by Allison Harrington and Nicole Ruiz

Looking above, the sky is shifting and birds are soaring high with a freedom that humans yearn for.   Looking below, fragments of earth are peeking through the cracks in the hard cement.   Looking ahead, dynamic trees are eclipsed by man’s towering structures; and, looking even further there is the vastness of the landscape we inhabit.   Frequently, thoughts of our Earth and our relationship with it occupy Gordon Senior’s mind.  His work is embedded with metaphors and myths of nature.  Reflecting on humanity’s anthropocentric relationship with the earth, Gordon Senior often conceptualizes the cycles, the fragility, the strength and the magic within our natural world. These days however, his naturalist sensibilities and artistic intent have been disrupted and influenced by the culture shock of his recent move to America.

Gordon Senior grew up Yorkshire, England.  His desire to become an artist came about when he was involved in a serious accident as a young boy.  During the year of recovery, his main source of release was through painting and art.   From that point on he wanted to go an art school.   Senior studied art at Leeds College of Art and Wakefield College of Art in England.  He attended Leeds College at a time when Harry Thubron, an instructor there, was creating a dynamic change in the way art was taught.  Thubron and his colleagues created the first design class at the college, emphasizing a more methodical, analytical way of creating art.  Thubron is also credited with bringing Bauhaus ideas of craft and assembly into Leeds.  Thubron became a great inspiration to Senior, instructing him to trust his own sensibilities - the way one does things - and to not be afraid to take risks when creating art.  Since then Senior has been able to pass those valuable lessons onto his students.  Besides his artistic career, he was a Professor of Art at Norwich School of Art and Design in the UK. He came to America five years ago to teach at California State University Stanislaus, where he is currently a professor and Chair of the Art Department.

Senior’s immediate environment is the source of his inspiration as well as the source of materials in his work.  More often than not, Senior uses found objects from his surroundings. He prefers to collect rather than buy traditional sculptural materials because he likes to capitalize on the materials and equipment around him.  This is why he chose to only bring two small artworks with him when he moved from England to America.  He wanted to “see how the move would change the way he thought and made things”.

Hare Fleet is a piece that was inspired by his journey to this new world.  Hundreds of fragile tiny hares, made from fired earth, lined up in a boat, gaze ahead not knowing what their future will bring.  It’s a scene reminiscent of early European settlers and African slaves when they first arrived on this continent.  Senior chose the brown hare, a wild animal native to Europe, to embark on this mission. The brown hare, known for its mystery and seclusion, shown in numbers, reflects the complexity of the human consciousness.  The hares can perhaps be interpreted as an extension of Senior himself, a native of Europe, setting off on an adventure into lands unknown; and, even though Senior chose to leave much behind, he is also taking a lot with him.

In his recent follow-up piece, Odyssey, Senior continues to incorporate the hare and the boat metaphor.  But this time, Senior uses sycamore for the boat—a tree that lines the street he lives on here in America.  And this time, the hares are strong, cast in iron, and they are carrying a boat filled with soil.  Could it be that Senior has found his place and direction here in America?

Senior’s move has allowed him to see America through an outsider’s eye while reflecting on his hometown from a distance. To his surprise, Senior found being away from England made his native culture much clearer.  His move to America brought into focus what would have otherwise been accepted and unexamined, had he stayed in England.  His sentimental view of his country and the culture shock he experienced in moving to America are reflected in his works: Journey, Hand Tools and Towers. 

It took Senior two years to function properly here in America and the work, Hand Tools,  spun out of that sense of displacement.  Hand Tools is a colorful piece and includes a variety of materials, found objects like wire, metal, plastic, string, wood and ready-mades.    He plays with dimensionality, displaying these three-dimensional tools the way a two dimensional painting would be displayed flat against the wall.  At first glance, these tools seem familiar, but upon closer inspection have no apparent function.  Hand Tools, is a work of countless, functionless tools that evokes questions of wonderment, “How do they move?” and “How do they function?”  He couldn’t help but have the same feelings and questions about himself while adjusting to this new American culture.  The viewer senses that in this new land Senior himself feels like an instrument of unknown function, or perhaps that his purpose has yet to be discovered.

The Towers are a response to his newly found insight on his homeland and its contrast to American culture.  The towers resemble versions of the high-rise, a contrast from England’s small architecture.  These towers also function as birdhouses.  Senior’s first birdhouses were made from found wood and were inspired by England’s history.  The idea came from wartime England when the government rented small lots of land for the people to grow vegetables.  The people would build small, “allotment style” shacks on the land and these shacks can still be seen today. The towers that the shacks inspired are human height, incorporating materials such as rusted eggs and used cut jeans (the American Tower).

The cycle of death and rebirth is another recurring theme in Senior’s art.  Both the crow and the hare have important meanings in many cultures’ mythologies.  The crow, seen through the lens of European history, is a symbol of the spiritual, transcendental aspects of death, the journey of the spirit into the afterlife.  The hare in Celtic mythology was associated with the dawn, the moon and Easter, themselves metaphors for death, birth and resurrection.

Birds—the migration of birds—the eloquence of nature myths and the Earth’s cycles are also portrayed in his large-scale drawing, Birds in Flight, Version 2.  The light fading into the dark, birds emerging and disappearing in and out of the clouds allude to the unrelenting and repeated cycles of life to death and day to night.

