Material Matters, 2020

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MATTERS

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MATTERS Exhibition Dates: March 3 - March 31, 2020 Reception for the Artists: Saturday, March 7, 5:30 to 7:30 pm Curated by Donna Seager and Suzanne Gray Front Cover: Dean Allison: Kitchen Floor Series #2, 2020, cast glass, 16 x 16 x 12 in Back Cover: Aggie Zed, Figures, 2019, ceramic, 4 to 5 in each Photo Credits: Robert Adams: Black Cat Studio Gale Antokal: Don Felton Adrian Arleo: Chris Autio Joe Brubaker: Seawood Photo Michael Janis: Anything Photographic Lisa Kokin: Lia Roozendaal Photography Sibylle Peretti/Stephen Paul Day: Daniel Fox/Lumina Tim Tate/Michael Janis: WGS Jessica Williams: Photolab, Berkeley All others taken by the artist Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 www.seagergray.com

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MATTERS Robert Adams Dean Allison Gale Antokal Adrian Arleo Kay Bradner Joe Brubaker Lia Cook Stephen Paul Day Daniella Dooling Jane Hambleton Michael Janis Lisa Kokin Dana Lynn Louis Jann Nunn Emily Payne Sibylle Peretti Ross Richmond Jane Rosen Liz Steketee Susan Stover Tim Tate Jessica Williams Aggie Zed

Robert Adams Watcher

basswood, walnut, Japan paint 23 x 17 x 10 in

Robert Adams Woodcarver, Robert Adams attended the Art Institute of Boston and spent 2 more years studying drawing and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute where he also delved into ceramics and paint finishes.

In order to frame his work, he got a job at a frame shop and eventually opened a framing business himself finding that he loved working with wood. The access to a shop and tools inspired his move toward wood sculpture.

Adams has been in many ACC (American Craft Council) exhibitions and has shown in galleries across the country. He sources ideas from folk art, antique furniture and vintage objects, the hidden layers of paint and wear always speaking to him.

Works such as Watcher and Ranger bring to mind modernist sculptors such as Benny Bufano while still remaining true to his reverence for early folk art traditions.

Robert Adams Ranger

basswood, Japan paint, old wooden crate 35 x 27 x 13 in

Dean Allison “My work is an exploration of portrait sculpture in glass,” says Dean Allison. He interprets the figure through living models that represent a connection to his life. He generally uses a life casting process to capture physical details of an individual and a moment in time. This particular piece is made from his first digital scan-and print which he started experimenting with due to the fact that small children cannot sit for a life cast.

“The process of creating a life mask is intimate and establishes trust and closeness,” says the artist. “The subsequent processes of making waxes, molds and glass of that person abstracts the identity slightly but freezes each subject in a state of being that is reflective, introspective and calm.” Allison is inspired by the people and relationships that shape who we are - family stories and memories, feelings of admiration, love, fear and strength. In the Kitchen Floor series, the subject is Allison’s own daughter, Violet. The image of the child with a pot on her head and holding a wooden spoon is at once personal and iconic.

Dean Allison is a studio artist working with portrait sculpture and the figure with glass. His studio is in Pittsburgh PA. He received his Master of Art, Visual Arts in glass from The Australian National University in Canberra in 2010 and a B.S. in Studio Arts from Illinois State University in 2001. He has worked at The Northlands Creative Glass Center in Scotland, The Canberra Glass Works in Australia, Chicago Hot Glass, Pilchuck Glass School. He has taught at The Penland School of Crafts, The Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Bullseye Glass Factory in Portland OR and The Glass Furnace in Istanbul Turkey. Public collections include The Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon MI; The Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn AL; Hinson Art Museum, Wingate NC; and The Imagine Museum, Sarasota FL. Dean Allison

Kitchen Floor Series #2 cast glass 16 x 16 x 12”

Gale Antokal

Red Egg on Black Box (above) pastel on paper, 19 x 26 in, 27 x 32.5 in framed

Kanister (upper right)

pastel on paper 16 x 20 in, 23.5 x 27.5 in framed

Sphere, Brushed Metal (lower right) pastel on paper 19 x 26 in, 27 x 32.5 in framed

Gale Antokal Gale Antokal creates pastel drawings on paper of simple subjects – a red egg on a black box, a cannister, a sphere- and refines them to their purest essence until they seem to vibrate with being. The word “istigkeit” or pure “isness” comes to mind. The drawings of these simple objects have the power to stop you in your tracks.

Antokal reveres objects that are polished or burnished. “There is such pleasure in examining qualities like opacity, translucency, transparency and reflection,” she says. Often focusing on things that have a deeper context of personal memory or meaning, her drawings refine each object until they take on a meditative quality. They are a kind of transcendent photo realism.

