What Grows Here
04.10.15-05.23.15 gallery
Cover images: Stills from Plant Family, Volume 3 by Nicole Lavelle
What Grows Here
EMBARK GALLERY 4.10.15 - 05.23.15 Tanja Geis Scott Hewson Jessica Hubbard Tim Kopra Nicole Lavelle Ashley Valmere Fischer Carolina Magis Weinberg
gallery
What Grows Here is an exhibition about the physical, historical, and emotional landscapes of California. Artists were prompted to respond to the exhibition Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California , held at the Oakland Museum of California and featuring works from SFMOMA. A common concern with environment emerged, yet you’ll find their interpretations are as varied and diverse as of the terrain of the state. Literal environmental challenges were addressed in Ashley Valmere Fischer’s poignant photography, which captures the invaluable importance of water as an element of California life, in both presence and absence. Jessica Hubbard’s sculpture is similarly focused on our disappearing resources, as she considers the permanence of waste created by over-consumption. Carolina Magis Weinberg’s portraits of San Francisco poetically suggest a gentle relationship between human endeavor and the natural landscape, and Tim Kopra’s concept-driven practice explicitly reflects on the detailed inner workings of an urban environment, comparing a city to a hive. The personal is present in the work of Nicole Lavelle, whose slideshow pieces together an intertwined narrative of family history, horticulture, and the drastic changes of the last few decades in the Bay Area. Reflections on the spiritual are present in mud drawings by Tanja Geis as she imagines multicultural religious traditions to inform contemporary environmental realities, and also from Scott Hewson, whose process and artwork evoke the power of the sublime. In all, the expressions of California represented here prove once again that the Bay Area is indeed a fertile ground- for unique artistic style, and for artists who engage in a conceptually thoughtful and socially conscious practice. Angelica Jardini | GALLERY DIRECTOR
Tanja Geis UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 2015 Tanja Geis uses California mud as a medium for intricately painted totems composed of both natural and manmade debris found in San Francisco Bay.
“The mud is both a literal particulate matrix of the Bay’s histories—organic, inorganic, chemical or otherwise—and a malleable metaphor of primeval matter from which life first took form, and which holds an infinity of possible futures. [I am] much influenced by a Hong Kong childhood, the folk rituals my mother partakes in, and my father’s collection of bronze, wood, and stone Buddhist and Hindu gods and goddesses, which gave me the sense that gods were multiple, malleable and adaptable entities or at least special objects. I came to think of them as compressed, tangible manifestations of worldviews, which emerge, perish and are reborn with the reordering of human paradigms. As I grapple with how to re-envision my relationship with this lifeworld, it has helped to imagine what some of the new gods might look like and what they might ask of us to earn their grace.”
Littoral Daemon I (left) Littoral Daemon II (right), 2014; mud from San Francisco Bay on paper.
Scott Hewson SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, 2015 Scott Hewson’s practice considers nature as a present and powerful force that distinctively shapes the idea of self. His hardground etchings are meticulously detailed, yet speak to the overwhelming grandeur of the natural world.
“I am attempting to describe the indescribable through the infinite and the temporal. It is overwhelming, invading and can be both malignant and benign, a duality that has existed for time immemorial as a function of myth, while also consuming the moment, which consumes us all.”
Aqua Terra, 2014; hard ground etching on paper.
Sumere, 2014; hard ground etching on paper.
Amor Fati, 2014; hard ground etching on paper.
Jessica Hubbard CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2015 “Living in California during a time of such progressive forward thinking and ongoing change has propelled me to re-imagine my role in the world not only as a maker and artist, but also as a person with a sense of ecological agency. In my work I explore the sense of dystopia created by garbage that is the result of a throw away culture. I critique the role I play as a consumer, and the systems put in place to deal with over-consumption. In Uncanny, I create a dystopian environment by combining the contents of waste bins with cement. The end result is a memorial for detritus, frozen in time. A headstone for the things we leave behind, the things we throw away. But where is away? Do these things really ever go away?�
Uncanny; 2014; cement, cardboard, plastic, assorted garbage.