In his essay, “The White Bird”, John Berger describes wooden birds, carved by French peasants, which hang in their living rooms above the hearth, during winter.  The essay begins with this quaint notion of decoration, and evolves into a discussion of our human tendency to sentimentalize nature, to tame and admire it from a safe distance.  In actuality nature makes its own course, it is wild and brutal.  This dichotomy between our perception of nature and its harsh reality is apparent in Gordon Senior’s work. 

Even when Gordon Senior is thrown off balance by the displacement and culture shock he felt when moving to America, the core of his naturalist sensibilities continue to be seen throughout his work.   His pieces quietly prod the viewers to contemplate their place on earth and their relationship with fellow inhabitants – the animals.  By elevating these usually overlooked creatures into the realm of “art”, Senior masterfully prods the viewer to consider their equal importance on this earth.  He chooses not to spell everything out and prefers the spectator to use imagination to unravel significance and meaning within the work. Gordon Senior fills his work with a wide range of meanings and possibilities for the spectators to engage in.  As a spectator, there is no telling what thoughts and feelings his work might induce.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present,  Propaganda: Poster Art by HSU Graphic Design Students, opening on October 3rd.  Professor Wayne Knight, who teaches Graphic Design at Humboldt State, has assembled the exhibition.  The show features custom-printed posters by over 30 alumni and advanced graphic design students who are either currently designing under his tutelage and other alumni artists who have participated in Knight’s poster project in recent years.

Professor Knight uses the rubric of propaganda as a contextual notion for his students to use as a jumping–off point in designing compelling posters that project a political or philosophical message.  While some of the posters may be serious, others can be amusing and light-hearted; yet all are well designed, communicating their messages strongly.

Of his poster design project, Knight relates that, “The popular notion of propaganda is that it’s always political and it’s always a form of disinformation.  The reality is that at its base it’s simply an attempt to convince, whether right or wrong, whether it is a lie or the truth.  All artists are attempting to convince in some form, the minute the object is put before the public, that it has value, that the vision is unique, or that it just has the right to exist.  This show is composed of many views on various topics that resonate with the artist.  These HSU Graphic Design students want you to see it their way.”

Propaganda: Poster Art by HSU Graphic Design Students, will be on exhibition from October 3 through November 2.  A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday October 4th during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.  HSU First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12noon 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.

This essay was prepared by HSU students Ryan Cox, Chelsi Kirby and Jill Moore, edited by Jon McCallum.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, Sanctuary: Paintings by Joan Gold.  This exhibition of recent paintings by the American artist Joan Gold is meant to convey a sense of Gold’s actual studio space, which she considers her personal sanctuary.   With this exhibition, Gold seeks to present her work in a format that captures the most satisfying steps of her creative process.  By thoroughly covering the gallery walls with her intuitively arranged patchwork of color, Gold invites visitors to step inside the personal world she has created—a visual haven of brilliant hues infused with life and joy.

Each completed series of her compositions evolves from a culmination of multiple steps and manipulations.  Experimenting with the media of paint as a means of unlocking the potential of color and expression, Gold creates abstract paintings that utilize traditional techniques and modern paint materials.  Within the image space of her paintings, she deploys a form of geometric abstraction, while incorporating an engaging lexicon of emotive, gestural mark-making. This approach can alternately elicit excitement or peaceful contemplation on the part of the viewer.  These emotional, yet ethereal states, are married with great force, as if an earthquake has deliberately assembled shifting tectonic masses into a coherent geometrical union.  In creating these pieces, Gold employs a rigorous aesthetic discipline, yet with such aplomb, that, in some works, the viewer is nearly unaware of the raw union of oppositional forces.

As a child, growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Gold began using color and design as a means of achieving the visual satisfaction that she has continued to seek throughout her life.  Gold’s mother adhered wallpaper samples to the walls of her basement playroom. “I remember being very content amongst those squares of color and pattern,” she reminisces. Gold’s fascination with color began with crayons and coloring books and was later influenced by her mother’s dried floral arrangements.

Gold traces her need to create a safe place, a sanctuary, back to the 1940s as she became aware of the larger world, especially the violent impact that the Holocaust during Second World War had on humanity.  As the terrifying meaning of the war grew in her consciousness, she experienced what could best be described as a profound loss of innocence.  She considers that this pivotal development in her awareness had everything to do with the subsequent choices she has made for the rest of her life.  And, quite paradoxically, it is what underlies the light and energy she puts into her painting.  She determined that this lens of experience would focus her luminous, life-affirming direction in art.

Once she reached high school, she began taking art classes, where even at a young age she found herself drawn to an abstracted, reduced style of rendering. In an example, she recalls an exam in which she was asked to draw a tree and notes that while her peers worked diligently to recreate life-like representations, her tree was intentionally stylized with only one leaf. “I knew that imitating nature was not what I wanted to do,” she admits. “I liked things to be flat and design-like.”

After high school, Gold was accepted to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, a school where all students who pass the entrance exam are admitted with a full scholarship.  Of The Cooper Union, Gold says, “I found my place in the world; there were other people like me.”  There she was strongly encouraged by such professors as Ray Dowden and John Ferren to find and develop her strengths. Ferren played a paternal role for Gold in which he “provided the ground in which I could grow.”

