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.

Art I'm Looking At: Suzanne Jacquot on the Art Wall at Shige Sushi--Opening Reception (April 6, 2015)

We had a successful opening last night at Shige Sushi. One of the guests, a musician, brought along flutes and gave us some unexpected live music. Most of the attendees were themselves artists, which resulted in some lively discussion about the work. Jacquot's abstract paintings are notable for their command of composition and expressive use of color. I especially like the way her work combines gestural detail with diffuse color fields that work on a larger scale. The combination creates a dynamic between close examination of the finer elements and a simultaneous assessment of the surrounding visual field.

The show runs through May 31 on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi. For more information about art at Shige Sushi, including information about upcoming shows, about purchasing art, or about submitting art for consideration for display on The Art Wall, visit http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/.

Art I'm Looking At: "Birds" at Ice House Gallery (March 16, 2015)

I attended the opening of the latest show at Ice House Gallery in Petaluma, "Birds" a show of art depicting birds--work by a diverse group of artists including Dick Cole, Sylvia Gonzalez, Diana Majumdar, Robert Poplack, Michele Rosett, Stephanie Sanchez, and Joanne Tepper.

Sylvia Gonzalez's work is attractive for its decorative qualities. She sketches birds on top of subtle, layered backgrounds created using a number of techniques, notably Xerox lithography. Some of her pieces are colorful arrays of smaller works. Diana Majumdar sketches very freely, but she nicely captures the kind of quizzical attitudes that often make birds so endearing, and she gets the birds right--which satisfies the bird watcher in me. Recognizable among her works in the show were Bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus, detail shown above) and a sparrow that I couldn't positively identify but one rendered in a way that makes me confident I could have done so with a field guide in hand--perhaps Five-striped Sparrow (Aimophila quinquestriata) or Black-throated Sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata). Dick Cole's work shows some nice painterly effects. Joanne Tepper's work is realistic--with an emphasis on draughtsmanship--but often whimsical at the same time. In her paintings she likes to pose real bird species on teacups, for instance (one such painting was on the cover of the 2014 Art Trails catalog).

I spent about an hour walking around Petaluma after visiting Ice House Gallery and dropping in at Griffin Map Design & Gallery, a couple of doors down, where the Ladies Night show is still on. The most interesting bird art I saw during the evening may have been this 4-foot-high cardboard creation in a shop window along the main drag. I wonder who made this wonderful owl? If you're a bird lover and an art lover, however, my top recommendation would be to take the time to visit Erickson Fine Art Gallery in Healdsburg to see some of the wonderful bird paintings done on gold leaf by Antoinette Von Grone that Erickson shows.

Later I stopped at Riverfront Gallery where an eye-catching photographic montage by Jeremy Joan Hewes depicting a crow or raven seemed the most interesting thing on the walls. Finally, I checked out Prince Gallery, which has a new show of photography up. I especially liked the work of one Laura Alice Watt. Her dreamy pinhole images struck a chord--beautiful, blurry corners of the natural world, not at all in the tradition of "nature photography"--but striking nevertheless. She says in her artist's statement that she rejects the perfection of much nature photography, saying "I am more interested in a direct connection with the world around me...attempting to see nature from the inside, via interaction, rather than simply admiring from afar." Compelling images.

Opening of the show "Birds" tonight at Ice House Gallery, in Petaluma (March 14, 2015)

Tonight I plan to attend the opening of a new show at Ice House Gallery, in Petulama. "Birds" an exhibition celebrating the art of rendering birds by artists Dick Cole, Sylvia Gonzalez, Diana Majumdar, Robert Poplack, Michele Rosett, Stephanie Sanchez, and Joanne Tepper. 405 East D Street, Petaluma. Reception tonight from 5:30 to 8:00. Look for a review here in the next couple of days.

Art I'm Looking At: "Ladies Night" Opening Reception (February 28, 2015)

Last night (February 28) I attended the opening of the new show at Griffin Map Design & Gallery in Petaluma--"Ladies Night," featuring work by fourteen local artists, all women.

