Rachel Foster Last Words (Paul McCartney’s Last Words to Linda McCartney)
22″ X 30″
screenprint on paper
The internet is playing a giant game of Telephone; information is copied, distorted, and reproduced. The data that you located on Monday, seems to have vanished by Tuesday. So much material is floating around the digital world with no physical form – they are ghosts. I scour the internet for hours; looking for that one perfect tid-bit that haunts me. I collect information concerning Whirling Dervishes, the Rosetta Stone, famous last words, Ouija boards….
Through the digital world I am collecting evidence of those things nearly invisible and through
sculpture, printmaking, photography I stabilize them with a physicality. Much of my work is processed through language, as language is the primary construction we use that has one foot in the tangible world and one in the ineffable. Each work transforms and translates pre-existing facts. By reconfiguring information present in our daily lives I hope to highlight simple, hidden magic.
Website: www.rachelefoster.com
Daniel Dallabrida All American Faggots (Menis)
Metalic C-print
Using the elemental materials of clay, water, metals, wood, and fire, Daniel Dallabrida invokes ancient rituals, ruins and myth. His sculpture, installations and photography exist simultaneously on a continuum of process, performance and artifact. A neo-medievalist, Dallabrida employs the classical past to illustrate the tenacious permanence of the human condition. With the resurrection of memory, personal and cultural, his art builds a thin bridge over annihilation—his own and ours.
Born in 1956 ,Dallabrida lives and works in San Francisco and Florence, Italy. This spring, he received an MFA in Visual Arts at California College of the Arts. In 2008, he received a Post-Bacc Certificate in Sculpture from Studio Art Centers International in Florence. Dallabrida has exhibited in California and throughout Italy, including Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, Casellio Ovest di Porta Venezia in Milan and Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.
Website: www.dallabrida.com
Marylene Camacho Displaced I and II
24 x 36
Digital Photographs
War, a subject that consumes history, has been a focus of my practice for almost three years. The United States is now entering its 10th year of conflict in Afghanistan, making this war the longest war in American history. Yet, despite its sheer length, this war continues to have abstract qualities in terms of both awareness and ignorance in the public eye. The majority of the public has some knowledge of our current war but rarely considers what really is happening on the other side of the world. Day after day, both soldiers and civilians, including men and women, have perished with only the slightest recognition from the American public.
My work is a result of my own reflections of war. I started to reconsider my thoughts of this issue after viewing photographs taken by a friend who served as a medic in both Iraq and Afghanistan. My goal is to create a moment during which my work generates questions and prompts self-reflection regarding issues of war. As an abstract condition in contemporary life, war lends itself to be viewed in multiple ways, because everyone looks at this issue differently. I believe that wars, past and present, have a strange rippling effect that continues to be felt for decades, and sometime centuries, to follow.
Born in the Philippines, Miss Camacho immigrated in Los Angeles when she was 12 years old. She received her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in 2005 from California State University at Long Beach and her Masters of Fine Arts in 2011 from California College of the Arts.
Website: marylenecamacho.com
Ed Calhoun Seasons 1
1 meter x 1 meter
oil on canvas
I love intellectual constructs: ideas, mathematical formulas, scientific concepts and new ways of thinking. These are my sources of inspiration. I first begin by exploring and developing a conceptual idea and then I decide on how to best translate and incorporate elements of the idea into a new painting or series of paintings. This serves as the framework and driving force behind the new work. Even if not readily apparent at first glance, the underlying concept is always present to add another layer of depth to the finished piece.
Ed Calhoun was born in California but grew up mostly in Arkansas. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Initially making his career in the construction industry, Calhoun turned to art full time in 2000 upon moving to Paris and studying under Nina Kovacheva for 3 years. He has been residing full time in San Francisco for the last 7 years and has exhibited both in Europe and the United States.
Website: www.elfilms.com
Zina Al-Shukri Comfort Zone
30″ x 22″
gouache, charcoal and metallic pigment on paper
Observing people is a practice that has fascinated me since childhood. As an
immigrant child displaced from Iraq and freshly immersed into a new culture, I
was naturally curious about the people around me and often trying to find ways to
relate. Sharing interests and conversations, mimicry, playing games were all my
early methods of interaction. And we were always moving. Every few years my
family and I would relocate and acclimate ourselves to our new surroundings.
This was not the easiest task considering we were an Arab-Muslim family trying
to fit into a predominantly Southern-Christian environment. Nevertheless, I made
friends, and that’s who I paint. I paint my friends exactly with the same curiosity I
had as a child trying to fit in. Through shared conversations, mimicry and the
naturally evolved intellectual play.
I see and relate to myself when making other peoples’ portraits, while
simultaneously providing a way for the sitters to relate to themselves and to me.
These paintings are an exploration of genuine interactions happening in real life
over extended periods of actual time. As I develop the image, the subject is
invited to watch and respond to my progress hence a feedback loop occurs
between us. Their image unfolds before them. This creates a vulnerable and
enchanting state for the sitter and often is a difficult place to be. My art practice is
shaped by a full collaboration between the sitter and myself to create a tangible,
intimate and visceral experience.
Zina Al-Shukri is an artist who was born in Baghdad, Iraq. She received her
B.F.A. in painting and drawing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in
2006 and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the California College of the
Arts in 2009. Al-Shukri currently lives and works in San Francisco.
Website: www.zinaalshukri.com
Luis Aguilera Untitled
11 x 15
prismacolor on paper
Luis Aguilera’s vibrant drawings of figures and animals are multi-layered, personal narratives that include icons of popular culture, buses and trains, fantasy creatures, musical instruments, and portraits of his friends from the Creative Growth studio. His saturated color palette and dramatic representations of figures and objects demonstrate a consistent vision complemented by his fusion of line, form, and color that energize and, often, abstract his imagery. Aguilera’s work has been featured in exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including most recently at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco.