After graduating from The Cooper Union, Gold continued her studies by participating in studio classes at the Brooklyn Museum where she gained an interest in the process of working with enamel on copper. This was followed by a fellowship to study painting in Venezuela where she enrolled in the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Caracas. 

In Caracas, inspired by the luminous effects that she could achieve in using enamel on copper, she continued her explorations by taking classes in both enamel and stained glass.  Though too toxic for her to work with long-term, these specific materials acted as a bridge to her creative process and aesthetic today, showing her how a translucent media could heighten the effects of the pigments underneath.  Living in Caracas also clearly had an impact on Gold as the vibrant light and color of the tropical locale show up in her work.  This is certainly evidenced by her hot palette, but also by the fact that she stayed in Caracas for twenty-four years.  “The color in Venezuela is extraordinary,” says Gold.  “It’s always in bloom.”

Settling in Caracas, she married and raised her four children while working as an Associate Professor at the Universidad Metropolitana.  Gold was awarded a medal for her service to Venezuela as an educator in 1974 by Raphael Caldera, the President of Venezuela.  In 1979 Gold retired from the university, and re-settled with her four children in Humboldt County, California, where she has been living and working since.  This move marked a turning point in her artistic endeavors, as it was then that she turned her focus to experimenting with acrylic paint and made a decidedly conscious effort to make her work more minimal. Emphasizing media as a means of unlocking the potential of color, Gold began to create abstract paintings, some, which are made with traditional painting techniques, while others incorporate digital imaging with paint.  Joan Gold has exhibited her work throughout the nation, in Venezuela, and is in several important public and private collections.

The works in this exhibition firmly embody Gold's unique aesthetic approach, which, within the image space of her paintings, she deploys a form of geometric abstraction, while incorporating an engaging lexicon of emotive, gestural mark-making.

She begins by painting different combinations of color and pattern with acrylics on rectangles of paper, which she later assembles into a variety of arrangements by pinning them on to boards or to her studio walls.  These works vary in size from 8 by 10 inches up to 6 by 20 feet.  Here she uses paint instinctively, almost like layers of stained glass, stacking pane over pane of paint and other media. As the layers grow thicker some areas are left bare, others are obscured, while still others combine to form complex bodies of color moving in and out of one another.  Using the application of transparent layers as a means of achieving a radiant quality in her work, she “plays with paint,” letting her intuition dictate the formal choices she makes.  Gold works on many units at a time, all rectangular in format.  As she builds up the surface she also strategically separates and reassembles the individual units of work.  Through this process of assemblage, she constructs united, yet starkly delineated regions of geometrically organized fields and groupings of color.  Observing these works is almost like viewing vast farmlands from far above or examining cross sections of fluorescent striated earth.  She terms her process a sort of stumbling towards balance, never knowing which addition or subtraction will achieve the right harmony.  The product creates a peaceful union of storms, a healthy marriage of chaos.

 A second group of works represented in Sanctuary starts with the same intuitive mark making, which, after passing through filters of technology, she then reworks by hand.  First, Gold creates works on paper with layers of translucent, yet rich, phthalos, turquoises, chartreuses and alizarins overlapping like pieces of wax paper melting into each other at the edges. These works are digitally photographed or scanned into her computer.  There she crops, enlarges details, and augments the original chroma to heightened, more ethereal, states. She then prints the new images onto archival paper and expands upon them even further, applying subtle layers of media: oil pastels, chalk pastels, graphite, colored pencils, collage, and gouache. The final assemblage is an accretion of forms vaguely reminiscent of architectural layouts, or sometimes they appear more like anatomical or botanical structures such as a flower or cell.

A unique aspect of Gold’s overall process involves the use of the studio space itself where she covers the walls from floor to ceiling with her pieces.  Gold explains this, saying, “The best moment is when there are a great many pieces pinned to the walls just before being dismantled and reborn into their final forms.  My workspace becomes the world as I want it, a safe place full of color and light.” The sanctuary of her studio allows Gold to manipulate and reorganize her work on the walls as she progresses, and this often informs new work. Surrounded by these modular, interchangeable pinnings, grouped into bodies she calls trios and quartets, she sometimes plays for years until she finds their appropriate arrangement. The next stage in the process is stacking these groupings on top of one another and affixing them to museum board or canvas, forming panels, which then blanket her studio walls.

In this exhibition, Sanctuary, Gold represents this artistic process as it unfolds in her own workspace. By extending her studio walls into First Street Gallery, Gold seeks to present her work in a format which best epitomizes the most satisfying steps in her process of creation. In covering the gallery walls with her intuitively arranged patchwork of color, Gold invites visitors to step inside the world as she creates it for herself: a visual haven of brilliant hues infused with life and joy.

Gold understands the consequences of living in this world, and embraces its gifts.  She makes work that emanates from the light end of life’s grey scale, having experienced the dark.  She paints options.  She paints windows and doors.  Gold creates her paintings to act as a great counterweight, offsetting the problems we face, and providing a space to rejoice.  Her work is deliberate, yet not dogmatic, captivating, yet it delivers a freedom.  Absorbing her work is like being transfixed by a visual manifestation of the voluminous and spiritual luminosity that many of us intuitively yearn for, but seldom glimpse in our quotidian existence.  Gold makes her world in her studio. She invites her viewer to share it.

