Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is pleased to present a series of paintings by Kathrin Burleson, titled The Creation Series, opening on November 25.  The series features a selection of vibrant watercolor paintings inspired by The Book of Genesis, the Bible’s creation story.

Informed by a family background that embraced both Protestant and Greek Orthodox traditions, religion has always been an important part of Burleson’s life and artwork.  But she says that she does not consider herself a literalist when it comes to Scripture, instead preferring its metaphorical potential. She is motivated to find profound realizations through her work, stating that, “Life is so beautiful and so precious and so brief.” In her ongoing Creation Series, she uses the first chapter in the Book of Genesis as a springboard into her exploration of the Creation, as seen from her studio door, using her observations of local flora and fauna as her subjects. Though the order of the series follows that of the Biblical seven days of creation, Burleson says that she is looking to convey a more general narrative about spirituality, life, and growth, allowing the viewer to find their own meaning within the work. In her own words, “If an artist expresses something that is authentic, then something will be passed on.”

Originally from Petaluma, California, Burleson earned a BA in French at UC Berkeley, an MA in Psychology from the Pacific Graduate Institute and an MA in Art from Humboldt State University where she studied under Leslie Kenneth Price.

This exhibition by Kathrin Burleson is produced by Humboldt State students. Students enrolled in the Art Museum and Gallery Practices Program participate in the daily management and planning of exhibitions 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.

The exhibition will run from November 25 through December 31 The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays.  Admission is free. The gallery will also be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.   A reception for the artist will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery on December 3 from 6 to 9 p.m. during Eureka's monthly Arts Alive event.

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka.  For more information, call (707) 443-6363.

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, The New Mother Nature Taking Over, a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Gina Tuzzi. The exhibition runs from October 1 through November 6. This exhibition marks the launch of Humboldt State’s new fine arts gallery in Eureka, California.

Tuzzi, born and raised in Santa Cruz, California makes her home on California’s North Coast and is currently an instructor of painting and drawing at Humboldt State University.

Gina Tuzzi is inspired by American youth culture and the counter-culture from decades past. Her vibrant, often nostalgic imagery is replete with optimistic representations of femininity and youth. The writer Jenny Sharaf notes that, “Tuzzi’s work focuses very heavily on the conjuring and manifestation of the idyll while playing with the ambiguity of romanticized language and autobiographical iconography. Her practice, which spans painting, drawing and sculpture, is inspired largely by counter culture ideologies and a romanticized neo-bohemian aesthetic. Tuzzi appropriates symbols and icons from popular love songs, spiritual divination, pop culture, familial history and an intimate personal narrative.”
 
Of her exhibition, Tuzzi states that, “These paintings were born as love letters. Their elements are strung together like torn magazine pages on a corkboard altar hanging on my bedroom wall in 1994. They are visual messages that I wish I could transmit through time to the eyes of my younger self, serving as a reminder to act boldly and recognize my strengths. The contents of the work are an arsenal for life preparedness. They are rich with totemic protection, lyrical reminders of rebellion and perspective. Ripe with beauty, to serve as a reminder of the potency of desire and recognition of the accomplishments I have achieved as a grown woman.”

The New Mother Nature Taking Over: Paintings and Works on Paper by Gina Tuzzi 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 and Location 
The exhibition will run from October 1 through November 6. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays   A reception for the artist will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery Saturday, October 1, 2016, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka's monthly Arts Alive event. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka.  For more information, call (707) 443-6363.

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, Verano, a solo exhibition of paintings by Leslie Kenneth Price. The exhibitionruns from October 1 through November 6. This exhibition marks the launch of Humboldt State’s new fine arts gallery in Eureka, California.

Price, a native of New York City, has made his home with his family on California’s North Coast for several decades where he taught at Humboldt State University as a painting professor and continues to maintain his studio practice.
  
