Exhibition news, October 2016

So many tidbits to share!

Chacaltaya and The Last Color are currently on display at the Galveston Arts Center in Galveston, TX.

The Last Color is also part of Local Resource, where it is representing the San Francisco Center for the Book. Some photos of the work and the show can be seen here and here.

Finally, Going Up, Climate Change in Philadelphia, was reviewed here! And then, inspired by my project, eight staff members at the Schuylkill Center are eating vegan for a week to save 280 lbs of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Which almost brought me to happy tears.

The Weekend Paper

The title of this post is a nod to Helen Hiebert's Sunday Paper posts, which are of course a nod to printed newspaper traditions. With the closing of my school year and two solo shows and some fall projects coming up (stay tuned!), I've been metaphorically juggling and spinning plates and walking a tightrope all at once, so, as usual, this post is a bit belated.

The first weekend of June was the opening at E.M. Wolfman for Sub Set, a collective of papermakers Rebecca Redman, Hope Amico, Alyssa Casey, and Elizabeth Boyne.

Sub Set has been working collaboratively, getting together as a group and trading materials and unfinished projects, exchanging them between as a collective "what if?" On the night of the opening, I recall asking one of the artists who made one of the pieces, and the answer was that someone made the paper and then another person drew on it and then another person....etc. To be more clear, authorship of the show was a collaborative whole.

Which gave the show an incredible energy. The artists are exploring the concept of workmanship of risk, the only limitations are the materials they had in front of them at the time. As someone who collaborates frequently myself, I can see how these experiments are opening these artists up and building a momentum for future possibilities.

The artists will be running a fundraising campaign later this year to raise money to purchase a Hollander beater - stayed tuned to their website to find out how you can contribute.

The following day was one of the ProArts Open Studios weekends, and I swung by Julia Goodman's to see some of her new large cast paper works in person.

(That's the floor in the bottom right corner of the photo above; these pieces are about five feet tall).

These pieces are rugged and topographical; she allows snippets of the bed sheets and clothing she uses to appear as reminders of her origin material. All her colors are from the clothing she uses, no added pigment or dyes.

Some of them, particularly her smaller pieces like this one, are almost a cross between pulp painting and casting.

I couldn't help thinking how Julia references the origins of her materials. They feel intimately connected to the earth, via the plants that grew her fibers, the soil that nourished the plants. Recently I've been told that the Bay Area has an enormous amount of waste clothing choking our landfills, with the additions of nylon and other petroleum-based fibers into our wearables, they aren't breaking down like they will if they were solely natural materials. Julia's work interrupts this cycle, turning waste fiber into art.

Some of her beet papyrus pieces were also on display:

Reflecting on these two exhibitions, first and foremost, I'm excited by the directions my papermaking community is exploring. Further, I was also struck by how much of what my fellow papermakers do is informed by community and collaboration (Sub Set, Julia's work with Creative Explored), and how coming together with others is such a catalytic force in this medium. The same fibers that make up paper also bring papermakers, new ideas, and new energies together.

Exhibition at Isabelle Percy West Gallery

Collected thoughts

I have two solo shows coming up next summer, and I've slowly been gathering thoughts and trying to make connections between them as to how they will take form in my work. No resolutions yet, but what I'm considering, in no particular order:

1) Last month the school I teach at was on lockdown for almost two hours due to an active shooter threat. We were slowly evacuated room-by-room. As I was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling tiles, the responsibility of keeping 35 lives from getting shot descended on me. Thankfully, no one was hurt, all students remained safe, threat was neutralized. But I can't shake that feeling.

2) Saw Sophie Calle speak last week. Her talk can be summed up in this statement she made towards the end, "Absence is motivation."

3) Refugee crisis in Syria, and how it is creating its own absence. Evidence suggests the crisis is directly related to global warming.

4) Does global warming cause other violence, albeit, possibly, indirectly? Is there a link between school violence and global warming? Perhaps in the form of anxiety and poverty?

5) Viewing art leads to an increase in empathy.

6) Shipwrecks, the economy, global exchange.

7) I think violence in any form indicates a lack of connection, to other people, to a community, to nature, to spirituality.

8) How can an artist create connection, or interconnection, between people?

9) One form of connection is stories, but does that build a deep enough connection? Could some form of social practice interaction build on stories to create connections?

