2004-2005

Fall 2004

Edges
9/27-11/24/04

Artists include Lucy Arai, Diana Pumpelly Bates, Julián Cardona, Nancy Mizuno Elliott, Titus Kaphar, Saaba MBB Lutzeler, David Maisel, Consuelo Underwood.

Edges highlighted formal solutions (for example, the way a painter handled the edge of a form) and also explored edges with respect to timely content, whether on a personal, regional, or global level. In his Visual Quotations series, Titus Kaphar worked from selected 19th century paintings but only painted the African Americans. He worked in oils on dry-erase whiteboards with all the surrounding area left white. A hard edge separated the two. Diana Pumpelly Bates' bronze sculptures focused on the edge between physical and spiritual worlds. Photographer Julián Cardona's works documented the violent entry of Mexico to globalization and probed inside the maquiladora world alongside the border. His series, Dying Slowly showed difficult edges: the border between life and death, death in life. In another series, THE TRUTH, Evidence of a Failure, he documented family members searching for the bodies of their daughters in the desert. Maisel's aerial photographs of Lake Owens documented edges between natural landscapes and landscapes degraded by human actions. Lucy Arai created soft and hard edges by applying sumi ink in washes on handmade paper and then employing sashiko, traditional Japanese running-stitch embroidery, in concentric circles and fluid patterns. Consuelo Underwood drew directly on the wall, included wrapped shaman sticks, and created an unusual red leather grid that looked like barbed wire. It referred to the ten sites where the U.S. government has constructed a 14' steel wall to secure the Mexico/U.S. border. TV: Open access cable program with artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, co-sponsored with De Anza MECHA club 11/17/04.

Reception for Toni Morrison, 12/2/04.
Book Club with Ulysses Pinchon, 1/ 24/05.

View ancillary materials for the Fall 2004 exhibitions.

Spring 2005

Shared Passions
2/14-4/15/05

Artists include Jody Alexander, Ali Dadgar, Bella Feldman, Penny Nii, Saïd Nuseibeh, Lisa Reinertson, Peng Peng Wang, Nanette Wylde.

Artist co-curators and collaborators included Melissa Harmon (Northern Chapter of the Women's Caucus for the Arts), Kent Manske (Bay Area Book Arts), Linda Mau (various ceramics groups), Nazanin Shenasa (curating an exhibition on Muslim artists).

The exhibition was derived from collaborating with four artists who worked with art groups, whether organized or loosely affiliated. We discussed directions and decided on different methods to focus on their particular area of interest. Highlights included a focus on book arts, a section for Lisa Reinertson's work in large-scale ceramic figures and public art (maquettes of public sculptures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez and St. Ignatius), and a section for two artists addressing their Middle Eastern heritage. Working with the Northern Chapter of the Women's Caucus for the Arts, we honored Bella Feldman, long-time sculpture professor at California College of Arts (1965-2001), for her lifetime achievements. She exhibited several large steel sculptures. Four artists from Bay Area Book Arts presented work reflecting a broad definition of book arts: a Peng Peng Wang shirt "book" embroidered with words commenting on Silicon Valley lifestyles; a Hisako Penny Nii eclipse book, built in two ways, presenting history, science, and poetic interpretation; a Nanette Wylde's Storyland "book" on an iMac computer; and Jody Alexander sculptures with books stuck closed or stuck in the box, presumably from age or neglect, with the content all locked away. Regarding Middle Eastern heritage, Ali Dadger's series of painting/silkscreens entitled Recent Antiquities touched on Iranian history and culture, and Saïd Nuseibeh's series of photographs of the Dome of the Rock took us to a Muslim holy site with significance also to Christians and Jews. Artist Presentations with Women's History Month Committee, Naz Shenasa, 3/3/05, and Bella Feldman, 3/9/05.

View ancillary materials for the Spring 2005 exhibitions.