Leslie Kenneth Price uses acrylic paint on canvas and wood panels to create visually striking abstract paintings filled with layers of color and biomorphic forms. Price’s compositions employ complex combinations of light, line, space and color interacting with one another to create abstractions are simultaneously meditative and dynamic, engaging the eye and the mind.

He draws his inspiration from the observable natural world, especially his own garden, which provides the visual information from which he improvises.  In repeated feats of imagination, improvisation and a bit of faith, Price paints from memory referencing raw imagery as seen in gardens. He draws influence from organic motifs such as flowers, earth, bark, plants and weeds. The result is, a body of paintings that impart an uncanny sense of place that feels specific, yet has never been seen by anyone until revealed by the artist.

Price recalls that, “When I was a child I remember watching my Mom in our apartment tending to her houseplants, or noticing a weed pushing up through the crack of the cement sidewalk. Because of these and other experiences, I have chosen to use nature to as a metaphor for life. Flowers, for example, are pregnant with historical, religious, and social meanings, while addressing the impermanence and transitory nature of life and consciousness.”

 Verano: Paintings by Leslie Kenneth Price, 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 and Location 
The exhibition will run from October 1 through November 6. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays   A reception for the artist will be held at HSU First Street Gallery Saturday, October 1, 2016, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka's monthly Arts Alive event. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka.  For more information, call (707) 443-6363.

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, all my pretty ones, a solo exhibition of paintings by Kathleen Mahoney-Cobb. The show runs from October 3 through November 5. Mahoney-Cobb, raised in Northern California, is an abstract painter currently residing in Providence, Rhode Island. 

An alumna of the Rhode Island School of Design, she has worked in various mediums including paint, photography and graphic design. From 2010 to 2012 she co-founded and ran the organization, Finch & Ada, a curatorial collaboration focused on creating contemporary fine art exhibitions that showcased original ideas and fresh talent from an array of artistic disciplines.

Mahoney-Cobb’s painting practice is informed by her understanding of the history of abstraction and surrealism in fine art. Her paintings focus on the relationships of space, color and texture. She explores these combinations while unveiling an emotive tone in the painting. She describes her mark making as a meditative practice that reveals the trajectory of her decision-making in the creation of each piece. As the viewer follows the movements of her brush, her abstractions begin to create a sense of time, space and movement within the confines of each canvas, inviting an individual response from each viewer.

all my pretty ones is produced by students enrolled in the Museum and Gallery Practices Program at Humboldt State University. These students participate in the planning and production of exhibitions at HSU Third Street 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 and Location 
The exhibition will run from October 3 through November 5. The gallery is open daily from noon to 5 p.m.  A reception for the artist will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery Saturday, October 7, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka's monthly Arts Alive event. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  For more information, call (707) 443-6363

The more I paint, the more I want to paint.

My work is the product of a deep love with painting, and its many possibilities. Working in the traditions of abstraction and surrealism has given me the freedom and the visual framework to realize my deepest desires and personal mythologies through paint. By building up and breaking down many layers over time I am able to explore the physical and emotional impacts of paint, create a sense of time, space, and movement within the confines of the canvas, inviting an extended communion between the viewer and the work. By engaging with the work over time in a meditative and present fashion the work can continue to expand and evolve. In this way, the viewer can become absorbed within.

Kathleen Mahoney-Cobb
Autumn, 2017

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is pleased to present A Holiday Exhibition, Affordable Art for the Season,which will open on Friday November 24 and will continue through December 31.  Seventeen artists from California's North Coast, who work in diverse styles and mediums, will be featured in the show.
  
The participating artists will display prints, ceramics, sculpture, and paintings.  “We're very excited to bring together these artists, many of them HSU alumni, during this holiday season," says Third 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."  The exhibition features artworks that are affordable and are suitable for the gift-giving season. Participating artists include Conrad Calimpong, Kit Davenport, Nancy Frazier, Amy Granfield, Alder Gustafson, David Jordan, Peggy Loudon, Jason M. Marak, Malia Matsumoto, Lush Newton, Scott North, Ted Okell, Lida Penkova, Meredith Smith, Gina Tuzzi and Mark Young.

