I am so pleased that this piece, Connector, will be included in the About Face show at Bedford Gallery, in Walnut Creek, CA. The exhibition will be on view from April 15 to June 25, 2023.
Connector
lasercut wood with acrylic, image transfer, 28x14x.5", 2023
I’m happy to share that my mixed media wood collage “First Green” was one of the winners of the “State of the Art” open call for art featuring Northern California at artrepreneur.com.
Working with pieces of a 325-year-old fallen tree had me thinking about life and the passage of time. I considered the annual cycles of growth and the unfurling and luxuriating in sunlight. In the spring, the new leaves are the brightest green-gold, and I thought of Robert Frost's poem, 'Nature's First Green is Gold.'
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First Green
acrylic, image transfer on wood, 17"x11.5"x1.5", 2022
I was so pleased to be invited to show a piece at 35 by 35, an exhibition celebrating Arts Benicia's 35-year history. It was especially sweet to be invited by an artist I admire, Paula Boas, a longtime member of the arts community in Benicia. I will be showing a new painting, which is my first in a larger size (for me, anyway!)
The exhibition will be on view from September 24 – October 30, 2022, with an opening reception on September 24, from 4-6pm, at the gallery’s new location, Commanding Officer's Quarters on 1 Commandant's Lane in Benicia.
Sun Patterns, acrylic on canvas, 20x26”, $500
I am honored to be included in the upcoming exhibition, Wax & Wane at Stay Home Gallery, in Paris, TN, June 19-September 4, 2022.
“Circles, cycles, and gravitational pulls. The Moon is a natural symbol of our humanity and in its light we tend to the ones we love, explore our dreams, and see our place in time. Both a literal and metaphorical light in the darkness, legends of The Moon are present in cultures across continents and throughout history. What does The Moon mean to us today?”
I was so interested in this prospectus because it aligned with the work I have been making this year. I have been thinking about the celestial, unseen world. Stars hide in plain sight, revealed only by the onset of darkness. Star charts remind me of the seemingly random patterns that might form different shapes if looked at from another angle. Perhaps the patterns are in the form of geometric structures, and those links exist down even in the air around us, connecting everything.
In this piece, my two sons are silhouetted against a clear, afternoon sky, but there are so many connections seen and unseen between them and the world around them. The lasercut pieces of wood layer suggestions of patterns, reinforced by geometric textured patterns over the astral patterns defined long ago.
Memories of Light, 2022
I was so pleased to be invited to participate in this Invitational Exhibition for 2022 at Fourth Street Fine Art by the wonderful artist, Celena Peet, who I had the pleasure to meet at the Bedford Gallery show, If A Tree Falls. I will be showing another piece from the tree series.
Please join us at the Artists’ Reception on May 15, 3-5pm. The exhibition will be at Fourth Street Fine Art from May 6-June 19, and is located at 2000 4th Street @ University Ave, Berkeley, CA. The gallery is open Fri-Sun, noon-5pm.
October 30, 2021 - February 13, 2022
Working with pieces of a fallen tree had me thinking about life and the passage of time. The golden light of late afternoon led me to considering the end of the tree's life, it's golden hour. Pattern of Memory and Recalling the Golden Hour also helped me process a recent loss, celebrating the golden hours lived and accepting the inevitable end.
If a Tree Falls: Art of the Boundary Oak memorializes the City of Walnut Creek’s signature Valley Oak, which tragically fell during a massive windstorm in October 2019. As a tribute to the tree’s long life and rich history, which spanned 325 years, the artists in the exhibition created artworks from its wood, offering this monumental being a second life.
March 4-18, 2022
All Shapes and Sizes at JKR Gallery, Provo, UT
This show celebrates artwork in any shape except for squares and rectangles—right in line with what I have been exploring lately!
Feb 24, 2022-Apr 24, 2022
This exhibition explores the negative voices in our heads, the voices that criticize us, tell us we will never be good enough, that keep us up at night and hold us back through fear. We all have these demons. They whisper in our ears, scream at us to stop when we are about to do something vulnerable. ‘You aren’t good enough, smart enough, strong enough. You will not succeed.” If someone says these words we may call them bullies, but what about when these voices come from inside us? Can we tell the difference between them and the truth? What happens when the silence of our own thoughts only makes them louder and more convincing? In this show each artist faces off with their demons to acknowledge them and begin thinking critically about how to manage self-criticism for the benefit of creative production.
