The printmaking process, a tradition that began in Argentina in the late 1800s, allows for the multiple reproduction of an image for easy distribution. Xylon artists work in a variety of traditional techniques, ranging from woodcuts to lithography. Like their predecessors, today’s artists from Buenos Aires are known for their use of an exciting array of color, line and texture.

In the past three years, Argentina's economy has faced a drastic downturn with the devaluation of its currency, the peso. During this time, many artists have been working in what Dr. Patrick Frank, curator of the exhibition and art historian with the University of Kansas, calls the "Interiorist" mode--artists looking to themselves for inspiration rather than the economic and political world around them. This introspection offers the viewer a wide range of contemplative and imaginative images.

The Xylon Society was founded in Switzerland in the 1950s. Xylon refers to xylography, another name for woodcut, and comes from the Greek word for wood, xulon. Argentina has been a country of intense European influence since its early colonization. Argentine art is highly influenced by European movements, and Argentine artists founded their own Xylon Society in 1991.

Dr. Frank was inspired to curate this show because of his interest in Argentine prints and the lack of international art shows in the U.S. in the past few years. Since 9/11, insurance for traveling exhibitions has nearly tripled, making international exhibits a rarity. His goal was to counteract the trend, and create a collection that could be easily transported "below the radar." The show is Dr. Frank's "attempt to make a small contribution to international understanding."

He will be speaking about the art on Friday, March 5, at 4 p.m. in Founders Hall 118. A reception at the gallery will be held Thursday, February 5, at 5 p.m. The gallery is open Monday-Friday from noon-5 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m., and also during Arts Arcata, the second Friday of each month, from 6p.m.-9p.m.

For more information, contact Lorena Weisenburger at (707) 826-5814.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present The Total Sum of Solitudes : Thirty years of Photography by Don Gregorio Antón. Adjacent to the exhibit will be a show of photographs by Antón's current and former students, titled From Whom I've Studied, From Whom I've Learned: Photographs by Humboldt State University Students and Alumni . Produced and curated by the students in the Museum and Gallery Practices Program at Humboldt State University, the exhibitions will run Tuesday, February 3rd through Sunday, March 7th .

Throughout his career, Humboldt State Professor Don Gregorio Antón's photographs have explored the theme of his personal journey in search of meaning and spiritual insight. Antón is a highly respected photographer who above all devotes time, knowledge and heart to his love of teaching. Antón's devotion to his students stems from his experience as a Chicano in the Los Angeles school system during the 1960's and the misguided education he received as a result of racial stereotyping and bigotry. It wasn't until a summer class with an inspirational photography teacher that he found a sense of self-worth and a future beyond the stereotypical roles suggested by teachers to young Chicanos of his generation.

He claims fear is often what keeps his students from moving forward in life and in their own art; a fear that comes from being part of a system of institutions they move through without ever finding an individual voice. Antón attempts to break down institutional barriers and create a classroom environment that is unlike that, which he experienced in his youth. He strives to create an environment where each student is encouraged to find his or her own voice and freely express it.

Antón's photography is a blend of spiritually and culturally charged images, imbued with dramatic atmospheric undertones. His imagery is rich in both implied and clearly stated religious themes inflected by his Catholic background.

The Total Sum of Solitudes is a retrospective of Antón's work throughout his photographic career. From the very early photographs made when he was 18 to his latest retablos, the viewer is invited to explore the passage of his career, a career that has been filled with personal discovery and exploration. Antón's current works in retablos, consist of an exploration of and variation on the Latino tradition of making religious imagery.

Retablos are a traditional form of painted prayer, rooted in Antón's Latino inflected Catholic background. Traditional retablos are painted on panels (often tin or wood) as invocations to the Saints, the Virgin, or the Trinity to intercede on behalf of the believer in such matters ranging from the sacred to the mundane. One might make a retablo dedicated to the Virgin in the quest for the cure to a health problem. Another might be made to the Holy Spirit seeking redemption for a grievous sin. And yet another may be created to simply ask for money to pay off a debt. In Antón's handling of the tradition, he makes mixed media pieces with photography and paint in order to chart his personal journey through life.  

Antón's life's work can be defined by one word, hope. Antón's purpose is to present the possibility of hope for his viewers.   He doesn't aim to inspire his audience, yet he hopes to move them enough to walk away from his photography with meaning. His purpose is to highlight the viewer, make it their position to reflect on the piece and draw from it whatever content and meaning they connect with. Antón doesn't try to convey a message through the work; he trusts in the ability of the viewer to define the photograph.  

Don Antón will give a gallery talk at First Street Gallery on Saturday, February 7, at 4 p.m., free to the public. There will be Portfolio Reviews by Don Antón on Saturdays, February 14 th and 21 st from 2-5 p.m. Bring your artwork to the gallery and meet the artist.- free to the public. First Street Gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m. It is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is always free. School groups are encouraged to call ahead for tours. For more information, please call 707-443-6363 A public reception for the artist will be held during Eureka Main Street's Arts Alive! on Saturday, February 7, from 6 to 9 p.m.

