Around the Bay People

Written by John on October 20, 2016. Posted in 2016

ArtSpan SFOS Hub Exhibition
October 1st – October 30th

Closing  Reception Saturday, October 29 – 4-8pm 

The Great Highway gallery is pleased to present Around the Bay People as part of the ArtSpan San FranciscoOpen Studios Hub exhibition weekend. The exhibition will display throughout he month of October with a closingreception October 29th during the Outer Sunset ArtSpan weekend 3 October 29th & 30th. The works will featurepaintings, photography and ceramic works by Loretta Bozung, Peter Cochrane, David Cronan, Patricia Hewett,Amber Hockeborne, Rex Mandel, Seren Moran, and Margaret Timbrell.

Seren Moran – serenmoran.com
Seren Moran was born in 1989 in Berkeley, California. In 2011, Seren graduated from San Diego State University’s Fine Arts Program, with an emphasis in painting. During her junior year of college, Seren studied abroad in the highly competitive art program at the original Leonardo da Vinci School of Art, L’Accademia di Bella Arte, in Florence Italy. “Being back in the Bay Area where I grew up had me wanting to explore more about my childhood and development, what forms who we are as adults, and what makes us call some place a home. I wanted there to be an energy to the paintings that felt relateble to that prepubescent age where we’ve struggled maintaining our innocence and optimism of the world, while simultaneously being exposed to more adult experiences.”

Margaret Timbrell – @margaretdth – margarettimbrell.com
Margaret Timbrell was born in Brazil, raised in San Francisco and graduated from NYU with a Bachelors degree in Studio Art. Margaret is currently a studio artist at Root Division. In 2018 Margaret will be the Artist in Residence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. “I’m also inspired by pop culture, both low brow and high brow. I like to combine this very traditional craft with referential phrases and autocorrect errors to bring together these different worlds and mediums. I’ve submitted for your consideration a couple of my text pieces that showcase both my technical skill and draw in the viewer with the use of language.”

Loretta Bozung
“This current ceramic work represents the impact of medical intervention on the human body and mind. Fragile bodies are represented by fragile ceramic work. Both bodies and materials are manipulated and pummeled, growing bumpy as new growth pushes it’s way out. In this way I hope to express the unbreakable link between our (my) biology and the seemingly inanimate quality of the clay.”

David Cronan
“I have been printing for 5 years, getting the most out of an industrial process from the small space of my home here. This limits the dimensions and quantity of what I make. The images are mostly from what I love to take pictures of in the city, busy and ephemeral stuff. The work has evolved in a niche habitat usually ignorant of sensible technical advice.”

Peter Cochrane – @pecoch – petercochrane.xyz
Peter Cochrane is an artist and an author. His writings and/or art have appeared in BOMB, Headmaster, The San Francisco Chronicle, make/shift, SFAQ/NYAQ/AQ, Artslant, and have been translated into Italian in a an obscure exhibition catalogue. He has created books that have traveled to the Vancouver Art/Book Fair, the Los Angeles Art Book Fair, the San Francisco Art Book Fair, multiple Bay Area book fairs, and the Room&Book Fair at the ICA in London. He works with and has an unhealthy adoration for flowers. Exploring queer identities through self-portraiture and installation work is my prime interest. I use beauty—that which may be calming and safe to look upon—as a tool to advance difficult discussions on death, inhumanity, desire, trauma, and recovery. As photography is familiar to everyone in the personal sense, as a record of our lives and moments and families, I use it as a lure to bring people into my reality, while installation is a tool of total immersion. The conversation about the photograph as a true or dishonest medium merges in the middle. It is both truth and lie, and the assimilation of all aspects of my personality built through myriad angles of history.

Patricia Hewett – patriciahewett.com
Patricia received a BFA in painting from the University of Kansas after undergrad studies at KU in Lawrence, KS and the University of Reading in England. “These gouache and ink paintings employ techniques similar to those used in Japanese suminagashi painting, Turkish Islamic ebru painting, and non-traditional printmaking. Whether above or beneath the surface of the sea, I delve within the landscape seeking to glean and interpret it’s mysteries and hidden forces that have shaped it.” ex omnia conchis -all from shells”

Rex Mandel
“For the past 36 years I’ve lived in San Francisco near the ocean. San Francisco, and in particular the people in it, are a constant source of inspiration. There is always something for me to discover and explore and I never tire of shooting both the city and people in it. When I’m out shooting, I get the same thrill as when I first picked up a camera and started seeing things from behind a lens.”