During the months of April and May, as part of its Art & Environment Exhibition Series, Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery will present,  The Water’s Edge: Paintings and Prints by Michael Guerriero, Jim McVicker, Kathy O’Leary and Walt Padgett, opening on April 5th.

Guerriero, McVicker and O’Leary are all long-term residents of Humboldt County, California and are counted among the finest landscape artists portraying the natural beauty of California’s North Coast.  Walt Padgett makes his home with his family in Grants Pass, Oregon where he has worked as an artist and teacher for several decades.

The four artists in this exhibition each convey a sense of place where water meets land in Northern California’s and Southern Oregon’s watersheds, rivers, bays and coasts. The intention of the exhibition is to demonstrate how these landscape artists convey the complexity of these important ecosystems, while also creating high-quality art.
   
The art made by these four artists is not that of a tourist or casual observer. Elaborately colored and imbued with the humid light specific to Northern California and Southern Oregon, whether expansive or close up, these artists focus on the integrity of the region’s ecology – not as a political issue (although by inference, they warn of its fragility and argue for its maintenance), but as an experience — as their home. To better grasp the power that the North Coast landscape wields over the spirit and imagination of its resident artists, read on to the eloquent statement that artist Kathy O’Leary has prepared for this show.

VISIONS OF HUMBOLDT BAY

My inspiration for The Water’s Edge was Humboldt Bay.  A San Francisco Bay Area transplant, I moved here in 1969.  Through the years I have lived in Manila, Arcata, and now Eureka, and have viewed our bay from all angles, in all lights.  After 39 years, I am still awed by its beauty.

Once I began working as an artist, painting here and in many other states, I became even more impressed with our bay.  There are very few waterways remaining in the U.S. with so much natural beauty surrounding them.

There are certain places around the bay, which really stand out for me: The Elk River Estuary, and Indian Island.  Throughout a year, the light, shrubs and trees, and the color of the grasses and water change considerably.  The changing atmosphere, clouds and moisture around these areas, particularly in late or early light, add to the visual feast.  Indian Island in particular feels like a sacred place to me.  Its sacred feel also comes from its importance to local Wiyot (Native American) culture, as a site for world renewal ceremonies where blessings of peace and harmony, for all beings and the Earth occur.  To evoke a sense of the sacred, I used the iconic shape (as orthodox churches use for displaying likenesses of the saints) to express my sense of the holy about this place.

Humboldt Bay enriches our lives every day.  Where else in this country does so much beauty, richness of culture and nature exist in one place?  I have thoroughly enjoyed painting these pieces and hope these images remind you of what we have here and encourage all of us to preserve it.

Kathy O’Leary
Spring, 2008

The Water’s Edge,  will be on exhibition from April 5 through May 18.  A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday April 5th during Eureka’ monthly  Arts Alive program.  Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12noon 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  A Holiday Invitational Exhibition, which opened on December 1st and will continue through December 23rd.  Featured in the show will be artwork by fifteen artists from California's North Coast, who work in diverse styles and mediums.  The show is a fundraiser for the gallery, with a broad selection of affordable, high quality art pieces suitable for gift making during the Holiday Season.
  
The participating artists will display photographs, 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 reminds those of us who live here, how fortunate we are to live in a community that is also the home of so many wonderful visual artists." 

Of special note, the exhibition will introduce the ceramic work of David Zdrazil who will be exhibiting his work in Humboldt County for the first time.  Zdrazil recently moved to California’s North Coast and teaches at College of the Redwoods.

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.  

Exhibition Schedule 

The exhibition will run from December 1st through December 23rd.  There will be an opening reception for the Invitational artists that will coincide with Arts Alive on Saturday December 5th from 6-9pm.  First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12-5pm and is located at 422 First Street, Old Town, Eureka, CA.  For more information call (707) 826-3424.

Cecilia Paredes was afraid of snakes, at least until she became one.  During a session in her studio for the piece Snake Woman, 2000, Paredes laid down, trying to remain as still as possible while all but the edge of her body was entirely buried underneath the sand by her assistants. As the anxiety of being below the surface washed away from her and her heart relaxed, Paredes began to feel a sense of transference as she purged her fears of the animal and suffocation. By working through her own experience of discomfort under the sand, Paredes developed a new mental state so that she could endure the transformation she had envisioned: to acquire the identity of a snake, protected and camouflaged.

Paredes is an internationally renowned Peruvian artist known for her unique sculpture and photo-performance work. She combines themes of origin, nature, and femininity to create a beautifully subtle blend of visual aesthetics, self-introspection, and representation. Her artwork is created through the lens of her past and present life experiences, integrated with her cultural, poetic, and environmental influences.

As a child, Paredes would create artwork using actual pieces from nature – sticks, twigs, leaves – and would paste them onto paper. As she grew up in Peru, a geographically and culturally divided country, her ethnically diverse family played an important role in supporting her artistic development. Her mother fostered her talents, saved her work, and encouraged her creativity while other family members practiced different forms of art.
Paredes began her fine art education in Lima where she learned the self-discipline necessary for creating art. Following her studies in Peru, she attended Cambridge School of Arts and Crafts in the United Kingdom and then completed further studies in Rome.

