Art I'm Making: Show at Hammerfriar Gallery

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be participating in a show of collage and mixed media work along with Molly Perez and Deborah Salomon at Hammerfriar Gallery, in Healdsburg, from February 24 to May 11, 2024. There will be an opening reception on Saturday February 24 (3PM-6PM) and I will be doing a collage demonstration at the gallery on Saturday, April 13 at noon. I hope to see you there.

Birds I'm Watching: California Thrasher (January 22, 2022)

Doing a bird survey on private property last weekend, I came upon a California Thrasher (Toxostoma redivivum) along the Russian River, near Healdsburg. Not a truly rare bird, but unusual and always fun to see. They have some distinctive calls and sometimes mimic other birds. Notable for the long, decurved bill.

Art I'm Making: Two Collage Pieces in "Purely Abstract" at The Healdsburg Center for the Arts (April 28-June 3)

Two of my collages, Untitled Collage No. 146 (Santa Rosa), shown above and Untitled Collage No. 137 (Santa Rosa) shown below were juried into the upcoming Purely Abstract show at The Healdsburg Center for the Arts (130 Plaza St, Healdsburg, CA 95448), which will feature abstract art by artists from all over the United States, April 28 through June 3, 2018. The opening reception will be Saturday, April 28 from 5:00PM to 7:00PM. I'm working on Saturday, but hope to get to the reception by around 6:00PM https://www.healdsburgcenterforthearts.org

Art I'm Looking At: Chris Beards—Sculpture at Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg (through July 15, 2017)

Chris Beards And After opening reception, Paul Mahder Gallery

The Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg opened an impressive show of new sculptural work by Santa Rosa artist Chris Beards last night (May 27). The artist was in attendance, along with many of the North Bay’s best artists, gallerists, and curators. I say sculptures—and they are sculptures—but all the pieces are wall-hung rather than freestanding, and they are dramatically lit, casting complex shadows on the white walls almost as interesting as the art itself.

Chris Beards, Siege (2017), detail

The show comprises about 12 pieces made from steel—mostly formed from sinewy, twisted strips or wrinkled sheets of steel—mummified in paper. Beards works by encasing steel armatures in multiple layers (sometimes as many as 20 layers) of paper bonded to the metal with thinned glue and other media. The paper and glue layers are then heavily worked. The layers are sanded, overlaid with more paper and glue, re-sanded, painted or shellacked or gessoed, sanded again and then further overlaid and finished in a laborious process that results in remarkably refined, sensuous, satiny surfaces, suggestive not of the raw steel underneath but of other metals—well-used bronze, smooth-worn iron, patina-green copper—or even softly eroded marble. The underlying steel is present in that it defines form here, but the surface finishes Beards achieves are as important as form. The sculptures have a skillfully crafted look in an age of art that often celebrates the opposite, and they are refreshingly appealing for that. There is something decidedly seductive about the work. You’ll want to touch it—caress it, even. Happily, the artist gives permission to touch the work a little.

Chris Beards in front of Within/Without (2016)

Beards has titled the show And After. A statement on the wall explains that the work is about how memory transforms experience—in particular, about the way time distils raw experience into something softer. The work, Beards says, is about the way our “narrative of the past becomes smoother,” the way the “sharp edges and thorns are softened and dulled.” He speaks of his sculptures not as depicting specific memories but rather as addressing the idea of memory itself. The finished pieces are presented as the softened remains of their underlying rough metal selves. He likens these sculptures to “time-tumbled driftwood or bones” and the metaphor is apt.

Chris Beards, After the Last (2013-2015)

Among my favorites pieces were Within/Without (2016, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, acrylic paint), After the Last (2013–2015, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, graphite, soft pastel, shellac), and Tiered (2017, steel, tracing paper, glue, gesso). The first of these suggests an unearthed artifact—a scrap of an obsolete, abandoned farm vehicle, perhaps—rusted but its surfaces polished as if long-caressed. After the Last is evocative of more organic forms. It kept suggesting to me part of the mummified remains of a frilled lizard, perhaps squashed flat on a roadway, or a fragment of a grasshopper—but the sculpture is again transformed into something sensuous by its satiny surfaces.

