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Ce Ce Iandoli
Lilacs in Somerville
Jill McLennan
Cuentas de M�xico
Mercury 20 Gallery
25 Grand Ave. (at Broadway)
Oakland CA 94612
Exhibition dates: June 6�June 28 2008
Opening Reception: Friday June 6 from 6:00–9:00pm (in conjunction with First Friday/Oakland Art Murmur).
Ce Ce Iandoli and Jill McLennan open an exhibition of new work at Mercury 20 Gallery on June 6th with a reception for the artists from 6:00–9:00pm.
A native of Somerville Massachusetts Ce Ce Iandoli remembers a working-class childhood–cleaning up her father�s bar collecting the detritus of last night�s revelry finding the story in lost quarters chipped compacts and scraps of paper with scrawled messages. It was a hard knock life punctuated in the spring by impossibly beautiful lilacs that spilled all over her yard. To a watchful kid the color of lilacs already mattered. Iandoli�s sumptuous collages use glue magazine clippings found papers acrylics nail polish chipped mirrors gold ink and scraps to create beauty out of the leftovers the worn-out and trivial things that constitute daily living.
Dr. Ce Ce Iandoli was a professor of design at San Francisco State for 17 years. She is currently a policy analyst at UC Davis’ Center for Public Policy Research. This is her second show for Mercury 20.
For her first show at Mercury 20 Gallery Oakland painter Jill McLennan has created a series of paintings that document time spent living in San Miguel de Allende Guanajuato Mexico during the summer of 2007. Working in encaustic the painter layers photographs drawing and painting to create a sense of the vibrant quality of life that she observed and experienced in this thriving puebla. Reflecting the colors textures and handmade craft of Mexican life McLennan explores the persistence of nature and art to sustain humanity in the midst of industrial and technological development.
Artist and educator Jill McLennan attended Hampshire College and received an MA in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Oakland CA where she teaches for the Museum of Children�s Art in Oakland’s elementary schools.