Walking up the lightly trod path toward the house in Eureka, I notice the garden. It is asymmetrical, surrounded by evergreens, hidden from the street, with a hint of Japanese design. I enter through a glassed-in porch—perfect for use as a painter’s studio—and make my way into a rustic kitchen. The bowls and mugs are hand-made, ceramic with cobalt blue outline drawings of a lizard, a newt, a hammer, and a wrench. Area rugs in the living room cover the wood floors in a riot of color, the walls are painted the color of orange sherbet, and a small stained glass window casts iridescent light onto the wooden floor. An impressive Vermont Castings wood stove with river rocks arranged on top stands to the side. On one counter lies a high school yearbook; next to it is a scrapbook filled with pictures of a tall young woman traveling in Japan.

There is a collection of LP records, primarily classical, stacked on the floor. And there are books. Hundreds of books. They fill two hand-built bookshelves that stretch from floor to ceiling. Perusing the titles I find Peter Selz’s German Expressionist Painting; the Letters and Journals of Paula Modersohn-Becker; Herschel Chipps’ anthology, Theories of Modern Art; and Heinrich Wolfflin’s classic, Principles of Art History. This was the home of an artist. I look further and find Barbara Novak’s American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, a book on the Romantic era, and Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, as well as volumes on Japanese painting and the craft of stained glass. A pair of binoculars sits perched in front of the volumes. Other shelves expand my knowledge of the artist who lived here; she was drawn to the work of other women—there are monographs about Diane Arbus, Georgia O’Keeffe, Käthe Kollwitz, Berthe Morisot, Alice Neel, even Marie Laurencin—and she read the works of Linda Nochlin and Lucy Lippard, two of the most important feminist thinkers of her generation. She was interested in spirits, myth and nature; the Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and American Indian Myths and Legends have both found a place on her shelves, along with a copy of the Birds of North America, June Fleming’s Well-Fed Backpacker, and a Tony Hillerman mystery novel. I meet Ingrid Nickelsen by meeting her books. They offer me entry into the depths of her inner eye.

Ingrid Ingeborg Nickelsen (1943-2005) was the eldest of three children born to Ralf Edgar Nickelsen and his wife Ingeborg. Ralf Nickelsen was from Hamburg, Germany, where he studied mural painting and stained glass before immigrating to the United States in 1922. He attended the Art Students’ League in New York and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, then worked on the WPA Federal Art Projects during the Great Depression. Eventually he joined Charles Connick’s stained glass studio in the Back Bay of Boston, where he collaborated on commissions for many of the most beautiful churches in North America.1 Ralf and Ingeborg spoke German with each other and English to their children. As a child, Ingrid Nickelsen visited her father in his stained glass studio, and his influence is one of many she integrated into her work during the course of her career.

Growing up in Newton, a suburb west of Boston, Nickelsen pursued drama, art, and sailing. The family owned a summerhouse on Cape Ann, in Rockport, Massachusetts, and Nickelsen spent many hours on her sailboat, alone with the sea. Cape Ann was also the home of mid-nineteenth century luminist Fitz Henry (Hugh) Lane, and a young artist can view one of the finest collections of his landscapes at the Cape Ann Historical Museum. Luminist
painting, as defined by Novak in Nickelsen’s copy of American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, is characterized by crisp light, precisely delineated form, invisible brushstroke, and an anticipatory stillness. Some have called luminist painting “a calm before the storm,” the storm being the war over slavery and abolition that ripped the United States in two. Others note connections between the luminists and the American transcendentalists. Henry David Thoreau immersed himself for two years on the solitary banks of Walden Pond to live off the land and know nature in all its forms. He and Ralph Waldo Emerson believed in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic for the revelation of the world’s deepest truths. There is in luminist painting, as in Nickelsen’s, a correspondence between what the eye can see and what the soul feels, a desire to lose oneself in nature, a focus on insight and revelation, and a belief that formalized society oppresses the individual. “Certain sites capture me,” Nickelsen wrote in a passage echoing Thoreau in its expression of intimacy with the natural world. “Often, I know these places well by visiting them throughout many years in different seasons and weather.”2

Luminism is an American manifestation of European Romanticism, and Nickelsen’s work also relates to the landscape art of northern Europe, particularly the paintings of Danish painters Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Christen Købke, and their German contemporary Caspar David Friedrich. These painters studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in the early years of the nineteenth century. Nickelsen’s father was from northern Germany, as was Friedrich, and the German Romantics looked as much to Scandinavia as to Italy for education and inspiration. They also read Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), a treatise in which God and nature are fused and the experience of awe becomes dependent upon a profound sensation of pleasurable fear, or even pain. The paintings of these northern artists, too, are characterized by a directness of vision, purity of form, and a clear, penetrating light. Friedrich went directly to nature, creating from his intimate encounter with the land an introspective spiritualism, one closely in tune with his Protestant background and its tradition of personal independence and direct communication with God. Nickelsen, fascinated by Nordic myths and fairy tales of all kinds, possessed a strong connection to the land of the midnight sun.