Gale Antokal was born in New York, New York, and received her BFA (1980) and MFA from the California College of the Arts in 1984. Recently retired, she was a tenured Professor from San Jose State University in the Department of Art and Art History and Coordinator in the Pictorial area. Antokal held several visiting artist positions and teaching positions including the San Francisco Art Institute, Instructor of Art History at the Lehrhaus Institute, and the American College in Jerusalem. She was an affiliate faculty member in the JSS Italy program in Civita Castellana, Italy in 2015. In 1992 Antokal received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Adrian Arleo The work of Adrian Arleo combines human, animal and natural imagery to create a kind of emotional and poetic power. Often there’s a suggestion of a vital interconnection between the human and non-human realms, the imagery arising from associations, concerns and obsessions that are at once intimate and universal. The work frequently references mythology and archetypes in addressing our vulnerability amid changing personal, environmental and political realities.

Some years ago, Arleo created a dozen or so figurative wasp nest sculptures out of clay and began to wonder about the more succulent quality of its counterpart, honeycomb. The appearance of a surface that is simultaneously growing and deteriorating appealed to her along with the lusciousness and sweetness of it’s aroma.

In contrast, it can also have associations with swarming stinging insects. As with many things in life, beauty and the grotesque can cohabitate.

One of the first pieces she made with a rich waxy honeycomb surface was a portrait of her thenthirteen year old daughter as she was coming into full adolescent bloom. The honeycomb surface lent itself to the sensuousness of this blossoming in a very natural way. The piece was called “Honey Child”. The subsequent emergence of Colony Collapse Disorder and its threat to bees became another layer to the content of this series.

After taking a 7-8 year hiatus from making honeycomb sculptures, she recently began to revisit the series with a sense that the passage of time, and all the ensuing changes in the world, would bring something new to the imagery. Her

intention with the first was to render the face of a very young child. What began to emerge inadvertently was a close likeness to Greta Thunberg, and Arleo felt compelled to bring her out. “The idea of connecting her to pollinators seemed very apropos,” said Arleo, “and it’s interesting to note that 8 years ago when I had decided to rest the series for a while, Greta was a young child who no one had ever heard of.”

The piece Genesis suggests the simultaneous creation and birth of a baby. It has a feeling of occupying two worlds; the one it’s coming from and the one its emerging into. “Completely at the mercy of the circumstance they’re born into, babies are devastatingly vulnerable beings; mysterious embodiments of potential, and fate.

I continue to be moved by this compelling paradox.”

Adrian Arleo is a ceramic sculptor living outside Missoula, Montana. She studied Art and Anthropology at Pitzer College (B.A. 1983) and received her M.F.A. in ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. Arleo’s work is exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in numerous public and private collections, including The World Ceramic Exposition Foundation, Icheon, Korea; The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia; Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT; Greenwich House Pottery, NY, NY; and Microsoft, Seattle, WA. Adrian Arleo Genesis (left),

clay, glaze, wax, encaustic, 2020 9.25 x 7.5 x 5.25 in

Greta (right),

clay, glaze, wax, encaustic, 2020 13 x 9 x 6.5 in

Kay Bradner Pied Beauty

oil on aluminum, 2019 36 x 48 in

Kay Bradner There is a distinctive quality to paintings by Kay Bradner.

They are luminous with their crisply incised drawing line and bright glorious pigment on smooth reflective aluminum – a technique that she herself created.

In her last gallery exhibition, Haven, Bradner created long horizontal paintings of the tops of trees that she hung high in the room where she painted. She loved the comfort of looking up into the trees. That beginning was a kind of epiphany for her and she began to paint from different vantage points. Her painting, Pied Beauty, for example is a bird’s eye view of a treetop as seen from an adjacent tree. Look closely. There are 4 squirrels and as many birds in the painting, the treetop beautifully contrasted with the blue clear sky.

After studying at New York University and the California College of the Arts, Bradner spent years as a master print maker, working with well-known artists at her own Katherine Lincoln Press, named for her grandmother. When that business ended, she focused on her own art and career, painting in ways that no one has ever painted before. She loved the way that pigment remained so pure on the metal surface used in printmaking and spent years perfecting a way to create her own paintings using the techniques that she developed.

Kay Bradner

Pied Beauty, detail

oil on aluminum, 2019 36 x 48 in

Joe Brubaker Joe Brubaker carves wood and assembles found materials to create figurative and abstract sculptures that reflect his concerns with time and the ongoing process of loss and discovery. He transforms shape into object, bringing it into our physical space. In Yin Yang 2, Brubaker presents organic rounded forms that entice the eye This elegant framework piece is reminiscent of Martin Puryear, whose work has an emphasis on primary structures and a dedication to craft.

The entire structure of the work can be seen – inside and out - with its pleasing curves and patina of time. It might be reminiscent of modernist sculpture, simple in shape like Brancusi or Arp, but also of African sculpture, carpentry and shipbuilding.

Joe Brubaker was born in Lebanon, Missouri and raised in Southern California. He received his B.A. from Sacramento State University, then attended UCLA where he earned his MA and MFA. From 1980 to 1988 he lectured in Art and Design at UCLA, as well as at Long Beach State from 1982 to 1984.

In 1987 Joe moved with his wife and two children to the San Francisco Bay Area. He continued to teach as an Art and Design lecturer at both San Francisco State from 1989 to 1994 and Academy of Art College from 1989 to 1997. He retired from teaching in 1997 to begin full time work on his own sculpture.

