Witness a select group of over 30 artists as they gradually transform Varnish Fine Art in the coming months during Project Wrecking Ball. This long-term art project is our response to the pending eminent domain demolition of the current Varnish location at 77 Natoma Street in downtown San Francisco. By continually changing the eviction/demolition date short-notice, the government agency in charge of demo (Transbay Joint Powers Authority) has blocked our ability to schedule further art shows as we have since opening over 6 years ago. Instead, a fabulous group of invited artists will leave their studios in the Bay Area and beyond to create artwork on-site throughout the main gallery for this on-going art event. The varied artwork will be created in paint, encaustic and photo-emulsion directly on the brick walls and on panels in addition to metal sculpture and kinetic art installations.  Project Wrecking Ball will continue until the wrecking ball swings. The PWB painters and sculptors include: Jennybird Alcantara, Zoe Ani, Beth Bojarski, Vance Cearley, Albert DiCruttalo, Ezra Li Eizmont, Kevin Evans, Brian Goggin, Joshua Hagler, Ben Harris, Brad Isdrab, Sharon Leong, Michael Maes, Joel Mejia, Pierre Merkl III, Stephanie Morgan, Annie Owens, Michael Page, Rob Racine, Rob Reger, Karl Reichley, Dan Romo, Jeff Ross, Christian Rothenhagen, Reuben Rude, Lucien Shapiro, Sofia Sharpe, Dylan Sisson, Winston Smith, Kal Spelletich, Chuck Sperry, Kerri Stephens, Jon Wayshak, Shawn Webber, Sri Zeno Whipple and more!

Kevin Peterson's Slumbody Loves You solo exhibit of oil paintings documents the importance of an American neighborhood community.  Peterson shares his love of the neighborhood characters, interwoven lives and eventual destruction through gentrification and corporatization.  The artist casts a spotlight on the individuals that comprise his and countless other small, lower income urban neighborhoods across the U.S. with his trademark dreamscape surrealist style.

"I would say more than anything, I paint what I love and I love what I paint," says Kevin.  Using a glaze technique, he carefully builds up layers of paint, allowing light to pass through and bounce back to the surface to give each piece its own "glow".  This process of layering allows for an exploration of ideas and imagery that evolve on the canvas, becoming a window into the subconscious mind of the artist.  In this most recent series of artwork, Peterson veers towards a narrative, documenting the landscape and characters of his tight-knit urban neighborhood as they fight encroaching development and the inevitable gentrification and loss of culture that comes with it.  When crafting his paintings, Peterson takes a cue from the Flemish Masters who he says "knew how to tell a story without shoving it down your throat."  The paintings that comprise Slumbody Loves You are allegorical in nature and take careful consideration to untangle which, given the dreamy and seductive atmosphere of the works, is a pleasure to do.

Kevin Peterson is an oil painter in his 20's who works from his home in a San Diego, California neighborhood.  He has shown extensively in the United States in solo and group exhibits.  Slumbody Loves You is Varnish Fine Art's first solo exhibit of Kevin Peterson's artwork.

Reception: Friday June 26, 7-10pm 

Jennybird Alcantara's Treacherous Gardens solo exhibit of paintings explores "the garden of the mind" and its vast, beautiful landscape filled with inherent pitfalls.  Duality, water themes, dreams and nightmares figure prominently in this series of detailed fantasies in oil and acrylic on panel.

"I have always been a daydreamer," says Jennybird, "and get many of my ideas during that state of semi-consciousness.  My inspirations come from a wide variety of sources including fairytales and fables, mythology, the natural world and freaks of nature, melancholy...broken dolls and objects out of place."  With a narrative at its core, Alcantara's minutely detailed paintings are filled with objects that possess un-borrowed symbolism contained within each piece and within the series.  The artist's love of animals and their instincts is seen and felt in her use of folklore and metaphor.  Dual natures addressing the veils between human-animal, internal-external, and life-death embody the characters central to each work of art.  Treacherous Gardens draws the viewer deeper into a world both strange and beautiful, guided by a generous hand.

Artist Reception: Friday April 3, 7-10pm.

In addition to recent original works on canvas, steel, wood, and paper, Signs of Change includes the debut exhibit of the entire Firehouse Goldenvoice series #1 through #25, encompassing Rock Art posters produced for the Warfield and Regency Grand Ballroom in San Francisco from September though December 2008.  Prolific rock art poster creators Chuck Sperry and Ron Donovan opened The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company together in the late '90's, and since it's inception they have created roughly 500 posters of their own design in addition to printed posters for Frank Kozik, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, and Victor Moscoso.  Sperry and Donovan's artwork churns within the pages of a half-dozen books, including a mongraph of Firehouse artwork, and they are featured in the soon-to-be-released documentary film "American Artifact" which chronicles the rise of American rock poster art since it's birth in the '60's.  Sperry and Donovan have created posters for a multitude of pop and rock music artists such as Eric Clapton, Ozzy Osborne, U2, John Lee Hooker, Madonna, MC5, and Tool.

