Shock and awe

A group show…
Opening Party Saturday September 27th, 6 to 9pm

Show runs September 11th, through November 8th 2014

Shock and awe (technically known as rapid art dominance) is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming creative power, dominant artistic awareness and maneuvers.  Showcasing spectacular displays of artistic power to paralyze the enemy’s perception of art and destroy their will to fight to remain boring.

An eclectic group of artists, most of whom reside at the Historic Cotton Mill Studios in Oakland.

Artists include:

Charles Boyd- Watercolor Artist

Cheryll May Macintyre- Painter

Craig Riedel – Photographer

Darcy Vasudev – Henna Artist

Hannah Woebkenberg - Abstract Artist

Ian G. Fabre - Interdisciplinary Artist

J. B. Mackinnon – Champion of creativity

Jeff Ritter   - Alchemist, Mad man & Industrial furniture designer

Lucciana Caselli - Visual Artist

Marty McCorkle – Painter

Sam Breach- Fine Art Photographer

Susan Tuttle - Fine Art Photographer

Thomas Lindahl Robinson – Photography

Wendy McDermott – Painter

Escape from Scarce City

Hannah Woebkenberg
J. B. Mackinnon
Opening Party July 26th, 6 to 9pm
Show runs July 21st though September 6th 2014

A view on creativity from the urban underground, two very different artists explore how we possess the power of creativity beyond any limitations. 

Hannah Woebkenberg – Abstract Artist

Hannah Woebkenberg is an active artist and practicing Emergency Medicine physician in the East Bay.  She came from Indiana via Atlanta and currently lives in the Jingletown arts community in Oakland while working in several East Bay hospitals.  Ever since college she has been attempting to perfect the balance of art and medicine.  For the past 6 years she has been working primarily with nylons as a medium, which allows an aspect of sculpture and painting to arise in her work.  She has created, displayed and showed art throughout the Midwest, Georgia, and is now excited to introduce the Bay area to her work.  Hannahsevolution.blogspot.com

J. B. Mackinnon – Champion of creativity

Escape from Scarce City/ Canvas and Comics a series of new work.

Monsters, aliens, lizards, and fish populate the paintings and drawings of J. B. MacKinnon, The Champion of Creativity. Highways, deserts, dreamscapes and cityscapes provide the backdrop, and road signs, old bones, old cars, pickups, semis, and even a harbor crane clutter the scene, and of course graffiti breaks up the areas you might least expect. Together they give a complicated and seemingly dark world that verges on chaos, but on closer inspection a humor, warmth, and even an unusual access to humanity is found.

We are led from piece to piece by a trail of comic book pages that at once reference individual works, and weave them into a tale of breaking free from where the Twentieth Century has left us, letting us, "Escape from Scarce City".    jb-mackinnon.com/about

Drunken Octopus

Stephanie Rigsby - Photography
Jeff Ritter - Industrial Furniture Design & Sculpture

Opening Party June 14th, 6 to 9pm

Show runs June 9th though July 19th 2014

Two multi-faceted local artists living and working in the San Francisco bay area. Their work embodies the daily life and remains of the industrial era. In rediscovering and redesigning the beauty of our surroundings they reclaim our past and what we know, and love about Northern California.

Stephanie Rigsby – Photography

Occasionally, the ephemeral, presents itself as visible. Surreal couplings of shapes, saturated layers of color, illuminated light and its refraction- all exist beyond a simple surface of what we register. Often, such aspects pass undetected. Transformations in lines or shadows may flicker into view for mere minutes. It is within these precise moments, Rigsby, endeavors to capture the life of her subjects. To capture these subjects in an organic state, her photography is not modified. This allows the images to reveal a duplicitous nature of their own accord. Perception has a natural tendency to rationalize that which contradicts a usual bias. By presenting unaffected subjects in their natural state, viewers may discern themselves, if the surreal has potential to coexist with reality. Primary themes in her work include architecture, industrial landscapes, performance art, haunted locations, and curiosa. More of her work can be viewed from her artblog: colorchrome.blogspot.com

Jeff Ritter - Alchemist, Mad Man & Industrial Furniture Designer

Jeff Ritter a self taught artist living in Oakland Ca. Ritter uses reclaimed steel along with different mediums creating functional industrial furniture, and sculpture. His work is available for special order.

Oil and Earth

Rory Terrell Environmental Activism artist
Teilor Good Ceramic Sculpture

Opening Party, May 3

Show runs April 28th though June 7th 2014

Two highly accomplished Bay Area artists who use earth products to their create art. This exhibit explores environmental activism though alternative mediums.

