for that place to call home.

BIO
Born in 1979, in Los Angeles and based in Oakland, California, Dave Young Kim draws from his Korean culture and personal experiences in depicting ideas of identity, as well as the human condition. He attended the University of California Davis before earning an MFA at Mills College.

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STATEMENT
When speaking of "the world" we often refer to only its human population. Humanistic systems seem to strip other species of their sovereignty and numb our awe of them. My work strives to combat this very narrow view.

With the paintings I've attempted to keep the depicted creature connected to her natural environment, making habitats an integral element of the work. The sculptural relief aspects of the paintings are made from cut and formed card stock paper and rubber cement. They are then attached with heavy gel medium onto layers of textured paper on canvas and covered with colored gesso. They are representative of a relationship of vital interdependence with the drawn animal. The drawing is done with Prismacolor pencils using a glazing technique traditionally used in oil painting. Instead of thinking in terms of background and foreground I want to depict the true intertwining of each component, getting closer to a "realism" of what we see and how we all live in the world."

BIO
B. 2/14/1947 | D. 8/2/2019
Iris Polos was born and raised in Oakland by two artists.  Having an artist mother and an artist father (a WPA, Works Progress Administration painter), Iris was raised with social activism in her blood.  She has continued the legacy of her family’s values thru decades of dedicated social activist art making practice.  Her work is unparalleled in courage and sense of justice.  She is a wildlife enthusiast of Greek descent who splits her time between the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas. She earned her MFA in painting from California College of the Arts and has exhibited her work in galleries across the country.

PRESS / REVIEWS
1. The Animals In Us | East Bay Express | Sarah Burke | June 2014
"The show Us at Vessel Gallery explores this tension between inclusion and exclusion in regards to the relationships between humans and animals through the art… "     Read more >

2. Animalia House | East Bay Monthly | Dewitt Cheng | July 2014
"A new show by sculptor Gordon Glasgow and assemblagist-painter Iris Polos, appropriately entitled Us, explores our malfeasance as our brother animals’ keeper..."     Read more > 

STATEMENT – RE PLAY 
The Toy, with relentless loyalty, bends rules, defies gravity, and conjures exploration.  A diminutive plastic microcosm fueled by imagination, the toy is a tool safely testing the dumbfounding world presented by adults.  With my toys, I was a hero, a villain, a caring companion. I played all the roles.  As with most children, I had almost no domain, control, or voice, but in my toy world, I lived fully.  Through this work, I am returning to and reinventing the meaning of toys for myself and for my viewers.  

This new body of art is a gathering and reimagining of used, broken remnants of toys that I reconstitute to bring people back to creativity and imagination.

Each toy touched and played countless times by its child owner. I am giving the toys one more role as a portal that lures with adult sensibility, gently guiding us back to a place of, curiosity, memory, story, and play. 

My process is additive, repetitive, and visceral. It is meditatively painstaking. The Neo-mosaic work, made from the colors of the toys requires hundreds of micro-decisions that lead to elegant disorganization. Initially, concepts lead to sketches and drawings. I scavenge for, dismantle and then sort both complex and simple toys to harvest their colors and shapes.  In reassembling the fragments, I create a macro-image that is in tension with the “garbage” of the discarded fragments from which it is made.

BIO
Todd Laby is a sculptor and former furniture design/maker who works in a variety of materials.  He has been building and sculpting since first picking up a piece of Lego as a child. Previously focused on wood, Todd is currently exploring and creating with broken toys and unwanted consumer goods.

Todd has been exhibited at Wonderland Gallery, Somarts, Vessel Gallery, the Armory Art Show (within the Art Forum lounge), New York, NY and HauteGREEN Brooklyn, NY. , as well as in various galleries in northern and southern California. In collaboration with the dance company BANDALOOP, he has exhibited at Mass MOCA and the Cache Valley Center for the Arts (Logan, UT) and received two National Endowment for the Arts grants.

His work has been featured in Time Out New York, The San Francisco Examiner, Plenty Magazine, Surface Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and 7x7 Magazine.

Todd has earned a BFA with distinction in Individual Studios combining Sculpture, Furniture and Industrial Design from California College of the Arts in 2004 and a BFA in Advertising Design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena/Switzerland in 1992.