Joe Brubaker

Yin Yang 2, 2020

yellow cedar with matte glaze 48 x 48 in

Lia Cook Lia Cook is a Berkeley-based visual artist whose practice combines weaving with painting, photography, video, and digital technology to explore the sensuality and materiality of the woven image and the emotional connection to memories of touch and cloth. Working in collaboration with neuroscientists, her recent research centers around the nature of the emotional response to woven faces using both the neuroscience laboratory and behavioral studies done within exhibition space itself, often folding the collected visualized data back into her weavings. Her work also investigates the relationship between neurological brain structures and woven structures weaving them together in unexpected ways. Su Series, Sad and Curious is a word cloud based on data collected from emotional responses to a woven face.

Lia Cook is the recipient of numerous awards including the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship and an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts. Her works are in the permanent collections of the MOMA, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC; The National Collection, France; Museum Bellerive, Zurich; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; National Gallery of Australia; Zhejiang Art Museum and the National Silk Museum, China. Cook’s work has been included in many museum shows and solo exhibitions worldwide. She is Professor of Art, Emeritus, California College or the Arts.

Lia Cook

Su Series, Sad and Curious woven cotton, rayon, 2018 16 x 12 in

Stephen Paul Day The Poets, 2020

solid worked glass with “soulphide” painted and formed inclusions 17 x 6 x 6 in

The Poets back, 2020

solid worked glass with “soulphide” painted and formed inclusions 17 x 6 x 6 in

The Blue Tower (far right), 2020 solid worked glass with “soulphide” painted and formed inclusions 15 x 5 x 5 in

Stephen Paul Day Soulphides are a natural evolution for Stephen Paul Day. His work often explores historical styles and uses manipulated antiques. The name is a riff off “sulphides,� which go back to the late 18th century in Bohemia and are a technique of encasing ceramic or other materials inside of glass. Often they were cameos on the sides of containers or plates, but they became very popular in the making of paperweights and snow globes. The artist and his wife, Sibylle Peretti, have homes in both New Orleans and Bavaria, so Day was able to find examples of early Bohemian sulphides in flea markets. He also collected American versions which were made into marbles with encased objects.

Day started using Zircar as a mold material in New York where he was a resident at the Experimental Glass Studio. Using it for casting glass and metals, he discovered that it was compatible inside glass and mimicked the silvery look of original sulphides. He refined the process and using molds and special paints found that he could put almost anything in glass if it was made of Zircar.

Wanting to get away from the original paperweight format that is typical of the process, Day invented a method to make them in parts and to assemble them into sculptural forms. He thinks of them as loose thoughts stacked together sometimes painted and sometimes as a relief. He chose the term soulphide as each inclusion is in the heart of the glass as an idea. The works are difficult to do and require a skilled glass blower to make them. The Poets and The Blue Tower were made in Montreal with Jean Simon Trottier who actually visited Day in Germany to see the original examples.

Stephen Paul Day lives in New Orleans and works part-time in Berlin Germany.

His main studies began at the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1979 to 1983. He had his first solo show in New Orleans at the alternative Bienville gallery in 1985. In 1986 he received the first of many artist residencies at the Experimental Glass Workshop in New York City. He stayed for six years. During this time, he was awarded a grant to study with Laurie Anderson at the Banff Art Center, worked with Dennis Oppenheim and Jenny Holzer. In 1993, he and his partner, Sibylle Peretti founded the collaborative group, Club S&S. Their exhibitions include, 1822 at the CAC in New Orleans, Diluvial Hood at the Freies Museum, Berlin, and an unofficial Souvenir Wagon for Prospect-1. Their awards include two Joan Mitchell grants, a Pollack Krasner grant, and a Warhol foundation award.

Daniella Dooling

Krustallos Fossil I, 2019

resin, stainless steel and aluminum lab hardware 12 x 4.5 x 6 in

Daniella Dooling Reimagining the organic process and formation of quartz crystals, Dooling’s Krustallos Fossil series replicates these natural forms into post-natural resin crystals as a reflection upon the growing consumer demand for healing crystals. Clear quartz crystals are believed by many to have healing properties, absorb negative energy, stimulate positive energy, and balance the immune system. Perhaps not so ironically, the global market for healing crystals has revealed both questionable working conditions for those mining crystal specimens and a depletion of this natural resource.

In Dooling’s work, the artificial becomes a synthetic copy of the original crystal - disappearing its healing properties and creating a duplication system through the process of casting. The use of casting fossils has a long-standing tradition in all fields of paleontology, creating a permanent duplicate record of the original form without harming the original fossils. Dooling presents her crystal fossils in laboratory clamps, imagining the scientific study of fossilized natural forms in a post-natural future.

Daniella Dooling received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA in sculpture from Yale University School of Art. She has been a teacher at Bard College since 2003 and lives in Tivoli, New York. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Krustallos Fossil II, 2019

resin, stainless steel and aluminum lab hardware 12.25 x 4.5 x 6 in

Jane Hambleton Jane Hambleton is a Berkeley-based artist working in multiple mediums with an emphasis on graphite drawing. Her work spans the world of painting, drawing and collage with equal agility. Whether focused on the figure or the natural world around us, her highly detailed and layered pieces explore the ephemerality of life asking us to pause, be present and look more deeply.