After graduating from Newton High School in 1961, Nickelsen began studies at Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana. Earlham had been founded by the Quakers and from its unique combination of idealism and practicality it evolved into a liberal arts institution known for such controversial actions as enrolling Japanese-American students during World War II. Nickelsen was attracted to progressive causes and had a keen sense of social justice; friends remember her environmental activism and involvement in community politics. She was also interested in Japan, and in 1962 took an extended trip to this East Asian country. Later in her life, she visited Mexico and Turkey. By the mid-1960s, she was living in New York, where she met ceramicist Jolyon Hofsted at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Nickelsen asked Hofsted where she could find a small town in which to study pottery. Hofsted, who had graduated from Humboldt State University (HSU) and later went on to become a professor of art at Queens College in New York, recommended Eureka. Nickelsen arrived in Humboldt County shortly thereafter.

For the next ten years, Nickelsen worked as a potter with Mike Mullen, who had studied with Bay Area ceramicist Peter Voulkos. It was during this period that Nickelsen created many of the utilitarian vessels that I found about her house. She decorated her dishes with salamanders, turtles, and frogs; after purchasing her home in Eureka—a fixer-upper requiring lots of work—she began drawing tools. She also turned to weaving, delighting in colorful rugs and brilliantly dyed textiles. Nickelsen returned to college in 1981 and enrolled in classes at HSU. Taking painting, ceramics, and the history of women artists, she graduated with a degree in art in the spring of 1984.

The paintings in this exhibition, created from that time forward, display a rich coloration and strong sense of design similar to that found in the work of John La Farge and the American Renaissance. Her father’s training in muralism and stained glass, and her long involvement with clay, undoubtedly drew Nickelsen to such applied arts’ movements. The artists of the American Renaissance promoted an integration of art, architecture, sculpture, and design, and two of the most impressive artistic collaborations from this period—McKim, Meade and White’s Boston Public Library and Henry Hobson Richardson’s Trinity Church—are in easy walking distance from Ralf Nickelsen’s studio. LaFarge, remembered as one of the first American painters to travel extensively in Japan, designed many of the windows and painted murals for the gilded interior of Trinity Church. His friendship with men like Boston philosopher William James (older brother of novelist Henry James) link him to turn-of-the-century religious experience that, according to James, trusted in “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”3

Nickelsen’s paintings glow with the light of stained glass, their color serving as a path toward spiritual fulfillment. Her landscapes employ as well the language of Symbolism, and her brilliantly hued views of Tish Tang, the Klamath River, and Guthrie Creek recall the famous exchange between painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier. A painter, Gauguin explained in 1888, should translate what he sees into pure color; if a tree is green, it should be the most beautiful green on the artist’s palette; if a shadow is blue, then it must be truly, deeply blue. Maurice Denis, who with Sérusier became a leader of the Symbolist group known as the Nabis (Nabi means prophet in Hebrew), explained that “all the sentiment of the work of art comes unconsciously, or almost so, from the state of the artist’s soul.”4 The Symbolists were anti-naturalistic, anti-bourgeois, and interested in mysticism of all kinds. Nickelsen, in describing her process explained that she painted in nature all day, watching “the slowly shifting changes in the place as the moving light successively reveals and conceals . . . . Eventually a presence emerges on the canvas and at this point I stay at home to finish the piece. Away from the site, I relate to the image before me as well as to the memory and feeling the place evokes in me.”5

Many observers who encounter the art of Ingrid Nickelsen connect it to the twentieth-century traditions that developed from these rich nineteenth-century sources; Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc—Nickelsen had Peter Selz’s German Expressionist Painting prominently placed on her bookshelf—jump readily to mind. Kandinsky’s famous 1910 treatise, “On the Spiritual in Art,” and Marc’s empathetic essay, “How Does a Horse See the World?” both appear as excerpts in Nickelsen’s copy of Theories of Modern Art. The German Expressionists were fascinated by modern Theosophy, as were their Americans contemporaries, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, three key members of the Stieglitz group. Theosophy, a synthesis of religion, science, and philosophy originally derived from Indian thought, starts with the assumption of the essence of God, and then deduces from it the nature of the universe. Because everything is seen through God, the natural world is essentially spiritual.6 Nickelsen was also interested in the Group of Seven, painters applying a similar complement of ideas to the Canadian landscape, another region that, like northern Europe, is illuminated by the midnight sun.