Rory Terrell

is an outdoorsman-river-rat of Idaho, living and working in Berkeley, California.  Terrell has studied fine art at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane Australia and Boise State University, where he graduated in 2012 with a BFA in painting and drawing.  He has been awarded two Art Department scholarships in 2010 and 2012 whilst attending BSU and has been displaying his work at exhibitions in Boise and in the state of Washington.
Terrell is an Environmental Activism artist, an idea fostered while he lived in Brisbane, Australia (2008-2009).  He is working with used motor oil as a media for a new form of conceptual painting.  This concept was cultivated after he witnessed an oil spill off the coast of Queensland in 2009.  The 71,000 gallons of oil from the capsized ship washed ashore and contaminated the beaches near to where he was living.  Shortly after he returned to the United States, the Deep Water Horizon incident occurred and further fueled the desire to express his disquiet to the miss handling of the drilling process for hydrocarbon.  roryterrellart.tumblr.com

Teilor Good

a San Francisco native, has been a practicing artist in the bay area for over a decade.  Inspired by her love of animals and rendering  the  female  form,  she  has  created  her  own  unique  pantheon  of  "beastly goddesses".  Her pieces speak of animal rights and the human, animal relationship. Her style is strongly influenced by Egyptian art and storybook illustration. Playfully transitioning between sculpture and painting, Good’s work ranges from simplistic stylizations to realistic depictions of the "whimsically macabre".
Good received her B.F.A with Distinction in Ceramics from the California College of the Arts in 2003.  Good shows her work locally, in both solo and group exhibitions. Good lives and work in the bay area as A Museum Art Preparator. More of Good's work can be seen at teilorgood.artspan.com 

Impeccably Installed

Paul Baker, Constructed Sculptures

Scott Schryver, "Figstract Expressionism"

Opening party, March 15th, 6 to 9pm
"Well-Phrased" Artists' Talk: Friday March 26, 7 to 9pm
Show runs March 10th though April 29th 2014 

Thousands of people in the Bay Area make art, and perhaps hundreds work in the museum field. But overlapping those two groups results in a much smaller number, perhaps just Paul Baker and Scott Schryver.

Baker and Schryver tap their museum backgrounds to present recent personal works with the skill, precision, and impact acquired in those marbled halls. “Outsider art” is a common phrase for marginalized or self-taught artists. Ironically, Baker and Schryver can lay claim to the description of "inside outsiders" since they are conversant with the world of established art institutions…but that in no way guarantees attention, let alone appreciation. Enjoy this unique show of two artists balanced between two worlds.

Paul Baker, Constructed Sculptures

Paul's found-object work, which he terms "constructed sculptures" since 80% of each piece is built from scratch, combine wit, intuition, arcana, and museum-level craftsmanship in an interactive enigma the viewer is encouraged to explore through action and memory. pbakerart.com

Scott Schryver, "Figstract Expressionism"

Scott Schryver is an Oakland-based artist dealing in non-figurative and figurative works on paper as well as pyrography on wood panels. Schryver's work has been compared to Pablo Picasso's as well as that of a kindergarten class in Point Richmond. Neither is accurate. Schryver delves into the narrative of everyday life. "I create characters and situations," says the artist. Once the ink hits the paper, it starts speaking. Giving directions." I don't always like the direction but I always learn a thing or two," says Schryver.

"My paintings are my experiences," says the artist as he sips a peppermint tea and fans his pale face with a worn copy of Art in America. - Scott Schryver

Schryver's recent works are a combination of sumi ink and acrylic on cold press paper. They are an opportunity for Schryver to capture the gesture, the quick sketch and "freeze" it with paint. Posterity begins where the paint covers the white negative space of the paper, trapping the sumi-inked figure or non-figurative sketch. scottschryverart.com

AutoErotica 2

 

     "It's all about the Car" A group show featuring:

Phillip Hall - Digital light painted photography
Bill Silveira - Auto inspired assemblage sculpture
John Sheridan – Paintings and prints 

Opening party, February 1^st, 6 – 9pm

Show runs through March 8^th, 2014 

Let’s face it…. Big old beautiful cars are sexy!

The US, with its love for the car, is still fighting the need to become fuel efficient, healthy and green. But no, we don’t want to adorn our walls with mini porn car art! Huge American cars are in our blood and we aren't letting them go easily.

