Terrestrial
Group Exhibition Thurs. Feb 5 until
March 5 at City
Gallery, San Diego City College (1508
C Street, SD 92101) Artists included Gail Roberts,
Joanne Hayakawa, Anna Stump, Lisa Hutton, Kendra Sollars, Lauren Strohacker,
Carolyn Lavender. More info: Terri
Hughes-Oelrich 619-296-9789
Terrestrial
by Vanessa Christie
by Vanessa Christie
“Boundaries are of four
types: Fixed, Moveable, Real, and Imaginary” states a piece of writing in a
piece by artist Joanne Hayakawa. The seven artists in Terrestrial at City
Gallery explore the boundaries between humanity and nature.
Lisa Huttons meticulous
graphite drawings depict storms both natural and artificial. The striking Oil
Rig with Sunbather depicts a languid bikini clad woman blithely watching an
unfolding disaster. Overtones of global warming and climate change are an
obvious theme alongside the apathy making such situations worse.
Only the trees are alive in Preservation
Woods by Carolyn Lavender, the animals are taxidermies closer to object than
animal. Her work includes as well imagery of animals next to totems of the same
animal, and Portrait a breathtaking graphite/gouche on canvas with 200
individual portraits of different animals.
Kristen Strohavcker and Kendra
Sollars video installation Instagram: This is Animal Land
depicts phantom-like animals projected against buildings with and without
people watching. On opening night the images from the indoor video were projected
on the side of the gallery. Animal
Land is part of an
ongoing project hoping to raise awareness of endangered animals such as the
Mexican Wolf which are in danger of becoming the ghosts of their projections.
Joanne Hayakawa’s
3-dimensional birds seem to fly above another bird whose rigorous posing on the
ground indicates its death The dead bird is coated in a layer of seeds the
other birds seem to be contemplating consuming. There are also several
paintings of birds by Anna Stump, each trapped in geometric fields.
There is decay even in Gail
Roberts photo-realistic water drenched floral’s. With spiders and insects
nestled inside lushly painted flowers. Flowers lives are short enough to remind
viewers that in the natural world we are all a part of all that lives will one
day decay, only art can seem to make anything last forever.
Terrestrial is another solid
show put on by City Gallery with painting, drawing, mixed media, 3-dimensional
and video art are all on display. While many of San Diego’s galleries remain ruled by
commercialism and clicks City Gallery has provided a venue for living artists
with something to say. Terrestrial is an all women artists show and it is one
that anyone searching for inspiration in art or in the natural world can enjoy
and maybe learn from.
Artists"
Gail Roberts http://artist.gailroberts.net/
Lauren Strohacker http://www.laurenstrohacker.org/
Vanessa Christie is an artist and writer living in San
Diego. She is currently writing for Picked Raw Peeled
and other Southern California publications.
Some of her short fiction is set to be published throughThe Radvocate and other
publishers in 2015. Examples of her art and writing are at: https://twitter.com/vtheartist
No comments:
Post a Comment