Moving further into the twentieth century, Nickelsen’s work may be connected to that of Milton Avery, one of several mid-twentieth century artists who abstracted from nature to create powerfully reductive and visceral responses to the American land. Like Nickelsen, Avery summered on Cape Ann; his glowing fields of color link him to Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Modern art in the western United States, with its connections to the Pacific Rim, led to a fusion of European and American attitudes with the aesthetic traditions and religious philosophies of the Far East. Nickelsen responded to the work of the Pacific Northwest School—the calligraphic white marks of Mark Tobey and the visionary birds, plants, and flowers of Morris Graves. “I paint to evolve a changing language of symbols,” Graves wrote in an artist’s statement from 1942, “a language with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us toward ultimate reality. I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world—to pronounce it—and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye.”7

Graves, too, had traveled to Asia at a young age. And like Graves, Nickelsen made her home in Humboldt County. She knew Northern California intimately; she backpacked through the Trinity Alps, along the Lost Coast, and into the Siskiyou Mountains. She was comfortable in nature; she liked to be alone with it; she was not afraid. She was looking for the essential, the profound, and the spiritual. In setting off on a trip, she packed a small backpack. She left her books behind, explaining that there would not be time to read, to paint, or to draw. Being in the wilderness required her complete presence of mind. She looked for nature’s patterns, the connections, the things that are real and can be made visible to others. Nickelsen made her final journey during the summer of 2005. She left a book, Morris Graves:Vision of the Inner Eye, in her truck, waiting for her return.

Notes from Ingrid Nickelsen’s Inner Eye by M. Elizabeth Boone
I wish to thank the many individuals who provided me with information related to Nickelsen’s life and work: Christine Aus, Bob Benson, Sigrid Casey, Becky Evans, Mannie Angell Garza, Carrie Grant, Lou Marak, Jane Meyer, Linda Mitchell, Laura Mullen, and Terry Oats. I could not have written this essay without their memories and insight.
_______________________________________________________________________

1 The Ralf E. Nickelsen (1903-1990) Papers are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
2 Ingrid Nickelsen, undated quote provided to the author by Becky Evans.
3 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902); quoted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/#5.
4 Maurice Denis; quoted by Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994), p. 306.
5 Ingrid Nickelsen, undated quote provided to the author by Becky Evans.
6 Herschell Chipp, ed. Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 321.
7 Morris Graves; quoted in Ray Kass, Morris Graves: Vision of the Inner Eye (New York: Braziller, 1983), p. 32.

M. Elizabeth Boone is Associate Professor of Art History. Her book, Vistas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain, 1860-1914, will be published by Yale University Press in 2007.

The Legacy of an Intrepid Spirit by Laura Oppitz

Ingrid Nickelsen has endowed our community of Humboldt County with two legacies to remember her by. The first is her legacy of inspiring landscape paintings. The second is a legacy of local artists who have benefited from knowing and working with Nickelsen. The path to these achievements was a culmination of a lifetime of personal growth and experience.

Born the eldest of three children to a German immigrant family that moved to New England in the 1930’s, Nickelsen’s father was a master stained glass artisan, who worked in Boston, but of her mother Ingeborg little is known. Despite showing an interest in the arts at a young age, her parents did not encourage her to follow that path. Instead, she left New England after high school to attend Earlham College in Indiana for two years where, it is thought, that she studied history and political science. Friends of Nickelsen recall her having an interest in the social and environmental injustices of the time that would later surface as themes in her artwork.

By the mid-1960’s, Nickelsen found herself living in New York City. Her friend Jane Meyer introduced her to The Brooklyn Museum Art School, which was the beginning of a lifelong journey in creativity and art as Nickelsen began to seriously consider a career in the arts. She turned to something she grew up with, creating a few stained glass pieces and loving the effects of lighting and the use of brilliant colors employed in stained glass design. At the same time, Nickelsen began experimenting with ceramics. Although it would have been interesting to follow in her father’s footsteps as a stained glass artisan, she had a passion for working with clay. Elements of both stained glass artistry and ceramics would find their way into her later landscape works. With the hope of getting out of the city, she determined to move to a small town where she felt that she could focus her attention and efforts on her artistic goals. This led her to ask her ceramics instructor Jolyon Hofstedt where she might find a good school. He recommended Humboldt State University.

Moving to Humboldt County in the late 1960’s, she found Northern California to be a perfect fit. She loved spending time outdoors and Humboldt County furnished endless options for pursuing her spiritual quests and communing with nature. While studying ceramics at Humboldt State University she began to develop a naturalistic pottery style. Her ceramics palette emphasized the use of cobalt blue over grey or all black. Experiments into biological imagery began with drawing frogs, salamanders and turtles on her pieces. Her inspiration changed when she bought a house and began drawing tools on the pottery. With the onset of arthritis in her hands, she had to look for an alternative creative outlet. She turned to painting.

Holding paintbrushes proved to be easier on her hands than working with clay. By the early 1980’s, Nickelsen took her first painting class, earning her Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Arts in 1984. Unlike the naturalistic tendencies she pursued in ceramics, Nickelsen’s paintings had an abstract flavor. College friend and fellow painter, Christine Aus said, “Ingrid’s early
paintings were abstract social images. She reduced everything to a spiritual quality through a sense of color.” The juxtaposition of color associated with stained glass work found its way into her landscape paintings where she often juxtaposed bold passages of color. She may well have borrowed from ceramics as well in her landscapes: after all, she was still able to shape the earth, but with a brush on canvas instead of clay in hand. It was not long before Nickelsen amalgamated her abstract style and sense of color with her love of nature. Her work began to reflect her spiritual insights.

