Thursday, November 13, 2008

Artists' Reception Saturday Night November 15th

Come on down to the gallery this Saturday night from 6 to 9 pm and beat the 2nd Saturday crowds! All the local artists will be there including Curtis Bond, Jack Hastings, Jodie Hooker, Jim Klein, Develyn Marshall, Terry Oliver, Chris Schiller & Michael Smith.


Curtis Bond has been a photographer for over 25 years. He received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from UC Davis and has been a practicing social worker and counselor since 1995. His passion for nature and work as a healer continue to inspire and enhance his artistic process and expression.

“My art typically starts with something simple that catches my eye and somehow resonates emotionally. I then look to see where this object lives, in what context it finds itself, and look to juxtapose the object and the surroundings in such a way that enhances the original mood and suggests a deeper meaning. The way I frame and compose my work tends to be more visceral than cerebral, playing with the placement and spacing until it “feels right”. When I’m done, the work speaks to my senses and emotions through light and shadow, color and form, in such a way that I can see “out there” what I feel and experience “in here.” As a counselor and as a human being, I value authentic expression as a means of finding connectedness and understanding in a complex world. Through sharing myself honestly in these images, I hope that others will find a sense of connection and understanding as well.”


Robyn Desposito lives and works in New York City. She has shown widely in the United States and abroad with concentrated shows in New York’s Lower East Side and Brooklyn galleries. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines including Art in America. Apart from exhibiting her artwork, Robyn has explored her curatorial side with the art collectives OpenGround and The Exhibitionists. Most recently she will be featured at Fountain 2008 in Miami this December.


Jack Hastings is a Sacramento-based musician, songwriter and performer with Surrealist/Fluxist musical/theatrical troupe, Pink Toupee Collective as well as a member of the bands dRAW PiNKY and Hell Toupee. He also serves as their chief graphic designer, photographer and webmaster. Jack studied photography at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and at Los Angeles City College before obtaining a degree in an entirely unrelated field. More of his work can be seen and heard at www.jackhastings.com.

“Any collection of photographs is an exercise in Surrealist montage and the Surrealist abbreviation of history.” So says Susan Sontag in On Photography. I have always embraced Surrealism’s sense of ironic playfulness. In the Tunguska Triptych, I celebrate the most recent reminder of Earth’s vulnerability to the billiard table physics of the cosmos: the explosion of an asteroid over Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. The fact that we are subject, at any moment, to an event of cosmic extinction is, to me, a source of both fascination and dread. We tend to forget (or perhaps we are not equipped to grasp) that the ephemeral nature of existence applies to us as a species as much as it does to us as individuals.”


Jodie Hooker is a professor of photography at American River College. (M.F.A., State University of New York at Buffalo; M.S.Art Education, Alfred University, Alfred

New York; B.F.A., Alfred University, Alfred, New York)

Chartres Cathedral Series, Gum Bichromate prints with various permanent pigments on BFK Rives paper, average print size 8.5x11”.

“As I study photographs I am drawn to ideas involving the nature of reality and the perception of the photograph as real. Painting, on the other hand, is seen as created or subjective. Gum printing from digital negatives combines these ideas into one process. The negative is straight and produced in a digital environment, the print is made by brushing light sensitive chemicals and pure pigment onto art papers as a painter would. The resulting alternative process photographs are unique one-of-a-kind photographs and visual surprises are the norm. By working in a combination of straight digital photography and alternative process photography I am able to communicate the relationship between subjective and objective reality. The interchange between the observed world and the experienced world is the subject matter of these gum prints of Chartres Cathedral.”


Jim Klein - There's so much to see around us, but if we slow down to observe and contemplate, new dimensions of the world emerge to invigorate and enrich and add wonder to our lives. We then begin to challenge our usual views and thinking of the world to expand our consciousness of its infinite beauty and complexity. This is the purpose of art, and my challenge in photography: To view the world in a fuller way to capture it for myself and others in a printed image to enrich our lives.

The photograph entitled “SS Petri et Pauli” is of a church of the same name built in 1903 in Bow Valley, Nebraska, built by German Catholics, and which my mom attended when growing up here. Elegant, meticulously designed and assiduously maintained for over a century, it reminded me so much of the churches one sees in Europe, yet this is located in the rural Midwest, and serves as a real testament to the faith and dedication of these folks.