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collect artworks by Barry Ebner >

STATEMENT
A wall was constructed, why, to protect from the elements, from danger from the unknown. To construct shelter, to define mine, ours and what is not. A wall is a way to keep the outside out and the inside, the private, in. It is a way to divide as much as it unifies. A wall is a border, a boundary. The border is what divides us from them, a boundary defines those limits. It defines limitations, how far we can go and where we should stop. A boundary in thought is as real as the Berlin Wall was, as the wall in Jerusalum is. A border can be a line in the sand south of Arizona, north of Mexico that defines who can walk in a region freely and who must present documentation. 

So I gaze at these walls constructed in our society, both real and through the image of the real to the walls constructed in our sociological interactions, through the illusions of transparency. I am fascinated by the constructs of the barriers, also by the ruins and remnants of our culture that show up in buildings that have decayed or crumbled. Places that feel familiar but are not, that are perhaps the hazy recollection of a forgotten memory or the passage of time.

Monotype is a preferred medium. The immediacy of the process is central to my approach. I find that creating a monotype is a performance. There is the risk of failure and the possibility of surpassing what was planned. My established themes are a starting point to explore variations in mark-making and gesture to arrive at the finished piece. The process of monotype is very intuitive, one works quickly to arrive at the moment of printing. Every piece is approached without direct reference, either sketches or photographs, on hand thus allowing my memory to change and shift the image as I explore the different textures and forms on the plate.

BIO
Barry Ebner is a printmaker who skips between abstraction and architectural in his mono prints.His abstract pieces engage with texture and line as they move into a conversation between figure and ground. His architectural series engages with memory and spaces that hint and conflict.

Barry has been working with printmaking since the late 80’s often focusing on monoprints. He has exhibited work in Europe, Asia, South America along with the US. He most recently taught several workshops in Santiago, Chile. He also has worked collaboratively on projects in Havana, Cuba and in Seattle and Berkeley. In Santiago he put together a 12 person printmaking collaboration between Chilean artists and American artists which culminated in “To Be Determined” an exhibition on monoprints that was in Valparaiso, Chile.

Barry also makes one-off artist books at his studio, The Studio of Nothing Else. This books incorporate monoprint and poetry. When not working in the studio he can be found playing guitar…badly.

He has a MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA in Studio art from the University of Texas at Austin.

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STATEMENT
When I began sculpting, over 50 years ago, it was almost unheard of for women to go into the field.  A psychologist I knew asked, disparagingly, if I had penis envy.  Women were just beginning to slip through the cracks when I started.  I slipped into the Sculpture Department at CCAC on a technicality: I was hired to teach a night class (less prestige). Later, when the head of the Sculpture Department complained that it was unsafe for a woman to be teaching at night, his superior, who was more progressive, promoted me to the faculty.  Even then my job was not secure.  Five years later I took a leave of absence to teach in Africa and the head of the Sculpture Department tried a second time to fire me. 

Desperate for community and in need of work, I searched at every college that taught sculpture in a 100-mile radius, but none had a woman on staff.  With courage brought on by desperation, I returned to CCAC and filed a discrimination suit under the Board of Equalization, which I won.  The department head who had tried to fire me was replaced.  To my chagrin, the new head was even worse – he propositioned me upon first acquaintance!

I persevered as a practicing sculptor, but the discrimination I endured hampered my career.  The kind of work I do has often been attributed to a man or questioned as being inappropriate for a woman.  We live in a world riddled with anxiety and war. I have never believed that some subjects are suitable for men and some for women.  I especially never accepted the notion that because I am a mother, my work needs to be about mothering.

Things are better for women sculptors now, but there's still a ways to go, especially in exhibitions.  I think most gallery owners (present company excluded), don't take female artists very seriously.  The majority of works exhibiting in museums and galleries are by male artists.  However, I am hopeful that things will continue to improve.  Some of the women I mentored in my teaching career have gone on to significant careers.

BIO
Fifty years into her career – and still innovating – sculptor Bella Feldman has more to say, more art to make, and more people to reach.  Feldman communicates through metaphor, juxtaposing the strength of steel and the fragility of glass, deftly crafting large and small scale sculptures – from series of elegantly composed “Flasks of fiction” to playfully poignant “War Toys”.

A pioneer among women sculptors, Feldman creates tension through her materials and expresses themes drawn from her own life experiences – including the Depression, the Holocaust, and many wars.  Although she and her work appear tough as nails, neither is invincible.  Her life (and ours), like the glass blown into her sculptures, is delicate.

Feldman’s message is timeless and delivered in a curious fashion that never ceases to compel us to look, think, and engage in her art.