Nickelsen manifested her spiritual visions of nature through her plein air painting approach. In an expressionistic way she reduced landscapes to big shapes and brilliant colors. It was the physical presence of a place transposed by her experience of it that mattered most. Drawn to specific locations known for their spiritual importance or geological complexities, Nickelsen observed:

“There is something about certain configurations of land, water, and sky, which set them apart. Such sites are honored in a myriad of ways. In a spiritual context they are considered sacred, in a secular one they are set aside as a park and in a personal one they carry unique meaning for the individual.”

Places recur in her California landscapes, places with great spiritual significance to her. Anna Lake, in the Trinity Alps; Tish Tang along the Trinity River outside of Hoopa; and, Guthrie Creek in Humboldt County – these were locations which gave her a unique opportunity for spiritual expression. Friend Carrie Grant said of Nickelsen’s interest in painting at Guthrie Creek:

“Ingrid loved Guthrie Creek because it had a raw energy due to its new and unstable geology, and as such exhibited a type of raw, changeable, unpredictable but also starkly beautiful example of nature surviving amidst all odds. I think Ingrid identified with this metaphorically.”

Journeying out alone into the wilderness, she would take along only a few necessities and her drawing and painting gear. Reminiscent of a vision quest, she found her spiritual path in the quiet solitude of the unmarked trail. To bring forth this shamanistic approach in her paintings was her desire, which she expressed this way:

“Everything I have tried to spend my life understanding funnels into this- all my experiences feelings & thoughts. But always a hunger to transfer into a kind of reality, action, communication. I know it possible to touch directly to speak more powerfully to a world of humans. And the other element, the sheer action of painting the beauty of color the magic transformation of a dream image of the mind and hand into a visible form.”

Believing in an “interconnectedness” of all beings on the planet, she brought this transcendent philosophy into her paintings. Her subjects were derived from real life, but her palette related to the “essence” or “spirit” of the location as she saw it. The colors, she believed, were truly there if only one took the time to really look. Painting in nature allowed Nickelsen to explore the language of color. The effects of color vibrations based on natural lighting offered at different times of day and season. The artist wrote: “Certain sites capture me. Often, I know these places well by visiting them throughout many years in different seasons and weather.” She would paint her canvases offering a striking scheme of bold reds, yellows and blues, often pairing them with complimentary greens, violets, and oranges, each color bringing out the richness of the other.

While Nickelsen had been content to carry out her artistic journey in solitude, a life-changing event took place in 2004. Fellow painter Terry Oats invited Nickelsen to paint with a group of women artists. After spending just one week together, this loose-knit group realized that they had become something of a tribe. This coming together as a tribe fit well into Nickelsen’s shamanistic spiritual belief system and gave her an opportunity to share knowledge and visions with other women who shared many common beliefs. The members of this tribe of Northern California women artists were: Ingrid Nickelsen, Liz Pierson, Kathy O’Leary, Judy Evanson, Terry Oats, Linda Mitchell, Joan Dunning, Carrie Grant, and Becky Evans.

They stayed at Liz Pierson’s 110-acre ranch located under the Iqua Buttes running along the Mad River. The women spent their days going off to individual locations to pursue their art, while in the evenings they would come together to prepare a meal and share their stories. Built around a shared creative energy, the women developed a special connection. “Nature inspires all of our work,” said Linda Mitchell, adding that, “We are all very drawn to the earth - love nature, we all paint from life.” This was a group that saw value in work and personal growth. There was a shared sense of mutual respect and support for what each artist wanted to accomplish at the ranch during their time alone.

On the final day of the 2004 women’s plein air excursion, Terry Oats, painting alone, had encountered a mountain lion. This incident led the tribe to make the decision in 2005 to paint in teams. Whistles were purchased for each group member to use in case of trouble. Nickelsen was reticent to take the whistle. She had not encountered problems in the past, and was experienced at going out in the wilderness by herself. Linda Mitchell recalls that, “she reluctantly took the whistle.” The acceptance of the whistle metaphorically carried with it a new connectedness for Nickelsen. During the summer 2005 plein air outing, Nickelsen confided in one fellow tribe member that: “The group of women artists had given her a true sense of family,” that she had not felt before. She no longer saw herself as alone. This was a family that shared ideals and mutual respect.

On her final vision quest, Nickelsen set out on her own, journeying to Doctor Rock, in the heart of the Siskiyou Mountains. Just two hours northeast of Crescent City, California. This location is thought to be the center of a spiritual vortex—a perfect place to capture the spirit of the landscape. Tragically, during the arduous solo trek into the mountains, Nickelsen fell and was unable to make it back to her truck to get help. On August 1st, 2005, she had
shattered her ankle, and threw out both hips. It took eighteen days to find her. During that time, Nickelsen had done her best survive. Ingrid Nickelsen died on location in the Siskiyou
Mountains at the age of sixty-two.