A Holiday 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 exhibitions 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 November 24 through December 31.  A reception for the artists will be held Saturday, December 2, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive event. The gallery will be open daily from noon to 5 p.m. The gallery will be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Admission is free. Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information call 707-443-6363

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, Two Views-Painting From Life, a two-person exhibition featuring representational paintings by husband and wife Jim McVicker and Theresa Oats, who reside on California’s North Coast. Together, this exhibition explores their long partnership animated by a mutual passion for painting the landscape, still life and portraits.  The show runs from April 1 through May 14.

Theresa Oats describes her hometown, Levittown, Long Island, New York, as “a cookie cutter, mass-produced suburb with wonderfully zany people”, most of whom were moving in from nearby, post-war New York City, bringing with them an artistic outlook and a great education system. Her father was in construction.  He was very creative, illustrating in his free time as well as driving her family all over Long Island to explore its villages and towns. Her mother, a nurse, was fairly strict and not approving of art as a career. Yet, she still indulged Oats by buying her art supplies and eventually Oats went on to study art and design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

Theresa Oats first became aware of California’s North Coast at the age of 10. When visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, she became separated from her group and found herself lost in the museum’s vast collections. She wandered into a room with a diorama depicting a Native American woman next to a river with giant trees surrounding her. The diorama, in fact, portrayed the Redwood trees of California’s North Coast. Oats recalls that as she looked upon these giants in wonderment, she told herself that, “When I grow up, I’m going there.” When Oats, as an adult, decided to move west to Northern California, her intention was to find a place in the arts community of San Francisco. But she was persuaded by a friend to keep traveling 300 miles north to visit Humboldt County, California. Upon arrival, she was transfixed by the discovery that she had entered the realm of her childhood dream. She stayed. Since then, Oats has continued making art inspired by the North Coast’s landscape and the people who live there.

Jim McVicker is a native of Ontario, California, which is about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. He grew up involved in sports but was constantly attracted to the arts and knew early on that becoming an artist was his path.  After graduating from high school, McVicker traveled extensively in Europe and the United States.

He recalls making his first plein air painting (painted outdoors) in 1973 while attending art classes at Chaffey Community College in Southern California. His influences then were the French Impressionists, primarily Monet, Pissarro and Sisley. By the summer of 1975 he decided to become a full-time painter. With $5,000 in his pocket, he quit his job, left school and moved to Northern California, eventually settling down in Humboldt County.

McVicker claims that Humboldt County is where his education as a painter really started. There were several painters in the area who he had met through a life-drawing group. Three of them became close friends and he would paint with them daily. He credits this opportunity to closely observe others at work as a key factor in mastering his craft. McVicker's style has been described as invigorating and effortless. Through paint he pursues atmosphere, form, light, and solid drawing. In his work he seeks to express the "elusive spiritual energy, the mystery of nature and life and the unknown." He believes that without this sensitivity to the land, his work would be "merely marks on a surface."

McVicker and Oats met in Humboldt County and were drawn to each other by their love of the landscape and their shared approach to painting. Both artists make their work from the direct observation of their subjects, eschewing the use of photographs as an aid in their process. When not painting outdoors, they are working on still life, figure painting and portraits in their large, sunny studio. Married since 1988, they continue to make their home and studio on California’s North Coast, surrounded by the magnificent landscape that brought them together.

Jim McVicker and Theresa Oats: Two Views-Painting from Life is produced by Humboldt State University 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 and Location 
A reception for the artists will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery on Saturday, April 1 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.  The exhibition, Jim McVicker and Theresa Oats: Two Views-Painting from Life will run from April 1 through May 14. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California. The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information, call (707) 443-6363.