Tim Kopra SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, 2015 For this exhibition, Tim Kopra created a site-specific installation in addition to and inspired by this shadowbox: a towering, hive-like structure made out of repurposed car tires. The piece includes a sound element, emitting manipulated cityscape noises into the space of the gallery.
“My work is heavily influenced by my environment, and the relationship that is created when one interacts and engages with their surroundings. This shadowbox is a reflection of the conceptual map I developed as I investigated the relationship between hives and cities. It can be seen as a visual journal of my process to a sculptural piece, and acts as a conceptual and practical schematic. Beyond its illustrative compositional aspects of text, sketch, and maquette, it acts as an object that displays an altered perspective of urban infrastructure in relation to ecological systems.�
Shadowbox Series: Hive, 2014; mixed media collage and assemblage.
Nicole Lavelle CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2015 “I am the daughter of a florist and a gardener. My current set of projects weaves personal and family narrative with the history of California as a horticulture paradise. Using multi-media documentary methods and a poetic approach to research, I am building a narrative of fragments that weave connections between 19th-century immigration to the U.S., domestication of wild plants, water rights, land use, family legacy, growth, death, and place-based identity. PLANT FAMILY is an historic glimpse at a sliver of California’s plant past. PLANT FAMILY is a present-day meditation on the role of green life in everyday urban places. PLANT FAMILY reaches to the present, examining the current status and engaging today’s narratives of San Francisco’s great family flower businesses. PLANT FAMILY is a story about loss and life, laden with metaphors about growth. PLANT FAMILY is a look at the regular moments of daily life lived in backyards and public parks.” “The lyric essay is all-telling, all the time. A snippet of image here, a stray bit of dialog there, nested in the telling: the logic of the traditional story reversed. It purposefully avoids a steady progression towards meaning, a predictable arc of exposition...preferring instead allusive, anecdotal, and abstract swipes at an opaque theme.” —Sarah Menkedick. “Narrative of Fragments,” The New Inquiry. July 3, 2014.
slides from Plant Family, Chapter 1; video slideshow.
Ashley Valmere Fischer STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 2016 “What grows here is limited by water. For the last few years, California has fallen deeper into drought, and this lack of water is changing our landscape. Californians have learned to treasure it. These photographs are meant to inspire attention and care for a valuable element.�
White Bags, 2014; inkjet print on archival paper.
The Waterfall, 2014; inkjet print on archival paper.
Swimmers in the river at Yosemite, inkjet print on archival paper.
The rock wall, 2006; inkjet print on archival paper.
Carolina Magis Weinberg CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2017 Weinberg’s photographs serenely capture the still, blue expanses of San Francisco fog.These are images that inspire meditation on the vast openness of California sea and sky, while infringing human elements perhaps hint to the increasingly rapid disappearance of these tranquil horizons.
“I am new to San Francisco; I just moved from Mexico City. Many aspects of this city have amazed me since the first day. But, there is nothing more present than the water. Water on top of water, in its various forms, all around.”
Flat Fog, 2014; digital print.
To blend gradually, 2014; digital print.
Untitled, 2014; digital print.
Urban Keynote by Tim Kopra, 2015; site specific installation.
Embark Gallery, a 1,500 sq. ft. non-profit art space at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, provides exhibition opportunities to graduate students in Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. The gallery fosters an environment for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and expands the audience for up and coming contemporary art. Our programming represents the diversity of talented artists studying at seven local art institutions: California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley. This show was juried by curator Julie Lazar and artist Michael Zheng.
Acknowledgements Sartle.com Fort Mason Center Julie Lazar Michael Zheng Libby Garrison Lauren Dare Jennifer Tucker
2 Marina Blvd. Bldg. B Ste. 330, San Francisco CA 94123
Tania Houtzager FOUNDER Angelica Jardini DIRECTOR Carolyn Nickell ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
Embark Gallery.com