Amber Hockeborne @amber_hockerborne – amberhockeborne.com
Amber Hockeborne is a visual storyteller. A San Francisco Bay Area native, she began photographing while living\ along the US/Mexico border. While documenting lives on both sides of the border she gained an intimate look into life’s shared emotions. Currently residing in the Sunset district of San Francisco, Amber continues to photograph intimate perspectives of herself through those around her while working on her current ongoing project: On an Off Forever. I am sharing emotions of love: indulgence and depravation, union and distance, bliss and torture. Some of these feelings I crave while others I fear – all I have experienced. My own intimacy written in the journals of my heart and captured in photographs of close friends, lovers, and strangers encountered. I feel once we step into our story we are better prepared to understand not only the emotions of love but emotions which consume our lives.

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Entre Fleurs et Mer

Written by John on August 28, 2016. Posted in 2016

Marie Van Elder

August 25th – September 24th
Reception Thursday, August 25 – 6-9pm

The Great Highway Gallery is pleased to present Marie Van Elder Entre Fleurs et Mer (between flowers and sea). The exhibition will feature still life and seascape oil paintings by Marie Van Elder.

About the Artist
Van Elder was born in Brussels, Belgium. She graduated from Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium and received her MFA in Painting in 2003 from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Van Elder’s work has been exhibited in California (San Jose ICA, SF MOMA Artists Gallery, Oakland Art Gallery, Berkeley Art Center, Marin MOCA, Headlands CFA, etc…), New York, Utah, and Tokyo. She was recently included in the national exhibition RTBF/Canvas, La Collection at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and featured in New American Paintings and Studio Visit magazine. She currently lives and works between Northern California and Brussels.

Artist Statement
As a “contemporary realist painter,” i am constantly looking for visual ways to explore shapes, make meaningful marks, establish color relationships, organize space, find metaphors. Nature (“morte” and “vivante”) reliably provides multiple opportunities.

I have recently become visually fascinated by the northern coast and its unruly ocean and crashing waves, unpredictable currents, enduring rocks, ever changing contours and light, moody reflections, moving skies. Its ominous presence elicits both anxiety and comfort, unease and reverence, danger and trepidation, a certain longing… It is a place of chaos where the whimsical can rapidly transform into the catastrophic! (and environmental concerns) Contradictory emotional states get amped up! (Which is what compels me to paint!) The intimacy of my seascapes is a humble attempt to tame this mysterious force.

Oscillating between intimate connections with Nature, I also look at familiar objects and their reassuring domesticity. The things i care about, their tactile presence, their vibrant simplicity, their ephemeral power, their feminine modesty, the way I arrange them, the way they embody the memory of times and people in my life, their “hidden” little massages and drama, their seemingly unimportance… Still lifes hold symbols, seasonal cycles, personal meaning, a sense of vanitas , despite their “no fuss” quality. The same way the ocean does.

In the end, these small paintings are a quiet celebration of life, impermanence and hope and solitary bliss.

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Inside Out Upside Down

Written by John on June 30, 2016. Posted in 2016

May 19 – June 25

 The Great Highway Gallery is pleased to present Inside Out Upside Down. The exhibition will feature the oil
paintings of Jason Arnold and mixed media works from Jonathan Steinberg.

Jason Arnold
“This new series of paintings are inspired by Andre Breton: writer, poet, anarchist, anti-fascist and founder of
Surrealism. I work in the skateboard industry which embodies many surrealist ideals and philosophies. I spend most days creating art that resides at street level underneath someones feet. Away from work, my imagination rises to the surface. My thoughts are liberated and begin to freely associate incorporating traditional and pop imagery.”

Jason Arnold is a self taught oil painter from San Jose California and is now a resident of Santa Cruz California. Currently Jason works as an art director for Oj Wheels and Krux trucks.

Jonathan Steinberg
“My art documents on the personality and narrative that mass produced consumer goods gain with age and use. For the past half decade I have been intrigued with swim fins. They have featured prominently in my two dimensional work, sculptures and installations. Recently, my wife pointed out to me that the color break in the rubber on my favorite fins approximates the color and feel of Mark Rothko’s large abstracts. She, as usual, was spot on. Displayed are close up photos of rubber swim fins from my shed. The works are an homage to Rothko and an effort to pull emotive character and beauty from a functional mass produced surf toy.”

Jonathan Steinberg lives, works, surfs and fishes on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

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