Founded in 2020, Art Night Gallery is an artist collective that began meeting online during the pandemic as a creative support group and community from afar. Every Sunday evening Art Night Gallery artists open their computers, sign onto Zoom, and make in their studios while chatting or just listening to the sounds of the other artists creating in their spaces. Our diverse group of female identifying artists reach from Canada throughout the United States. Each artist springs from divergent cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds and create work in a variety of mediums from painting and drawing to ceramics and fiber. Equally as varied, are the concepts and aspects of each artist's practice, reaching from highly rendered figurative work to full abstraction. The common thread is a dedication to the creative and to supporting other artists in their journey as makers.
Participating Artists: Bushra Gill, Sarah Plamondon, Carmen Mendoza, Dani Vinokurov, Shannon Astolfi, Kirsten Francis, Tara Centybear, Ash Woodworth, and Amy Dyck.
I'm so pleased to announce that I have two works in the Sh1ft show at Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery in Lafayette, CA. The show is about perseverance and how we shift our approach when difficulties arise.
exhibition opening: Sat, June 5, 11am-4pm
Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery
3525 Mt. Diablo Blvd, Lafayette, CA
Top:
TY Note: Shahzia Sikandar, gouache on drypoint print, 11x15" 2020
Bottom:
TY Note: Shirin Neshat, gouache on drypoint print, 11x15" 2020
These paintings are from my Thank You Notes series, expressing gratitude to artists who have influenced me. I had been working on these as Covid restrictions began. As I got more time to work in the studio, I reflected on my art journey and realized how several artists had been really influential. These two women in particular were the first I had seen that looked like me and were making contemporary art that reflected their stories and heritage. Do check them out for yourself:
Shahzia Sikandar
Shirin Neshat
I was so excited to be included in this juried exhibition of handmade prints by women of color, juried by Satpreet Kahlon. Three of the Circling series: Circling 3, 6, and 7, are in the exhibition at LightArtSpace in Silver City, NM, which has just opened. The show is also part of the Southwest Print Fiesta, which sounds so tantalizing! I’d love to go see it in person, but that doesn’t seem possible at present :(
freshly framed!
It’s always so fun to see an exhibition being installed! https://lightartspace.com/
I was so pleased to be included in ‘Unleashing Magic,’ a virtual exhibition by Create Magazine in partnership with PXP Contemporary.
From the exhibition essay, “the artworks we’ve chosen are filled with moments of joy through the use of color, shape and subject, embodying the magic it takes to hold onto that joy and cobble together the time, materials, and energy it takes to keep on creating, to continuously and repeatedly work on your craft. Each piece of art is a piece of us, a piece of magic we offer each other. We may be exhausted and unsure about what the future looks like, but we know that, thanks to all of us, it will not be without magic.” @foxinthecove
The Bird, Nest, Nature show was supposed to open in July at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA. I've loved the exhibitions at this excellent gallery for years. When I returned to art a few years ago, it was my first goal to show here. It seemed so pie-in-the-sky then, but just two years later, I find that I need to create new goals :)
The call for entry for this show actually inspired an entire body of work, the first piece of which, Circling 1, was accepted into the exhibition (top right piece in the image below). Thinking about birds always makes me think about flight and flight patterns. I’ve wondered about the unseen purpose of animal behavior (beyond just survival) since watching birds fly in circles above the Ka’aba in Mecca, mirroring the worshippers on the ground below. The concentric pattern became a drypoint plate and was the jumping off point for a series of pieces about circumnavigation.
The underlying drypoint print that began most of the series
About halfway through the series…
It's been bittersweet waiting for it to be safe for the Bedford Gallery to be open to see the show in person, but they've made the show virtual, linked below. And, finally, as of next week, the gallery will finally be open to visitors again, with advance reservations, available at https://www.bedfordgallery.org/
I was so pleased to have been included in the 2020 Left Coast Annual (LCA) Exhibition which was juried by Carin Adams, Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum of California. Over 800 entries were submitted, and only 50 were chosen by 49 artists. The show was supposed to open on Friday, April 10, at the Sanchez, except that a global pandemic got in the way. Thankfully, the fine team at the Sanchez, artists and Sanchez Art Center staff, (Janet Barker, Program Manager and Cindy Abbott, Executive Director) pivoted to create this first show in new virtual galleries. Click HERE or enter SanchezArtCenterVirtualGalleries.org in your browser bar to enter the galleries.