In life, Nickelsen’s fearless spirit and creative drive won out over the many adversities that stood in the way of pursuing her dreams. Her legacy includes a future trust that will provide grants to local women artists. Her life continues to inspire the tribe of plein air artists, and many others as well, to whom she is remembered as a role model. Her artistic and spiritual legacy is here, for us, in her paintings.

This essay comes from Laura Oppitz, a student intern in the Museum and Gallery Practices Program at Humboldt State University who has served in the capacity of Associate Curator for this exhibition.

Figure
Loose handfuls
Of ashes and bone
Dust sift down
Stream a milky stream
Swirls uncoiling trails
Away within another
Clear and cold
Always and forever
Ghost the mouth
Measuring out into
Goodbye white
Wave after wave
Unrepeatable a now
Dissolved ground
—Laura Mullen

What is a family? What are our biases towards defining a family and where do they come from? Drawing from her own experiences with the idea of identity, artist Lien Truong thinks about human interaction, specifically the perception of the self and how the self perceives others. Truong has created a body of paintings that directly communicates these issues in a manner to which anyone can relate. Lien Truong’s exhibit titled, Portrait of a Contemporary Family includes paintings from her Portrait of a Family series and pieces from her new series, The Contemporary Family. This show, like Truong’s work, explores the perception of identity while allowing the viewer opportunities for interpretation. The dialogue that Truong’s paintings stimulate promotes understanding of various forms of identity, including the cultural and societal influences that mold our perception.

Lien Truong’s identity investigation started during her undergraduate studies at Humboldt State University. Describing herself as a “hippie girl who wanted to save the world.”, she began in the environmental sciences, viewing them as a career path that would contribute to progressive change. After two and a half years of study in the Natural Resources Department, Truong recognized that though she loved the sciences, her calling was in a different field. She took a two-year leave from HSU to find herself and returned as a Studio Art major, with an emphasis in painting. Acting on her desire to remain socially progressive while applying the ethic of scientific neutrality, Troung began to create work that was activist in its intent while descriptive ( as in the eye of the scientist) of specific social concerns—all informed by a visual aesthetic that satisfied her passion for the painting medium.

Her first cohesive body of work, The War Series (which is not presented in this exhibition), confronted the central issue of her identity. This series directly relates to the Vietnam War, her family’s suffering there during that period and, subsequently, their lives as a refugees and then immigrants to the United States. The War Series is comprised of narrative paintings about the Vietnam War, which often show Vietnamese youth stuck between the world of a child and a state of war.

Making her paintings in an expressionist style, she describes a melancholic atmosphere through painterly marks, drips, hazing and a muddied palette, which accentuate the themes of loss of innocence and childhood as a consequence of war. These works are intuitive and free flowing, as Truong allowed the painting and mark making processes to be prominent formal components in the work. This initial series of painting marked the beginning of Truong’s disciplined refinement of her painting skills—a work ethic that propelled her into her graduate studies.

While studying for her Master’s of Fine Arts at Mills College in Oakland, California, a new series was conceived as she considered her impending marriage to her husband, Mark Soderstrom. During this period she became acutely aware of the prohibitions against people near and dear to her who were forbidden to enter the union of marriage. These were family and friends in dedicated, long-term, same-sex relationships, who desired the equal right of entering into a state-sanctioned union of marriage—the same that Truong was about to enter into.

In a deep empathic response, at the very most personal level, Truong began to consider the subject of what constitutes the identity of a family in a new series of paintings, titled, Portrait of a Family. She began to explore those pictorial conventions that communicate visually the subject of “family”. Here, she teased out and tested the tensions and contradictions that arise between the conventional, historical and cultural visual depictions of “family” versus her own encounters with people who embodied the actual love, commitment, respect and dependability that constitutes any viable family.

In the paintings, Truong removes signifiers that have their roots in the conventions of traditional European portraiture, which depict status through a system of idealization. Signifiers such as clothing, locale, possessions and positioning of subjects, which all convey an ideal of family as filtered through social status, roles, race, and religious affiliations. To further reinforce her investigation, Truong chose to portray families whose gender, racial and social status were ambiguous. In order to pictorially represent the uncertainty about the status of her subjects, the images of the families depicted in her paintings are stripped of those conventional signifiers. To make these paintings, Truong brings together disparate individual images of the respective family members, and then recombines them within the frame of the canvas to create a composition. The series is painted in a photo-realistic manner, portraying one family residing within painting’s composition, each family member occupying their own space. Truong places the figures separately from each other, not touching, in order to reinforce the sense of ambiguity, building a unique, yet diffused dialogue with the viewer. Had she painted the work in a looser manner, her work would have been seen for its formal qualities and not its deep seeded political and conceptual intent. While developing this series, content began to take the spotlight in her work; technique however, became critical in executing her concepts.