This drawing is based on a photo taken of the artist’s mother the day she got her braids cut. She was 12 turning 13. A passage from childhood to adolescence captured in a moment. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the Japanese idea of Mono No Aware for the last few years,” explains the artist. “Roughly translated it means the beauty of passing things and this piece encapsulates that idea for me on so many levels.”

The figure stands in ambivalent space, intentionally patinaed with age. Her back is turned, her long braids tied with ribbons, a symbol of childhood about to be abruptly shorn. There is no stopping time, but each fleeting moment is real and poignant.

Jane Hambleton

Jean’s Braids, 2019

graphite, acrylic, oil on paper 35.5 x 24.5 in

Michael Janis

Spirit Animal, 2020

kiln-formed glass, glass powder imagery, steel 19 x 36 x 2 in

Michael Janis Glass artist, Michael Janis works in a technique called “sgraffito.” In ceramics the term usually means scraping away one color to reveal another, but Janis uses the word to mean drawing with tiny beads of powdered glass, a process that requires a great deal of patience. With a tiny sifter, he sprinkles powdered glass onto a panel. He then manipulates the powder with a series of tools, often relying on static electricity from synthetic paintbrushes to carefully maneuver granules on glass panels until he has perfected a pointillist image. Then Janis stacks the panels – usually five at a time – and fires them together in a 1,450-degree kiln. The resulting half-inch-thick block of glass is an intricate, layered collage with a deceptive sense of three dimensions.

Born in Chicago, Michael Janis spent 20 years as an architect in the United States and Australia, finally returning to the US with a focus on working with glass. In 2004, he took a “Narratives in Glass” class at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine with Michael Rogers and the following year, he studied at Brooklyn’s Urban Glass studio with Jeremy Lepisto who taught Janis how to draw with glass powder. In 2005, he became co-director of the Washington Glass School, a hybrid school, studio, and public art production facility in Mount Rainier, Maryland where he is now co-director along with Tim Tate and Erwin Timmers.

Janis has received numerous awards for his artwork including the Florida Art Glass Alliance’s Emerging Artist Award 2009, the Bay Area Glass Institute’s 2010 Saxe Fellowship and he was named a “Rising Star” at Wheaton Arts 2011. His glass artwork was featured in Corning Museum’s ‘New Glass Review’ #30 & #31 and in 2016, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities awarded Michael the prestigious Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts.

The Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts mounted a solo show of Janis’ glass panels and sculpture in 2011, and the Fuller has recently acquired one of his works for their permanent collection. His artwork is also in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and in the Permanent Collection of the Bucharest Embassy, US Department of State, Romania.

Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2012, Janis went to England’s University of Sunderland and taught at the UK’s National Glass Centre where he became an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for International Research in Glass.

American Craft Magazine featured an extensive profile on Janis’ work in the April/May 2013 issue. In the following issue (June/July), the magazine interviewed him on the process’ his studio undertook to create the cast glass panels for the U.S. Library of Congress’ new entry doors. The James Renwick Alliance named him Distinguished Glass Artist for 2014, and he presented a talk about his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in May 2014.

Lisa Kokin

Text 1, 2 and 3, 2019 (above)

collage (shredded money on Canson watercolor paper) 12 x 9 in, 13 x 10 in framed

Hood 1, 2 and 3, 2019 (right page)

collage (shredded money on Canson watercolor paper) 12 x 9 in, 13 x 10 in framed

Lisa Kokin Lisa Kokin is a mixed media artist with a strong bent toward content-driven conceptual work. She has worked in mixed media installation, altered books, fiber, thread, found photos and sculpture has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. She has often worked with shredded money in the past two decades and has brought it out to work with again with her series, Lucre, a response to the last presidential election and the focus of her 2018 solo exhibition at the gallery. The series includes both two- and three-dimensional works based on ancient textile fragments and in configurations that evoke architecture and clothing.

Denominate, her current series of collages made with shredded U.S. currency, is an outgrowth of the Lucre series. Each collage is made on 9 x 12 Canson watercolor paper and features an image taken from contemporary society. “As political events become more convoluted and disturbing,” says Kokin, “my work has evolved into a more minimalist response. Gluing tiny pieces of money together using a tweezers and miniscule gluing brush, I find comfort and serenity in lining up edges and staying within the self-imposed lines. Despite the limited parameters size- and design-wise, I am able to improvise and let each piece evolve without a preconceived notion of the outcome”. Kokin is particularly drawn to the “white” areas of the bills, the margins and the negative space. “They work for me aesthetically,” says the artist, “and I like the metaphor created by featuring that which is not meant to be important.”

Lisa Kokin received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. The recipient of numerous awards and grants, Kokin was most recently given the Dorothy Saxe Award from the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. In addition to her one person exhibition, How the West Was Sewn at the Boise Art Museum, she has been included in group exhibitions at numerious museums across the country.