I particularly liked the small pieces by Meg Regelous, whose work I've seen before at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts. She's showing a drawing, an etching, and what looks like a linocut, suggesting the wide range of her activities. She's young, enthusiastic, and stylistically still evolving, perhaps, but I look forward to watching her career.

I had a long conversation with Jaynee Watson. She appears to be mainly a performance artist, but her contribution to the Ladies Night show is two mixed media pieces--Nothing More/Less #1 and Nothing More/Less #2. They are not quite collages but not straight drawings either. Both are done on backgrounds of what looks like thin card stock rather crudely cut into near-rectangular shapes onto which she's painted with latex, gouache (perhaps), and drawn on with pencil and black crayon. What at first glance look like graphite lines in the images are actually fine sewing needles suspended from threads, their effect subtly doubled by shadows. A scrap of plastic is attached in the lower right corner of Nothing More/Less #1 (shown here). Semi-circular dimples at the top of the sheet are actually bite marks. The sheets are shown unframed, nailed at their corners to the wall.

There is no pretense of prettiness in Watson's art or the way it's shown. The work is direct, simple, accessible, unfinished, bare. The corners of the sheets are perforated with overlapping nail holes, evidence of previous hangings. It was hard to resist the temptation to play with the dangling needles or to run a finger over the bite marks or to feel the surface of the small plastic piece attached to Nothing More/Less #1. I suspect Watson wouldn't have minded. The works invite interplay. They have a palpable vulnerability. They are open to accident, vandalism, wear, and she has deliberately chosen non-archival materials. Nothing More/Less #2 uses strips of what look like black electrician's tape (when I asked, she explained the tape was the seal from a tin of printmaking ink) and other inexpensive plastic tapes that will deteriorate and probably stain the underlying sheet. She told me human beings don't last forever and that their art shouldn't either. I found the insouciance behind the works made me a little uncomfortable. I almost wanted to clean them up, to make them neater--yet I found these unabashedly unpretentious pieces of art strangely compelling at the same time.

Perhaps my favorite piece in the show is a painting by Angelina Maria Rodrigues called Flight. Painting isn't quite the right word. Like Watson's two pieces, Flight doesn't fit well into a category. The surface is not really a surface. It's made up of numerous fine strands of variously colored yarn wrapped around what looks like a canvas stretcher. Onto the yarn layer, Rodrigues has attached pieces of cloth--some that look like fabric scraps, others that look like pieces of clothing or lingerie--and the whole is splattered with what she described as "house paint." The lighting was difficult. My photograph here doesn't do the piece (or Watson's piece) justice; the yarn layer is subtly colored. The variety of textures is a pleasure--the yarn, the yarn with paint on it, the unpainted fabric, the paint-splashed fabric, the strip of smooth unpainted canvas at middle left, the different textures of the fabrics (some of which look like nylon stocking material), and the wood of the support are all different. This thick wooden armature and the gaps in the yarn layer, which allow you to see through to the back side of the piece and the wall behind it add depth--literally. There is also a slightly titillating tension as you go back and forth between viewing the piece solely as an abstraction and being drawn in to an examination of the fabrics as pieces of clothing, which can suddenly give you the feeling of looking at a pile of someone's laundry, some of it intimate. I look forward to seeing more of this artist's work.

I also enjoyed a tongue-in-cheek pair of photographs by Kadie Sue Anderson. The Blond Bimbo Beauties, shown here, is a send-up but it's attractive for its formal qualities at the same time. I like the use of color--the overall palette--but especially the train of yellows that runs from the mail holder at bottom left through the filing cabinet, the two skirts, the yellow shoes in the book case, and the paper folder there. The shadows on the wall behind the figures are beautiful in their own right. I also like the way it's so easy to imagine the women singing. You can almost hear this image.

I thought pieces by Jamie Drobnick, Angella Dela Cruz, and Cammy York also of interest. The show at Griffin Map Design & Gallery (405 East D Street, Suites D and F, Petaluma, CA 94952--707 347-9009) will run through March 28. Curator Justin Ringlein has chosen some good art. Worth a visit. Next to the Ice House Gallery (which will be showing new work from March 14).