Arts Benicia in the Press

Artweek
February 2006

Looking Glass at Arts Benicia

I was determined not to follow anything. For me it was glass. I was completely one-sided…It was for me just glass.
- Josef Albers

Josef Albers's postwar comment testifies not only to artistic obsessionality, but also to the seductive nature of glass-sand, lime, soda and a few colorants and additives transformed by heat into molten, tensile, pure plastic color. Physically brittle yet visually voluptuous, glass is complex and paradoxical, whether fashioned into window, container, lens or screen. The five artists in Looking Glass make the most of its manifold potentialities. Elin Christopherson, Sarah Hirneisen, and Kana Tanaka explore nature, perception and memory through glass's lens/window, while Bella Feldman and Lawrence LaBianca create containers of metaphor and mystery.

Christoperson's botanical sculptures, based on local plants, inevitably recall the scientific models of high school biology, their cambium and chloroplasts numbered and indexed. These re-creations, however, imagine plants as radiant and translucent ecosystems, both architecturally elegant and jewel-like in their perfection (especially in the millefiori-like cross-sections that bisect her blades of grass e.g., Berkeley Sedge). They're both analytical and ecstatic, but with a timely subtext. The partial nature of these dissected specimens - some "vertebrae" have been excised - and their immobilization on bases or plaques hint at modern alienation from nature and its replacement by simulacra.

Hirneisen's soil samples, collected with the aid of volunteers (Contaminated: 20 Active Calsites in Oakland CA), infuse another scientific model with emotion. The glass envelopes that she fabricates conflate the plastic bag from the field and microscope slide from the lab; the grids and file system in which she arrays her biopsies inevitably suggest narrative and the passage of time. Lares and Penates, named for Roman household gods, sets glass pouches filled with the ashes of burned clothing atop an old metal-frame bed, with a binder on an adjacent nightstand full of photos of the clothing (underwear, shirts, blouses, slacks) before combustion. The bed's associations with birth and death an reliquaries of ashes convey an elegiac view of life as loss, like the tattered, disembodied clothing falling fluttering into tree branches in the recent War of the Worlds film.

Tanaka's explorations of light and perception focus us resolutely in the timeless here and now. Conscious of light's psychological impact, she employs glass's refractive and reflective properties to create personal "trigger moments" of grace that "shift awareness within an instant as if suspended in a daydream." In three Aqueous Memory "pictures," we see the world intensified and sharpened inside her bubble-shaped lenses, as the real world fades in the watery silver blur and shimmer of the backgrounds. In the installation October Rain, glass droplets hang spider-like at the end of their own glass vectors, providing the marvelous illusion of rainfall suspended in time, each drop a brilliant, living miniature lens and theater/world. Glass, a precious and spiritual material, becomes a metaphor for water, the primal metaphor for time.

Feldman's Flask wall sculptures may not be "anxious objects" in the Rosenbergian sense-experimental art objects insecure of their status as art- but they certainly embody a kind of pre-postmodern angst beyond and behind their immaculate fabrication and elegant form (these objects are quite self assured). Feldman likes the contrast of rough steel and fragile glass, and posits her hermetically sealed vessels, couched or confined within their metal armatures, as analogues of "the human spirit in the constraints of our (mostly man-made) existential dilemma." These spiritual sconces do indeed evoke the body, with dual lobes evoking breasts and buttocks, and tripartite forms the "masculine part" (as we say these days) or perhaps an abbreviated torso, like some ostensibly religious paintings, they're also intentionally funny and kinky. Artemisia, named for the Italian baroque painter betrayed by her artist father and raped by his friend, carries a triple reservoir/phallus/torso suspended in a beaded or knobbed swing. Sumo sports a tightly cinctured metal G-string. Dotty features an inverted heart shape embellished with a perforated metal pectoral/breastplate (or panties), recalling chastity belts and other exquisite devices or erotic and/or judicial torture.

LaBianca, by contrast, creates more ambiguous artifacts by attending to the medium's demands. They're a collaboration of nature (raw wood, enhanced) and technology (glass and steel) with the artist as intermediary, and the pieces read as tools, "extensions of the human hand" for some garage philosopher's epistemological or metaphysical inquiry. Tool for Revealing Lost Information is a metal framework with knurled screws that hold blocks of wood securely beneath a magnifying glass that slides on metal rails; it's like a cartographer's device for scanning maps, or a bombsight. Tool for Seeing uses the same lens-over-landscape idea but features a concave reducing lens instead, displaying the entire block in its Cyclops eye. Set into a semicircular ring, the lens on its ecliptic mimics the sun's path overhead; perched at noon, it focuses directly below, where the rings of wood grain ripple out concentrically like flames. Thesaurus pairs a slab of wood, the grain again enhanced, with its frosted-glass twin (cast from the wood). Tilting Board is a seesaw-shaped sculpture, perhaps patterned on the gimbaled fixtures in ships. The large vials of ocean water, Atlantic on one side, Pacific on the other, set into holes in the opposite ends of the board, which is inscribed with text from Moby Dick, attest to the artist's bicoastal existence and perhaps all artists' glassy-eyed monomaniacal quest for the Absolute.