Informed by earlier days as a political cartoonist, Chuck Sperry's keen interest in political art imbues his work with dynamism and commentary, using postmodern tools of the trade.  Incorporating images from B-movies, gossip magazines, covers of cheap crime books, and film noir adds to Sperry's visual lexicon.  The bad-boy of Bay Area postermaking, Ron Donovan's first footprint on the art world came in 1985 when he co-founded We Are Not Gentlemen (WANG), a cadre of infamous art saboteurs, headquartered at the California College of Arts and Crafts.  For the last 2 decades Donovan has created hundreds of cutting-edge rock posters, all the while spilling spurious political propaganda.

Artist Reception:  Friday January 16, 7-10pm 

With all artwork inspired by the Conan films, the Crom group show brings together a selection of artists participating in San Francisco 2008 APE--the Alternative Press Expo. 

Artists include: Sean Andress, Lee Ballard, Rob Bowen, Jennifer Chang, Dave Correia, Jahkeeli Garnett, Brad Isdrab, Harper Jaten, Jerome Opena, Alex Pardee, Lucien Shapiro, Aiyana Udesen, N8 Van Dyke, and John Wayshak.

Artist Reception: Saturday November 1, 7-10pm

Admission is Free; You must be 21+ to attend.

Varnish Fine Art is proud to present Beth Bojarski’s new series of paintings Confessions from the Family Tree, Bojarski’s first solo show.

 

Milwaukee-based artist Beth Bojarski wants to make you laugh.  She is among the small, select breed of contemporary artist that successfully delivers serious artwork with a fantastic sense of humor.  “I love the fact that an artist is often given more freedom to question the world around them,” says Bojarski.  Her work continues to challenge the viewer in a sustained, timeless way.  “(T)he great thing is even I may think I know what a painting is about, then I see it a year later and find something completely new.” 

 

Often working in oils on found wooden surfaces, Bojarski creates paintings as a form of storytelling.  All the while the artist delves into a fantastic world that draws upon her own peculiar ability to find everyone’s laugh-button.  Though each work of art stands alone, the characters that develop dynamically during the creation of each piece relate within the series as a whole to tell the tale.  Bojarski plays further upon this concept in Confessions from the Family Tree by incorporating the original mythical family Adam & Eve, infusing features of her own family throughout the series and traditional family portrait elements.  The intertwining tale of the “family” based on the connection of characters in this collection of paintings is rooted within the gallery by a 3-dimensional installation created by Bojarski with sculptor Mark Winter. 

Opening Reception: Friday September 5, 6-10pm.

 

Michelle Knox and Eunkang Koh 2-artist show fo new works in metal and glass by Michelle Knox and gouache and ink by Eunkang Koh.  Both Knox and Koh approach the landscape of our reality (or unreality) from a tranquil center.  Each artist has shown extensively, but this marks the debut of both Knox and Koh at Varnish Fine Art.

Eunkang Koh constructs worlds in gouache and ink on paper where creatures of an animal/human hybrid nature act, exist, and adapt within monumental, illusionary landscapes that become players in the narrative themselves.  Koh's personal philosophy is heavily influenced by early exposure to Korean myths and the tenets of Buddhism where the physical world in which we live is nothing more than a perceived illusion.  "My characters contain ironic gestures that simultaneously evoke humor and the grotesque," says Koh.  "My work illustrates how I see humans and human society.  It is a visualization of my own perception of society using satirical and metaphorical representations of creatures."  San Francisco Bay Area artist Michelle Knox relocated from the East Coast over a decade ago.  Knox incorporates glass and metal in each of her works to create sculpture that emphasizes grace and subtlety of form.  "My work and my working process attempts to find tranquility.  To reconnect myself with myself and to others," says Knox. 

Opening Reception: Thursday July 10, 6-9pm

From artist debuts to a literary-hoax enacted and revealed, from miniature scenes to half-ton bronze sculptures, Varnish Fine Art has enjoyed the whirlwind that is San Francisco art, community and politics for the past 5 years.  The artists we've had the pleasure to show continue to impress as their work matures, while newer blood reveals itself.  The 5 Year Anniversary Show is a group exhibit of new work by over 40 artists who have shown at Varnish since the Grand Opening Group show on April 19, 2003.  Cast bronze sculpture, oil painting, mixed media, and photography. 

