Silence!

Can you hear my heart?

 

Photography by Thomas Lindahl Robinson & Jewelry and Sculpture by Victoria Skirpa

Opening party July 13th 6 – 9pm
With live music by woodwind renegade Cornelius Boots
Show runs through September 28th 2013

In a world that revolves around money, money that is entirely imaginary, existing only in our minds, as humans we manage to enslave all forms of matter on this earth, living or not. Oakland artists Thomas Lindahl Robinson and Victoria Skirpa are uncovering this silence.

Thomas Lindahl Robinson documentary photography  
Often confined to a box of silent voices, whispers abound, as sentiment for the revolution dissipates like the summer rains falling on the Caribbean Sea, “What can we do, but open our eyes and look beyond our window shades, beyond the iconic images of what has been left behind of our revolution, past the horizon where we dream.”

And when we dream, we dream all things Cuban, as we accept the reality with which we are presented – government handouts of sugar, beans, and rice. Despite our decaying roof-tops, our, crumbled side walks, long hot days without water and electricity, and many moments of frustration and despair, yet even in chains, we Cubans still learn how to dance.

Somewhere between melancholy, tranquility, and non-sobriety, in a place so surreal, fiction is truth. I remain silent, without a Spanish voice, invisible, and like a fly-on-the-wall; I leave without a trace, my existence in the here and now fade into the fiction, as I too, begin to dream in Cuban.

Thomas Lindahl Robinson is documentary photography, who lives and works in and around the Bay Area, and continues his photo documentations of families in Cuba and Asia. His works are held in private collections, and have been exhibited domestically and abroad.  Thomaslindahlrobinson.com

Victoria Skirpa, sustainable jewelry & sculptor
Victoria’s interest in the body and visual forms led to a deep exploration of jewelry as an intimate sculptural medium. In 2009 VRS by Victoria jewelry design was founded. Jewelry is so special, says Victoria "because it is intimate and can foster human connection."

The love of beautiful objects, and the dismay over human and environmental destruction that often accompanies the supply chain, brought Victoria to the shores of sustainable jewelry, and Sulusso Custom Sustainable business. For Victoria, the foundation of sustainability is to value, facilitate, and sustain relationships over time, between human beings and the environment. It is simple. When we wear sustainable jewelry we commit and trust both beauty and meaning.

"Designing custom sustainable jewelry for clients is a delicious opportunity for collaboration and engagement with those committed to sustainability in a profound sense."  - Victoria Skirpa

Victoria is an entrepreneur and artist of incredible creative and material breadth.  As an experienced visual artist, her work dialogues between contemporary design and visual archetypes; contemporary, yet anchored in history. While Victoria respects craftsmanship and is meticulously attentive to detail, her work also radiates energy, movement and life. Studio 106, Victoria’s first successful business, produced sculpture for galleries, museum pieces, as well as architectural metalwork for select clients in the wine country of California. VRS, victoriaskirpa.com

Opening night music by Cornelius Boots
East Bay reed renegade Cornelius Boots is a progressive rock composer, bass clarinet performance specialist, wu wei woodwind instructor and Zen flute adept.  Since 1996, he has led and released two albums with Edmund Welles, the world’s only composing bass clarinet quartet, for which he has composed and arranged over 60 pieces of virtuosic “heavy chamber music.”  Recent projects include Sabbaticus Rex (elemental sound-structuring ensemble) and mukyoku etudes: 27 Training and Performance Pieces for Taimu shakuhachi (large Zen bamboo flute). He has three music degrees (clarinet, audio, jazz) and is currently working towards his shihan (master teaching license) in shakuhachi. CorneliusBoots.com

Exoskeleton Paintings by Philippe Janssens, Sculpture and Jewelry by Victoria Skirpa

Opening party May 9th 6-9pm, with DJ KODA (45 Amp Recordings)
Show runs through June 20th, 2009


Electric, synaptic and mysterious, painter Philippe Janssens and sculptor-jeweler Victoria Skirpa continue to refine the evolution of imagination and adornment. Philippe Janssens' paintings are channeled directly from his spirit and imagination. He gives form to these colorful and odd-shaped beings.  They leave you intrigued and wondering, what multidimensional universe have they evolved from? What universe do we step into as we look upon them?
Victoria Skirpa draws from living forms to create her sculpture and jewelry.  Skirpa makes pieces that are dynamically functional by inter-playing the mechanical and organic, simultaneously. You will discover elements of living organisms and symbols encapsulated in the armor of her work.

Philippe Janssens
Janssens is an artist, certified metal smith and sculptor. His paintings and sculptures are expressions of the linkage between primitive and contemporary art, with the intention to remind you of your cultural and spiritual connections to people from other parts of the world. His designs are channeled directly from his spirit and imagination. With the belief that the power of the creative process itself has produced the artwork he has created.
Born in Brussels, Belgium, he immigrated to the US in 1968, and has been living in Bali since 2008. Jansens graduated from the Academy of Beaux Art, Brussels and the Art & Metiers School in Jewelry Design. He went to work as an apprentice under a master Jeweler by the name of Gustave De Cock (famous in Brussels). In 1969 he came to the US and worked as a jeweler for many years and eventually opened his own business Indigena. Indigena was recently sold in 2008.
Janssens has exhibited his work mainly in Northern California and participated at Art Festivals as well, Mills Valley Art Festival, Marin County Festival, Palo Alto Festival and at Stanford University.
“In my wide space of heaven are figures and signs with, which one you can discover the deepest secrets.”   - Philippe Janssens -


Victoria R. Skirpa, Artist Statement

“Though I am well-known for my futuristic sculpture, in recent years, I have moved more towards jewelry as a source of inspiration.

Unlike other artistic mediums, jewelry is a physical experience. It is sculpture, that engages intimately with the body. My jewelry and small metalwork shows my preoccupation with the human body, its history of protection, and adornment.

Jewelry is also a relic that shows us who we are today and gives us access to memory and history. There has always been a cosmology for the wearing of adornment, from amour to earring: in order to please the sexes, to protect from others, to designate family and tribe, to indicate relationship to God (s), to protect and identify in battle, and many other permutations.  And these things are still true in the modern world. I am profoundly interested in this phenomenon.

As a jewelry designer and sculptor, I am interested in the visual play of dichotomies such as Rough/Smooth, Fine / Crude, Interior / Exterior, Ancient/Modern, and Feminine / Masculine, Machine/Organics”

Victoriaskirpa.com, Jewelrybythelake.com


Opening night music by DJ KODA (45 Amp Recordings)