“Next Harvest” was taken outside a winery in the Anderson Valley, inland from the Mendocino coast. It suggests to me the spirit and hard work of the individual laborers who harvest the grapes in this region: Uncomplaining, they work their bodies untiringly year after year, and then are set aside out-of-sight between harvests until they are once again called upon to serve others for the harvest


Devalyn Marshall was a featured artist in the Digital Abstract & Pattern Magazine published by Aloramyst Media/Issuu. Her work as been displayed and auctioned in the Obama for America Campaign, including a fundraiser held at the Bricka Bracka Art Gallery in Sacramento CA. Several of Devalyn’s pieces have been featured in online Art galleries. Her art gallery can be view at http://alteredpaths.redbubble.com/

“Since my first view of Romare Bearden’s ‘Blue in the Smoke of War White the Bones of Men’ painting, I have had a great passion for abstract art. I feel with abstract art, the viewer is exposed to the artist’s creativity in a way that opens up the viewer’s own creativity and imagination. The viewer’s mind has an opportunity to create its own interpretation of the piece of art. In 2005 I began producing digital abstract art using pieces of my own digital photography. In this I have found great expressive satisfaction.”


In nineteen seventy-seven, Josh McGrath was given a chance at life in what is now a bankrupt hospital near Interstate-25 in the central New Mexican city of Albuquerque. Most of his first twenty-two years were spent in the valley of the aptly named Sandia Mountains of that peculiar, enchanting city with its high desert climate, billowing tumbleweeds and rusting 1950's signage. Educated in a mishmash of subject material at the University of New Mexico, he also had an unsuccessful two-year stint in a PhD program at Rutgers University. After college, he wandered around the dangerous boutiques and trust-fund babies of East Village, NYC for seven years. In two thousand and seven, he relocated all that could fit into a Civic, with a small hole punched out for the review mirror, and trekked to Austin, Texas where he now dwells in an unusual house. www.fourphotos.com

Exhibitions include: Los Griegos Public Library, Albuquerque New Mexico, one person show, November 2008.; Upstream People Gallery, on-line exhibition, special recognition "Perched", November 2008; Target Gallery, 5"X5"X5", Alexandria, Virginia, December 2008 – January 2009; Oso Art Gallery, Capitan, New Mexico, November 2008.


Booker "Terry" Oliver grew up in Columbus, Ohio and after a stint in the military, began a 24-year career in the real estate title insurance industry. Terry relocated to Sacramento County in 2002 and soon after received a camera as a gift. It didn't take him long to combine his fondness of the valley with his newly discovered love of photography. Terry lives in Midtown - Sacramento with his wife, Sheila, and their four pugs.


Christopher Schiller - www.schillerimages.com

“I have been photographing the American West for over 20 years. I seek out places and views which have rarely or never been photographed before. To do this, I frequently hike far from roads to places which can only be reached on foot with a backpack full of cameras, lenses and film. Once at a scene, I use my camera as another way to explore the light and the landscape. Crack Canyon brings all these intentions and elements together. It was captured deep in a rarely visited canyon in Southern Utah, far from National Parks and beaten paths. In such canyons there is light and silence, beauty and bare stone. Photographing these canyons is like exploring a cathedral, every rampart and niche containing secrets and relicts of nature.

The writer Barry Lopez has said: "The desire I experience most keenly when I travel in landscapes is for intimacy with the land. I have learned that I will not experience the exhilaration intimacy brings unless I become vulnerable to the place. The practice I strive for when I travel is to meet the land as if it were a person. To encounter it as if it were as deep in its meaning as human personality. I wait for it to speak." The land speaks to me in a similar way, and I strive to capture its voice through my photographs.”


Michael D. Smith creates abstract/surreal art by severely manipulating photography. His works are often mistaken for paintings. Michael’s technique and imagination define his “cutting edge” unique style. He has combined old and new technologies to create an award winning hybrid form of artistic expression. Michael has created art much of his life in various forms. It has mostly been job or hobby related and secondary to other interest. After retiring from the Sheet Metal trade, He started to experiment with creating art by manipulating photographs. As it turned out he developed a technique that is fairly unique and produces interesting art. His main focus is to create art that is entertaining. Much of his work is better suited art for collectors than decorators. www.uptownwebs.com

Imagine This conjures up visions of objects that are nonexistent. When closely inspected the viewer will find that many of these objects are not actually on the canvas. The shapes, colors and orientation of unknown objects imply the existence of objects that viewer sees. Much of how it is interpreted is based on the individual’s imagination.

Corporate Global Dominance implies that global corporations rather than governments are controlling and manipulating the world. There are insinuating symbols, icons, and connections that represent their priorities, behaviors, and results

Sea Life is a scene the looks as though it is under the sea. There are many suggestive objects. Viewers may see other objects that only exist in their mind.

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