After finishing her education, Paredes repeatedly traveled, gaining international experience and recognition for her art. She currently divides her time between Philadelphia and San Jose andCosta Rica, researching and producing her work in both cities. While in Philadelphia, she lectures intermittently at the University of Pennsylvania. She considers San José her “home-base” and frequently visits the beautiful tropical forests near her studio there for inspiration.

Traveling frequently, Paredes is inspired by the many locations and cultures she encounters. Her travels and deep immersion in a variety of cultures has given her a nomadic-like perspective that informs her work.  This condition is partly the result of her choice to divide her time between North and Central America as she fully pursues her career as an artist.  Her itinerant existence is reflected in her art as she wanders, and in a metaphorical sense, portraying her many selves.

As Paredes moves through the many forms, subjects and ideas of her work, the theme of origin is highly important and all-encompassing to her.  She views the concept of origin in a literal and poetic sense. Her art lies in the methodology of investigating possibilities of where her origins lie.  From that basis, she uses a blend of sculptural forms and photography to convey a vision of her mutable identity.

Paredes, with the aid of her assistants, commonly spends weeks preparing for a photo shoot, refining the concept, and laying out the technical details. The result is a photographic register of an intricately staged event in which she may perform as an animal-like creature, a mythical being, or en element drawn from nature.  She will often merge her identity with animals that are generally unrepresented or marginalized in popular culture. She also chooses particular animals based on how she identifies with them, or as a way to face her fears and prejudice about that particular creature. Paredes wishes to give these animals dignity by showing they are worthy creatures, perfect as they are within nature. With many of her pieces, Paredes’ transformation transcends the visual realm, as her deepest consciousness reaches towards the animal she is depicting.  The process of creating her work, in turn, relieves Paredes of her own misgivings about her subjects.

Her self-portrait images often interpret herself as coming to a middle ground with nature, morphing into an entity that is not completely human or completely animal, but something new and mythical, as in Venada, 2001, in which she is presented as a human-deer hybrid. Underneath the various subjects Paredes chooses to represent, is her body, a “blank canvas”, which has been painted, posed, costumed, or digitally altered. Her approach to the traditional understanding of an artist’s self-portrait is unconventionally figurative.  She regards her work as private act— a part of her personal journey of self-discovery and interpretation. It is in these personal and private aspects that Paredes’ work becomes a truer form of the self-portrait. Paredes is exploring exactly where she fits in with the natural world.

She is inspired by nature and her personal relationship to it, as she sees her first exposure to art as synonymous with her first exposure to nature. This idea of working with nature continues strongly through her contemporary pieces. Her photographic work is at times set in nature, such as in Birdman Contemplating, 2008, in which she lays on a tree limb in middle the woods. In her sculpture, natural elements are also clearly referenced and integrated. In some work, Paredes constructed trees from replicas of her hands and arms. She also has cast her feet with inlaid

While she uses many natural forms such as seashells or bird feathers, Paredes makes sure to always pick materials that have already been or will be discarded. Often these materials have an ephemeral quality, which she often preserves with the aid of taxidermists. Her body of work contains various articles of clothing constructed from incredibly delicate material such as dragonfly wings, or chicken wishbones. In her piece To See You Through, a dress made of leaves without chlorophyll, she transforms something common into a manifestation of the artist merging with or originating from nature. For Paredes, the dresses become a surrogate skin as they contour the human body. The dresses also reference femininity, in homage to women-dominated skills or crafts.

In her more recent photo-performance works, Paredes has shifted her focus to feelings about migration and displacement. These themes emerged from her life outside of Costa Rica, as Paredes feels more at ease in the tropics. In contrast, she has spent relatively less time in the type of natural regions surrounding Philadelphia.

This has led to the development of photos such as Blue Landscape, 2008. Mythological creatures play no role in these new photographs because mythical stories have their origins in the history and nature indigenous to the region, and Paredes has no personal history with her new type of location. This image depicts Paredes, seminude, now painted, in an interior setting. She stares forward situated in front of walls plastered with floral designs on wallpaper. The environment here is patently artificial as it incorporates sentimental, mawkish renderings of tropical themes—blatantly alluding to a stereotypical visual perception of Latin American aesthetics. Instead of acting as a backdrop for her image, these interior environments are a subject equal to her physical presence in the photograph. She is truly transformed into a disenfranchised migrant—absorbed by her surroundings. 

There are other works in her repertoire that strongly hint at gender, but Cecilia Paredes does not consider herself a feminist in the classical sense. In her series entitled, The Subtleness of the Ordinary, 2003, as in her other photo-performances, she uses natural forms to metamorphose her body into a new being. Here the focus is on the genitalia, but the depictions here are ambiguous. The images create a cohesive balance and contrast between the genders, as she is a female using her body in her work, while simultaneously acknowledging the male side of humanity. The flower forms easily bring to mind reproduction, simultaneously resembling both an opening to the womb and having phallic qualities. Paredes is not antagonistic to the other gender. She is not interested in one aspect over another or pushing ideas of equality. Instead, she focuses on her whole being, how she can be both a masculine and feminine entity simultaneously.