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STATEMENT
The paintings often don’t reference recognizable forms.  Images are deconstructed, meaning is shifted, and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted.  Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of imagination.  With a subtle minimalistic approach, I establish a link between reality and that imagined.  By exploring the concept of landscape, architecture, and form / colors I investigate the dynamics of painting.  I can say with color, spontaneous scrawled lines, and multi-layered renderings; things that I don’t have words to express.

BIO
Linn Thygeson spent her childhood on a farm in South Dakota.  She studied art in Minneapolis, Flagstaff, Nebraska, at CCA, and at the Sorbonne in Paris.  She graduated from the University of Nebraska.  She has worked as a photography instructor, a florist, an art teacher, an opera costume designer, and as an award-winning graphic designer for the San Francisco Chronicle. She currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. 

Her work is in collections in Arizona, California, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Oregon.

STATEMENT
My encaustic paintings are created out of a deep sense of the oneness of humankind and nature. Nature is my most intimate contact, my reassurance of ongoing life. Through my paintings I seek to bring experiences of beauty, peace, and healing to a fractured world.

BIO
B. 6/18/1932 | D. 11/24/2017
Born in Minneapolis, Mari Marks moved to Illinois at age seven, following the death of her father. The family lived in the country and Marks found comfort and beauty in nature. She attended the University of Illinois, where she studied drawing with Richard Diebenkorn and graduated in painting with highest honors. She and her husband farmed for six years in northern Illinois with their three children. They moved to Washington, DC where her portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., was exhibited during the Poor People's encampment. She received an MA in Art Therapy from George Washington University. In 1984, Mari moved to Berkeley to resume active study of painting and fiber arts, exploring textured figurative work, symbolic constructions, and patterned nature paintings. In 1992, Mari studied with Elizabeth Murray at a California Summer in the Arts workshop. There she produced her first encaustic paintings. Her paintings are included in public, corporate, and private collections, among them the Richmond Memorial Civic Center; Hewlett-Packard Corporation, and the Hilton Hotel in Sapporo, Japan. Marks has exhibited widely throughout the United States, her recent solo exhibitions include Ispace in Chicago, and in the Bay Area, Robert Allen Fine Art, the Graduate Theological Union, and Dolby Chadwick Gallery. She has also shown in Brooklyn, Miami, Tucson, and Lincoln Nebraska.

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STATEMENT
My work arises from my strong connection to the land and the interrelatedness of all the life of our cosmos. I encourage appreciation of the beauty and the complexity of common insects and plants perceived as pests or weeds, whose diversity is crucial to the survival of life on our planet. My recent project in Iceland incorporates impressions taken directly from the land and peeled away as a memory of the earth itself. Currently I am working in the same way with California’s Coastal Redwoods.

BIO
I am an English born artist, now living in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Northern California. My work has evolved through glass/mixed media, sculpture, installation and photography to include video and sound installation. The media is dictated by the project concept.

In 1980 I researched and helped to revive the French glassmaking process of Pâte de verre. Examples of this work are in the collections of museums worldwide. These include the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Contemporary Art Collection Tate Gallery, London. National Museum of Scotland. LA County Museum, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan. kunstsammlungen De Vest Coburg, Germany. Cooper Hewitt, NY. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Toledo Museum of Art. Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and more.

collect artworks by Evan Holm

STATEMENT
Holm creates artifacts from a world where humans have long since disappeared and new forms of life have gained foothold upon the discarded architecture of our present civilization. Materials for these works begin as present day discards, leftovers, and forgotten flotsam. Transistor tubes create a bustling hive within an ancient bureau. A turntable is brought back to life nestled into a woven nest. The humble umbrella, the modest stapler, lost cassette tapes, and the crushed carcass of a Chevy Impala are imprinted into ghostly fossils that lovingly display the crumpled inventiveness of human ingenuity. As a whole, my sculptures and flat work generate glimpses of a future where the boundary between man-made and nature-made has dissolved into a family of hybrid organisms and abandoned relics.

BIO
Holm engages with wood, steel, ink, plaster, electronics, and motors to generate large scale immersive sculptural environments.  The work visualizes human’s relationship being in better harmony with the natural world.   He has shown throughout the Bay Area, including SFMOMA, San Jose Museum of Art, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Vessel Gallery, Oakland. Holm recently collaborating with Poet Laureate WS Merwin on a short film, first screened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  He has received grants through the Knight Foundation and has twice been nominated for Bay Area’s SECA award. He lives and works from his home studio in East Oakland.