Participating artists include Jennybird Alcantara, Chris Anthony, AttaBoy, Beth Bojarski, Chris Buzelli, Benjamin Carpenter, Vance Cearly, Elizabeth Dante, Albert Dicruttalo, Ron English, Kevin Evans, Jose Fernandez, Kate Garner, Ron Garrigues, Charles Glaubitz, Nemo Gould, Ben Harris, Archie Held, Al Honig, Carlos Huante, Grant Irish, Jordin Isip, Jung Han Kim, Craig LaRotonda, Sharon Leong, JP Long, Michael Maes, Chris Mars, Pierre Merkl III, Stephanie Morgan, Skot Olsen, Kevin Peterson, Rob Racine, Karl Reichley, Dan Romo, Reuben Rude, KRK Ryden, Isabel Samaras, Kristen Sard, Wayne Shaffer, Dylan Sisson, Winston Smith, Kerri Stephens, The Oyster Pirate Workshop, Thomas Wargin, and Robert Work.

Artist Reception/5-Year Anniversary Party: Saturday April 19, 7-11pm

California-based artist and art history professor Kenney Mencher knows what it's like to be at the center of controversy, stemming from his artwork.  In Mencher's case, past controversy resulted from successfully probing the unconscious with oil on canvas.  His provocative slice-of-life paintings in a Realist style always tell a story with cryptic scenes, requiring viewers to dream up their own interpretations.  This challenge prompts the question of who is bringing controversial notions to the party---the viewer or Mencher.  He makes a point, but deftly balances this with viewer imagination, humor and mystery.

"You can tell an awful lot about a person by the stories they make up when looking at my paintings," says Mencher.  "I think of my paintings as a kind of 'commedia del arte' in paint."

Kenney Mencher has shown extensively in the US for the past 20 years, but Lovers and Liars marks his first showing at Varnish Fine Art.

Opening Reception: Friday January 18, 7-10pm

The Fertile Ground 4-artist show curated by Alix Sloan explores the cycles of life and nature and our roles and experience as we relate to each other, or environment and even the forces beyond our control.  Additionally, all of the artists---Sarah Sohn, William Crump, Julia Marchand, and Ryan Scully ---combine representational elements with more graphic/design inspired elements to create colorful 2D works.

Sarah Sohn's work unapologetically celebrates femininity.  With a folk-inspired feeling to the work, she collages organic, architectural, and mechanical elements creating delicate, romantic images that explore female relationships with each other, nature and life.  Her use of exposed wood, with its subtle curves and color, lends an added layer of warmth and the suggestion of nature to the work.

From a distincly male (and new father) perspective, William Crump questions the chasm between the reality of who we are and the fantasy of who we thought we would become.  He shows us the complicated, deeper nature of iconic masculine figures (such as athletes and predatory animals) by juxtaposing them into romantic settings and/or traditionally feminine backgrounds.  His work challenges our ideas of acceptable masculinity and the male role in the cycles of life and invites us to see beyond  limiting cliches.

Julia Marchand works as many as seven layers in each painting or drawing.  At times completed works are totally eclipsed underneath the layers above.  Through this process she discovers each narrative as she works, and it is exposed to both the artist and the viewer.  The line between the animal kingdom and humanity is blurred and children and families (human and animal) face the joy, danger, sorrow and tenderness of life and the future alone and within the context of family.

With his anonymous, organic and androgynous (yet often suggetive) figures, embracing each other against the forces of nature---graphic Japanese-inspired waves, voluminous clouds and brilliant sunsets---Ryan Scully strips away gender and identity and explores the essence of form, emotion and humanity.  Without seeing the expression of his figures we still feel their experience as they fight, frolic and love within and against their environment.

Alix Sloan is a private dealer, consultant, writer and curator who has been working with emerging artists for over 15 years.  Artists included in Sloan's exhibitions have gone on to show at a wide range of galleries and include a number of today's best-known contemporary artists.  This is her first curated exhibition at Varnish Fine Art.

Opening Reception: Saturday September 22, 7-10pm

With a penchant for fine detail, the four painters and illustrators of Duck Soup focus our gaze on the private moments of flora, fauna, fantastical creatures and inanimate objects.

Ana Bagayan moved to Burbank, California from her birthplace in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan.  Having earned a degree in Illustration from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Ana's work has been received internationally and has been featured in such publications as Rolling Stone, Spin, GQ and various others.  Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including Varnish Fine Art's Urban Tales show in 2004.  Bagayan's new series of paintings and drawings with their surreal landscapes and creatures from her own fantastical mythology, capture the private moments of her subjects in an imagined nature.