She exhibited a piece from this series, The Wagner Family, in two galleries in California; one in San Francisco and another in Fremont, a middleclass suburb of San Francisco. This portrait included two women of roughly the same adult age. In Fremont, viewers saw these women as sisters. However, in San Francisco, the audience generally interpreted the same two women as a lesbian couple. Truong surmised that the viewers in Fremont were more comfortable with sisters, not lesbians and vice versa in San Francisco. This anecdote illustrates Truong’s intention—that her painting’s open-ended portrayal of family identity will allow viewers to encounter and evaluate their own biases, stereotypes and prejudices. Encountering Truong’s work, the viewers must inevitably confront personal identity issues as they attempt to decipher the relationship of the paintings’ subjects, questioning their desire for signifiers and their reliance on personal, internalized biases.

Building on the conceptual and stylistic development of the Portrait of a Family series, Truong’s new project, The Contemporary Family further explores identity issues and family values. This new series is comprised of two inter-dependant, sub-bodies of work: Family Sittings and Family Trees. Similar to her previous series, Truong again employs ambiguity to stimulate a social dialogue. However, with these paintings she changes her conceptual approach to her subjects. Here, almost alarmingly, Truong has made family portraits of invisible, featureless people: only portraying those accoutrements with which the various families chose to surround themselves, and thus identify themselves. As with the conventions of traditional European family portraiture, the subjects present themselves in their best attire, surrounded by their processions and the material comforts of their homes, however the skin and hair are missing. These are invisible people, wearing clothes, seated in rooms. The ethnicity, age, religion and perhaps gender, of the family members are left unknown.

In Family Sitting no.2, one invisible person is sitting on another invisible person’s lap. The smaller of the two people, is seated on another’s lap in a cradled position. Naturally one assumes this must be a child seated on its parent’s lap. Also, this “child” is wearing a dress. One assumes, almost without a second thought, that this person is a girl and that the adult is her mother. As these assumptions surface in the mind of the viewer, the realization that one is participating in making assumptions becomes part of a dialogue between Family Sitting  no. 2 and the viewer.

Complimenting these works are Family Trees—abstract paintings, made of painted squares of wood, which reduce the relationships between each invisible family member from the Family Sittings to a schematic depiction of their skin color. Here Truong is offering us tantalizing clues about the identity of her invisible sitters. The Family Trees are arranged to mimic the genealogical schema of a family, with its implied genetic link between child and parents. But how do we really know if they are in fact genetically related? Truong, however, does not indicate to the viewer which Family Tree coincides with which Family Sitting. The viewer is once again left to his or her own judgment (and attending prejudices) given the available signifiers. These paintings obviously further challenge one’s personal biases.

In her work, Truong attempts to open a dialogue concerning internalized stereotypes surrounding the values, which create a functioning family. What are our family values? What makes a good family? Who decides what family is? When we make assumptions about identity, we are faced with personal and social questions. How do you see yourself? How do you see others? With whom do you identify? Whom are you identified as? Truong’s work explores these questions in ways that can challenge and surprise both the viewer and the artist. We can view Lien Truong’s work as an exploration of identity at its very root—the family. The confluence of identity with family issues is the unifying theme that weaves throughout her work. Her concern is to create an art form that stimulates a social dialogue; an art form created not just for the art world, but for everyday people and about everyday people.

This essay was jointly written and edited by Humboldt State University interns at First Street Gallery: Liz Asbill, Erica Botkin, Peggy Coburn, Kate Mills, Rachelle Perez and Amanda Singleton.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, 4 in October: Works by Alumni Artists, on exhibit from October 6 through November 4, 2007. This exhibition continues the gallery’s mission to highlight alumni artists who have studied at Humboldt State University. Participating artists are Cija Bellis-with drawings, Julie Clark-with photography, Jeremy Hara- with painting, and Malia Landis-with ceramics.

“The alumni participating in this show have all developed to a point where they are working at a professional level as artists,” states First Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley.  “All the participants demonstrate real evidence of artistic success.  Crucial to their success, however, are the less tangible qualities they all share—a dedication and commitment to making art as a way of life and a deep engagement with their work on poetic and intellectual levels.”

“Beside the obvious accomplishment of these artists, this exhibition underscores the success of the HSU Art Department’s teaching philosophy—to impart to its students an understanding of the value of discipline, experimentation and thoughtful engagement with their art forms,” says Bentley.   Mr. Bentley also emphasized that the exhibition provides these alumni artists with the unique opportunity to show their work in a prominent local venue.

The exhibition is produced by students enrolled in Art Department’s Museum and Gallery Practices Program at Humboldt State.  The program provides practical, hands-on experience as the students design, coordinate and curate exhibits at First Street Gallery.

Art is one of the highest enrolled majors at the HSU campus. HSU’s Art Department offers classes with 25 full and part-time instructors, multiple, well equipped studio facilities and several campus showcases that enable undergraduates to enjoy an early experience of presenting their works to the public.