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VIEW EXHIBIT SIGHTINGS BY EVAN HOLM

STATEMENT
Initially my enchantment was with the pure physical materiality of Paint; how it could ooze and goosh, flex, bend, smooth, blend, scrunch up or flow. And its colors were so handsome, so intriguing, and capable of infinite expressive nuance. In turn, paint appreciated my reverence for its history, and, I suspect, began to even like the way I learned to manipulate it. It responded to my devotion by teaching me to dance, showing me how to move together between a physical reality that remains itself but at the same time can refer to something else.

BIO
B. 9/5/1949 | D. 7/28/2017
It was her grandmother's name. We don't know how the grandmother came by the name as she was neither Greek nor Scandinavian, but British. There are records of an older one, Thekla-Equal-to-the-Apostles, who lived in Antioch and was a follower of Paul. She disguised herself as a man in order to preach the gospel, was found-out, seized by the authorities and put into the arena with wild beasts. But angels descended from heaven to protect her from harm. She became a saint.

The events of the current Thekla's life are not so dramatic - yet. She grew up in Los Angeles, between UCLA and the sea, in a somewhat conventional family. Well, it consisted of a father, a mother, two brothers and a dog. Almost as early as she could talk she started telling stories and drawing pictures to illustrate them. She read the many stories about "Margaret" aloud in their entirety to her family any time they were sitting in the car, a captive audience, for more than five minutes at a time. Either the family members were long-suffering (hard to imagine with brothers) or angels were protecting Thekla from harm.

She studied History and English in college and went to graduate school in Anglo-American Intellectual History. The stories about the development and influence of ideas fascinated her, but she missed the pictures. She started taking drawing and painting classes at night. In time she realized that she was more interested in the night. She moved to Massachusetts and apprenticed herself to a New England painter. Under his guidance she began to explore the magic of stories in color and form. She exhibited her paintings in several galleries and began to teach in a community college. She needed a degree in art, so she returned to California to earn an MFA in Painting and Drawing. Out of school, she worked first at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, designing and installing the Marine Hall. She set up her own painting studio. Then she taught English classes at Santa Barbara City College and art classes at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Stories and pictures. Perfect. But she had met Stephen. He wanted to move to San Francisco. She wanted to stay in Santa Barbara. They married and moved to San Francisco. In 1986 they moved to Berkeley. She built her own studio there in 1990. Stephen designed it, her father paid for it, and she borrowed a hard hat so she could be the General Contractor.

Thekla was represented in San Francisco first by the Tom Luttrell Gallery. Then by Cheryl Haines. Now by Toomey-Tourell. In Oaxaca, Mexico, she was represented by Galeria Quetzalli. Graciela, the dealer, had such difficulty getting the shipped paintings through customs in Mexico City that she invited Thekla to come to Oaxaca to paint. She provided a house with a rooftop studio. Perfect.

Collaborations, first with a Boston painter, then with a cellist and a composer occupied Thekla's attention for the last years of the 20th century. Exhibitions of the resulting work at the Richmond Art Center, "Epistolary Paint: A Visual Correspondence", at Cal Arts in Valencia, "Sound and Surface; A Duet for Brush and Bow" and at the Santa Barbara ContemporaryArts Forum, "Synaxis: A Collaboration in Sight and Sound" completed the series.

Since then she has been solitarily painting in her studio. She also sings in her studio with a madrigal group. Pictures and stories in song. But she has just about given up hope for Thekla-Equal-to-the-Apostles' drama. The wild beasts she faces in her studio are probably enough, and anyway, the angels may have been protecting something more than the name Thekla. In any case, it's looking as though she won't be a saint. Perfect? 

collect artworks by William Schwob >

STATEMENT
My most recent work involves wood-fired clay, one of the most basic of all materials, combined with a process that matches the medium perfectly and resonates with the subject material of the human form. In my exploration of the human form, I expose the anatomy and combine invented architectural structure in a way that suggests both the fragility and strength of the human condition. My interest in Japan in the early 90’s to the ceramic centers of Bizen and Shigaraki where I first encountered their beautiful ceramic works with their amazing surfaces and patinas of earth colors created by wood firing in large anagama kilns. The process is a collaboration between conscious intent and the unpredictable nature of wood firing. Initially, I model the clay directly, working with its specific characteristics and limitations. Once a form is completed, the clay is allowed to dry and then bisque fired. I use no glazes on these works. The wood firing takes anywhere from 8 to 12 days and reaches temperatures of 2500 degrees. During this extended firing process the wood ash, minerals, and salts, which are not combustible, begin to adhere to the red hot sticky surface of the clay and builds up into an amazing natural patina and finish that is usually more than I could have hoped for and in the process transforms them.”