Having received his MFA in Painting with High Distinction from the California College of Arts in 1984, Michael Beck has shown extensively through the US.  "This new body of work," says Beck, "explores the boundaries of what is an acceptable object in a fine art painting."  Michael Beck's paintings, based in the realist tradition, isolate and subtley twist our gaze around peculiar objects found at flea markets and thrift shops and have no reference to anything but themselves.

Justin DeGarmo values his upbringing with a Marine Corps dad that exposed him to different ways of life through constant relocating.  Developing an interest in drawing early on, DeGarmo gathers inspiration from current events, bits of social interaction, childhood memories, food, music, and he's a sucker for pretty packaging.

Berkely, California painter and illustrator Joseph Daniel Fiedler hails from the Appalachian hill country of Western Pennsylvania.  His accolades include a Silver Medal from the New York Society of Illustrators and recognition from such publications as Graphis, Print, Communication Arts, and American Illustration.  In this latest body of work, waterfowl, leaves of chard and Godzilla spark airy reminiscences.  "Fiedler produces exquisite artworks; the landscapes are magically transporting while the lustrous colors radiate an antique, spiritual quality."-Kirkus Reviews.

Opening Reception: Thursday June 14, 7-10pm

Recently Kim Maria of Revelation Studios was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, and an incredible group of west coast artists have come together for a one-night event to help her offset medical costs with 100% of art sales proceeds from tonight's silent auction.  Please join us for drinks and a fantastic chance to bid on fine art that is rarely available. 

Artists include:  Hawk Alfredson, Kent Alexander, Nikolai Atanassov, Gary Baseman, JennyBird, Calef Brown, Tim Butler, Chris Buzelli, Stephanie Dalton, Guy Dill, Bob Dob, Joseph Daniel Fiedler, Rebecca Fox, Charles Glaubitz, Jack Howe, Craig LaRotonda, Omar lee, Rafael Lopez, Julia Marchand, Kim Maria, MariNaomi, Miller-Havens, Joel Nakamura, James Nacarrato, Kevin Peterson, Ferris Plock, Silvia Poloto, Martha Rich, Isabel Samaras, Anastasia Schipani, John Sheridan, Chris Sickels, Winston Smith, Hannah Stouffer, Katherine Streeter and more.

To view some of the donated works, please go to www.jenvaughnart.com/Anahata.htm

Preview: 6pm   Bidding: 7pm-9pm

Varnish is a 21+ only venue; Please bring ID

Sculptors Ben Carpenter and Rey Hernandez with painter Carlos Huante bring their unique visual interpretations of symbiosis and conflict of nature in the technological world in this 3-artist show.  Carlos Huante has made a successful living in character design and modeling for the film industry, both in animation and live action, working on projects for such luminaries as Rick Baker, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Guillermo del Torro.  Huante's works on display will include limited edition prints as well as original sketches that served as studies for his paintings.  Born in Athens, Greece, Rey Hernandez lives and works in the Bay Area.  "Living in a digital age of fast-paced techmological progress has been a major influence on my art," says Hernandez.  The resulting bronze sculptures are natural-looking objects that seem slightly familiar but defy taxonomy.  What looks to be an artfully sculpted organic shape at first--perhaps an animal horn or sea shell--appears next as something artificial, the dislodged piece of an alien machine.  Ben Carpenter's sculpting techniques include die-forming, forging, and lost-wax casting.  For this exhibit, Carpenter shows his recent forged and die-formed wall-mounted sculpture.  These works are part of an on-going series that "address the biological functions of the body's organs in contrast to the emotional functions we assign them--such as love," says Carpenter. 