Chris Beards, Tiered (2017)

Tiered, my favorite piece in the show, reminded me of centuries-old stone steps worn smooth by the foot traffic of generations of pilgrims (the interior staircase of the leaning tower at Pisa, the steps inside Haghia Sophia, in Istanbul, came to mind) or the much-touched drapery of a recumbent figure on a white marble sarcophagus lid. These are only a few impressions, but Beards’s work is beautiful to look at and richly evocative.  And After will continue at Paul Mahder Gallery (222 Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg, CA 95448, (707) 473-9150) through July 15, 2017 (although Paul Mahder now represents Beard and will therefore continue to handle his work after the show). Highly recommended.

Art I'm Looking At: "Ain't Natural" at Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg

I attended the opening of the latest show at Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg on May 2. The show, called "Ain't Natural," brings together four superb collage artists working in the Bay Area--Jenny Honnert Abell, John Hundt, Sherry Parker, and Scott Wilson.

Collage unites the four artists but they work in very different styles. Jenny Honnert Abell's work combines the surreal with religious iconography. Brought up a Catholic, she attended parochial girls' schools through high school. While explicitly religious themes don't seem central to her work, clearly the imagery of the church made a lasting impact on her sensibilities. In talking with her about her collages I sensed in her an uneasiness about making fun of the religious imagery she appropriates, a hard-to-shake compulsion to take it seriously, at least at some level. Yet, the work is irreverent. The show includes several small pieces on worn but fancy book covers, in themselves evocative of churchly things like decorated vestments. Onto these covers she's attached perches for Jesus-headed birds that somehow manage to look content and not unnatural--the serenity of expression of the Jesus heads doing its work. In other pieces on display, bird heads grow out of tree branches. Pictured here is a somewhat different piece entitled "The Monroe Flower" that I liked for its use of color and the multiple levels of enclosed detail it employs.

John Hundt seems to work exclusively with engraved book illustrations. He carefully cuts out architectural fragments, figures, animals, snippets of scenery and other elements with a tiny pair of scissors and assembles the pieces to create imaginary spaces that are clearly unreal but spaces that use perspective and subtle overlaps to trick the eye into seeing them as plausible, inhabitable. I'm reminded of the photographic work of Jerry Uelsmann. Merged and blended contradictions in Hundt's work involve not only physical space but also time; inevitably the old engraved images are evocative of something old-fashioned--we no longer illustrate books with engravings much and the subjects Hundt chooses are often historical--but, at the same time, the strange juxtapositions seem modern--at least modern in the sense the word is used in art history.

Sherry Parker is among the most delightfully inventive artists I've encountered in the Bay Area. Her work is consistently of the highest caliber. She has an exquisite sense of composition. Her subtle color sense is equally impressive. Most especially, though, I like her work for the slightly edgy whimsy she nearly always achieves. Bizarre creatures, part human, part machine, inhabit her surreal landscapes. These are dream worlds, yet they are familiar enough to be both seductive and deeply unsettling. They are inviting and a little frightening at the same time.

To take just one example, "Yellow-throated Lookout Bird" is immediately amusing because of its title, which plays on the conventions of real bird names, and many of Parker's titles are funny. Here we see a lone, one-legged sentinel on what looks like a coastal rock, keeping its squinty eye out for signs of approach. But its ability to see is illusory. The bird's eye is just a screw at the base of a blade from a pair of clippers--a rather long, decurved blade from a nasty-looking pair of clippers. The antenna, perhaps, takes in more useful information than the eye?

Scott Wilson's work is also slightly disturbing, but in a different way. Made largely from illustrated medical texts, the collages are interesting for their formal qualities of composition and attractive for their combinations of pinks and beige and palest orange--the colors of flesh and viscera. But many of the images used illustrate pathologies, so this is diseased flesh we are looking at. Collage titles name the diseases. Wilson presents his odd combinations as if they are plates in an actual text--deformities to be studied, learned from, repelled by. Abstract shapes often overlay or augment the human body parts suggesting early 20th century Russian abstraction. As a child, I remember being given an encyclopedia of the insect world. It was a very thick volume. I don't remember the text, but the plates were photographic and numerous. Each plate was an array of related insects--bizarre insects, large and small. Round beetles, oblong beetles, elongated beetles. Beetles with antennae longer than their bodies. Grasshoppers of every description. Walking sticks. All in black and white. Repellent yet fascinating at the same time. I spent hours looking at that book. I was immediately reminded of it when viewing Wilson's collages. They are likewise simultaneously fascinating and repellent.