BIO
I was born and raised in Mishiwaka, a small town in Northern Indiana. I developed an early interest in fine art through my father, a painter. At a young age, I was drawn to both music and art. I attended Herron School of Art in Indianapolis in the early ’70s. I have spent my life painting, drawing, photographing, sculpting, and also working with sound to create pieces I describe as sound paintings or collages using both found sound and created sound. My sculptural work covers a broad range of approaches from site-specific conceptual pieces that I document with a camera to more traditional approaches using clay and wood firing.

I started out as a painter but midway through art school I developed a keen interest in conceptual art, earthworks and other similar ideas that were coming of age at that time during the early ’70s/ I began experimenting with site-specific works and turned to B&W photography as a means to document the completed pieces

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collect artworks by Luke Heimbigner >

STATEMENT -  CRANK
This work is about the change I have undergone since I arrived in the Bay Area 9 years ago.  The bronze sculpture is an assemblage of objects found and collected from my explorations all over The Bay, while the stands reference the trusses of bridges and towers found in our industrial landscape.  It expresses the initial shock of city life and the machinations of a densely populated constructed urban environment.  My personal reaction to over stimulation is conveyed through movement and manipulation of this sculptural object in space.  While change is inevitable, even invited, the natural rural landscape of home will always beckon.

STATEMENT -  RANGES SERIES
Collecting has always been a part of my life.  This began with toys, baseball cards and music and evolved into the materials for my sculptures.  The idea of reusing or repurposing an object that is overlooked or discarded interests me.  The feeling of discovering something unseen ignites my creative process and propels my artwork. Therefore I scavenge, always on the lookout for materials, objects, or parts.

After moving to the Bay Area from Montana, I began to miss the mountains, the landscape, and the familiarity of home.  Around this time, I discovered a resource of discarded used brushes at the foundry where I work. The smooth elegant handle with the sharp rounded point attracted me. This attraction to the handle’s form sparked the idea of a constructed mountain ridge, ultimately expressing my desire to render the mountains I missed.

This series is a collision of what I was feeling and my impulse to collect using resources from my new surroundings. Looking back, creating this body of work allowed me to reconnect with the solid foundation of home amidst the scenic mountains while living the urban life in the Bay Area. Creating these bronze sculptures led me to understand the profound connection I have with the mountains.  Their strength, beauty, and comfort exhilarate the soul.  

BIO
Luke Heimbigner makes cast metal sculptures using the forms of forgotten and discarded items. He was born in 1982 in Bozeman, Montana. His grandfather may have hoped to make an engineer of young Luke by bringing him old lawnmower engines to take apart and rebuild; instead, it was Luke’s artistic imagination that was sparked by the functional beauty of those machines. In 2006 he graduated from the University of Montana at Missoula with a BFA in sculpture and a minor in media arts. In 2007 he moved to Oakland, having accepted a position as metal chaser at Artworks Foundry in Berkeley. He is also a captain of the foundry pour crew, helps with mold making, and assists in the installation of finished sculptures. At Artworks he met the late Steven De Staebler and worked closely with him as an assistant in the creation of the bronze sculpture for which De Staebler is internationally famous. Alongside De Staebler, Heimbigner numbers Richard Serra and Martin Puryear among the sculptors whose work he admires.

collect artworks by Rossella Scapini >

STATEMENT
Mutation is the central theme of my work. Combining human figure with artificial, natural and animal forms I strecth the boundaries between real and surreal. This hybridization reflects the constant changes and shifts we undergo in the process of becoming and discovering ourselves. Emotional, biological, cultural and social transformations determine our identities and the very perception of ourselves and others. 

I work extensively with clay to model the original sculptures and then proceed to make my own molds, which are then cast in different materials like resin, plaster and bronze.

BIO
Rossella Scapini (Rox) is a sculptor and painter whose artistic experience spans from fine art restoration to cinema set construction. She has lived and worked professionally in Europe and the United States. As a sculptor she works extensively with clay and plaster, foam, resin, wax, bronze and anything than can be modeled. She is also skilled in life casting and mold making. Her painting experience includes acrylics, oils and water colors, various techniques for faux finishes, decorative painting, frescoes and mosaics techniques. 

