Exhibition dates: July 3 ﾖ August 1 2009
Opening Reception: Friday July 3 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)
Meet the artists at Afternoon After: Saturday July 4th from 12-3pm
Wood and Water: Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Anna Vaughan
Mixed media artist and photographer Mary Curtis Ratcliff seeks out images that represent peace calm and mysterious complexity. After removing the color from her original print she applies thin acrylic wash drawing collage and transfers to the surface adding new layers of color and texture. The underlying structures of tree branches water landmasses swimming pools luminous lights shadows and reflections are not lost in this process.
Mary Curtis Ratcliff Below the Falls 2009 water color pencil on canvas plexiglass photo credit: Peter Macchia
Ratcliff attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence Rhode Island. She has exhibited in nineteen solo exhibitions and over 80 group shows. Her work is in more than 80 private collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ﾖ Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts and the Oakland Museum of California.
Anna Vaughan is an Oakland-based multimedia artist working in painting sculpture and ceramics. Her work responds to the interplay between natural phenomena and the manmade structures that surround us. Utilizing the formal elements of line form color and space she intuitively draws out points of connection and diversion between these two worlds.
Anna Vaughan Blue Leaves painting on paper 2009
Vaughan received her MFA from Mills College and her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has curated exhibitions for local galleries and has been included in numerous group and juried exhibitions.
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In the Mercury Twenty’s back gallery…
Forecast: Julie Alvarado Aaron Geman Kathleen King Joan Weiss
ﾓWe look we think we enter the futureﾔ says art critic Matthew Collings. Four East Bay artists combine prescience with presence as they chart the elusive movements of mind and imagination confronting the turbulent patterns of history and time.
The richly colored realistically detailed paintings of Julie Alvaradoﾒs series Accordion Dreams are inspired by the magical music of the accordion and the artistﾒs transformative humorous and spiritual experiences in learning to play it. Alvarado also presents a new video in which she performs. Aaron Geman is an inventor. Presently he invents art. The artist creates precise elegant machines from unlikely materials such as junkyard motors and bicycle grease. Sculpting with steel wood light and acrylic but also incorporating drinking straws and sewing pins Geman invents thought-conveying machines. Abstract painter Kathleen King constructs compositions with spray paint on large wood panels that experiment with ideas of fluidity and containment. Combining observations of the urban environment with a gritty alchemy King explores the possibilities and promises of abstraction in a contemporary milieu of multiplicity and risk. Responding to the abandonment of cities such as her native Detroit by social and political support systems painter Joan Weiss creates works on paper and canvas chronicling the ongoing urban apocalypse. The artist finds the terrible beauty in alienated landscapes both figurative and abstract.