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, Just Kids: Tender Forever, an exhibition of photography, mixed media and video installations by the artist couple Megan May and Marval A Rex, running January 31 through March 5.

Megan May and Marval A Rex, recent alumni of Humboldt State University, created Just Kids: Tender Forever, which portrays the nuanced nature of their relationship within the journey of Rex’s recent gender transition. The exhibit highlights their vulnerability, love, and evolution as a couple, offering an intimate insight of their life together.  
 
Just Kids addresses issues such as the intersectionality imposed within relationships, transness, the condition of being transgender, and further addresses the oppression, which the dominant culture  (often unwittingly) levies against the queer community.  May and Rex present an unconditional love thriving in the face of adversity.     

Considering themselves predestined for one another, May and Rex invite the audience to an inside look of their personal life. One piece, Altar Throughout celebrates their psycho-spiritual trajectory while photographs and video performances project both the realities and subjective understanding  of their shared  experience. May and Rex claim within Just Kids to be “self absorbed and unapologetic,” stating, “the work is about us, our connection, its divinity, and how it navigates a corporeal, normalized reality.”

This exhibit seeks to captivate all audiences, while providing critical exposure and support to the genderqueer and transgender community.

Megan May and Marval A Rex’s Just Kids: Tender Forever is produced by Humboldt State students. 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.

Artists’ Screening, Talk and Reception
Megan May and Marval A Rex will present a film screening and artists’ talk about their work at Humboldt State University on Friday, February 3 starting at 3 p.m. The presentation will be held in Room 218 in Ghist Hall on the Humboldt State University campus.  This event is free to the public and the campus community.

A reception for the artists will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery on Saturday, February 4 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.  The exhibition will run from January 31 through March 5. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California. The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information, call (707) 443-6363

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” 
-Rainer Maria Rilke

My love for you has been the cauldron of your transformation. I cooked you inside me with all my eyes laid upon you, forgiving you every step of the way. I took your soul into my body and said yes, I took your body into my arms and confirmed your liquid desire to be free. I said, somehow amidst grief and fear, “Come out & be free of your prison. Come to the surface and see that you are Real.” This making of self we undertake that we might live and breath, this constant coming out in a world that feels like it cannot hold us, is our art. 
I fight against you, you fight against yourself, and still we desire to be free and to have love. Our self-aggrandizing nature is here, in this room. These fragments and compilations of our importance in this world is strength pulled to the surface by facing one another. By loving one another. We drudge through the murk of our mind, heart and soul for pearls of truth to bring to the surface and wear around our necks with grace and courage. Our effort is for recognition: See me, I am important, my body, is important, my desire, my sexuality, my power are important. You are important. 

In this room strung with our pearls, we have invited some part of the world to witness us in our sexuality, desire and power. We have tempered this holy trinity with love and mutual positive regard. We give form to the magic, the alchemy of Lovers.

Megan May
Winter 2017

---

you like a mountain stream 
full of rushing enthusiasm 
the exuberance of young life 
a fool on the brink

4th hexagram of the I Ching, Youthful Folly

Love is like an ocean floor 
A clear solitude shared by two pairs 
of focused, lighted, eyes 
Beings sunk with feeling, 
blissful while drowning.

- Maria Angela Rechsteiner

I face myself, through You. I am a prince, resigned to this world. Our art, my art, all art, keeps me buoyant in the unseen magic. I feel larger than my body, larger than the mutant I am. And yet, with you, I have felt perhaps the most terrifying truth….that I am, we are, just kids.

We marry the paradoxes of the mundane and mystical. I hold naive pride over my mutation, and you pull me down into my humanness. I hide in isolation, and you expose each day in its majesty.

The greatest challenge has not been needles and testosterone, my name, my death within a life.

The greatest challenge, and what the work in Just Kids honors, is how I have begun to strip myself bare for You. I have broken myself down and you arose as the divine gift you are, to hold together jagged pieces of me as they heal. This work, as it catalogues me, you, and us, is for You. This work is to honor our love and our growth.   

