About the exhibition “Mixed Messages” focuses heavily on the idea of communication, mainly through the representation of text and portraits. I am drawn to the varying ways NIAD’s artists interpret faces and people, what features to exaggerate or abandon, what these choices convey, and what stories they are trying to tell through the words they incorporate into the paintings. You can see this especially emphasized in the works by Luis Estrada, Edie Braught, and Dorrie Reid. And where the faces or words aren’t present for interpretation, abstract movement fills in to communicate and the use of color and stroke becomes Read More …

“I’ve gained so much from working with these artists. On my first day at NIAD in 2011, I remember when an artist walked by with her cane, she was blind, and she said loudly and proudly: “Oh yeah, I used to be a butterfly.” Hearing that opened me up. I felt like: yes, these are conversations I want to be a part of. I have never felt any different, per se, than the artists at these various centers and have developed profoundly loving, playful, honest and rare relationships over the years. I feel blessed to have been able to step Read More …

Yesterday we began installing a group exhibition at Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco. The show, CE x CG x NIAD, is the first exhibition — in seven years — of works exclusively from the three progressive art studios founded by Elias and Florence Katz so many years ago. Opening reception is Saturday June 1 from 5-8 pm, after a panel discussion beginning at 2 pm. Complete details.

About the exhibition “A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image… one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronised with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.” -Helen Frankenthaler (Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler, 1972, New York: Harry N Abrams, p.85 When I came across Phyllis Carr’s beautiful ceramic works, I was inspired by the boldness and her ‘attack’ on the piece of clay.  I knew it came from a place of knowledge of how the clay would react and the freedom to Read More …

About the exhibition Before photography, portrait paintings were created with the goal, of reflecting to the viewer, a true picture of the what we, collectively, agree that we “see”. Today artists have the freedom to paint portraits from their own unique perspective. They are no longer bound by others perceptions. The artist is free to use unconventional colors to express emotion or distort features to help guide the viewers mind to travel past what they think they should see. The observer is led into an alternate reality that invites them to experience what more is actually present. The following collection Read More …

Last week news spread through the New York art community that Thomas Nozkowski had died after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Nozkowski was known for his colorful abstractions, often made on small canvas boards. His intimate, anti-heroic approach influenced a generation of abstract artists (myself included) and readers will recall that his work was often featured on Two Coats of Paint. Roberta Smith contributed a thoughtful obituary at the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt… Read it here.

Some snapshots of NIAD artist Marlon Mullen at the VIP opening reception for the Whitney Biennial 2019, of which his work is a part. Enjoy.

About the exhibition “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.” -Georgia O’ Keefe C O L O R. To name a few – hansa yellow, ultramarine blue, cadmium red medium, magenta, cobalt turqouise, permanent green. Imagining these pops of color in paint, wool, glazes or fabrics can trigger a creative buzz that needs to be instantly and compulsively explored. Scribbles, drips, dots, stitches, lines and layers create a language to express a collective rhythm in color, process and play. Color Compulsion brings together work that blurs what we know with Read More …

“So when I first opened up downtown in SF, most of the artists from the area that I knew already had galleries. I initially showed lots of NY, LA, and European artists like John Currin, Zoe Leonard, Raymond Pettibon, Karen Kilimnik, Andrea Zittel, Catherine Opie, Erwin Wurm, Christian Marclay, Christopher Wool, Jack Pierson, Sue Williams, Rirkrit Tiravanija, on and on. Not many painters actually. I liked a more ephemeral-type work, usually somewhat humorous… Read the rest.

About the exhibition At dawn, wings flashing crimson then black. Toucan the skybearer carries the half-moon to the heavens in his ivory bill.  —Jan Conn, from “To Be Sung to Villa-Lobos’ ’The Amazon Forest’,” Jaguar Rain The most wonderful mystery of life may well be the means by which it created so much diversity from so little physical matter. The biosphere, all organisms combined, makes up only about one part in ten billion of the earth’s mass….Yet life has divided into millions of species, the fundamental units, each playing a unique role in relation to the whole.  —Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life Following a recent Read More …

About the exhibition “All of these works strike me in their immediacy of line and gesture as well as their economy of information. Boiling down the visual information into just the necessary elements. Form and line are king.” View the exhibition.

Artist Christine Wong Yap interviewed people (including some of our artists) throughout the Bay Area about their ideas of connection and belonging. And a terrific book is the result. Find out more here.

“Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said last week that she would be taking down two oil paintings by Emil Nolde, an Expressionist whose work she greatly admires, from the walls of her office. Her decision, widely discussed in German media, was interpreted as a symbolic gesture: a belated official rejection of an artist who yearned for Adolf Hitler’s approval and thought that banishing Jews from the country was a good idea. One of the works, “Breakers,” from 1936, shows crashing dark green waves against a fiery evening sky; the other, from 1915, depicts a flower garden. The decision to remove Read More …

About the Exhibition The paintings, ceramics, and works on paper in this exhibition contain references to language through the inclusion of lists, taxonomies, and data visualization, or simply letterforms. Lists become poems in the work of Sara Malpass, whose circular ceramic tile features the words None, Loyal, and Glory, floating around an evocative grouping of text that includes Vision Blink. In an artist book by Malpass, the serendipitous pairing of words creates phrases like “matchy small,” “sand-house going,” and “please what.”  With some pieces, text becomes abstract mark-making, as in the works on paper by Donald Walker and Luis Estrada. For others, text is a Read More …

For the past 150-some years, while the Confederate battle flag has monopolized attention with its corrosive symbolism and inflammatory bluster, a different, largely unknown Confederate flag — the Confederate Flag of Truce, which the South used in the process of surrendering to the North — has been quietly waiting for its moment in the spotlight. That moment is now. Hoping to start a new conversation around the Civil War artifact, textile and social practice artist Sonya Clark has conceived a massive version of the Flag of Truce, measuring 15 by 30 feet — 10 times the size of the original Read More …

“The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced the 2019 recipients of its biannual SECA Art Award. Conferred this year on three Bay Area artists, the award has been the region’s most visible recognition program for contemporary artists since its inception in 1967. The winners were chosen from among 16 finalists announced in December. They are Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Sahar Khoury and Marlon Mullen. Each artist will have a dedicated gallery in a three-person exhibition to be held at SFMOMA in November…. Read the entire article.

About the Exhibition These artists get to the essence of what makes ceramics so wonderful- its imposed and inherent meaning, its ability to playfully perform mass, structure, architecture, figuration, and gooey, chunky painterliness.  All of these works have qualities I strive for myself as an artist coming back to clay after 30 years away from it.  View it here.

Seriously. They are doing an amazing job of covering and exploring America’s progressive art studios and the artists that are engaged in them. And they have a newsletter to which you may subscribe! Disparate Minds.

“The best-selling author and decluttering maven will guide curatorial staff in determining which of the museum’s roughly 1.5 million undisplayed objects should be deaccessioned based on whether or not they “spark joy.” In a statement, the museum’s CEO Daniel H. Weiss said, “Marie’s hire ensures that the Met will continue to lead the way on museum practices that sound truly innovative until you think about them.” Among the items feared to be in danger of sale are the Met’s Egyptian funerary objects, Christian crucifixion imagery, and practically every artwork by a Russian or German….” Read the rest here. (Btw Happy Read More …

About the Exhibition My waking life and dream-scape have been filled with all things book for the past few months gearing up for CODEX VII, the expansive international book fair that takes place every other February right here in Richmond. So, I was thrilled to find a small selection of one-of-a-kind artist books (my favorite!) by NIAD artists to showcase here. Enjoy & pick up a good book! View the exhibition.