Recent Shows
July 8 - August 7, 2010
Christine Hodgins
Sculptures and Drawings
Studio View
June 10 - July 3, 2010
Ernie Palomino: "Coatlique: A Farmworkers Truck"
Muralist, filmmaker, writer, and mixed media artist Ernie Palomino presents a fascinating look at the process of transforming a lifelong vision into reality. Beginning as an early 1970's mural exploring maternity, social injustice and the immigrant's struggle, this towering bronze represents an intriguing melding of an agricultural icon and Coatlique, an ancient Aztec Earth goddess.
May 8 - July 3 2010
William Ishamael
"Light and Imagination"
"Clear Light" Acrylic on Canvas 48" x 48"
October 9 - December 5, 2009
Jack Alvarez - Craig Martinez
"Ghost Genes"
Jack Alvarez, Red Day, Acrylic/Mixed Media, 16"x20",2009
Craig Martinez, "Ghost Genes", Oil and Acrylic, 16" x 16", 2009
Intriguing paintings by two respected regional artists based on the proven existence of each human being’s inherited “ghost genes”, which are imbedded in our DNA and carry personal information of family history and life experiences. The artists explore the personal visual language of their ancient culture and how it shapes individual perception and awareness of self.
September 2009
Fred Martin: Four Decades
September 11 – October 3, 2009
A lifetime of creativity: This wide-ranging exhibit displays the talent of Bay Area artist, cultural theorist, and critic Fred Martin. Former director of San Francisco Art Institute, his brilliant watercolors, paintings and works on paper are a fascinating glimpse into the world of a prolific and highly creative mind.
“Yes, my painting is about my fears about the glory and the majesty of life…”
A true Renaissance man, Fred Martin’s long and illustrious career spans not only multiple decades but multiple disciplines. He received BA and MA degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He also studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) under David Park, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.
Martin’s first solo show was in 1949 at the Contemporary Gallery in Sausalito, CA; his first group exhibition was the 1949 Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The artist is Emeritus Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he continues to teach art drawing and painting. He is also Adjunct Professor in the Arts and Consciousness Department of John F. Kennedy University.
Previous solo exhibitions include the M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Richmond Art Center and the Oakland Art Museum (from which he received both Bronze and Gold Medals). He was honored with a Retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California in 2003.
Martin’s work is in the collections of SFMOMA, the Oakland Art Museum, the Richmond Art Center, the Crocker Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, as well as numerous private collections.
Martin’s work in art criticism, history and cultural theory has appeared in The ArtJournal, Artforum, and Art International. He was Contributing Editor to Artweek, 1976-92, with over 300 essays under the general title "Art and History." Martin has given many papers in the fields of art criticism, history and cultural theory. Martin’s artist’s books include Beulah Land (1966), Crown Point Press, San Francisco; A Travel Book (1977), Arion Press, San Francisco; and From an Antique Land (1979), Green Gates Press, Oakland
Summer 2009
“Bronze Works”
Featuring the Sculptural Works of John Denning, Richard Hunt, Alan Osborne, and many others.
John Denning, Reclined 2008 18 x 17 x 8
John Denning, The Poet, 37 x 12 x 13, bronze
June 11 – September 5, 2009
Second Saturday Receptions: July 11 & August 9 at 6-9pm
Bronze pouring demonstrations at 7:30pm
Monotype demonstrations with public participation throughout the evening with Andy Graham and Katherine Venturelli.
Join us as we celebrate the ancient art of bronze, as interpreted by top contemporary sculptors from New York, Chicago and the West Coast; including the works of John Denning, Alan Osborne, and Richard Hunt, recipient of the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center.
This major sculptural exhibition will run throughout the Summer, with new works, both abstract and figurative, brought in every month. Among the stellar artists featured are Nathan Oliveira, Bob Brady, Bruce Beasley, Peter Voulkos, John Battenberg, Heidi Lippman, Dina Angel-Wing, Steve Snyder, Dick Ratcliff, James Lloyd, Kirk Vaughn, and others.