The work in Just Kids: Tender Forever simultaneously exposes and obscures the inner lives of myself and Megan May/Dolphine Ryder. Megan/Dolphine and I have put ourselves up for display as many artists have done before. It seems we both share a taste for the martyrs of the art world— those who use their fragile corporeal forms as fodder for any and all to deconstruct. We love and admire the unfettered tenacity of Marina Abramovic, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Pipilloti Rist. We see their confessional vulnerability, we see it as our own. There is miracle within the martyr. Us two, we are modern day millennial martyrs. We are self absorbed and unapologetic. The work is about us, our connection, its divinity, and how it navigates a corporeal, normalized reality. So often we dream ourselves as divine beings to then struggle amidst the weight of the external world, with its expectations: its dirt and blood, its money and its time. And yet we honor the mundane, as we honor the mystical. We have our totems and we have our needles and pads. We have our ecstatic dance and we have our sex. We muddy the lines of the body and the spirit. Our work grounds us in both.

This work began as a dialectic of my transness and how love transforms through transition. Now, as the work begins to manifest as object and light, the true meaning bursts through the clouds and is rolled to shore by persistent waves. Just Kids: Tender Forever is a space that holds our two frail and ever-powerful bodies, and captures our fears and our joy. It is a space that carries with it the future reflections of many more collaborations to come. It is a space for our love, as it is a space for our desire to share our love with you.   

Inspiration for the work:

NYC (the whitney) 
Pippilotti Rist 
Glitchart 
Catholicism 
Patti and Rob 
Esotericism 
Feminism 
Spiritualism 
Love of the Body 
Ritual 
HSP 
Our Relationship

Marval A Rex
February 2017

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, Morphic Structures: Ceramic Works by Shannon Sullivan and David Zdrazil, a two-person exhibition of ceramic sculpture and ceramic vessels by artists Shannon Sullivan and David Zdrazil (pronounced DRAY-zel). The show runs April 1 through May 14. The objects in this exhibit reference a variety of phenomena found in the natural world. Geology, crumbling cliffs, stormy landscapes, and vibrant growth are among the shared references in the works made by Sullivan and Zdrazil. 

The artists use the ceramic process itself to link these environmental experiences with the objects they make.  Clay and glazes transform between states of soft and flowing to dry and solid throughout the forming and firing process.   The resulting pieces are a condensation of geologic time, enduring yet fragile.

Shannon Sullivan’s ceramic sculptural discs are reminiscent of peering through a microscope onto specimen slides that might have mineral formations as well as biological structures. Her curiosity with micro imagery was born from growing up with her mother who worked in a medical lab. Images unseen by the naked eye that require closer investigation has been an inspiration in her work, which explores the nuances present in the living world. “The work asks the viewer to question their relationship with place” to evoke the feeling of intimacy with the world that surrounds us. Sullivan’s ceramic pieces have been included in the book, 500 Ceramic Sculptures. Her accomplishments also include having worked as an artist in residence in Jingdezhen, China at the Pottery Workshop and at the International Ceramics Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark.

David Zdrazil’s work is a fusion of traditional and contemporary pottery styles from the East and West.  His wood-fired ceramic vessels call upon geometric ratios, textures, historic processes and materials that Zdrazil has extracted from his surroundings. Sustainability plays a large role in his work, as he often makes use of locally found materials. He describes his work as “chunky style” in reference to the textures and masses he employs in his design as well as for the way he combines his materials. Zdrazil claims  that, “Truth to materialsis a theme that is found throughout my work—the “clayness” of the clay can be smooth, chunky, flowing, cracking, pure and unrefined all at once.” After building his first wood fire kiln in 2001 he has explored various aspects of kiln design, including hybrid and hydrogen fueled kilns. Zdrazil’s work has been presented in publications such as Luxe Interiors and Design, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Technical and The Log Book.