Dana Lynn Louis

As If, 2013 (upper left) embossed etching 21 x 16.25 in

Untitled, 2013 (lower left) embossed etching 21 x 16.25 in

Lolo, 2013, (upper right)

etching with mica inclusions 30 x 20 in

Constellation III detail, 2016 (lower right) glass beads, mica and steel

Constellation III, 2016 (right page) glass beads, mica and steel 144 x 30 x 30 ins

Dana Lynn Louis Dana Lynn Louis is a visual artist who makes works that honor the interconnectedness of being and explore the timeless, magical reality of biology in the natural, personal, and constructed worlds we inhabit. Glass, light, drawing, shadow and a variety of other media shape her work, which fluctuates between intimate, domestic-scale pieces, interdisciplinary performance collaborations, and large scale public installations. As a response to tenuous political and environmental climates worldwide, Louis seeks commissions and projects that allow her to imbue spaces with beauty and hope, and open a window into a world of calm contemplation. From intimate objects and drawings to environments, Louis creates visual worlds that help us perceive the beauty, levity, and wonder that exist in the natural world and in our own bodies and minds.

In 2017 she created Gather: Make: Shelter a citywide creative collaboration in Portland Oregon to create a new model of engagement and connection between people experiencing homelessness and those more fortunate. To date over 2000 people have been involved in the project.

Louis also works on projects in West Africa since 2002.

She helped create a cultural center in Bamako, Mali and as Artist in residence in the remote village of Sinthian in Senegal,Thread: a project of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation where she introduced yoga and drawing classes and collaborates closely with a women’s ceramic collective.

Louis’ work has been exhibited and collected Internationally. Lewis and Clark College also published a book on Louis’ work aligned with a major solo exhibition entitled “Clearing” in 2014. Louis has received awards from The Pollack Krasner Foundation, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Ford Family Foundation, and the Oregon Arts Commission. Her Artist in residency Awards include: The Museum of Glass in Tacoma Washington, Bullseye Glass Factory, Ohio State University, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and THREAD a project of the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation in Senegal, West Africa.

Louis has a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in Art and Education, and an MFA from the Ohio State University.

Jann Nunn

Wild Cherry, 2019

cherry wood, stainless steel 12 x 48 x 11 in

Jann Nunn The content driven artwork of Jann Nunn primarily takes the form of sculpture, large-scale sculptural installations, and works on paper engendering both conceptual and poetic sensibilities. Copious research and gut instinct- a marriage of head and heart- inform the decisions in each of her site-related, site-specific, situation-responsive projects. Not unlike words in a poem, material selection along with scale and presentation become greater than the sum of their often-unrelated parts.

Every aspect and implication of material usage is carefully considered and specifically relates to the work’s content and context. Nunn uses a variety of materials including welded steel and stainless steel, cast bronze, glass, lead, fiberglass, paper and wood. She has held a life-long penchant for repurposed materials. Frequently disparate materials are employed in a single work to accentuate duality, tension or evoke multifarious interpretations. She leaves no stone unturned in her quest to symbolically convey personal, political or spiritual manifestations with authenticity and relevance.

Nunn says, “The driving force behind my work resides in conjoining idea and aesthetic. Often described as a draw-youin kind of beautiful, my art embodies a strong physical presence with carefully considered and often laborious craft, yet the ideas remain paramount.” Wild Cherry is no exception, meticulously crafted from a cherry tree branch that has been skinned and charred and cut into quarter inch sections and reassembled onto a spiral stainless steel rod with spacers in between.

Jann Nunn has exhibited her work, lectured and held residencies nationally and internationally since 1987. She has a BFA degree from University of Alaska Anchorage, attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and earned an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. Recently retired, she is Professor Emeritus of Sculpture at Sonoma State University. ‑

Emily Payne

Tresses, Shadow, 2019 graphite on paper, framed 30 x 26 x 1.5 in

Tresses I, 2019 (upper right) wire 16 x 14 in

Tresses II, 2019 (lower right) wire 14 x 12 in

Emily Payne In 2019, Emily Payne attended a residency in Vermont. She wanted to challenge herself and go without preconceived notions of what she would do and on arrival, anxious about whether or not that was a mistake, she took a walk. It was cold out and at her feet she found long pine needles and began to consider the clumped shapes on the pine branches, so perfect for her wire work and perfect too for the shadow and light they create around them.

Thus began the Tresses series – inspired by natural forms but clearly made by human hand.

“I have been thinking about how we are animals but we have moved so far from being comfortable in our native habitat, the earth. Instead we are disconnecting from this slow, patterned, day by day world in which trees, mountains, plants and animals exist. We somehow hover above or coexist, using whatever we want in an often harmful relationship. I want to always move closer to nature, not further, and that is what I hope to do through my art work.”

Payne has always been interested in balance. In the Tresses Series, she is playing with gradations of density and weightlessness, darkness and light and two- and three-dimensionality, much like her earlier Circular Web Series. This time however, the long verticals of the pine needles add a special quality, recognizable in nature and a portal to many multiple associations and physical sensations. The effect is magnified by the repetition of the form and the visual imprint on paper in graphite.