Richard Hunt, Sculptured Places II
Heidi Lippman
“Alan Chin: A Cycle”
Celestial Devotion, Ceramic & Steel
Abstract Paintings and Mixed Media Sculptural Works
The Art Foundry is pleased to present the innovative and exciting work of youthful Bay Area artist Alan Chin. His work addresses the contemporary Chinese American experience with spectacular large format abstract paintings and intriguing mixed media sculpture. Chin was the youngest artist ever to be commissioned to create one of the “Hearts of San Francisco” artworks, benefitting the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.
A man of all trades, Alan is also a clothing designer, entrepreneur, and aspiring bonsai master. Alan Chin was born in Berkeley, California, 1987, and has studied art at the California College of the Arts in Oakland and the Academie Minerva Hanzehogeschool, Groningen, The Netherlands. The artist states,
“We come from a materialistic and structured society, a world filled with order and rules. As artists, we are taught to look beyond guidelines and regulations. Creativity flows throughout my veins and, inspiration is seen through awesome beauty. Beauty lies in everything and does not necessarily mean something that is pretty. Beauty can be ugly…beauty is unique. “
“My existence as an artist and mission in life is to interpret the world, to reveal the mysterious condition of the soul, to encourage our higher nature and awaken the dormant spiritual amenities within every individual. When people see my work, I want them to see beyond the abstractions that I make to feel powerful emotions of nostalgia within their current life. My work is reflection of my travels and the various cultures I have been exposed to. “
Patience, Ceramic, Wood & Mixed Media
“When working with any material, whether it is clay, stone, plastic, or paint, I make art. My life goal is to engage my senses in art with sensitivity through creation. I am interested in photographic aspects of life, and the way selective observation connects my visual process. I live where the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds co-exist. I push my limits and boundaries everyday to reveal the defined and undefined. I crave daily, to unveil and investigate the sacred phenomenon of creation. I become engaged with clarity and awareness to unfold my emptiness. I am in a continuous cycle of learning, though the beauty of life as an artist.”
Tribute to Travel, Mixed Media on Linen
The artists work has been featured widely at exhibitions throughout the West Coast and in galleries and art centers in Europe, including Winschoterdiep Gallery, Groningen, The Netherlands, and the Minerva Gallery, Groningen, The Netherlands. His work has also been shown at the Richmond Art Center, A21 Gallery and Isabelle Percy West Gallery in Oakland, and the Bruce Galleries in San Francisco.
Tom Holland
Known as one of California's most important contemporary artists, Holland considers the color surfaces and the interaction and motion in his work as the most important aspects of his paintings. His work has been acclaimed by both East and West coast art critics. New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer writes:
“Tom Holland is represented by a stunning series of painted reliefs and three-dimensional constructions….in these - the most accomplished polychrome constructions I have seen since Frank Stella first turned his talents to this medium – the esthetic of the abstract Expressionists is ingeniously combined with the structural ideas of the Cubists. Everything about these constructions is impressive. Their color is brilliant, and their form – which uses flat surfaces, cut-out shapes and rounded open-form volumes in subtle allusions to painterly authority and invention.”
In the 1970's, Holland began using materials in his painting process which were light and strong but which did not require a frame. Using fiberglass and aluminum, making pieces of color which hang on the wall like stiff tapestry, the thin edges allowed the painting to become a part of the space it occupies. Using simple materials and a unique approach combining painting and sculpture, the artist cuts thin sheets of aluminum to build either a wall painting or a free standing sculptural form, using epoxy paint to achieve the effects of depth, light, reflection
Born in Seattle, Washington, Tom Holland studied art at UC Berkeley, traveled to Chile on a Fulbright grant, and began teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute. The artist has received both an NEA Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship.His work is in the collections of all the major museums in the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Guggenheim Museum,the Whitney Museum, theLos Angeles County Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Bob Nugent
“Notavels and Floras” - Paintings and Works on Paper
Shown from February 4th - April 3, 2009
In describing Bay area artist Bob Nugent’s work, the NY art critic Donald Kuspit wrote, “The vital layer, the layer of earth that supports life, that is the real theme of Nugent’s works.” His art is a meditation on this generative layer,which exists below “the earth’s crust, where our feet touch the ground….. where seeds, roots, plants start to gestate.” The work is a reminder that unless man’s inhumanity to nature stops – unless we make a deliberate effort to preserve the vital layer – man will self-destruct.
