Steve Gibson: Listen With Your Eyes at SIP Art Space

 by Patricia Frischer

For those of us who are visual, listening with our eyes is second nature.  But when you listen, you often hear things differently depending on your mood. My mood was set when I arrived to see the Steve Gibson exhibition at the SIP Art Space  in San Marcos by an article I had read in the New Yorker magazine.  The article Bodies of Evidence by Anthony Lane describes the 2022 version of a film by David Cronenberg Crimes of the Future.  The key for me was the "single conceit: a plan to reboot the human digestive system so that we will gradually be capable of eating plastic."  So primed, I saw these organic shapes as human remodeled internal organs. I know this is very specific, but that is what I saw/heard in these works on the last day of the exhibition. When I read Doug Simay's curator statement, he quoted Gibson, "Paint like you are an alien."

I have seen many series by Steve Gibson and his technical skill  using gouache is always impressive. The color is so flatly applied that it could be silk screened and the lines are so precise that it almost seems mechanical. But I am always drawn to the wonderful colors that sing from the page. Maybe that is that it what I hear above all and unchanging.   

All of his works seem to me to be like comic book illustrations without the story or the figures. The color and compositions are stimulating and they seem to read from frame to frame. I don't particularly care that I don't know the meaning or if the meaning changes with each viewing. I just get lost in the complexity of the patterns and the juxtaposition of all those hues. 

A word about SIP Art Space which is not just the brainstorm of Vicki Walsh, but also her studio and classroom. SIP derives from the course she used to teach at Lux (now ICA North) and the Athenaeum. It stand for Someday I'll Paint. Walsh had a successful business career, but we are lucky that she found her someday, sooner rather than later. Her current work is about the black sheep that we all adore and hopefully will be on view once the series is finished. 

The large airy studio and back court yard are great for overflowing reception guests who are lucky to have a food truck available and a wine shop next door. The small gallery is the perfect clean well lit place and Walsh cleverly has offered it to a variety of curators at no charge. 

Elegant exterior of SIP art Space, a wonderful breath of art air in San Marcos. 

The Listen With Your Eyes exhibition  from May 17 to  June 24, 2022

For more information on the work in this show at SIP Art Space  contact: Vicki Walsh 858.336.6678

See more works by Steve Gibson in the report by the Contemporary Art Committee of the SDMA. 

The next show at SIP Art Space is curated by Anna Stump  

High Desert Carnival 
July 9 to August 19, 2022

Opening Reception July 9 from 4 to 7 pm. 

215 South Pacific Street, Suite #104, San Marcos, CA 92078