Objects in space are not a new concept for Payne. She grew up with a Ruth Asawa sculpture in her home and knew the artist when she was growing up. Her uncle, writer Mervin Lane attended Black Mountain College in its most fertile and experimental period and the young Asawa and Payne’s mother, Nina became lifelong friends. Nina Payne was an accomplished poet and fiber artist in her own right and in 1975 the family moved from Mill Valley to Amherst, MA where her mother was a professor of creative writing at Hampshire College.

Emily Payne grew up in Mill Valley, California and Amherst, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio and her M.F.A. in Book Arts and Printmaking from San Francisco State University. Her installations have been a favorite at the gallery and she will open her one person exhibition at Seager Gray Gallery on April 1, 2020.

Sibylle Peretti and Stephen Paul Day Michael, 2016, (above)

kiln-formed, engraved, silvered and painted glass, laser print 10 x 20 x 5 in, diptych

Sibylle, 2016, (right)

kiln-formed, engraved, silvered and painted glass, laser print 10 x 20 x 5 in, diptych

Sibylle Peretti with Stephen Paul Day Sibylle Peretti received her MFA in Sculpture and Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne and a Master in Glass Making & Design from the State School of Glass in Zwiesel, Germany. Her work has won numerous awards and endorsements, including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation as well as the 2013 United States Artist Fellowship for her glass sculptures and multimedia collages, which combine photography & drawing with surface interventions such as engraving, mirroring and glass slumping. Children and nature, as symbols of innocence and promise, are the central themes in Sibylle’s work.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), Museum of American Glass (Milleville, NJ), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), Museum für Kunsthandwerk (Frankfurt, Germany), Hunter Museum (Chattanooga TN), Speed Museum (Louisville,KY), 21c Museum (Louisville, KY), and the Barry Art Museum (Norfolk, VA). Sibylle splits her time between New Orleans, Louisiana and Frauenau, Germany.

These works are in collaboration with Peretti’s husband, Stephen Paul Day.

Ross Richmond Repose, 2019

hand blown pigmented glass 15 x 14 x 7 in

Ross Richmond Ross Richmond discovered glass in 1991 during his time at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received a BFA in glass, with a minor in metals. He is considered one of the top glass sculptors in the field today, and has worked with (and for) some of the greatest glass and non-glass artists, including William Morris, Jane Rosen, Preston Singletary, KeKe Cribbs, and Dale Chihuly. Richmond studied and taught at the The Studio, Penland School of Craft and the Pilchuck Glass School. He began working for artist William Morris in 1997, becoming a member of his team in 1999.

William Morris encouraged teamwork and “working outside the box.� Richmond took that to heart. His work, focusing on sculpting realistic figures of humans and horses adorned with color and pattern is an outstanding example of how an artist can push his medium beyond its normal boundaries. Both in surface and shape, Repose and Gaze, exquisite figures of horses, transcend general ideas of what glass can do.

Richmond teaches throughout the U.S. and Canada, and his work has been featured in many exhibitions and galleries in the U.S. He currently resides near Seattle, Washington.

Ross Richmond Gaze, 2019

hand blown pigmented glass 16 x 16 x 11 in

Jane Rosen

Sebastian’s Tea, 2019 (left)

Provencal limestone, marble mix and pigment 53 x 13 x 8 in

East West, Asia Clumper 2015 (below)

beeswax ink and archival pigment print on clay ground 20 x 24 in

Little Petfinders, 2013 - 2020 (right) tinted glass 2 x 2 x 3 in (each), 2 x 21 x 3 in (group)

Jane Rosen Exploring the interconnectedness of all life forms, Jane Rosen closely observes animals as a key to understanding human nature. Consequently, deer, horses, hawks, and dogs often serve as subjects for her sculptures, paintings, and prints. Her drawings often proceed spontaneously, taking coffee or ink stains as their starting point.

New York native, Jane Rosen studied at New York University and then the Art Students League in the early 70s. She recalls going often to the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum studying the falcon-headed God Horus, God of the sky. Birds appear in her work as early as that same decade, in the form of abstracted wall-hung heads, which evolved gradually into freestanding figures in the ‘80s.

Sebastian’s Tea is an iconic Rosen sculpture of a stone-carved hawk created from Provencal limestone and pigment. As with all of her work, the size and weight of the bird is in perfect harmony with its perch, giving dignity and presence to this prehistoric predator.

Rosen’s Little Petfinders are a series of blown glass “snouts” or little faces of dogs. Rosen had recently lost her dog and was looking for a new one on petfinder.com and thought the pictures all looked like different noses. They were made as waxes and were kilncast in the first version but Rosen envisioned them in blown glass. These were made in miniature with master glassblower Ross Richmond. “I love the subtle differences in each head the blue-gray translucent glass,” said the artist.

Asia Clumper is a hand-colored and waxed pigment print of a group of Chinese horses in the background and a beautiful chestnut Hanoverian stallion. The stallion belonged to a friend of Rosen’s and she loved to draw him.

