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Hosted  by Elizabeth Sher, the Art Obsessions Podcast features gallery artists from Mercury 20 Gallery and outside curators, experts, influencers, and collectors. Click below to listen.

Three Mercury 20 Gallery artists, Tara Esparanza, Raymond L. Haywood and Jill McClennan, share with Oakland Art Murmur executive director Jean Marie Durant insights about how art enhances community and community enhances art.

Stories from their own experiences and art practice and tips on how to get involved with your own or Oakland’s vibrant arts community.

links: www.tarasorganic.com , www.taraesperanza.com , @taraesperanza  , https://www.facebook.com/raymond.l.haywood ,  www.ivstudios.com ,  @jmclennanarts , @raymondlhaywood , @oaklandartmurmur , www.oaklandartmurmur.org , @elizabethsher_artandfilm

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Three fiber artists from Mercury Twenty Gallery and acclaimed textile artist Lia Cook share their philosophies, motivations, pitfalls and techniques as well as their inspirations and challenges of marketing fiber art.

Ruth
Ruth Tabacay, Bleached, 2022, Crochet, assemblage. Acrylic, wool, bamboo yarns; plastic medical waste (needle caps, needle sheaths, vial caps, tubing caps, oxygen tubing, nasal prong tubing), polystyrene, pins, 36” x 40” x 6”
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Christine Meuris, Alchemy: Elements 1V, 2021, black and white bookbinding cloth, mulberry paper, ink and thread, 23" x 21.5"
lia
Lia Cook, Connectome 2, 2015 , cotton, rayon, wool woven. 67" x 51"
andrea
Andrea Brewster,Blue Grid, 2022, PolySmooth filament, alcohol ink 14" x14"

A conversation with Johanna Poethig a visual, public and performance artist and Chris Brown, a musician, composer. and professor emeritus at Mills College. They will talk about their collaborations, their separate creative practices and their life together over the past 4 decades with a focus on their work together for Johanna’s Upcoming solo show Hideouts, Escape Hatches and a submarine. It opens at Mercury 20 on February 19th. Let’s hear how they do it all!

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Johanna Poethig
Chris Brown
Chris Brown

Three photographers from Mercury Twenty Gallery and Jan Watten Director of Gray Loft Gallery present a lively discussion of their philosophies and processes and how they keep their passion for the photograph in our images saturated world. Featuring Brooks Fletcher, Neo Serafimidis and Jan Wattan moderated by Chris Komater.

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Chris Komater, Drapery Study (2021). Digital C-print. 30 x 42 inches. Photo by the artist. $1,200 unframed, $2,100 framed.
Brooks1390MarketStreet
1390 Market Street, San Francisco, 2020, color transparency film, LED panel, and rechargeable battery, 8 x 10 x 2 inches framed, NFS
The Sheltering Night #65
The Sheltering Night #65 (2020). Photograph, archival pigment print. 24 x 18 inches
Jan Watten Gesture
Jan Watten, Gesture, 2021, Gelatin Silver Print

In this episode founding member Kathleen King gives a brief history of Mercury 20 Gallery, this year’s 15th anniversary plans and best of all explains her own artwork evolving from abstract expressionist painting to constructions, installations and collages transforming society’s discards which she finds on the streets of Oakland into aesthetic and profound works of art.

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Kathleen King, Heterotopian Enclosure, 2019 discarded materials
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Kathleen King: "Puzzle" (2013) spray paint, found wood
Kathleen King
Kathleen King
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Because Mercury 20 Gallery (in Oakland, CA) is an artist run gallery, all members have a say in everything we do. In tonights “trial” episode 8 members “duke” it out to decide on a name. Spoiler alert – we got one!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1801087/11290123