Hammerfriar Gallery is at 132 Mill Street, in Healdsburg. The "Ain't Natural" show will run through June 22. Well worth a visit.

Serendipitous Art: Chalk Board, Healdsburg CA (January 30, 2015)

A chalkboard used to keep score next to a bocce ball court at a restaurant in Healdsburg, CA looked like art to me. Unintended art, serendipitous art.

For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Wines I'm Drinking: Portalupi Wine, Healdsburg, CA

I stopped into Willi's Seafood & Raw Bar at the corner of Healdsburg Ave. and W. North St. in Healdsburg yesterday, tired after a long day of landscaping work, to treat myself to a glass of wine with my lobster roll--a late lunch. I noticed a Vermentino on the wine list from Portalupi Wines, a winery I'd never encountered before. At its best, Vermentino is both crisp and flavorful. It seemed a perfect choice, as I wanted something refreshing--although I was wary; so many California versions of the more obscure European grapes turn out heavy, monolithic, and too alcoholic to be either refreshing or very interesting. I ordered a glass, reassured by my waitress, who appeared to know what she was talking about, and I was impressed from the first sip. I very much enjoyed the 2013 Vermentino from Portalupi (from the Las Brisas vineyard, in the Carneros region). It was exactly what I wanted. The wine has fruity presence and good length with just the right amount of crisp, balancing acidity (suggestive of key limes) to make it seem delicate. An excellent example of wine made from this grape--as good as any I've had in the variety's heartland, in Sardinia.

Vermentino seems to be gaining a foothold in California. Mahoney Vineyards, also in the Carneros region, has a good reputation (although I've not tried their wines yet). I've tasted the Vermentino Tablas Creek Winery (affiliated with France's Château de Beaucastel) is making in Paso Robles and I've talked Vermentino with one of its champions in the state, Ken Volk, who makes Vermentino wines (and many others) in Paso Robles. There has been activity in the Lodi area and the Sierra foothills as well. I look forward to tasting more Vermentino wines from local producers (and it would be nice to see them on retail shelves at the kind of affordable prices they go for in Italy--often less than $10 for even the best examples--where they are everyday wines).

While eating, I happened to look across the street and was surprised to see a sign for the Portalupi tasting room, literally a stone's throw from the raw bar--something of an odd coincidence. I resolved immediately to stop there after my lunch. I ended up having a very enjoyable conversation and tasting, the wines poured by the winemaker himself, Tim Borges (Portalupi is his wife's family name). Borges has been making wine for others for decades, but the Portalupi label appears to have emerged around 2002. The Healdsburg tasting room has been in operation since 2010. Portalupi makes small lots (10 wines totaling about 5,000 cases annually) and the love shows. I tasted all the wines available in the tasting room. I was particularly impressed by the Vermentino (as noted above); a somewhat unusual, but quite successful white blend that Portalupi packages in what look like liter milk bottles; and a wonderfully perfumed old vine Zinfandel redolent of raspberries that put me in mind of Paul Draper's Geyserville. That said, the entire line-up is marked by a refreshing lightness and restraint that gives the wines more elegance and nuance than is often the case in California. Delicious. Recommended. The Portalupi Wine tasting room is at 107 North St., Healdsburg, 95488 (707 395-0960) grazie@portalupiwine.com.

I have no financial connections of any kind with the companies mentioned in this post.

Found Art: Drain Cover and Green and White Paint (December 6, 2011)

Walking along a street in Healdsburg recently, I came across this little composition. I love the splash of green paint on the iron drain cover, the splash of white paint on the sidewalk beside it. Found art.

For more found art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.