- DeWitt Cheng

Looking Glass: seeing through the medium: Elin Christopherson, Bella Feldman, Sarah Hirneisen, Lawrence LaBianca, Kana Tanaka closed in December at Arts Benicia Gallery, Benicia.

DeWitt Cheng is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

Artweek
October 2006

An annual exhibition, Cream - from the top culled a selection of work by recent Bay Area MFA graduates from Mills College, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), California College of the Arts (CCA), Stanford University and San Francisco State University (SFSU). The show is as much about the artists as a snapshot of what's happening in the region's fine arts programs. "I don't pick just what I like," says Kathryn Weller-Renfrow, the show's curator and the artistic director of Arts Benicia. "I try to represent what's going on."

Cream was conceived five years ago by artist and CCA professor Mark Eanes. This year Weller-Renfrow assessed the works of roughly 200 artists which she whittled down to fifty-five, and then the final eighteen on show (her goal was fifteen). In choosing the final few, Weller-Renfrow notes that she was looking for a "strong voice," "honed craft" and "a cohesive, achieved body of work."

She describes the MFA programs as "wildly diverse" and filled with artists whose work "trends toward being less of a trend." That is, she reveals, artists don't appear to be doing what they think they should be doing because it's popular; they are sticking with what they want to do. However, Weller-Renfrow does notice a couple of trends which are exemplified in Cream: more video and time-based art and works characterized by meticulous detail.

Speaking to the diversity, media in the show ranged from video to weaving to painting, pen-and-ink drawing, oil-on-canvas painting and more. With so many different types of work presented - there were thirty-eight works in all, a few of them large - in the not-huge space of the gallery, the show was, as Weller-Renfrow aptly describes, "alive". Though there were some misses among the hits, the overall presentation showed vibrant promise within Bay Area art schools.

First among notable mentions was the work of Taravat Talepasand (SFAI) who had five works in the show: three pencil-on-paper works and two egg tempera and gold leaf on panel. Taking on a Frida Kahlo-beautiful-strangeness, these delicately awkward figurative works reveal what appears to be personal (though not realistically depicted, all of the figures describe the same person, suggesting self-representation) and the powerful. The figures reflect the artist's technical understanding of the form and composition and their compromised or laboring positions are emotionally compelling.

Other standouts are the three works of Jeremy Chase Sanders (CCA), together dubbed Fabricating Masculinity: Queer Plaids. At first appearing to be only displays of plaid fabric a la Burberry, closer investigation finds that not only does Chase hand dye the threads, he weaves the work, and more: the artist is affected by synesthesia and sees colors as letters. Implementing his vision, each color in the weave represents a letter and together spell out the name of the plaid. On show: Gay/Fag, Queen/Fairy, and Clone/Pansy. Such intricacy is so well executed.

Categorically, it was the meticulous and time-laden work that was the hallmark of this show. In addition to Sander's work, there were the simple stacks of hundreds of pieces of paper in Amanda Shoppel's (UC Davis) Piles. Almost completely unseen by the viewer, each piece of paper featured a drawing. Visible was the end of a line of each drawing that was allowed to go over the edge of the paper. These edges were painstakingly aligned, forming a line down each stack of papers. The piece was comprised of many of these stacks, each about five inches high, set on shelves on the wall. It was subtle, and beautiful and complex.

Opposite Piles was Katie Lewis's (CCA) Accumulated Numbness (12 months and counting) which consisted of clumps of red-orbed hatpins stuck in the wall in groups that gathered tightly and then spread out, like comets in the sky. The work showed an ability to utilize a simple and unconvenional medium to elegant effect.

Notable as well, Keira Kotler's (SFAI) luminous light-jet print on aluminum works as well as Robbyn Leonard's (SFSU) playfully serious mixed-media-on-video piece, Limerence. The show did have a handful of not-so-stellar moments, most falling into the predictable "art school art" category: "neat" ideas hovering on shtick-y; "socially conscious" concepts that are too obvious thus banal, and too, promising talent still in need of additional years of honing.

Yet all together, Cream remains a highly valuable (dare I say, critical) element of the Bay Area art scene that offers a view of what's new and happening here, and showing what our arts future may hold.

-Cheri Louise Turner

Artweek
October 2005

Arts Benicia's annual exhibit, Cream - from the top, featuring work selected from Bay Area Master of Fine Arts Programs, was lauded this month in two arts publications with national distribution: Artweek, published in San Jose, and artUS, published in Los Angeles. The reviews were written by Colin Berry of Guerneville, CA and Melissa Feldman of Piedmont, CA, respectively. Cream is in its fourth year, and is curated by Arts Benicia's Artistic Director, Kathryn Weller-Renfrow.