Opening Reception: Thursday February 8, 7-10pm

A fitting end to 2006 for our sculpture-centric gallery, this group show of bronze sculpture from the southern California Decker Studios Foundry features Sandford Decker, Ynez Johnston, Karen Mortillaro, Jose Ismael Fernandez, and Tanya Ragir with a portion of the show's proceeds benefitting the Ventana Wildlife Society.  Information about Ventana Wildlife Society may be found online at www.ventanaws.org.  As well as being an accomplished sculptor, Sanford Decker is the owner and founder of Decker Studios full service fine arts atelier, providing a complete range of casting and fabrication services in materials that include bronze, stainless steel, silver, gold, and aluminum.  Karen Mortillaro's love of detail and craftsmanship binds with her interest in anamorphia, both a concept and a technique that she uses to lift images from a flat page and turn them into three-dimensional forms.  Her exquisite and imaginative pieces of Alice down the rabbit hole evoke the wonder of those images that everyone knows from childhood.  At 86 years of age with a National Endowment for the Arts grant under her belt along with a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ynez Johnston has shown her work extensively, both nationally and internationally.  Her combination of modernism with ancient art forms, including references to Byzantine, Persian, Mexican, Indian and Southeast Asian motifs has registered throughout her career in a variety of mediums, including lithography, watercolor, oil as well as wood and bronze sculpture.  Iconic and heroic are the terms that come to mind when looking at the work of Jose Fernandez.  His work reflects the impulses of an artist of a different era a-la Stanislav Szukalski, to create forms in bronze that shoulder concepts of solidarity, redemption, innocence and purpose.  Tanya Ragir and her series of totems reflect her interest in the sensual relationships between land and human form.  She frames details of figures then alters the scale in order to deepen the relationship we have to the figure.  "I perceive beauty," she says, "as authenticity, not perfection.  In all the work, I have a great reverence for grace, and attempt to find a balance between sensuality and power."

Opening Reception and Auction of 1 Sanford Decker sculpture: Friday December 15, 7-11pm

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A solo show of pinhole cameras/creations devoted to the subjects of their photographs by Wayne Martin Belger.  Along with accompanying photos, A Collection of Souls from the Borderland features 9 Belger cameras, 7 wall-mounted, 2 on custom tripods, including Deer Camera, the Sons of Abraham (9/11) Camera, the Yemaya (underwater) Camera, the Heart Camera, Wood Camera, Classic Camera, Yama (skull) Camera, Dragonfly Camera and perhaps most controversally, the HIV Camera.  "I love the idea of functional art," says Wayne.  "And that art then goes on to create art itself," referring to the creative functionality of the cameras themselves.  Designed and built around the idea of taking a specific shot, no two cameras shoot their assigned scenes in the same way.  "To me, each camera is a working alter.  And it usually takes a couple days before the theme of the camera emerges...and even longer for me to understand why."  There are no lenses or mirrors---only light focused through a tiny pinhole in order to create an image on film; a pure reflection of what is happening at the moment with exposures lasting from 1.5 seconds to 1.5 hours.  The HIV Camera photographs people surviving with HIV or AIDS wherein blood taken from subjects and introduced into the camera, pumped through clear cylindars that push the blood between two sheets of glass mounted in front of the pinhole.  The blood---mixed with other solutions---is the restrictive equivalent of a #25 red filter.  Using steel from the World Trade Center after 9/11 and aluminum, The Sons of Abraham (911) Camera also contains relics in resin combined with one block of 6061 t6 aircraft aluminum.  The jagged WTC steel forms the pinhole and is faced in the direction from the South Tower, photographing Mosques, Churches and Synagogues along with Priests, Imams and Rabbis holding the Quran, Torah or Bible. 

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 28, 7-11pm

Bay Area Bronze group show mines the wealth of selected local sculptors working in the medium of bronze.

Featured sculptors include Al Farrow, Albert Dicruttalo, Anthony Ricci, Archie Held, Benjamin Carpenter, Ben Harris, Courtney Brown, Dan Romo, Dann Gesink, Elizabeth Dante, Grant Irish, Karl Reichley, Ken Whitaker, Kerri Stephens, Michael Maes, Paul Graf, Peter Schifrin, Raymond Suarez, Rey Hernandez, Ron Garrigues, Stan Huncilman, and Wayne Shaffer.

Opening Reception: Saturday July 22, 7-11pm.

This third anniversary show at Varnish features cast metal sculptor Brian Elliot's Bay Area debut, intaglio printmaker Kevin Evans and ceramic sculptor/installation artist Liz Orleans.

Each of Brian Elliot's cast metal pieces---about 27" high, 11" deep and 18" wide---have an improbable charisma and beauty to them, which is only enhanced by the lightness of their appearance.  These brave ladies, like a fleet of demure, feminine Zeppelins, look as if they might float away unless tethered.  Brian Elliot is influenced by Gaudi's passion and overstatement, Harrell Fletcher's elevation of the seemingly ordinary and banal into ingenious and respectful looks at the human condition, the aesthetics of Popular Mechanics magazine prior to 1950, Terry Gilliam's fascination with puppet-like creations, as well as the glorious high fashion of Issey Miyake.