Each of these three Bay Area artists has their own unique take on the love of the car. They honor our rapidly disappearing, uniquely American, decadent automotive past.
About the Artists:

-Philip Hall
Philip Hall takes photographs of classic cars. Or, at least, at first glance that’s what the viewer might assume he does. However, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that while the classic (and sometimes not so classic) car is the predominant object in the pictorial field, it certainly isn’t the only subject. In fact, what Philip Hall does quite remarkably is use the classic car as a vehicle (pun intended) through which he can talk about highly sophisticated concepts in contemporary art and photography.

Philip Hall graduated from the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in Southern California and as this might suggest he has a very thorough understanding of contemporary art concepts and the mechanisms of art criticism and appreciation. His images are littered with visual quotes from Contemporary Art. One of the artworks being shown is “California Cruisin’.” Hall has layered warm, diffuse sunset tones over the contours of a rare vintage 1953 Corvette. The car’s cherry-red taillight and the flesh-colored curves subliminally evoke the nude female form. The filtered, patterned light in

this composition is the direct influence of cinematic lighting techniques Hall learned in his Hollywood years: shadowy fronds, like palm leaves in a coastal breeze, fade into and out of focus. Hall’s dreamy composition equally encapsulates the sensuality and nostalgia of an imaginary ideal—an ideal not only personal to Hall, but nearly archetypal to an entire generation. Philiphallimagesandlight.com 

-Bill Silveira
Slightly curmudgeonly, a bit on the eccentric side and possessing a rabid enthusiasm for the automobile, Bill Silveira enjoys making art out of discarded auto parts, rusty scrap metal and other unique items that seem to find their way into his vast collection of interesting and eclectic junk. A long term resident of Oakland's Jingletown Arts District, Bill can often be found wallowing through the skeletal remains of his rusty old vehicles while pondering the future of what was left behind. Picture a maniacal Fred Sanford with a warehouse full of crap, a scruffy dog named Scrapmeister and an old welder.

-John Sheridan

Imagine trying to find the Muse of artistic inspiration in an American culture that is both expanding and deflating at the same time. Where a minute is like a century. And where its people can only recall the past as a kind of blur. 

John Sheridan chooses and arranges images found in a long (endless) search for meaningful content in American culture. He has discovered and learned much from the past 50 plus years of portable, commercial and short-term imagery - put it on canvas and painted and printed the results. 

The artist uses a large, colorful and surprising palette of existing images, words and paint which strike resonant chords because they are both art and also come from and target the American working class. The paint is simple house paint, saved before it becomes landfill. The images he uses often contain logoistic corporate and other mesmerizing and controversial elements, which cannot be separated from the great energy that has always marked the poor, blue collar and working culture of the country. These works on canvas explode with cars, pinups, superheroes, numbers, logos and images from the deep (or not so deep) popular unconscious as well as from the most persuasive propaganda machine the world has ever seen – American advertising. johnsheridanart.com 

“follow me, don’t chase me!”

“follow me, don’t chase me!”

Photography by Jan Watten & Sculpture by Benjamin T. Smith

Closing party 1/11/14, 6 to 9pm

Show runs November 17th January 11th, 2014

Two Oakland artists capture the symbols that both surround and embrace us.
Please join us!

Photography by Jan Watten:
Born into an artistic family, photographer Jan Watten has a passion for expressing the essence and core of her subject's being.  Her work revolves around the idea of identity – capturing an aspect of her sitter in an isolated moment.  Intrigued by the concept of Self, Watten has been attempting to capture unique qualities and characteristics in her subjects for more than two decades.  Whether she is photographing an adolescent boy, the weathered hand of a gardener, the elegant face of a musician or a young girl clinging to a family portrait – she is attempting to portray identity through a small but very revealing and symbolic aspect of someone. Watten photographs her subjects in black and white, as it reduces an image into simple elements and without the distractions of color and extraneous information.  Her images are captured with film and are archival traditional darkroom prints.
Watten attended California College of Arts and Crafts, and has shown domestically and internationally, and was recently profiled in Black and White Magazine.
  www.janwatten.com

Sculpture by Benjamin T. Smith:
Since the beginning I was pursued by monsters in my dreams. Until one night I stopped short and said, “If you’re going to run behind me, follow me, don’t chase me!” Since then they have been my subjects.
 
   There’s the friendly monster story. Alternately, there is the horror of the momentum of our current trajectory.  My art is a static representation of hallucination. My favorite piece is a painting by Brueghel, the Blind Leading the Blind.
 
   When you see a face in a grain of wood where is that coming from?
I’m sure we have all also seen other things that are even harder to explain. Anyway I do, everyday, in every little piece of junk around me. Incessantly, they call out to be saved. -Benjamin T. Smith
 benjamintsmith.wordpress.com