Her artwork also speaks of environmentalism within the bounds of Paredes’ personal relationship to nature and her interest in preserving the environment. In May of 2008 she participated as a panelist in a United Nations’ seminar titled “Art Changing Attitudes toward the Environment” in which she and other artists shared their work and concerns with the world, and how their art can bring awareness to what is happening. She is a full-time artist, yet her personal connection and interest in nature and the environment certainly push environmental awareness as a clear window through which Paredes’ work can be viewed.

Paredes’ work recognizes the inherent relationship between the origins of humanity and the natural world. While her methods and aesthetics have changed, she is largely addressing the same range of issues from origin, to migration, to femininity. Her balance between traditional artistic methods and the incorporation of natural elements creates a genuinely beautiful fusion and contrast between art and nature—where her art always seems to insinuate itself. As much as these images and objects are viewed in a public setting, they retain a sense of privacy or ritualistic secrecy. In the process of creating and interpreting, the artist is seeking a poetic connection to the world.  And the art produced through her investigations have created a window into a reality where she expertly delivers to us a simultaneous sense of enchantment and verisimilitude.

Ruth Miller and Mark Jew are interns in the Museum and Gallery Practices Program at Humboldt State University. © 2009, Humboldt State University.  All rights reserved.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, ANIMALIA ALUMNA ARTISFABRICUS, featuring nine alumni artists who studied in the Art Department at Humboldt State University.  The exhibit runs from July 3 through September 12, 2009. The exhibition is billed by First Street Gallery as a clear demonstration of the excellent career preparation that Humboldt State University offers its Art Majors.  The exhibition will feature a special memorial section dedicated to the work of the late Nancy Finch-Halliday.

“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 nine participants have developed as unique artists who clearly demonstrate their facility with their media while engaging with a variety of themes.  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.”

Some of the artists participating in the exhibition have gone on to further studies at other institutions, earning their MFA degree, the highest degree attainable in the fine arts.

Participating artists are:

• Erica Botkin – photography
• Allison Harrington – jewelry
• Alyse LaVerne - painting
• Joshua Martinez – photography
• Justin Mitman – ceramic sculpture
• Gina Tuzzi – drawing and painting,
• Christopher West – mixed media works,
• Erin Whitman - painting;
• and a special memorial section dedicated to the late Nancy Finch-Halliday.

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.  Additionally, students enrolled in the Art Department’s Museum and Gallery Practices Program gain practical, hands-on experience as they design, coordinate and curate exhibits at First Street Gallery.

Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery presents The HSU Printmakers Show from April 4th through May 17th 2009.  This exhibition consists of a wide variety of mediums such as woodcuts, etching, engravings, lithographs and serigraphy, all covering a broad array of subjects. The contributing artists are students and alumni of Professor Sarah Whorf’s Honors Printmaking classes at Humboldt State University. The exhibition is billed by First Street Gallery as a clear demonstration of the excellent career preparation that Humboldt State University offers its Art Majors.

Art is one of the highest enrolled majors at the HSU campus. HSU’s Art Department offers classes with over 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.  Additionally, students enrolled in the Art Department’s Museum and Gallery Practices Program gain practical, hands-on experience as they design, coordinate and curate exhibits at First Street Gallery. Gallery director Jack Bentley states, “This show is a valuable experience for theses young artists as it provides them with the experience of exhibiting in a professional gallery while demonstrating to the community the depth and quality of the art instruction that Humboldt State provides its students.”

Artists included in the show are Faith Dickens, Annie Hehner, Jorden Goodspeed, Becky Grant, Jeff Jensen, Lauren Kinney, Kristina Pedersen, Elizabeth Poock, Matthew Porr, Charissa Schulze, Bryant Taylor and Vada Trott.

An opening reception in honor of the artists will be held at HSU First Street Gallery on Saturday, April 4, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The exhibition will run from April 4 – May 17th, 2009. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m., and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is free and those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead at 707-443-6363.

Intermingling the subconscious with the everyday world, Karen Sullivan creates art  steeped in perplexing riddles. Her interest in the psyche began some years ago as a Humboldt  State University art student studying Abstract Expressionism, a post-WWII art movement that  emphasized the subconscious mind, Jungian psychology, and universal symbols. Embracing these values as her own, Sullivan learned to "let things happen." And since that time, through the years and various events, her work has become increasingly invigorated by the subconscious.  Paradoxically, however, her work has also become intensely deliberate. The culmination of these  opposing methodologies has resulted in work that is both curious and compelling, showing us, through her artistic maturation, that dreams and reality are not antithetical, but coexist in wonderful, if yet mysterious, harmony.

There was once a time when Sullivan paid little attention to her dreams. But in 1980, when painting abstract landscapes and still lifes inspired by Richard Diebenkorn's 1955-56 shift into representational imagery, she experienced a peculiar dream of a fellow artist walking down a street carrying a painting. The painting was done in vivid colors and featured a life-like lizard with the words "save a lizard from extinction." She shared the dream with her husband, also an artist, who encouraged her to paint the image. Sullivan did, which led to a personal epiphany. Sullivan realized that it was not so much the lizard that needed saving, but rather herself, even noting that the first letters of "save a lizard from extinction" create an anagram of the word "self." Since this experience Sullivan has kept an ongoing journal of her dreams, including both words and sketches, and has also worked with a Jungian psychologist towards interpreting them. Dreams have thus become a source of life and inspiration for Sullivan. "I take my dreams very seriously,” she states.