Sculptor Elizabeth Orleans works in clay and tells "ceramic tales."  She is inclined to pair visual and tactile structures like smooth, orbed surfaces along with crusty exteriors in order to excite what she calls, "visual sensations."  "I want," says Orleans, "to illustrate the visual stimulation you get from seeing paint peeling, metal rusting or moss growing."  These ceramic tales reflect the currents or ravages of time and/or evolution.  At first glance some of them look like they could have come from the ocean, but upon closer inspection, reveal the telltale clues of an unfolding story.

In his painting and other work Kevin Evans looks to the concealed natural world for inspiration.  He moves forward through projects with a combination of instinct and imagination.  "It is," says Evans, "an unpredictable voyage toward an unpredictable outcome."  The images, especially in his intaglio work, often seem dense and riddled with a structural mystery that resists explanation.  It's easy to imagine they might be only recently discovered but still unexplained plans of a Michelangelo.

Opening Reception: Saturday April 22, 7-11pm

New metal and glass sculpture by JP Long and new paintings by Jung Han Kim.  The tension between the rigidity of steel and the fluidity of glass is a key element in the work of Bay Area sculptor JP Long.  Fabricated steel is paired with slumped or blown glass to produce pieces that exude a dynamic authority.  The glass is graceful and swooped, almost like spun taffy and is nestled within steel that has a graphite patina.

"Sculpture is the last frontier of great art," says JP.  "While work in two dimensions is an impressive illusion, pieces in three dimensions are a reality, a presence in space."

Painter Jung Han Kim's aesthetic is steeped in classical technique, but the almost unbearably rich, ethereal touch he brings to his San Francisco landscapes of busy corners and Bart trains is his alone.  When looking at his paintings, it is easy to find yourself feeling as if you're reaching through some highly permeable barrier to a heightened but slightly blurred or smudged present.  A present that seems informed by some unexplained, but quite palpable past.

"Every new painting," Han explains, "is built upon the previous ones...like the relationship between there, here and somewhere...I think it is the feeling of haunting from being."

Opening reception: Saturday January 21, 7-11pm

Gale Hart marries gentle whimsy and disturbing reality in her paintings and sculptures that explore the contradictions running amuck in a culture that relies on animals for sustenance on the one hand, while marketing them as cute, cuddly and vulnerable on the other.  Hart's work looks at animals and our relationship to them throught the almost sentimental lens we use to depict them, but reveals the reality of what we do to or with them at the same time.  The result is an eye-pleasing series of work that lulls you gently on the one hand--but jars on the other--by addressing the unsettling nature of this disconnect.

"I am," says Hart, "interested in amusement, sarcasm, hypocrisy, deception, social injustice and piquing the viewer's curiosity...the work, I think, stands for itself."

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5th, 7-11pm

Artist Talk: Friday, November 18th, 7-9pm

Szukalski's bronze sculpture bridged burgeoning 20th century art movements only to fall into obscurity until the efforts of Glenn Bray, Lena Zwalve, George DiCaprio and his son Leonardo DiCaprio reawakened interest.  His work has been called "bent classicism."  Szukalski was perhaps a narcissist of the highest order, as he considered himself "without antecedent or influences," while managing, according to his admirers, to fuse the movement and energy of Futurism, the emotion of Impressionism and the geometric configurations of Cubism into a single poetic form.  He is quoted as saying, "I put Rodin in one pocket, Michelangelo in the other and I walk towards the sun." 

Szukalski left his native Poland for the United States, where in 1920's Chicago he fell in with the likes of soon-to-be Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht, poet Carl Sandburg and the notorious Scopes-trial defense attorney, Clarence Darrow.  He later returned to Europe where he was recognized in his native Poland by the Ministry of Art as "the country's greatest living artist," and a museum was built in his honor.  After his return to Chicago, World War II detroyed much of Poland and the entire museum, thus laying the groundwork for his fall into obscurity.

The heft and intricacy of the pieces, complete with decorative flourishes of Art Nouveau as well as primitive pre-Columbian motifs have been called "emotionally theatrical."  In 2001 a retrospective was mounted at the Laguna Museum of Art and a reviewer for the LA Times noted that "As a man and an artist he thrived on bold gestures...his work aspires to the monumental, regardless of the physical scale...muscles are taut and exaggerated...he fetishized the mythic," and then went on to compare his aesthetic and production to "Mathew Barney's staged, over-the-top epics in film, photography and installation."  Like Mathew Barney, Szukalski works from charged egomaniacal obsessions---tortured and heroic figures drawn from pop, classical and primitive culture collide to produce mysterious and symbol-laden fascinations.  Another critic called Szukalski's large bronze busts "As powerful and overbearing as a faith healing."