The artist’s creative journey has covered nearly forty years and thousands of miles. Inspired by his travels in South America, Nugent’s work explores the themes of decay and regeneration, using delicate botanical and historical drawings and the rich flora and fauna of the rainforest as both inspiration and backdrop for his brilliant, complex, and emotive paintings, drawings, and works on panel.
"Notavel" 
Bob Nugent has had over 100 solo exhibitions and has been included in over 550 group exhibitions throughout the United states, Europe, Asia, and South America. He became interested in the rain forests of south America in 1984, and returns to the Amazon Basin three to four times yearly to study and draw inspiration from the rich diversity of flora and fauna.
The artist received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from UC Santa Barbara in 1971. He has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including a Tiffany Fellowship, an NEA fellowship, Fulbright Travel Grant, and a California Arts Council Grant for his work in Brazil.
The Flora Drawings 
“ The drawings entitled Flora Brasiliensis are part of a series of work started in 2006 and continuing today. I discovered a damaged book of botanical drawings in the basement of an old antique book seller in Sao Paulo Brazil…. The book was printed in the year 1870, on beautiful handmade cotton paper, and was a reference guide for botanists. “ After stabilizing the deteriorating antique paper, the artist began to make his own drawings on the paper, using watercolor, gouache, conte, ink and a variety of other materials. “When my drawing started to coincide with images on the paper the relationship began to transform the drawings. My contemporary approach to what I saw and knew about Amazon plant life was now interaction with the historical images on paper.”
Shown from October 8th to November 1st, 2008
Joseph Slusky, sculptor & Suzanne Johnson, artist
Joseph Slusky - Painted Metal Sculpture
By Diana L. Daniels, Associate Curator
Artist Joe Slusky has worked in welded steel for over forty years. He appreciates the directness of this hands-on method and early on felt in the process an affinity to the act of painting.
Wuhu
Media : Steel and acrylic laquer paint
Year : 2004
Dimensions: 14"H x17''L x 10"W
Questioning the usual academic distinctions between the two appealed to the artist, who, in the mid-1970s, influenced by artist Robert Hudson, began hand painting his metal constructions, enlivening his surfaces with colorful geometric and glyphic forms. With this bold step, Slusky satisfyingly added a new dimension to the very serious exploration of planar versus volumetric entities.
Senega
Media: Steel and acrylic laquer paint
Year : 2007
Dimensions: 21"H x18''L x 14"W
This engagement is ongoing and evident in his most recent body of work. Viewed distantly, a Slusky sculpture is a frolic of curves, fearless armatures, and offset geometries. On its otherwise neutral surface, the artist paints playful archetypal shapes in brilliant acrylics that echo the sculpture’s composite elements.
Ogelet
Media:steel and acrylic lacquer, Year 2007
Dimensions:20"H x 13'L x 13"W
Silhouette and overall form yield to this commanding patterning. There is in the work the signature of Bay Area Funk as well as vestiges of Kandinsky, Picasso, and Russian Constructivism. Important as these antecedents may be, they are freshly evoked by Slusky, an artist who, when tempted by both forming and painting, chose both.
Suzanne Johnson - “Poets on Deck”:
Original works in graphite on paper commissioned by SMAC for the Sacramento Poet Laureate Project. Art Foundry Galler
y will be hosting a special reception in the small gallery Saturday October 11th 2008 6-9pm
The artist and Sacramento’s 2008 Poet Laureate will be in attendance.