This seriousness is made evident by the fact that all of the works in this exhibition contain elements from her subconscious. For instance, a baby face, which occurs in many works in the E&Fseries, is a detail from a dream as well as the head form, which Sullivan calls Igee, made up of a V-shape with eyes. The sense of a room found in the E&F series also comes from a dream, including the row of boxes that drops down from the top center of the picture plane. In speaking of these boxes, Sullivan recalls, "I woke up one morning and all of a sudden - poof! - these forms just came down from the ceiling and I saw them and thought, oh my gosh, I am going to have to incorporate them into the work." As seen in these cases, such instantaneous moments may go on to affect her work for years and years as Sullivan reincorporates various elements from her subconscious into new work. 

These elements, which have become so characteristic for Sullivan, may never have become prevalent if she had not experienced a critical moment that "totally changed [her] life."  In 1992 she had taken some work to a highly respected art consultant in Los Angeles.  Sensing that it was too extrinsic, the consultant was unimpressed. The work lacked personality. "Where's the intrinsic?" the consultant asked. Somewhat deflated and sensing it was time to leave, Sullivan remembered she had brought a folder containing slides of her doodles. She did not really think of them as "art," but decided to let the consultant see them regardless. "Now this," the consultant enthused in response, "is art." The encouraging feedback inspired Sullivan to be more personal and carefree with her work, to "let things happen" on an even greater level.

In "letting things happen," often the dream comes first for Sullivan with the art following, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the art comes first through an approach known as automatic drawing where her subconscious is allowed free play. A work readily displaying this method is Yellow Falls, 2008. At about eight feet high and six and one half feet wide, Yellow Falls is made up from a collection of hundreds of post-it notes that cascade out from the wall, each note featuring doodles created by Sullivan while she was on the telephone. As the conversations occupied a certain part of her mind, her hand was allowed to doodle freely; she was not cognizant of what she was drawing. Predominantly drawn in pencil and black and red ink, the notes bear the everyday responsibilities of life: appointment times, phone numbers, birthday reminders, and bills due. But commingled among them are extraordinary figures, designs, and forms; the day-to-day world and the dream life unite on the everyday material of post-it notes. Yellow Falls reminds us that not only do these two antagonistic worlds coexist, but that they are in conversation, each influencing the other – a major intention underlying Sullivan's art in general.

Through the incorporation of dreams, automatic drawing, and to some degree style, Sullivan's work can be linked to Surrealism, an art movement that began in the 1920s and was influenced by the psychoanalytic discoveries being made by Sigmund Freud. Sullivan's work, for instance, shares many characteristics with surrealist Paul Klee's Twittering Machine, 1922, through its simplicity of line, vibrant color, and curious figures. However, Sullivan claims to be more influenced by one of Klee's contemporaries, Joan Miró, whose colors, being more muted and earthy, as well as his emphasis on biomorphic shapes, tend to relate better to Sullivan's work.

But more importantly comparable to Klee and Miró, the works of Sullivan bear a fun and whimsical quality while also possessing something mysterious, even unsettling, about them. This can be exemplified by the E&F series, which concerns interpersonal relationships, often accentuating a dichotomy of good guy versus bad guy. One figure acts on another, but there is a certain ambiguity. Sullivan's E&F Series #19 - Black Pig, 2005, for example, shows a pig, a figure Sullivan has used since the late 1990s as a representation of innocence. But while the overall image seems pleasant and calm with its pink and orange background, the other figure, stretching forth a long, black arm to grab the pig is worrisome. And what are those peculiar forms in the scene? What is happening here? "Something," answers Sullivan, "is going on. I want to the viewer to feel that sense of mystery and maybe a slight unease about what is going on." She gives us a sense of story, yet she offers no explicit narrative. She prefers a kind of "dance" between the art and viewer, presenting for us complicated puzzles to solve. It is in this dance where much of Sullivan's magic can be discovered.

Whereas the magic of the E&F series regards relationships, the Diver series is directed more globally: fuel shortages, environmental problems, poor economy, chaotic politics, unreliable media, and so on. But Sullivan notes that these two areas of issues are not mutually exclusive. "The world has many layers," says Sullivan. It can seem "candy-coated" with a sense of  "looming darkness." However, Sullivan contends that there are also layers of great beauty.  She recalls spending many of her childhood weekends and summers at a cabin near Redway, CA, close to the Eel River. But the memory is bittersweet for the once vital river has since abated and the cabin has been bulldozed to the ground, leaving Sullivan feeling a sense of loss and grave concern over our mismanaged world. Arriving at a point a few years ago where she could no longer keep from integrating these conscious issues into her work, the Diver series has become a way for Sullivan to address the "scary and ominous." She sometimes wrestles drawing them out, putting them down on paper; the problems of the world are difficult to bear. However, this critical exercise results in a sort of dreamy enchantment, seen in the gentle color and clear lines of her work, coalescing with a matter-of-fact chaos, seen in the strange figures and arrangements, the unresolved tension between the two contributing to the mystery. 