Opening Reception:  Saturday, July 30th, 7-11pm

Ron English shares certain pop fascinations with artists like Andy Warhol as well as Jeff Koons.  But instead of celebrity, ubiquity and pop luminescence as his subjects, he goes after the aesthetics of mass media by hijacking corporate advertising for his own unabashed ends.  Sometimes called the father of "agit-pop" or a "subvertising executive," Ron combines an angry and fed up political sensibility with the tried and true techniques of modern advertising in order to jar viewers into recognizing the suffocating presence of advertising and the assumptions it promotes.  According to the New York Times, he was so good at capturing the essence of child friendly tobacco shill Joe Camel, that indeed he was hired to create billboards for the cigarette maker---though he was later fired after it was found he'd concealed skulls in the paintings as some sort of subliminal warning.  Ron and his cohorts are known to literally paste over or alter real billboards in urban settings.  It's been said that his artwork doesn't so much hang as trespass.  "Advertising agencies," says Ron, "are mercenaries, it's about profit.  I am about content.  I guess I'm a criminal...but I don't think I'm a nuisance to society."  In 2004 a documentary about English, called Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English portrayed him as a modern Robin Hood of Madison Avenue, infiltrating, perverting, reinventing and satirizing modern culture through the hypodermic delivery device of advertising.  In addition to showing at the SF Documentary Festival, this film will show at Varnish on June 11th.

There is much more to look at in a Ron English show than refaced billboard work..from his three-eared, grinning rabbits bopping through the universe bathed in pastels to the veneers and detailing in his reproductions of famous Marilyn Monroe poses, made unsettling by her Mickey Mouse faced breasts.

Each unique piece in this current show is rooted in Ron English originals Marilyn, Little Andy and Cowgirl. Ron worked with master printer Alexander Henrici, who had previously worked with Andy Warhol on his Campbell's Soup Can series, as well as with Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring.  Each piece in their collaboration was built from the canvas up, with Ron painting layers followed by Alexander's screenings until each image achieved a unique completeness. 

Private Preview:  Saturday, May 28th, 7-11pm

Opening Reception:  Thursday, June 2nd, 7-11pm

This group show of a selection of artists participating in the Alternative Press Expo features Lee Ballard, Jerome Opena, Wayshak, Alex Pardee, Robert Bowen, Dave Correia, Sean Andress, Brad Isdrab, Lucien Shapiro, and Jahkeeli Garnett.  All are artists in their mid to late twenties working in the milieus of illustration and comic book art.  These artists are heavily influenced by 80's culture and have a zeal for drawing, rendering and sculpting their world in anti-heroic terms that borders on the surreal.  "It is her inspiration that keeps us excited.  She is stunningly beautiful, yet ruthlessly cruel.  Our art reflects her true nature.  It is because of this, we dedicate our show to Martha Stewart."  Matha Stewart was not available for comment on art, Yoohoo, donuts, or cryptic universes, which is probably "a good thing."

Among the participating artists, Jonathan Wayshak is known for a furious pen and ink cross-hatching style and points to Francis Bacon as an influence.  Alex Pardee's humor comes through either despite of or because of disfiguring his characters or celebrities with a bloody lampoon style in pieces that show Tom Cruise as the only adult survivor of Progeria.  His world is a cruel place where buck-toothed innocence conspires in its own gleeful self-destruction, as in the Bunnywith series.  Jerome Opena's self-published book, Rusted Lung, brought him to the attention of Dark Horse Comics where he was responsible for Lone.  He dabbles in mainstream comics as well as in the alternative press and is known for his rangy take on characters that mimic the look of Cinemascope.

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 7-11pm

This group photography show includes works incorporating various techniques, including light manipulation, photo on cement forms and large-scale polaroid.

Stephanie Gene Morgan's spy-like and anthropological POV combine with the auditory visualizations of blind photographer Pete Eckert, along with Chris Anthony's moody Agit-Prop in this group show. If Harriet the Spy was an anthropologist, used a camera instead of a notebook, and printed the photos as emulsion on cement, her photos might look like Morgan's. "I prefer to shoot with my 2 1/4," says Morgan, "I call it my spy box...it supplies me with the imprint left by the thing that was gone as soon as I pressed the shutter." Pete Eckert started going blind at 24, over a ten-year period. "My work investigates the world around me," he says, "as a blind person who was once sighted and who takes photos of the world I currently perceive." Trained as a sculptor, Pete thinks of his work as conceptual art. Chris Anthony, raised and educated in Indianapolis and Florence, Italy also works as a rock photographer and video director. "I made these photographs," he says, "as a simple reaction to current affairs. I felt the need to make some dark and beautiful, iconic and poetic."

