TERESA STANLEY
the Garden Grotto
In
In
TERESA STANLEY IN THE GARDEN GROTTO
April 26th – May 31st 2023
Bryant Street Gallery is excited to announce In the Garden Grotto, a new exhibition by Teresa Stanley. Her work will be on view from April 26th to May 31. Botanical and mechanical, In the Garden Grotto explores the coexistence of plants with modern civilization. The gallery and the artist welcome the public to the opening reception, which will take place Saturday, April 29th, from 4-6 p.m.
The show’s namesake, the garden grotto, became popular in Enlightenment-era Europe when Romans accidentally discovered the remains of Nero’s palace. The ancient structure had sunken underground, but its strange, lush murals remained intact. The ruins inspired a trend of these partly artificial, partly natural areas filled with plants, fountains, and art that inspired artists of the era like Michelangelo and Rafael. 600 years later, Stanley unearths the garden grotto to take a fresh look at it. Through her paintings, she explores places where plants and humans come together to make something new. Instead of fountains, pools, and intricate hallways, she examines how plants adapt to imposing cityscapes and sleek interior spaces.
Stanley creates art intuitively, puzzling out her compositions as she goes along. Her collages consist of clippings from maps, magazines, fabrics, rubbings, and acrylic hand-painted elements that fit together to evoke images of plants merging with man-made structures. The resulting form is an amalgamation of natural plant systems with the complex inner workings of machinery. Her work meditates on the role of plants in urban spaces, the influx in domestic plants and decrease in wild ones, and how plants adapt to threats like the climate crisis. It brings to mind weeds growing out of sidewalk cracks, moss enveloping abandoned buildings, pampered houseplants that enliven a home, and apple blossoms falling on city streets. One recurring concept in her work is a mythology of the last greenhouse on earth, the building rusting away while the plants inside grow wild and strange despite their lack of a caretaker.
Ever-present in Stanley’s work is the looming threat of climate change. A rapidly changing environment will cause plants to veer naturally towards new traits that will allow them to survive in the new environment, while man-made chemicals in the ground and air can cause mutations in plants. New flowers borne out of a disintegrating environment can be conceptualized as both beautiful and a terrifying warning. While the existential threat of climate change is hard to ignore, In the Garden Grotto nudges us to react to change through the lens of a plant: not with panic or apathy, but with an openness to adaptation.
Stanley was born in L.A., then moved to the Bay Area to attend S.F. State University and U.C. Berkeley. A teaching opportunity at Humboldt State University brought her to where she currently resides in Arcata, California. Now retired, she works in her studio full-time.
In the Garden Grotto will be on view at 532 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301 from April 26th to May 31, 2023. For more images and information please visit the website at www.bryantstreet.com or email us at bryantst@mac.com
Bio:
Teresa Stanley is an abstract painter based in Northern California. She was born in Los Angeles and spent her formative years in Southern California. Her parents were emigrants to this country from Australia, where her father began his career as an early pioneer in the field of radio astronomy and her mother was a teacher. Her parents instilled in her an appreciation for both science and the arts, an interest that resonates in her work to this day.
After receiving her B.A. in Studio Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Teresa moved north to San Francisco, receiving her M.A. from San Francisco State University and her M.F.A. from U. C. Berkeley. She subsequently relocated to Arcata, California to take a teaching job at Humboldt State University. She served as a Professor of Art at Humboldt State until her retirement in December 2020.
Her mixed media paintings and works on paper are created using acrylic, collage, graphite, silkscreen and ink. Referring to imagery of the natural world that is layered upon a matrix of technical schematic drawings, she is interested in different ways of mapping and interpreting experience.
Teresa has exhibited her work at the Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, K. Imperial Gallery in San Francisco, LaFontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids, MI, William Sawyer Gallery in San Francisco, the SF MOMA Artist’s Gallery, the Palm Springs Desert Museum, the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, Stellar Somerset Gallery in Palo Alto, Blue Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri among others. Her work is in a number of private and public collections across the country, including Oracle Corporation, Intel Corporation, Freddie Mac Corporation, and the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. She has been a recipient of grants from the Golden Foundation, the U.C. Art Affiliates and the HSU Foundation. She is currently represented by the Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, Blue Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri and Lafontesee Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Teresa lives and works in Arcata, California
Forgotten Plants in a Hidden Grotto No. 1
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 30” x 24”
Forgotten Plants in a Hidden Grotto No. 2
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 30” x 24”
Plant Formed from Scraps
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 36”
Forgotten
Plants in a Hidden Grotto No. 3
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 30” x 24”
Forgotten
Plants in a Hidden Grotto No. 4
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 30” x 24”
Plants on Grotto Shelves No. 1
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 16” x 16”
Plants on Grotto Shelves No. 2
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 16” x 16”
Plants on Grotto Shelves No. 4
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 16” x 16”
Plants on Grotto Shelves No. 3
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 16” x 16”
Vines in an Old Grotto No. 1
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 48”
Vines in an Old Grotto No. 2
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 48”
Kitchen Window Garden with a View Over the World Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 36”
New Plant with Complex Roots
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 36”
Still Life Under the Weight of the World
Acrylic and hand painted collage on birch panel 36” x 36”