After working as an art restorer and fresco painter in her native Italy, Rox moved to Spain, where she worked professionally as a set decorator and prop maker for museums, cinema and advertisement, in productions such as “The Perfume: History of a Murder” from director Tom Tykver (Cloud Atlas, Run Lola Run) and the Gaudi museum in Reus, Barcelona. Rox moved to the United States in 2007, starting to work as a studio assistant for several artists such as Kentucky-based landscape sculptor Forest Boone, California figurative sculptors Patrick Stull and Mario Chiodo and for the English imaginary realist painter Robert Bissell.

Since 2012 Rox has been working as a sculptor and mold maker for the internationally renowned Mussi Artworks Foundry, where she uses the ancient technique of lost wax bronze casting to produce her own artwork.

STATEMENT / BIO
I am a sculptor who does public art installations, gallery work, and commissions. I work in a wide variety of media, including bronze, steel, wood, plastic, glass, ceramic, neon, adobe, and poetry. My goal is to nudge people out of their routines so they become more conscious of moments of variety and richness in daily life. Much of my work is site specific. The appearance of the site, its function, and the people who use it all have a huge influence in determining the nature of the art. For this reason, I welcome collaboration with local communities, developers, and with other artists.

My career as an artist started in 1982 with SCULPTURE SACRAMENTO,  a site specific sculpture show organized by the Sacramento Arts Commission. My piece consisted of a fleet of Tyvec boats six to nine feet long, anchored  in the Sacramento river for six weeks.

The bulk of my career has been in Sacramento, with some activity in Los Angeles and Fairfield.

collect artworks by Christy Kovacs >

BIO
Having grown up around the natural beauty of Santa Barbara, and also in a community where technology and computers were so revered (at least in my direct sphere), the focus of my art seems to have fallen somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, exploring that place where nature and technology meet, celebrating that juncture while also critiquing it and bringing into question the necessity and purpose of many of man's inventions.

My father, an early pioneer of the computer graphics industry, moved our family from LA to Santa Barbara in the early '80s to start Wavefront Technologies. I remember watching his colleagues animate swooping journeys through the universe and ancient Mayan cities. They were like artist magicians at the helm of an avant-garde ship navigating uncharted waters. I was in awe of these rock star artists, I wanted to be them, I wanted to create images that also engendered feelings of awe and wonder.

I was lucky to have parents that understood and encouraged my drive to create art. They provided me with a steady flow of sketchbooks, my dad would give me long drawing lessons in two-point perspective at the kitchen table, we built a darkroom in the garage, went on photo shoots, and critiqued one another's sketchbooks. My childhood was filled with these memories of creative bonding, there was a mutual understanding that creating art was one of the most important things you could do.

In high school, I supplemented my art classes with photography classes at Brooks Institute and programs at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I also participated in mentorships with local Santa Barbara artists Marie Schoeff and Rafael Perea de la Cabada who pushed my art to the next level, both on a technical and conceptual level.

In lieu of art school, I pursued a liberal arts education at UC Berkeley taking classes in astronomy, philosophy, English, animation, art history, ethnographic filmmaking, and eventually majoring in anthropology – all of which have become strong influences on my work. When struggling with the decision of whether to go to art school or whether to get a "normal education", I got some wonderful advice from two art teachers. They said, " You can always go back and get a master's in art. Go get your liberal arts education because the better your ideas are, the better your art will be." That was such mind-blowing advice. Art is about ideas. So, get good at ideas! 

I currently live and work in Oakland, California working in a variety of mediums ranging from woven photographs to other experimental applications of photography, and painting. My day job is being the co-owner of Muffin Revolution, a Paleo muffin company in Berkeley. You can find our muffins at most Northern California Whole Foods, as well as many other Bay Area grocery stores and cafes. While the business takes up almost all of my time, I still try to carve out spare minutes or hours to create something, anything. 

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The de Young Open presented by de Young Museum >
de Young Open - Datebook, SF Chronicle >

collect artworks by Irene Imfeld >

STATEMENT / BIO
Irene Imfeld’s landscape and nature-based imagery draws on aesthetic traditions from realism to minimalism. Always grounded in reality, beginning as straight photographs captured by the artist, the pictures often abstract the ordinary. Some are more recognizable than others as, over time, her work has become more abstract. Even the unmanipulated pieces show the everyday world as transcendent or strange, imbued with a sometimes ethereal, sometimes rough, beauty. The combination of digital technology and a longing for romanticism evokes the moment—and environment—in which we find ourselves. Her work is about the paradox of this co-existence seen within the beautiful place it occupies.

Irene Imfeld was awarded a residency at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residencies in 2015 where she completed the Zone of Transformation series. She continued abstract work in January 2016 in New Mexico and produced the final form of Strangeness of Seeing later that year.