Both from Wisconsin, Sullivan and Zdrazil have known each other since the late 90s and have studied, worked, collaborated, and exhibited together extensively. Sullivan and Zdrazil’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. They have presented at the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts in the U.S. and at international conferences in France, Australia, Germany and Denmark. After many years of friendship, they were married in 2011. They both teach art at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California where they share a studio at their home.

Shannon Sullivan and David Zdrazil’s Morphic Structures is produced by Humboldt State University 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 and Location
A reception for the artists will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery on Saturday, April 1 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.   The exhibition will run from April 1 through May 14. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California. The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information, call (707) 443-6363.

Artist Statement by Shannon Sullivan

These sculptural flats are formed using various ceramic techniques and materials, finished with mixed media details. They combine the experience of looking through a microscope, with the disk-shaped petri dishes where samples are grown and examined. The compositions investigate relationships between micro and macro aspects of the living world. Human intervention in the landscape imagined through aerial imagery plays a role in how the circular planes are developed.  My work celebrates and hybridizes intersecting patterns and prevailing ideas rooted in natural growth, transformation, and decay.

Zooming in and out, the disks delicately portray agricultural hotbeds, changing continental boundaries, shifting waterways, migrating oceanic phenomenon, seasonal shifts, and geologic trends. Ideas merge to create forms that are sensitive and familiar, yet maintain a mysterious quality. The work asks the viewer to question their relationship with place. How do you see the world changing around you?

Imagery that evades the naked eye or requires close investigation has always been a source of inspiration in my work. My curiosity about systems in the natural world was born from growing up with a mother who worked in a medical lab, where access to microscopes and x-ray imagery informed my visual vocabulary and sense of wonder from a young age. From my perspective, the more intimately we notice the world around us, the more we appreciate our place in this complex web of life.

Artist Statement by  David Zdrazil

Organized chaos, the beauty of imperfection and the overlapping of spontaneity and control are common themes in my work. I combine inspirations from the natural world with established ceramic styles to create an aesthetic that reflects my own life experience and values.  I often describe this as “chunky style” not only for its appearance, but for the conceptual mixtures that it consists of.

Sustainability and collaborative group efforts like wood firing influence the work I make.  “Truth to materials” is a theme that is found throughout my work- the “clayness” of the clay can be smooth, chunky, flowing, cracking, pure and unrefined all at once.  I develop glazes and clay bodies that often include local natural materials in order to make a connection to my environment.  I prefer to use wood fired kilns for my work because of the rich surfaces produced by the atmosphere.  I feel that the laborious process somehow infuses the work with more value and integrity.

I use geometric ratios, textures, and processes that elude to my interactions with the world around me.  The familiar vessel forms I make allow for interaction and function while relating to the ancient and elemental parts of ceramics.  The aesthetic of my work might transcend a literal message while it embraces serendipitous moments in life and the creative process. 

Humboldt State University (HSU) Third Street Gallery presents, Rooster Summer: Young Alumni 2017, on exhibit from Saturday, July 1 through Sunday, September 3. The exhibition features works by recent graduates from Humboldt State’s Art Department.

Annually, HSU Third Street Gallery exhibits the creative work of these ambitious artists as they transition from their art studies into their professional careers. The Rooster Summer: Young Alumni 2017 exhibition presents the work of 38 graduates whose art includes a wide variety of media and talent. This exhibition reflects the breadth of courses offered at the university including media areas such as sculpture, jewelry, painting, graphic design, mixed media, photography, printmaking, new genre and ceramics.

“The alumni participating in this show have all developed to a point where their craft has approached or is at a professional level,” states Third Street Gallery Director Jack Bentley.  “These participants demonstrate real evidence of artistic success. Crucial to their success, however, is an intangible quality they share—a dedication and commitment to making art as a way of life informed by poetic and intellectual engagement with their work.”