Website: www.creativegrowth.org
Melissa Dickenson Release, Capture, Release
11″ x 9″
Acrylic on Canvas
Melissa Dickenson lives and works in San Francisco. Past exhibitions include ‘Exploration’ at Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo Japan, ‘Uncertainty’ at Athens Institute for Contemporary Art in Athens, Georgia and ‘Hybrids of Tutela’, a solo exhibition in at the Mclean Project for the Arts in Virginia. Dickenson’s work is part of the permanent collection of the Embassy of Sudan, Khartoum, Sudan. This Spring Melissa’s paintings were part of Hammarby!, an exhibit at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, CA. Most recently Dickenson’s paintings and installations were featured in the exhibition Tarnow: 100 Years of Modernity, at the Moscicki Museum Cultural Center Tarnow, Poland, August 2011.
“I see my current painting practice as resembling the fluidity and constantly evolving forces of life. The work seeks to evoke life’s processes of germination, growth and mutation as well as the destructive forces of contamination and decay. I am interested in the edge of instability and uncertainty balanced between the forces of control and chaos.”
Christine Elfman Untitled, from the Anthotype Dress Project
16 x 20 inches
pigmented inkjet print
Christine Elfman is an artist based in San Francisco whose work combines photography, painting, and textiles to explore ideas of transience. The Anthotype Dress project shows the process of making a dress within a series of photographs. The inner lining of the dress is a fugitive photograph, made by Anthotypy, defined in the Focal Encyclopedia of Photography as “A process suggested by Sir John Herschel in 1842 that used the colored extracts and tinctures of flowers and vegetables to sensitize paper. Objects such as leaves, lace, and other thin materials were placed in contact with the sensitized paper and exposed to sunlight. Anthotypes were not fixed or stabilized, making them impossible to display except in night albums, for evening viewing.” The Anthotype is impractical, yet describes the desire to hold on to things that fade, and is an example of something that is made out of its own disappearance.
From the Philadelphia area, Elfman received her BFA in Painting from Cornell University, and then lived in Rochester, NY while using 19th century photographic processes. Elfman has been awarded The San Francisco Foundation Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship, the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Career Development Fellowship, Graduate Merit Scholarship at CCA, artist residency at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, NY; 1st place prize for the Made in New York Exhibition at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center; and the Faculty Medal of Art from the Cornell Art Department. Her work has been exhibited nationally. She is currently a graduate student in fine arts at California College of the Arts.
Website: www.christineelfman.com
Peter Max Lawrence A Personal Paradise
43″ x 24″
oil and ink paper transfers on poplar wood
Peter Max Lawrence is a maker of things. Born in Topeka; adopted soon there after and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. Over the course of his life, he has created a large and diverse body of work, exploring a wide variety of approaches, media and techniques. Lawrence’s visual art, performances and videos have been presented internationally in venues ranging from major museums to basement bathrooms. Among his recent works of note are the critically acclaimed QUEER in KANSAS, Warholics and the experimental short de Young which was created while working as an artist-in-residence at the museum and later was featured on KQED’s Truly California. He has also directed music videos for Carletta Sue Kay, Krystle Warren and troops. Currently he is the curator for The One and Art Thieves as well as developing various collaborations with other musicians, artists and writers. He lives and works in San Francisco, California
Website: www.petermaxlawrence.com
Amber Stucke Botany, Homo Sapiens, Canis (vessel structures) for symbiosis state
11″ x 26″
inkjet,vellum paint, black bevelled plate, paper
STATEMENT
I work with ideas within artistic research. Through formal mediums of painting and drawing, my work is project based and involves interdisciplinary investigations within artistic production.
What is symbiosis? I connect this question to my current project on symbiosis state. I started it in 2009. It is a project exploring and investigating how I embody the idea of symbiosis through an intensive drawing relationship interconnecting evolutionary biology, consciousness, philosophy of mind, and the imagination. By combining experiential and rational knowledge systems together within drawings, I appropriate from visual taxonomies to create conversations between local knowledge systems of the human body and scientific classification structures.
BIO
Stucke was born in Chicago Heights, Illinois and has been living in the Bay Area since 2004. She received her BFA in 2002 from Barat College (Lake Forest, IL), and her MFA in 2011 from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). She has had additional studies at Goldsmith’s College in London, UK and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL. Stucke has had solo shows in Chicago and San Francisco and has had group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Berkeley and Albuquerque. She received a CCA Scholarship Award in 2009, has been nominated in 2008 for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Art Award and has also been nominated twice for the Visions from the New California Award through the Alliance of Artists Communities. Stucke lives & works in Berkeley, CA.
Website: www.amberstucke.com
Brad Brown 16E
29″ x 29″
watercolor, walnut ink, china maker, collage on paper
Brad Brown is an artist working primarily on drawings and works on paper. His drawing projects tend to be large, open-ended series that can remain unfinished for years. This drawing is from the SERIALS project, which was exhibited at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco last year.
Brown has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco (2010), Larissa Goldston Gallery, NY (2007), Lemberg Gallery, Detroit (2007), The Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2006), and the Jundt Museum of Art in Washington (2006). His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA (NY), SFMoMA (SF, CA), Palace of Legion of Honor,(SF, CA), the National Gallery (Washington, DC), Arkansas Museum of Art (Littlerock, AK), Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), among others.
He currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Website: www.hosfeltgallery.com