Her image, Vacant Nests #21, was chosen by William Wegman as Grand Prize Winner in the 2014 Fauna competition, San Francisco. The Vacant Nests series was shown at a solo exhibit at Soho Photo Gallery, New York, in June 2016, as winner of the SPG portfolio competition. Irene spoke about the development of her work at City College of San Francisco in April 2016, an update to her featured presentation, “The Artist’s Path,” at Shooting the West, Winnemucca, NV, in 2013. She had solo exhibitions at the Bolinas Museum and the Fresno Art Museum, both in 2007. In addition, she won awards in exhibitions at the Print Center, Philadelphia, and at the Atheneum, La Jolla, California.

Irene grew up in Middletown, Ohio and currently has a studio in Oakland. She is an accomplished digital printer who has worked with textiles, handmade books, and commercial book design in the past. She was co-owner and curatorial director of PHOTO Fine Art Photography, a regional gallery in Oakland, 2010-15. Irene served on the PhotoAlliance Board of Directors 2015-18.

STATEMENT / BIO
Wayne Shaffer has been creating sculpture since 1980 when he graduated with a BFA from Colorado State University, where he studied ceramics with Richard Devore and sculpture with John Berland.  In 1982 Wayne relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to establish a studio and work in the bronze casting industry for Piero Mussi at Artworks Foundry in Berkeley CA. 

Wayne has created sculpture in wood, steel, ceramic and stone, but his medium of choice is cast bronze.  With over twenty years of experience working in the field of fine art casting as a sculptor, foundry man, mold and pattern maker, and sculptural enlarger, Wayne has developed his knowledge of metal casting. Creating his own work and working with notable artists such as Stephen DeStaebler, Nathan Olivera, Robert Graham, Ron Garrigues, Bruce Wolfe and others. 

Currently Wayne continues to work as a sculptor and teacher of visual art.  He maintains a studio and foundry in Oakland CA.  His work draws inspiration from nature in all its forms.  The sense of unity, of simple movement and timelessness that one finds in nature are combined with the recurring themes of the vessel as an art form, the human figure, and landscape.  The forms have been described as minimal, but he prefers to think of them as organic and essential.

STATEMENT – PAREIDOLIA
“Pareidolia” is the psychological phenomenon whereby a vague or random stimulus (often an image or sound) is perceived as significant or having recognizable form - classical examples being seeing the “man” in the moon (or the “rabbit pounding rice” if you are Japanese), the Shroud of Turin, and the “face” in the Cydonia region of Mars.

Much of my recent work explores this phenomenon. I’m not concerned with illusion so much as the how culture and technology shape our perception. Where is the information or meaning in patterns formed in nature and by human culture and technology? Is there a correspondence between processes in nature and human technical processes and systems of thought? Is the ‘signal’ distinguishable from the ‘noise’?  Or is it just our imagination? And more fundamentally, is there anything that isn’t “just our imagination”?

 Most of the work in this exhibition is made in response to specific locations in northern Iceland, the south-east coast of Australia, the Rocky Mountains near Aspen, Marin County California, and at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. As an artist who worked professionally as a scientist for many years, I’m interested in the common ground between the methodologies and philosophy of science and art. In particular, I’m investigating the notion of “field research” as a model for both artistic and scientific exploration. 

I use contemporary digital technologies such as image manipulation software, 3D scanning and digital printing, video and sound, combined with more traditional hand-making and compare the inherent qualities or ‘artifacts’ of these processes with natural processes of emergent complexity and pattern formation.

BIO
Donald Fortescue is a Professor of Art and Design at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. He was born in Sydney, Australia, where he studied zoology and botany for his first degree, and worked as a botanical consultant and scientific illustrator for many years. His love of making lead him to further studies in design at the Australian National University and then to a Master’s degree in Sculpture. He moved to the US in 1997 to head the Furniture Design program at CCA. He has exhibited in Australia, the US, Europe, Asia and South America. He received the Experimental Design Award from San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in 2001 and his work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Houston Museum of Fine Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His most recent solo exhibition "Pareidolia" was at Vessel Gallery in Oakland in 2014.

His work involves the use of digital technologies (digital treatment of photographic images, digital stereo imagery and video, computer modeling and mapping of sculptural forms and digitally recorded and treated sound) in tandem with antiquated technologies and craftsmanship associated with expeditions of discovery from the Enlightenment era to the early 20th Century (whittling, scrimshandering, scientific illustration, and the fabrication of instruments of collection, recording and display). By combining these seemingly disparate technologies, Fortescue investigates their underlying meanings.