Perhaps one of the explanations behind Sullivan's love for conundrums is the fact that her mother was skilled in the use of coded language. Sullivan's mother was a stenographer for her father, a lawyer, and could write beautiful shorthand, a type of writing made up of abbreviations and designated symbols, useful for speedily documenting such things as business meetings and court trials before the advent of tape recorders. As a child Sullivan would often see notes of shorthand about her home, her parents using them as a way of keeping her "out of things." Yet the mystery only intrigued her, which is precisely what the coded language of Sullivan's work does for us, both figuratively and literally. Some of Sullivan's pieces actually feature bits of stenography collaged directly onto the canvas, as in Llama Longing #8, 2003, whereas other works bear a word or phrase written by hand. Adding to the enigma, these words are sometimes partially obscured or erased. "I definitely like mystery in art," she confirms.
 
Although Sullivan's mysteries are greatly influenced by the subconscious, it is important to know that they are also very considered. A dream or a doodle may inspire a beginning, but there remains "erasing constantly, reworking constantly" in order to get it "right." Sullivan usually creates preparatory studies in gouache on eight and a half by eleven inch paper. She was inspired to use gouache after seeing the work of Frank Lobdell (1921–) and she loves the freedom of its water-based, opaque quality, allowing her to put paint down, wipe it off, to work and rework. Once the perfect composition is realized, Sullivan may then make the final piece with acrylic paint on larger paper, usually around two and a half feet high by three and a half feet wide, as seen in both the E&F and the Divers series. The size is important as she wants the work to have presence, but if the size is too large, it loses the magical quality of glimpsing into another world. And while acrylic is preferred because of its durability, achieving the same colors in a different medium can be quite challenging. Also, there is a concentrated effort to maintain the precarious balance between whether her work is painting or drawing. While she does use paint, she paints on paper, which is then mounted on unusually thin stretcher bars and left without a frame, making the painting more like a drawing. And her purposeful choice of soft color allows her line work great emphasis. "I want the lines to stand out because I love line," she says. "I love drawing – that's the main thing I love. I love color, too, [but] I know that the line will be sacrificed if I get [the color] really loud."

Pulling these elements together, the subconscious with thoughtfulness, the paint with line, the playfulness with seriousness, the global with the personal, Sullivan creates art that not only incorporates dream, but is, in itself, a fulfillment of a dream. Her mother had given her a Raggedy Ann book when she was four years old. She loved the pictures, particularly the images of a train, which inspired her to make her own train from cardboard. She was always wanting to make something magical as a child, to create another world that one could enter into. And now, speaking many years later, she could not help but note that the shapes of her large acrylic works were similar to the shapes of the Raggedy Ann boxcars. Her childhood dream has been realized; each of Sullivan's works is an enchanting world just waiting to be entered.

Interviews with artist conducted at the artist's studio in Eureka, CA on July 23, September 11, and December 4, 2008.

Jon Lynn McCallum is an intern in the Museum and Gallery practices Program at Humboldt State University. © 2009, Humboldt State University.  All rights reserved.

Humboldt State University First Street Gallery is pleased to present, Six Unruly Artists Paint the Town.  Featured in the exhibition are paintings by six artists from California's North Coast who work in diverse contexts and styles.

The participating artists display a colorfully rich show that runs the gamut from realist interpretations to imaginative expressions. This exhibition is divided between two rooms offering viewers polemically charged subjects in one room and poetically inspired visions in another. The exhibition’s broad spectrum of painterly expression demonstrates to the community the infinite choices of subjects and methods available to the contemporary painter.

In one room the figurative works capture thought-provoking issues of personal, political, inter-personal interactions and societal affairs. Fernando Ramirez portrays an intimate series that examines what he calls “self-love” and the importance of observing in one’s self the “difference in masculinity/ femininity, dominance/ submission and other such gender-based binary oppositions.” Rebecca Glaspy’s feminist inspired paintings address gender inequalities and culturally entrenched biases.  In portraits of powerful women, such as Hillary Clinton or Oprah Winfrey, Glaspy portrays women who have endured and thrived despite the hardships and judgments they face merely because they are born as women.

In another room the gallery visitor will find art that registers on the poetic end of the painting spectrum.  Artist Julie McNiel grasps her imaginative license and “re-creates for us to see her fanciful and powerful world of characters, stories and imaginary landscapes drawn from all the realms and influences of her life” (Artweek magazine, November 2007). Kelly Leal approaches her paintings by “just letting elements and forms come as they would,” poetically portraying her imagination without the obstruction of explanations.

Participants include:

• Rebecca Glaspy
• Alyse LaVerne
• Kelly Leal
• Julie McNiel
• Jake Mondragon
• Fernando Ramirez

“Six Unruly Artists Paint the Town” is produced by Humboldt State University students enrolled in the Art Museum and Gallery Practices Program who 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. 

Exhibition Schedule

The exhibition will run from October 3rd through November 7th.  There will be an opening reception for the artists that will coincide with Arts Alive on Saturday October 3rd from 6-9pm. An open house will be held on November 7th for the closing of the show.  First Street Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12-5pm and is located at 422 First Street, Old Town, Eureka, CA.  For more information call (707) 826-3424.