Artist Statement In 2016 the American Community Survey estimated there were about 115,000 children under 18 living in the city. San Francisco Animal Care and Control estimated there were about 120,000 to 150,000 dogs living in the city. We have all come upon owners that constantly helicopter over their precious pets, take endless photos, cover their feet in little boots, scold, make perform and show over the top public displays of affections. Holden always kind of looked with a puzzled disdain at these Dog People.
23 million American households acquired a pet during the COVID-19 crisis. Dog People is Holden’s latest work in response to his own adoption of Yuki a.k.a. Goose, an American Long Haired Akita. He confronts his own love and newfound obsession with his beloved pet, also investigating how dogs help our struggles and heal us during these challenging times.
The window installation will include kinetic sculptures and busts that create a sense of how completely unpredictable, comical, and frustrating life with a dog can be. Inside the gallery, Holden will show figurative low relief works that tell time.
About the Artist Oliver Hawk Holden is a San Francisco-based artist whose work takes a satirical, yet deeply intimate look at the world and pulls mostly figurative imagery of distinct moments into semi autobiographical collage. His practice includes kinetic sculpture, painting and installation.
His work has been featured in Juxtapoz and he has exhibited at Evergold gallery, Incline Gallery, R/SF Gallery and FaceBook AIR Mural Residency San Francisco. Holden has been nominated twice for the SECA award in 2019 & 2021.
Alongside his art practice, Holden is a co-founder of Expert Art Service @expertartservice , a fine art services company that provides art installation and general art handling services to the Bay area. He holds a degree in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA), where he studied under John Defazio, Alicia McCarthy, Terry powers, and Jeremy Morgan.
October 17th – November 28th Reception Saturday, October 23rd 6 – 9pm
The Great Highway Gallery is thrilled to present Rupturre Reduxx, a window installation and paintings by San Francisco artist Jenifer K Wofford.
Exhibition Statement October 17, 1989 at 5:04 was a moment of profound rupture in the Bay Area. The Loma Prieta earthquake that day reshaped much of the culture and landscape on a local scale during a year of upheaval on a global scale, from Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Rupturre Redux is the latest incarnation of artist Jenifer K Wofford’s keen interest in retracing what broke in 1989, and what has been rebuilt in its place. Working in an aesthetic loosely inspired by the design palette of that era, Wofford investigates a broader array of dates and sites of calamity and collapse, both public and personal. The window display presents Wofford’s 2019 video, Klub Rupturre!! in a new immersive installation. The video, taking the form of a 1989 regional TV Dance Party, shows a creepy television hostess and dancers presenting each song on a top ten countdown leading up to the moment of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Inside the gallery, Wofford presents a selection of works on paper from her ongoing Rupturre series.
About the Artist Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work investigates hybridity, history, calamity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio M.O.B. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong).
Wofford is a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her other awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has also been artist-in-residence at The Living Room (Philippines), Liguria Study Center (Italy) and KinoKino (Norway).
A well-known arts educator, Wofford is part-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco. She has also taught at UC Berkeley, Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University. She holds degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA).
Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia and the California Bay Area, Wofford has also lived in Oakland and Prague. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Artist Links instagram – @woffsilog web – wofflehouse.com
The Great Highway Gallery is excited to present The Stampede a window installation by San Francisco artist Margaret Timbrell.
Exhibition Statement Upon graduation from NYU I entered a photography based art career. However, after a very bad accident, I could no longer work in the darkroom so I began needlepointing. This practice soon expanded to other fields of technically advanced needlework, including embroidery, cross stitch, as well as needlepoint. I consider myself a conceptual needlework artist who uses the craft to reflect vulnerability, failure, and perseverance. An overarching source of inspiration with my work is the influence of the external. In the middle ages the Unicorn was universally believed to exist. This made me wonder, what in contemporary times do we believe that is not real?
My visual and technical inspiration for creating The Unicorn series draws from two sources: The Hunt of the Unicorn (a seven panel series of medieval tapestries that now hang at the Cloisters) and The Lady and the Unicorn (a six panel series of French medieval tapestries that hang in Musee de Cluny). The Unicorn tapestries of both the Cloisters and the Cluny appealed to me because of the magic of the unicorns and that both these narrative pieces of history have survived all this time. I then sourced vintage needlepoint canvases from eBay and used a variety of stitches in Bargello, Redwork, and Blackwork needlework techniques to unify the work and highlight important elements.
About the Artist Margaret Timbrell is a conceptual needlework artist with a multi-disciplinary degree from NYU. Her work is inspired by various influences (such as technology, parenthood, perseverance and failure) that alter language and engagement. Timbrell has exhibited at the De Young Museum, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and other galleries. She was featured in the SF Examiner, LA Times, Bust Magazine. In 2012 she was selected as a Heart Artist for SF General’s annual fundraiser. From 2015 to 2017 Timbrell participated in the StARTup Fair. She participated in Lenka Clayton’s Artist Residency in Motherhood and, in 2018, Timbrell was the Artist in Residence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Currently Timbrell is a Facility Artist at 1240 Minnesota Street Project, and Studio Artist at Pacific Felt Factory. In Fall of 2019 she completed a 15’ latch hook portrait of Minnie Pearl for the Graduate Hotel in Nashville.
The Great Highway is a fine art gallery and working studio featuring contemporary works in all mediums. The gallery has a deep appreciation for images and ideas that explore where lands meet water.