"Cream is fast becoming a Bay Area favorite", says Berry, "and 2005's edition was nearly perfect… . Cream proved a rich dollop, and much to absorb in a single visit. But such a complaint is slight, one much of the rest of the country would gladly suffer. Besides good schools nurturing exceptional young artists, the Bay Area is lucky to have a curator like Weller-Renfrow, whose research necessitated countless hours to create such a satisfying show. Even after a couple of our own spent enjoying Cream, we remain in her debt."

Berry wrote extensively about the work of several artists; calling Amy Hick's video pieces "visually spellbinding", Sean Horchy's short videos "tasty eye-d'oeuvres", and describing Scott Oliver's and M. Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor's "innovative sculptures" and the "super-human rigor" demonstrated in the work of Jill Sylvia and former Benicia artist Laura Paulini. Mentioned as well were Heather Kessinger's "compelling, moody photographs", Yoon Lee's "explosive graffiti-inspired acrylic" paintings, and Jake Longstreth's "superb…contemporary landscapes", Marq Sutherland's "wry photographs" and Lisa Stoneman's "intriguing multilayered watercolor". Berry was also very impressed with Ehren Tool's "thoughtful installation" of 300 ceramic cups depicting wartime imagery, some of which were sent to prominent politicians, and many others given to exhibition guests.

To view the complete text of the Artweek Review, Click Here.

artUS 10
October / November 2005

"Cream" by Melissa E. Feldman
Arts Benicia, Benicia CA
July 16 - August 28, 2005

Now in its fourth year, "Cream" presents work selected by Arts Benicia director Kathryn Weller-Renfrow from current Bay Area graduate arts programs. This year the California College of Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford, and the University of California at both Berkeley and Davis are represented. The show has a lively pace and is installed in a fluid yet sensible manner throughout the 2,000-square-foot, high-ceilinged gallery that shares this former 1920's arsenal with artist studios.

Beyond its obvious role in showcasing emerging Bay Area art, "Cream" unintentionally offers a snapshot of the larger local scene. Though rampant elsewhere, here there is no Currin- or Peyton-esque painting, Pop or mange-inspired work, or the diaristic folklore of Barry McGee and Chris Johanson. And there is very little photography per se. What you do have are slick gestural paintings (Yoon Lee, Kyong Ae Kim), weird Leonor Fini-esque pen drawings (Travis Kerkela), painted landscapes that look like corny photos (Jake Longstreth), photos that look like black monochromes (Heather Kessinger), big funky creatures made out of stuffed dishtowels, bath mats, etc. (M. Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor), and short animated videos of alarm clocks, bottle caps, and a real dog that squeaks like a toy (Sean Horchy).

But it is labor-intensive, process-oriented work that emerges as a dominant trend in this selection, and perhaps reflects a mood swing in the Bay Area at large. From Lauren Pace's candy-colored, rippling Op paintings - which, close up, reveal surprisingly full-bodied brushwork - to Amy Hick's large kaleidoscopic video collage of San Francisco bridges and freeways, the repetitive gesture asserts itself. In more monk-like fashion, Laura Paulini recorded the sunrise every morning last February by filling in a small sheet of paper - one per day - with rows of dots in foggy colors that fade until the brush is replenished with paint. A bookkeeper's version of this is Jill Sylvia's skeletal ledger in which the little rectangular spaces in between the grid lines have been cut out. Wei Wang's Carpet Beast (2005) and other drawings of mythical creatures appear stenciled, so perfect are the angular, confetti-like marks that map out her forms.

Labor, skill, and process come together most successfully in the work of Scott Oliver and Ehren Tool. Oliver seamlessly alters found generic modernist furniture into surreal scenarios. Aptly titled, Afterhours (2005) comprises four bentwood chairs resting upside-down on top of a round table. Eventually you notice that the up-ended legs are not straight as they should be, but curve and interconnect in a kind of looping minuet. In another work, a round faux-wood table whose center collapses into a funnel seems like a receptacle for the globe light hanging directly above it. Reminiscent of George Segal and Edward Hopper, Oliver's form of emptied-out theatricality offers an inside view of a modernist legacy from the recent past or post.

Each of Ehren Tool's brown earthenware cups is differently "decorated" with various war imagery, from raising the flag at Iwo Jima, still-volatile Vietnam photos, to standard military icons and pinups dressed in nothing but artillery. Displayed on shelves in neat rows, interspersed copies of letters to President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and others explain that these cups were sent as gifts to these figures of authority from the artist, a former marine who served in the Gulf War and remains critical of the experience. The replies, if any, are also on display.