Opening reception: Thursday, February 3, 6-10pm

You must be 21+ to attend.

Our Toy-themed group show runs the gamut of toy-related permutations, bringing together artists working in diverse materials, including metal, glass, moving parts, paint on canvas and found-objects.

The diverse group of 7 artists featured in Misfit Toys are:  sculptor and National Endowment for the Arts winner, Bella Feldman; pop iconoclast Ron English; the sweet but harrowing doll-sculptures and paintings of JennyBird Alcantara; the robotic antics and mayhem of Al Honig and Kal Spelletich; the moody aesthetics of Al Farrow and the paintings of SF-character Jack Yaghubian II.

 Opening Reception: Thursday, December 2, 7-11pm

You must be 21+ to attend.

Sculptor Bella Feldman's work has shown internationally in solo and group shows since 1976 to great acclaim. Her work resides in numerous private collections including the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco and is commissioned by a variety of architects interested in incorporating her work into their structures or plans. Bella is the winner of several awards including the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artist's Fellowship. Bella Feldman's interest in the "vocabulary of shape" as well as the scale and mass inherent in working with heavy metal, makes for pieces that have been described as emigmatic and multifaceted, which is a good place to begin the job of describing her thiry-year body of work. Work that distills a cultural impulse preoccupied with weaponry and technology in collections like "War Toys", with its "small, mobile works of glass and metal that look delicate, even exquisite," yet that by her own admission, convey a knack for intimidation, to the tightly muscled subtle aggressions in "Cable Organic", with its good tools gone somehow terribly wrong sunniness, all the way back to the filament-like delicacy and grace of the rose thorn and fiberglass resin structures in "Membrane Sequence" or "Cadmus Cadre" from the late '70's. Bella is in the business of producing three-dimensional topographical maps that allow us to get a sense of where we've been and where we're going, from a sharp-eyed, caring feminist perspective that is completely aware that the "difference between beauty and pretty," as Bella says, "is that beauty has an edge to it." Join us with Bella for the opening reception on Saturday, September 25th 7-11pm

 

Eric White, Jordin Isip, & Carl Dunn are "Underneath Nostalgic Rotation". Eric White has been called the anti-Norman Rockwell, partially because of his ability to capture the lucid, formal qualities of photography in oil paint on canvas, as well as his interest in looking to 40's era Hollywood for inspiration. Jordin Isip, an illustrator by trade, uses mixed media on paper and wood to create iconic and somber narratives. Having appeared in The New Yorker, The Progressive, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice, Carl Dunn's expressionistic painting and sculptures use primary colors, collage and found materials. Together, these artists reflect this show's title: Underneath=Jordin Isip, Nostalgic=Eric White & Rotation=Carl Dunn. Reception: Saturday, July 10th, 7-11pm

The "Urban Tales" group show of on-the-wall-work features the collage & painted works of David Ball, paintings from Ana Bagayan, Nathan Spoor, Ezra Eismont, Aunt Kate and found-object sculpture by Dan Levin. Reception: Thursday, June 3rd, 7-11pm

"No longer created by and for the 'big daddies', Lowbrow art has seen the transformation from gals simply being the voluptuous subjects on the canvas to women gracefully mastering the hand and imagination behind the brush.  These driven ladies continue to wink at everything bawdy and gawdy, while they woo thousands with their distinctly feminine approach...And if Lowbrow didn't fling its arms wide to embrace female artists, well, these dames weren't looking for an invitation anyway---they elbowed in without so much as a bayou leave."---Chris Pfouts, Vicious, Delicious, & Ambitious by Sherri Cullison

"Skin Deep" features a selection of the bold Lowbrow  painters from the Vicious, Delicious & Ambitious artists, including Sunny Buick, Kirsten Easthope, Annette Hassell, Sharon Leong, Isabel Samaras, and Andrea Tucker.

Opening Reception Thursday March 25th 7-11pm.

We begin 2004 by looking at the beauty of impermanence with Jim Haynes' artfully corroded photography and Wayne Shaffer's essential bronze sculpture inspired by the natural world.

Reception Thursday, January 8th 6-10pm.

This group show delves into the dark side for a closer look under the surface. Eric White, Scott Musgrove, Joanne Stephens, Sean Christopher, collaborative works by Craig La Rotunda and Kim Maria, Karl Unnasch, Kyle Ranson, Jakob Bokulich, Dan Romo, and Grant Irish.

This new work of original assemblage sculpture by Ron Garrigues and inspired, always timely collage artwork of Winston Smith is not to be missed.

 Reception Friday June 6, 7pm-11pm