Prof. Fortescue is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Australian National University where his research explores congruencies between the methodologies, aspirations and limits of ‘science’ and ‘art’. He is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art and an Artist Collaborator at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

collect artworks by Cheryl Patrice Derricotte >

STATEMENT
For the “Art is Essential” show, I created my own take on all of the “plague journals” that artists are making. From the new weekly mainstay in the Sunday New York Times to many of my friends’ Instagram feeds, “plague journals” (and “protest signs”) will be the way history remembers 2020. We all seem to be counting. Counting the days, counting the stages of re-opening, and counting the number of Zoom meetings. Lots of counting.

I am counting, too. It is not unusual for me to count, as I make art from research. Identities shaped by home (or homelessness); natural beauty (or disasters), memories of happiness (or loss) inspire my artwork. Home has taken on new meaning during the time of COVID-19, as home = work + daycare + school +restaurant + date night++++ -- pick the equation combination that fits your reality.

My reality always involves an art practice that brings historical images into contemporary dialogues. I keep a daily journal, and for the back-drop of these artworks, I was drawn to one of the blank journal pages of Clara Barton. A revered civil war nurse, often traveling with the Union Army, she is best known as the founder of the American Red Cross. I was also drawn to the images of the 1861 British classic “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management.” Unlike Clara Barton, Isabella Beeton devoted herself to her husband and domesticity. It should be noted that a significant portion of this book details how to hire and manage servants!

It is not lost on me that I would occupy the position of a servant on either side of the Atlantic “pond” in the 1860s. This year, 2020, has often felt like I woke up in a Dickens novel in the middle of the Civil War. And yet today, like many women, I am required to embody both Clara and isabella: focused career woman, (serving society) and a goddess of domesticity, (understated beauty with a well-appointed home).

My new series, “Pandemic Bookkeeping“ shares an assessment of how I stack up against the standards of running a Victorian/Civil War-era middle class household that haunts us today. Like it or not, I am occupying the precariously demanding positions of mistress, housekeeper, and cook. Clearly I have enough bed pillows, but really, only two demitasse spoons? This is my plague journal. I am counting.

STATEMENT | THE RETURN: CA EDITION 1995–2000

The Return: CA Edition 1995-2000, visually depicts the migration of Black people away from California. For the first time since 1965, this period marked the fact that more Black people migrated out, rather than migrated in. Three California cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, were among the top 10 metropolitan areas with net losses of Black people. Even more telling, the majority of these Black people migrated to the South. This return to the South mirrors a broader trend in the United States since 1965: more Black people have migrated South than anyplace else in the US. This trend continues and completes a reversal of the original Great Migration. From 2005 to 2010, the average result was an annual gain for the South of 66,000” Black people.

1 Frey, William H., The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Return to the South 1965-2000, Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, The Brooking Institution, May 2004, p. 10. 2 Frey, The New Great Migration p 5. 3 Toppo, Greg and Overberg, Paul “After nearly 100 years, Great Migration begins reversal: College Grads and Retirees are leading the return of Blacks to the south, USA Today, Published 2:20pm ET Feb 2, 2015, |Updated 12:39pm ET Mar 18, 2015, p. 2.

BIO
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist and her favorite mediums are glass and paper. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. She has an extensive background in the arts and community development. Cheryl holds the Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), the Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University and a B.A. in Urban Affairs from Barnard College, Columbia University. Recent awards include the San Francisco Individual Artist Commission; the Puffin Foundation Grant, and Antenna Paper Machine Residency (all 2019/2020). She is also the recipient of the Hemera Foundation Tending Space Fellowship for Artists; the Rick and Val Beck Scholarship for Glass; Emerging Artist at the Museum of the African Diaspora; Gardarev Center Fellow; Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass’ Visionary Scholarship and a D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities/ National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship Grant. Cheryl is an active thought leader in the arts. She serves as the Secretary, (aka The Minister of Information), for Three Point Nine Art Collective, a group of Black artists who live and make art in San Francisco, and she is also the Chief Mindfulness Officer of Crux, a nationwide cooperative of Black artists working at the intersection of art and technology through immersive storytelling (VR).

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PRESS / REVIEWS
De Young Open to showcase works of hundreds of artists at critical time for creativity | SF Chronicle | August 2020
”When art therapist Evri Kwong got the call that not one, but two of his drawings would be on display at the de Young Museum as part of a new open-submission exhibition, he was elated.”… Read more >