Upon entering the gallery, visitors will encounter a number of pieces of art by these graduates that have garnered awards and prizes.  These annual prizes, awards and scholarships are either underwritten or endowed by generous community members who support the educational mission of the Art Department at Humboldt State.

Exhibition Schedule and Location 
A reception for the artists will be held at HSU Third Street Gallery on Saturday, July 1 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive program.   The exhibition will run from July 1 through September 3. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays. The gallery will be closed on July Fourth in observance of the holiday. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California. The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information, please call (707) 443-6363 or visit the gallery’s website at www.humboldt.edu/third

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition featuring works by JoAnne Berke. The exhibition, Significant Moments, will run from November 24 through December 31.

JoAnne Berke is a retiring professor of Art Education at Humboldt State University, a position she has held since 1994.  A life-long world traveler who continues to teach Art-Ed workshops in China, Berke is responsible for having mentored and trained many art instructors who are currently working in the K-12 school systems in California and beyond.

The exhibition, Significant Moments, has a selection of works spanning the period of 1985 through the present.  Works on paper, drawing, mixed media, paint and mosaic will be on display.

In Berke’s mixed media pieces, her penchant for incorporating the written word as a conceptual device that simultaneously provides a compositional structure for the work, is on full display.  Visitors to the gallery will also encounter mosaic and found object sculpture that range from the absurdly ironic to somber beauty in tone.  Two of these sculptures, Seed Catcher, 2009 and Ancestors, 2017 highlight Berke’s bravado mosaic technique as applied to architectural forms.

JoAnne Berke’s conceptual approach is tempered by a narrative impulse that reflects significant episodes and developments in her life.  This is especially evident in the three rebuses that document her life events spanning the years of 1985 through 2014.  A rebus is a puzzle in which words are represented by combinations of pictures and individual letters; for instance, apex might be represented by a picture of an ape followed by the letter X.

The artist states that, “At the time of this exhibition I will be completing my last semester teaching at HSU. I think of this exhibition as a significant moment and the exclamation point to the end of a successful career of 45-years teaching art, and also perhaps, a time for my own rebirth as an artist.”

Exhibition Schedule 

The exhibition will run from November 24 through December 31.  A reception for the artist will be held Saturday, December 2, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka’s monthly Arts Alive event. The gallery will be open daily from noon to 5 p.m. The gallery will be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Admission is free. Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka. For more information call 707-443-6363

Once you reveal to someone that you’re a visual artist, they inevitably ask, “What medium do you work in; are you a painter, a sculptor, a printmaker?” Even though most people want a simple answer, I usually give them the unsatisfactory response that I’ve worked in wide range of media through out my artistic career. For me it’s never been about the medium, it’s about the idea and how I can best convey the concept.

 In this exhibition I have chosen two and three-dimensional pieces that are mixed media and narrative in nature. They have been described as wry interpretations of our culture and society and are examples of work that has had significant meaning in my life as I’ve responded to personal transitions and global, and societal issues.

In Rebus I, II and III, I use the format of a rebus, a word puzzle that uses pictures to represent words, to tell stories about personal transitions.  The rebus became popular in the 18th century. In linguistics, the Rebus Principle means using existing symbols such as pictograms that are similar to what many ancient writing systems used. As our world becomes more and more visual I feel the rebus is having a rebirth and all of a sudden feels very 21st century.

In pieces, It’s all French to Me and  he Book of Knowledge texting acronyms and technological transitions in my lifetime are explored.

 In  Seed Catcher and  Irma I speak to ecological and climate issues.

The three-dimensional piece,  Ancestors is a meditation on mortality.

Become One With Nature refers to the struggle with the artist process.

Shiva Lingam are reflections on the unity and duality of male/female energy. 
At the time of this exhibition I will be completing my last semester teaching at HSU. I think of this exhibition as a significant moment and the exclamation point to the end of a successful career of 45-years teaching art, and also perhaps, a time for my own rebirth as an artist.

JoAnne Berke
Winter 2017