ArtCam

1. Leslie Shows: Split Array and Darren Waterston: Forest Eater @ Haines Gallery, reception November 3. 2011

 Shows’ mixed-media paintings are the attention-getters here, shiny metallic abstractions suggestive of geological fractures that outshine her floor-mounted sculptural installations in sulfur (!) and her video. The engraved aluminum-panel Face pieces, made of crushed glass, inks, mylar, plexiglas and metal dust, replicate, says the press release, iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, and examine  “the connectivity of philosophies of matter and ontology, geology and the materiality of painting”; how about a possible  economic metaphor? The paintings of Deborah Remington and James Rosenquist,and the mixed-media assemblages of Laddie John Dill come to mind as stylistic antecedents.

 Waterston is showing works on paper and even a sculpture that he developed during a recent residency in Hawaii. The new works explore the theme of vulcanism as both geological creator and destroyer, and its personification in  Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes, “Ka wahine ‘ai honua: “the woman who devours the land,” according to the gallery.

Through December 24. HainesGallery.com.

Leslie Shows.

Art by Darren Waterston.

 

 2. Tweet/Cry/Drink/Connect/Soar @ UC Berkeley Extension Gallery, November 4, 2011

This small group show featured Darpana Kapil, Angie Lee, Sarah Mark, Martitza Ruiz-Kim, and Susan Sternberg. Curator Amy Berk: In Tweet/Cry/Connect/Drink/Soar, five Bay Area artists take us on individual journeys, sharing their diverse interests and outlooks in visual form with us. These personal and poetic explorations stem from the class entitled "Exhibit Art," a part of the Post-Baccalureate program at UC Berkeley Extension. I have had the privilege of working with these artists on this exhibition that is conceived as both a group exhibition and five solo shows.We welcome your feedback as we welcome these emerging artista into the art community.

I was on art duty elsewhere, so I missed the reception, unfortunately. The show ended December 4

Darpana Kapil explores contemporary multicultural experience—“ borne out of my travel & art studies and my meanderings between various worlds -- the western one I inhabit now and the eastern one I grew up in (India)”—through conceptually-inflected drawing, using her fingers to work the pigments into the weave of the paper. “I’m able to get even closer to my subjects that way. I primarily use pastels, sometimes with addition of ink washes, spices & coffee.... The length of each work varies, as I lie on the paper and then mark it with an approximation of my height further creating a sense of intimacy between the subject and me... Since each artwork is a special journey, a pilgrimage, the end of the process suggests itself organically.  My “People and Places” series is my attempt at stringing a cogent narrative through my diverse experiences as an immigrant and as a world traveler.”

Angie Lee combines representational painting and abstraction, in the medium of knitting: “I paint to find myself; I knit to find silence.” She uses acrylics in her paintings to depict “the ethereal and imaginary world that I want to draw the audience into,” while allowing for the play of accident and intuition. For her abstractions, which she considers equivalents to the paintings, she employs  “thin, soft, high-quality alpaca yarn and small needles, using the stockinette stitch (knit 1 row, purl 1 row...), which produces a smooth, soft surface. The tactile qualities of knitting yarn seemed to lend themselves to the sense of muffled sounds and stillness... “

Sarah Mark, a psychotherapist and adoptive mother, uses visceral imagery to explore “the more terrifying, and often avoided aspects of femininity and motherhood.” Art for her is a safe way to address professional and personal concerns: “I work with people who struggle with their emotional selves.  The intensity of emotions is often uncomfortable, so people come to therapy seeking to diminish or extinguish these feelings. In my art I create space for emotionally intense experiences to exist and push the viewer to face the full force of their own response.... My work is deeply personal and exposes both my own vulnerability and that of the viewer, dissolving the boundaries between self and other, between the literal and symbolic.”

Maritza Ruiz-Kim explores identity, interaction and social structures—"What do we reveal when we devise systems to categorize each other? What are we hiding? What is valued? What is subjugated?" —in encaustic paintings using encaustic, a wax-based translucent paint. “I smooth it on, bury information, and set the layers in place with a blowtorch. The interplay  of surface, interior, space, and material becomes its own story... The material combinations, the titles, and the layers of imagery built into each piece (then subtly obscured) create an expectation of exchange.”

Susan Sternberg uses photogrraphy and installation to explore “identity both formed and superimposed; identity coming from the family, from the family’s culture, from society, and from expectations (the superimposed) created by appearance, stereotype, and one’s culture.... Materials and process incorporate traditional Asian methods as well as artifacts representing my Chinese heritage.... such as horses and nature... Horses also represent the “wild west”, referencing another part of my heritage... I...  raise universal questions and invite the viewer to share in experiences that are not only personal, but transcend definitions of country, border, and even time.”

Curator Amy Berk.