My piece, Cousin Chaos I, Ordered, was the only one I entered, and I was over the moon when it was included and then won a Juror Prize! It was among the first I did on my own drypoint print, and I experimented with loosening up the image into the pattern.
The Sanchez extended the show for two weeks until May 27, and added a fun twist: a new mini pop-up show "Art x Nature x Art". The event pairs eleven randomly selected 2020 Left Coast Annual artworks with floral creations inspired by an artists' work, and I was charmed by the floral creation by Susan Landry that was inspired by mine!
I’m so pleased to have a piece in the exhibition Reflections on Home, organized by GAMA, Gathering All Muslim Artists, and ARTogether, at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, from Mar 1-28, 2020. I had answered their call for submissions of art by female immigrant artists of color back in December since I checked all those boxes :)
A few years ago, my family and I visited Bangkok, Thailand. It was a city that was totally familiar in its massive, cosmopolitan & dense downtown neighborhoods, like New York; the everyday simple living of an Asian village turned major metropolis, like Karachi and Lahore; and yet with the spine-tingling flavor of a wholly unfamiliar language and way of life.
As often happens with travel, unexpected experiences change your perception, and therefore, your life. The best part for me was that it was a piece of art that did it—public art, an unexpected installation on the grounds of a famous temple. A site-specific work at Khao Mor, Wat Arun, “Across the Universe and Beyond,” by Sanitas Pradittasnee, was part of the Bangkok Art Biennale 2018, and it literally changed how I saw the world around me.
What was most interesting was how the work uses mirrors, which should reflect exactly, but don’t, because they’re in a mosaic. The mirrors reminded me of the mirrorwork used as decoration in Pakistan: embedded into walls on old buildings like the Lahore Fort, spangled across trucks, and embroidered onto clothes. This piece in Thailand led directly to the exploration of pattern that resulted in the work chosen for the Reflections on Home show.
We become part of the work. https://sanitasstudio.com/project/across-the-universe-and-beyond/
The painting chosen for this show is Vacation Chaos, Ordered, based on a family selfie I took on our first day in Bangkok. I can’t wait to go back.
It starts with a pattern. After using some preprinted patterns, I made my own in drypoint & printed a few sheets to have more to experiment with. Then an image or three bubble up, one takes root, and it begins.
Studio Chaos, Ordered, 1st phase
A few spots of color here and there to get the process going, working all over the page.
Studio Chaos, Ordered-2nd phase
The most important parts assert themselves first.
Studio Chaos, Ordered-3rd Phase
The pattern’s structure builds and simultaneously breaks spatial planes.
Studio Chaos, Ordered
2018
Watercolor on paper, 9.75 x 13.5″
The parts I resisted the most–blank walls, various piles of chaos–end up being the most interesting to work on.
Studio Chaos Study
2018
Oil on canvas, 12x16”
More interested in exploring how pattern would affect an image than which image to use, I grabbed a recent study of my studio as inspiration.
Disordered chaos…
Studio wall, Jan 2019
The best part of making art is finding something in that process that leads to the next one and the next one and the next one. It’s the holy grail to staying interested for me, and figuring out ways to keep the flow going has made all the difference for getting work started as soon as I enter the studio. Utilizing the studio wall to collect possible images, sketches and works in progress is a quick visual reminder of where to pick up at the next session.
I’ve learned to make use of small pockets of time, ideally half an hour at least, to get into the studio to work. I use an app to track my productivity, and an unfinished work or two to add a few marks to. The geometric pattern pieces have been ideal for this kind of practice: monotonous but meditative, yet full of interesting decisions about color and pattern that benefit from having to step away.
The wall is actually thin sheets of stainless steel used in roofing, painted the same grey wall color. Little round magnets make putting up work in progress really easy. (Studio visitors, especially the younger set, LOVE the magnets!)
