SS95: Kalani Engles



Kalani Engles painting, Saddle Road, reflects the stunning and diverse natural scenery of her birthplace in Hawaii.

Saddle Road, Oil on canvas, 48" x 48"

Comments by Kalani Engles:

Hawaii has always been a special place for me. My grandparents and their grandparents were born there, and as a girl I spent every summer in the Islands drinking in the culture, history and traditions. There are many spectacular places in Hawaii, but one of my favorites is the saddle road straddling the Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea volcanoes on the Big Island. It runs from the lush tropical rain forest of Hilo across a vast lava moonscape past snow capped mountain peaks to the grasslands of Waimea. Saddle Road conveys the contrasting landscapes one experiences along this highway. There are many saddle roads in the world, most featuring remarkable scenery. You can find elements of all of them in Saddle Road.

More about Kalani Engles.



SS95: Kalani Engles

SS95: Dominique Caron



Adventure, Oil on canvas, 48" x 72"

Dominique Caron responded to the theme of time and place with a painting inspired by ancient graffiti in Europe and Africa.  Her layered marks and symbols reflect the collective human desire to leave a record for future generations.

Comments by Dominique Caron:

     The sense of passing time has been conveyed to me not so much by studying history but through a visual revelation of the humble graffiti of ancient travellers.
     When visiting famous ancient places, such the Hadrian Villa near Rome, a Portuguese fort on the coast of Africa, the Michel Montaigne tower/study in France and Lascaux and Altamira caves, I have been deeply touched by the graffiti left on the walls by generations of past visitors. They have left their marks in names and symbols, hearts, and humble crosses traced in charcoal, colored chalk, or carved deeply in the plaster, , overlapping each other in a collective cry of, “I was here!”
     What I have seen, in this pattern of interwoven words hanging over the walls, in their haphazard testimony, was a tribute to the interactions of men, famous and obscure, all wanting to leave their mark through the inexorable passing of time.
     When I paint and draw words in a still-life, landscape, or abstract painting, I leave them as a physical trace of a thought, attached to that very instant of the creative process.

More about Dominique Caron.

SS95: Dominique Caron

SS95: Sean Smith

Hummingbirds, Oil and tin on canvas.

Sean Smith bridges past and present with imagery from ancient tribal myths and modern artifacts of found tin cans, which also serve to represent the life cycle of decomposition and rebirth.

Studio Shop exhibition: Time and Place.

Hummingbirds  

by Sean Smith

           

Hummingbirds

they do this

do that

fly here

fly there

Ah

the nectar

of the

red flower

blooming

in

the moonlight.

More about Sean Smith

SS95: Sean Smith

SS95: Nancy Torres

Tom the Tree, Oil on canvas

Nancy Torres examines the theme of Time and Place with this painting of the famous Tom the Tree which stood in front of Burlingame's Easton Branch Library for nearly 100 years.

Comments by Nancy Torres:  Most people love the trees in Burlingame. Our motto is “City of Trees”. I remember as a child driving under the canopy of Eucalyptus that used to run down Millbrae as well as Burlingame along El Camino. Millbrae cut theirs down to widen the street for modernization. Even as a child I thought that was dumb. I’m so happy Burlingame saved our beautiful giants along El Camino. One particularly large tree was in front of the Burlingame Easton Branch of the library. It was tremendously large. Recently the trunk and roots had grown so large that you had to cross to the wrong side of the street to drive around them. A debate began to remove it. In the grass roots battle to save the tree some named it “Tom”; I think to humanize it in hopes of tugging on heartstrings. No Luck. Tom came down anyway. Before he did, I spent a day with him to memorialize his grandeur. It is hard to believe, but this painting really is to scale.
More about Nancy Torres.

SS95: Nancy Torres

SS95: Pat Sherwood

Artist Pat Sherwood describes memories from childhood in her painting, Carolina Lemon Grass, in the exhibition, Time and Place.

Carolina Lemon Grass, Oil on canvas, 36" x 36".

Comments by Pat Sherwood:
I was born in Columbia, South Carolina. My family still lives around Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. Every summer of my life I have returned to Pawley’s Island Beach (near Myrtle Beach) to vacation.  This painting is about the feeling of being there in what is called “the low country."  The women weave these wonderful baskets with sweet grass (it actually tastes sweet!) which they grow and cut from ditches in their yards.  An ocean breeze and sweet grass under your feet! Nothing could be finer!

More about Pat Sherwood.

SS95: Pat Sherwood

SS95: Joyce Savre

From the exhibition Time and Space

Words and Water, 48" x 36" , Acrylic on canvas

 
Comments by Joyce Savre:
The expansiveness of water is a spiritual event: the ocean is full of possibility, goes forever and suggests an eternity. You see the ocean, and you are never the same. If you swim in a lake or the ocean or a river, that place is a part of you forever. And though it is the same ocean, the same lake the same river, we know it is forever changing and we are moved by that too.

More about Joyce Savre.

SS95: Joyce Savre

SS95: Daniel Phill

Traverse, 60” X 48”, Acrylic on canvas.

Comments by Daniel Phill:

This painting "Traverse" was submitted
to the show "Time and Place in the 21st Century" because it is a reflection of where and when it was painted. This piece is about the San Francisco Bay Area at the beginning of this century. It is a painting that is about an evolution and continuation of abstraction in the Bay Area. Updated and distilled (from what has come before it) into a new object for the 21st century. From roots in the 20th century, abstract painting has taken hold as a major force in the visual arts, not only in the S.F. Bay Area, but in places around the world.
My paintings are a process of exploration and discovery, including references to the land from an aerial view. A sense of place is established through abstracting the landscape as seen from above. This gives a sense of capturing time on canvas - by synthesizing and re-interpreting the view that was seen at the time the work was painted.
I believe the most complex emotions can be evoked from the simplest of forms, merging and emerging, interlocking and dividing. My vocabulary of color, shape, and texture are given form through movement. The gestures, marks, and scribbles found throughout my paintings are remnants of a process and journey, rather than simply compositional elements on a two-dimensional surface. The paintings evolve over the course of many layers of paint, obliterating and revealing past histories of thought and action.

More about Daniel Phill.
More about the exhibition Time and Place.

SS95: Daniel Phill

Studio Shop 95 Year Exhibition: Jon Wessel

This is the first blog entry of our 95th anniversary exhibition: Time and Place. Artist Jon Wessel created these two small pieces as part of a series. Nine are on exhibit at the Studio Shop.

Statement by Jon Wessel:

These small works (4” x 4” and 5” x 5”) were created for a 2009 exhibit entitled “Road Trip” and continue my interest in using acrylic, graphite, and found paper on panel.

I used maps and old postcards for this work. I was interested in time and place captured by these vintage images. There is something nostalgic and comforting about them. They remind us of adventure and good times; They ground us in the past. By sanding and marking these images, I also introduce an element of time passing - images are worn away, covered up, or faded.

Far from being pessimistic about the passing of time, this work reminds us of the beauty in the history of place.

More about Jon Wessel.
More about the exhibition Time and Place.

Studio Shop 95 Year Exhibition: Jon Wessel