There will be a public reception for the alumni artists on Saturday, October 6, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., during Eureka Main Street’s Arts Alive program.  HSU First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 5:00 p.m.  The gallery is located at 422 First Street in Eureka and admission is free to all. School groups are encouraged to call ahead to arrange tours For more information call 707-826-3424.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to announce "A Holiday Invitational Exhibition", which will open on December 1st and will continue through December 23rd. Featured in the show will be artwork by more than sixteen artists from California's North Coast, who work in diverse styles and mediums.
  
The participating artists will display works on paper, ceramics, sculpture, and paintings.  “We're very excited to bring together these artists, many of them HSU alumni, during this holiday season," says First Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley. "This exhibition will remind those of us who live here, how fortunate we are to live in a community that is also the home of so many wonderful artists."

Participants include: James Crawford, Nancy Frazier, Nina Groth, David Jordan, Tom Klapproth, Malia Landis, Peggy Loudon, Louis Marak, Justin Mitman, Scott North, Theresa Oats, Eric Pawloski, Stock Schleuter, Rachel Schleuter, Keith Schneider and some surprise guest artists.

Of special note, the exhibition will introduce the sculptor Eric Pawloski, who is new to the region. Mr. Pawloski is currently lecturing in the Art Department at HSU.  His life-sized sculpture of a stag, titled “Pursuing Eyes”, is prominently featured in the gallery.  The sculpture employs a conventional depiction of a deer, re-contextualized into a startling image through the use of unexpected additional sculptural elements. 

“A Holiday Invitational Exhibition” is produced by Humboldt State students. Students enrolled in the Art Museum and Gallery Practices Program participate in the daily management and planning of shows at the gallery.  The gallery provides real-life opportunities for the students to develop their gallery and museum skills, which in turn provides them with experience that will help them to enter the job market. Many students who have participated in the program have gone on to careers in museums and galleries throughout the nation. 

There will be an opening reception for the Invitational artists that will coincide with Arts Alive on Saturday December 1st from 6-9pm. For more information call (707) 826-3424.

Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery is pleased to present Doorway to Darkness: Illustrations by Mariko Pratt on exhibition from August 24, 2007 through September 23, 2007.  This exhibition features original illustrations from two stories by Pratt, The Gorgon’s Smile and The Cold Curse Files.  The gallery is also showing small sculptures by Pratt, depicting some of the characters that appear in her stories.

Inspired by her love for the North Coast, Japanese folklore and fantasy writers like C.S. Lewis; Pratt’s fairytale-like illustrations take the reader on a twisting tale through the doorways of a magical, spirit-inhabited world, complete with mystery and humor. On entering those doorways, she writes:

Let’s suppose that instead of leaving, we decided to take a peek inside.  Let’s suppose that instead of dark, dreary rooms, we found a completely different world in which anything is possible, including magic.  Let’s suppose that this particular house is actually one in a series of gates connecting a vast sprawling multi-verse.
            
We humans like to think such things are conceptually possible, that we can venture through a seemingly ordinary doorway and have an adventure in a place far from the acknowledged framework of scientific laws.   It may sound great until you consider what might be lurking on the other side of that particular door.

Pratt was born in 1973 in Mountain View, California and raised in McKinleyville, California.  She graduated from McKinleyville High School and received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Humboldt State University in Studio Art in 1994.

A reception for the artist will be held during Arts Alive! on Saturday, September 1st.  Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California.  Admission is free.  Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead.  For more information call 707-826-3424.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, Knot Now: Sculpture by Norman Sherfield, on exhibit from January 30 through March 11, 2007. Sherfield is the winner of the 2007 North Coast Cultural Trust Victor Jacoby Award.

Knot Now, will feature small sculptures created by Sherfield who uses a basketry technique known as knotting.  With this technique, Sherfield transforms the simplicity of a single knot into complex forms, which hold a variety of textures, shapes and color patterns.

Sherfield’s forms are inspired by biological science, the automatism of surrealism and a fascination with natural biological form. The meditative and simple action of knotting allows Sherfield to fully immerse himself in the process.  With the repetitive pulse of each knot, it is as if he’s breathing life into his abstracted forms. His sculptures reference various aspects of the physical, spiritual and mythological world; engaging the curious imagination with humor and mystique. Sheffield’s merging of bright colors and earth tones in the weaving form a modern take on a traditional art form. His combination of dream imagery, instinctual and imaginative impulses; with forms of the natural world, explore the boundaries where mind and nature meet. Sherfield feels the content of his forms become complete only with the interaction of each viewer’s intellectual and spiritual contribution.

Knot Now: Sculpture by Norman Sherfield will run from January 30th through March 11th.  There will be a public reception for the artist on Saturday, February 3 from 6 pm through 9 pm.  There will be a gallery talk by the artist at First Street Gallery on Saturday, February 24th at 3 pm. Admission is free.