BOOBY TRAP: JESSICA CADKIN, LAURA MALONE, CHARLIE MILGRIM, K.C. ROSENBERG, CAITY SALAMANCA

Gallery Hours: Fri and Sat, 12 – 5 pm
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, March 15, 3 – 5 pm
Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: April 4, 5 – 9 pm

In celebration of Women’s History Month, “Booby Trap” brings humor and wit to feminist commentary. Each artist draws from personal stories. Using the kitchen as a metaphor for women’s work, Rosenberg and Ratcliff both honor and mock traditional notions of a woman’s place. Like her mother’s casserole nights, Rosenberg creates art with “leftover” scraps from her studio floor. Ratcliff’s ceramic cakes serve up sex and success for us to taste. Milgrim’s tin cisterns play on the expression “Nice Jugs”, offering a sardonic meditation to heal an insult. Cadkin creates abstract Rubenesque shapes that mimic the female form: referencing the binding of women’s creativity as well as the sewing tradition handed down from her mother and grandmother. Malone’s buck-naked dancers’ spin in gleeful defiance of age-bound stereotypes, while Salamanca’s painting, “She Has a Tropical Glow,” explodes with color, movement and texture, celebrating her attraction to her wife. Says Salamanca, “I see my wife covered in sand and salt, I’d be lying if I said this painting was about anything other than the sweat on her upper lip.”

Gallery

to connect, to join; 2021 (detail); jeans, staples, thread, dimensions variable; $15,000 and up, depending on site specifics

to connect, to join, 2021 (detail); jeans, staples, thread, dimensions variable; $15,000 and up, depending on site specifics

to connect, to join 2021 (detail); jeans, staples, thread, dimensions variable; $15,000 and up, depending on site specifics

Available Work

Laura Malone

Born in Tucson, Arizona, Laura Malone grew up in a family of artists. Like her uncle, artist Richard Artschwager, she received her first art lessons from her grandmother Eugenia, a Ukrainian immigrant painter with deep roots in Russian art patronage. Malone has studied under renowned artists including Janine Antoni and Alex Kanevsky. Residencies include The School of Visual Arts, New York, and a virtual residency with Mira Schor. Malone co-founded Art’s Pupils, a forum dedicated to discussing contemporary female artists.Her paintings have been shown across the US and internationally, including The Crocker Kingsley National Art Competition, Sacramento, California and “Disrupted Realism,” curated by John Seed Buckham Gallery, Flint, Michigan. She currently exhibits at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, California and is also represented by The Studio Shop Gallery in Burlingame, California. She lives and works in Oakland.

Dr KC Rosenberg

Born in Marin County, California, Dr. KC Rosenberg was raised in a bohemian household shaped by intellectual rigor and domestic improvisation; while her mother worked and studied law, Rosenberg and her siblings were cared for by a shifting network of caretakers, an environment whose chaos fostered early strategies of invention through imagined companions, substitute characters, and close observation of animal behavior. In 2021, medical complications during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a significant shift in her practice toward abstraction, reducing narrative certainty and temporarily setting aside personal history, which later returned as material rather than subject; these formative experiences now register in her work as form and emotional traces rather than representation. Rosenberg has exhibited with Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and her work is held in the collections of the California Arts Council and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. She holds an Ed.D. and conducts social research on collective mentorship systems among artists.

Caity Salamanca

Caity Salamanca identifies as an introverted observer. As a child, she found communication through words challenging, even dull and unappealing at times. Eventually, she discovered her true form of expression through drawing, which marked the beginning of her creative journey and shaped her perspective on the world. Today, that perspective is conveyed through her sculptural paintings. Throughout her artistic journey, Salamanca has explored diverse mediums including ceramics and photography. After experimenting with different painting styles, she developed a distinctive voice that combines techniques she has honed over the years—from smooth color transitions to rich textured layers. Her mark-making process serves as a visual language, built upon a lifetime of experiences, observations, and intuition. Her work has been shown at the Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City, Made In California 2024, Brea Gallery, in La Brea, CA, Reflections of Us (Juror Sergio Gomez) Warnes Contemporary, in Brooklyn, NY, and Metal Haus Gallery, in San Francisco, CA.

Charlie Milgrim

Charlie Milgrim is an Oakland based sculptor, installation artist, photographer and painter. She has had major solo exhibitions at OK Harris, New York City; Haines Gallery and Gallery 16, San Francisco; The Oakland Museum and the Richmond Art Center. She has been an active participant in the Bay Area arts community through exhibition and curation, and is a member of the Mercury 20 Gallery, where this will be her fifteenth solo show.

Jessica Cadkin

Jessica Cadkin is an Oakland-based artist, born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Napa, California. She received a BA in Sculpture and Painting from San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in group shows internationally and throughout California including the de Young Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, di Rosa Preserve, Bateman Foundation Gallery of Nature, Bedford Gallery, Tryst Alternative Art Fair (Los Angeles), Root Division, and the Berkeley Art Center.

Cadkin has completed artist residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Ragdale, and her work has been featured in numerous publications including KQED Arts, the Daily Californian, Oakland Art Murmur, and Artweek.