Rosen’s work is featured in numerous public and private collections including the The Brooklyn Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Art, Mitsubishi Corporation, Luso American Foundation, and the US Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia. Her credentials include a professorship at University of California at Berkeley, Senior Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts in New York and visiting Consulting Professor at Stanford University.

Liz Steketee

Family Portrait, 2017 (upper left)

archival digital print with thread and dye 18 x 28 in

Lost Girl, 2017 (lower left)

archival digital print with thread and dye 14 x 12 in

Long Boy, 2017 (above)

archival digital print with thread and dye 14 x 9 in

Liz Steketee Born in Michigan, Liz Steketee received her BFA in photography from the University of Michigan and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute where she was a member of the faculty for over a decade.

Stekettee focuses on the notions of photography and its role in family life, memory, and our sense of self.

“It is through art that I make sense the world,” says Liz, “I use my life and family as material for my work. By doing this, I am able to explore the complexity that exists in the everyday and the richness found in the mundane. My belief is that life experiences are a combination of independent, non-linear moments that we construct into memory.”

Traces Project Series In this series, the backs of photographs are the primary works. “As I get older, I find my memories of earlier life are hard to pin down,” says Steketee. “I question how events happened, when they occurred, and was I even there? I sew on the front side of the image to reexamine image as memory.” Thread acts as a line, tracing the important elements, leaving the extraneous behind. The pieces are soaked and dyed to congeal the thread, paper, imagery into one. “When I have finished, I turn the image over and discover what has been left behind. Ultimately, the photograph is gone, the drawn memory is all that remains.”

Sewn Projects Series, In this series, Steketee uses composited imagery from her family archive and her daily photographic diary. “I cut out, obliterate, and cover up elements of an image to draw attention to what is missing, what may have changed, or what needs to be considered.” Pieces are sewn and dyed to congeal the elements and ideas together. “Thread binds the content. Dye binds the color of memory. Past and present Liz Steketee collide. Memories are colored by the past, guided by the images Brick Wall, 2012 (upper) archival digital print with thread and dye burned in our brains. The pieces in this work are purposefully raw and 10 x 10 in unrefined, recalling the impulsive and rough nature of childhood.

Couple, 2012 (lower) Red thread binds the images, red for the connection to the heart in archival digital print with thread and dye 12 x 13 in the everyday. The pieces are stained as a representation of the color of memory.”

Susan Stover Susan Stover is a San Francisco Bay Area artist who creates paintings and sculptures that explore themes of cultural identity and mythology. With the study of ethnic patterns and of utilitarian and sacred objects in non-western cultures, her work embraces ritual, tradition, and meditation through repetitive labor.

These works are from her series, Anamnesis, a word that can mean “The recollection or remembrance of the past” or “recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, especially by means of reasoning.” Either definition works beautifully for these sculptures created with recycled cardboard, linen thread, latex, acrylic and varnish. Stover is interested in ritual and rebirth.

“This body of work draws specifically on memories of sewing with my grandmother and of my experiences in India embroidering with women in remote villages,” she says.”

Susan Stover

Anamneses: Is That Right?, 2020

cardboard, latex, acrylic, varnish, waxed linen thread 9 x 15 x 5 in

Anamneses: Sail On, 2020

cardboard, latex, acrylic, varnish, waxed linen thread 6 x 10 x 4 in

“I am interested in how textiles function within a culture, in how they are used from birth to death, in rituals, ceremonies and everyday life. Items are created for special occasions such as weddings or other religious events. These textile activities, often a communal one, are handed down from generation to generation and the textiles that are produced become containers and objects of memory, tradition and experience.”

Stover received a MFA from California College of Art in Oakland, California and a BFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her paintings are in many private collections and in 2016 was commissioned for several pieces for the American Ag Credit headquarters in Windsor, CA. Her work was featured on the cover and in the lead article of the Surface Design Journal Winter 2016 issue and has been included in The Art of Expressive Collage by Crystal Neubauer, Studio Visit, and Gathering Clouds – A Magazine of Contemporary Art. She teaches workshops in her northern California studio, other locations in the U.S., and internationally.

Susan Stover

Anamneses: Owing to One, 2020

cardboard, latex, acrylic, varnish, waxed linen thread 9 x 10 x 3.5 in

Anamneses: Imagine What Was Lost, 2020 cardboard, latex, acrylic, varnish, waxed linen thread 7.5 x 10 x 5.5 in

Tim Tate and Michael Janis Tim Tate and Michael Janis have worked together for more than fifteen years, creating art, teaching and establishing a highly functioning arts studio at the Washington Glass School in the nation’s capital.

Having mankind’s interaction with nature as their central theme, the artists decided to collaborate on works that might offer a unique tactile experience by combining their various techniques and skills. For To the Ends of the Earth, they combined separate bas-relief plaster molds, sgraffito glass powder drawings and lost wax glass castings to create a nine-panel experience of nature that includes dragonflies, nests, bees, birds, leaves, water and flowers unified by the pleasing olive tint of the transparent glass.

Tim Tate co-founded the Washington Glass School and Studio along with Erwin Timmers in 2001. His work is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and the Mint Museum. He is the subject of several articles in American Style, American Craft, and Sculpture magazines, as well as the Washington Post and Times newspaper reviews. He was also the 2010 recipient of the $35,000 Virginia Groot Foundation award for sculpture.