Paper in Nature

This past weekend I was part of the Art In Nature festival in Redwood Regional Park. Redwood Regional Park, which is about fifteen minutes away from where I live, is one of the places I go walking. Judy had mentioned something about being part of last year's festival and how much she enjoyed it, and so I applied and was accepted to make a piece, as a chance to honor a place that fulfills me so much. The work I exhibited was developed in the cast paper street art I did recently.

(For larger images, click on the pictures.)

The park is notable for Redwood Creek; its native rainbow trout have been cross-bred with other struggling trout populations throughout the US. Redwood Creek's trout are a genetically pure population that is under critical study in order to reveal new understandings about trout populations. With California's extreme drought the creek appears to be dried up completely; I'm not sure what this means for the population. This idea was the basis for this work I'm calling Upstream.

It was an insanely hot day, and yet they clocked around 5000 visitors to the event. For me, the best part was to sit (or lay) near my piece, and listen to the musicians play, and let their songs become a soundtrack of sorts. I didn't get to photograph many of the other works and performances, but here's a few!

Printmakers for the Ayotzinapa 43 at the Santa Cruz Public Library

The Printmakers for the Ayotzinapa 43 portfolio is currently on display at the downtown branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library. There will be reception with a poetry reading and performance on Friday, August 7.

My print is the first on the left in the middle row. You can see a earlier post about the making of it here.

Coming up soon - Parking Lot Art Fair!

"Living with Endangered Languages" at Root Division

2014 closed with a whirlwind, with the completion of Future Tense! Which is currently part of Living with Endangered Languages in the Information Age at Root Division, until January 31.

The opening was this past weekend, here's a bit of a sneak peak. Since I had to exhibit the book under protection, I included a video to show more of the piece.

It was also great to be a part of show with artist friends who I so greatly admire, like Pantea and Ali. (And my nametag would not stick to my dress for anything, which is why I stuck it on my arm).

I didn't get to photograph many of the other pieces in the show, but loved this piece by Irene Carvajal.

Future Tense will be debuted to the book arts community next month at the Codex International Book Fair.

Finally, a midst all this craziness, my studio was just featured on Hyperallergic!

Hallowed Grounds Exhibition Photos

"Hallowed Grounds," Upcoming Solo Exhibition in Michigan

Happy 4th! It's been a hectic week, getting stuff ready for the my upcoming show! It runs from July 21-September 19 in the Baber Room Gallery at Central Michigan University. There will be an opening reception on Monday, July 21, from 2-4 PM.

Today, however, I'm off to Redwood Canyon for a picnic day with friends, a dog, sun, and trees!

"Now. Here. This."

March was a busybusybusy month, so much that I'm still in recovery, I think. Now. Here. This. came down the first week of April, here are a few shots of the show and opening reception.

Sneak Peak: (Re)Appropriate at Market Street Gallery

Last night was the opening for the California Society of Printmakers exhibition (Re)Appropriate at the Market Street Gallery. Above is a panorama of the show.

Colleen Terry of the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts curated the show. She states, "Re/appropriation" can be read in myriad ways, and...speaks to historical as well as contemporary concerns with the creation of artistic content (whether by the first artist or by subsequent artists)."

My piece, Leap, was selected. In this piece, I was trying to bring some of the design impulses I've developed in my recent collages into an editioned form - breaking an image up into registers, playing with patterned elements (the blue bars in the image are fabric inclusions), as well as reduction blocks.

Actually, the most impressive thing to me about the gallery was their cat, Mo, who, despite the door being open all evening, does not leave the gallery.

The show is up till March 30, with a closing party on March 29, from 5-9 PM. It was also be part of the number of exhibitions during the 2014 Southern Graphics Council International Conference in San Francisco!

Chaos ensues

The final preparations for my show, "Now. Here. This." As Katie pointed out recently, during crunch time, it gets messy.

I've been carving this big board for the past two months or so.

It was too big for Rocinante, so I had to print it by hand with a spoon. I'm not sure how long that took, but I listened to 2-3 podcasts of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me while spooning.

The final print:

We hang the show on March 3, and it will be up till April 4. The UC Berkeley Art and Design Extension Gallery is located at 95 Third Street in San Francisco. There will be a reception on March 20, during the Third Thursday Yerba Buena Gallery Walk, from 6:30-8. The exhibition will also be open during the Southern Graphics International Conference (although the link lists it as part of the East Bay exhibitions, despite being in San Francisco.)