He taught in Istanbul in August 2007 and at Penland School on several occasions. In 2009 he received an award from the Museum of American Glass in New Jersey as one of the “Rising Stars of the 21st Century”. He received his Fulbright Award from Sunderland, University in England in 2012. He is also the founder of “Glass Secessionism”.

Tim shows his work at numerous International Art Fairs, such as ArtBasel Switzerland, Art Miami, SOFA and Frieze, London.

Michael Janis became the Co-Director of the Washington Glass School in 2005. He has received numerous awards for his artwork including the Florida Art Glass Alliance’s Emerging Artist Award 2009, the Bay Area Glass Institute’s 2010 Saxe Fellowship and he was named a “Rising Star” at Wheaton Arts 2011. His glass artwork was featured in Corning Museum’s ‘New Glass Review’ #30 & #31. In 2016, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities awarded Michael the prestigious Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts.

The Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts mounted a solo show of Janis’ glass panels and sculpture in 2011, and the Fuller has recently acquired one of his works for their permanent collection. His artwork is also in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and in the Permanent Collection of the Bucharest Embassy, US Department of State, Romania. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2012, Janis went to England’s University of Sunderland and taught at the UK’s National Glass Centre where he became an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for International Research in Glass (IIRG).

Tim Tate and Michael Janis To the Ends of the Earth, 2020 cast glass and mixed media 36 x 36 in

Jessica Williams Jessica Abbott Williams was born in Washington D.C., the daughter of a Dutch mother and a father who worked in international affairs. She and her sisters grew up traveling extensively and living around the world including years spent in Bangkok, Thailand and Vienna, Austria. As an undergraduate she studied English Literature and Poetry at Westmont College in Montecito, California. After college she worked for many years in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, Chanel and the Council on Foreign Relations. At the age of 29 she returned to California to study ceramics at the California College of the Arts and received a BFA in 1997.

Jessica Williams

from top left clockwise

Beloved, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

Biophilia, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

Centering, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

The Gift, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

Meditation, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

How to Interpret Poetry, 2020

iridescent watercolors on black watercolor paper 10 x 8 in (13 x 11 in framed)

Since 1997, Williams has owned Brushstrokes, a community art space and ceramics studio in Berkeley. Maintaining her own studio practice in both ceramics and painting, Jessica has sold her line of ceramics at the SFMOMA Museum Store, the Palo Alto Art Center Gallery Shop, The Gardener in Berkeley and Farm House Urban in Mill Valley. She has shown her paintings at Erica Tanov (Berkeley, Marin and LA), Farm House Urban in Mill Valley, Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Manhattan and St. Supery Winery in Napa Valley for Art in April curated by the artist/curator/landscape architect Topher Delaney. Jessica has worked with Topher Delaney for over 20 years on public art commissions for garden projects including a ceramic fountain for San Diego Children’s Hospital and ceramic and mosaic vessels for Highland Hospital in Oakland.

The artist is currently working on a community collaborative art project on the public pathways of Berkeley. She has set up a Biophilia Art Lab where members of the public are invited to contribute their drawings and reflections on the term biophilia, a belief that all humans have an innate love and connection with nature and other forms of life. Selections from these submissions as well as her own drawings and writings will be made into a book to be given away for free in her Little Free ART Library housed by the Berkeley Art Center.

These works of plant life have an uncanny lifelike quality. “Having worked largely with sumi and walnut ink in the past,” says Williams, “I loved discovering black cold press watercolor paper and iridescent watercolors for the way the remind me of daguerreotypes and other early forms of photography. There’s a static feeling — a moment frozen in time. Like the plants I’m painting, I like how the painting changes depending on the light.”

Aggie Zed Slave to Limit, 2014 ceramic, mixed media 9.5 x 6 x 5 in

Aggie Zed Born Emily Agnes White in Charleston, South Carolina in 1952, Aggie Zed is the eldest daughter of Zed Lecates and Emily W. White. She grew up on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, a barrier island outside of Charleston, with seven brothers and sisters and so many dogs, donkeys, ponies, and other animals that her neighbors wished they grew up on a farm. Aggie received a BFA in Painting and Sculpture (cum laude) from the University of South Carolina in 1974.

In 1976 Aggie moved to Richmond, Virginia where she came to enjoy the camaraderie of members of the faculty and students of the art school of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Aggie discovered a natural environment in which to work as an artist, developing her ceramic sculpture as well as her painting with which she has been able to make a living for over twenty years. Her work is shown in a number of galleries across the country.

Aggie Zed received a Virginia Commission for the Arts Professional Fellowship in 1982 and a National Endowment for the Arts Professional Fellowship in 1986, both of these for sculpture. She has participated in numerous and various group and one-person exhibitions over the years, and her work is included in collections worldwide.

Aggie Zed Cowman, Hammer Puppetman, Dogman,Dog Costume Man, Horse Costume Man,Horseman, Horse Puppetman, Ratman, 2020 ceramic 4 to 5 in each