Julia
Graphic on paper
2 1/2"x3 1/2" 2007
"Poets on Deck Cards are available for sale at the Art Foundry. Julia Connor, Sacramento's third Poet Laureate was appointed by the City Counceil and the County Board of Supervisors. Her Poets on Deck project celetrates the evulation of the Sacramento poetry scene. Each card in this unique deck of playing cards includes a hand-drawn portrait of poets and poetry supporters by Sacramento artist", Suzanne Johnson
Kenjilo Nanao : Recent Works
September 3rd to October 4th 2008 "Kenjilo Nanao is not only very talented but he is among the most dedicated artists that I know, it has been so since we first met in 1960. As a fine modern artist, Kenjilo has managed to bridge the gap so to speak and it is as if he were a giant that was able to have one foot in the United States and one foot still in Japan". Nathan Oliveira
Red Lake
Oil on Canvas
66" x 96"
With great art there is an evolving, symbiotic relationship that an appreciative viewer can trace from one series to the next. Much like tracing the genetic code following a family tree, we behold the revelations theartist has experienced one body of work conceiving the next.
This is the elegant lineage of Kenjilo Nanao’s work we are privy to.
From his early years as a master printmaker, to his highly successful body of representational works, to the culmination of the recent works of abstract expressionism now exhibited at the Art Foundry. Kenjilo Nanao has remained at the forefront of the ‘ Bay Area movement’, both vital and rare.
Silver in Chaos II Oil on Canvas
50" x 70"
A worthy colorist his lush surfaces, balance what Kenjilo describes as “abstract message and abstract form”, to “an elegant state of confusion”. The September exhibition at The Art Foundry of recent oil paintings ,monoprints and prints embody Kenjilo’s melding of culture, and mastery of media and the abstract form which have placed him as a continuing influence and a respected and revered modern artist.
Kenjilo Nanao was born In Japan 1929. He studied at San Francisco Art Institute 1960 -1962 and the Tamarind Institute in 1969. His teaching career includes Professor of Art Cal State University, Professor of Art Emeritus Cal State Hayward, Visiting Professor Stanford University, Visiting Professor University of New Hampshire and Lecturer San Jose State University.
Red Lake II
Oil on Canvas
50" x60"
Kenjilo Nanao’s work is exhibited at major museums and galleries world wide including The Library of Congress Washington D.C., The Museum of Modern Art New York, and The Los Angeles County Museum.
* * *
July 10th to August 16th, 2008
The Subject is Color
An exciting new show opens at the Art Foundry Gallery in July for the combined Summer months of July and August. Featuring fourteen top Northern California artists working in a wide range of media, “The Subject is Color” is a celebration of the rich hues of the season.
Featured are the brilliant oil paintings of local artist Zbigniew Kozikowski, color studies which veer from pure abstraction to sophoisticated cityscapes, imbued with dramatic vertical line and implied space.
Zbigniew Kozikowski
Something Special
18"x24"
Working in large format abstraction are four Bay Area painters: Miki Sue Leavey, Marc Ellen Hamel, Mary Ann Leff, and Linda Fong. The artists’ use of brilliant color and energetic line and form is the perfect complement to enliven modern, clean-lined interiors. Also offering dramatic abstract paintings is local Sally Worthing. Elly Simmons offers work in the folkloric vein, with large figurative abstractions which feature highly textural surface treatments.
Linda Fong
Proper Punctuation
2005 Oil
36"x50"
Mary Ann Leff
Click No
Acrylic, 40"x30"
Elly Simmons
Blue Bird of Happiness
Casein & Collage
Marc Ellen Hamel
Regatta
Oil on Canvas
Area sculptors Larry Love, Maggie Jimenez, and Julie Didion show dramatic and playful works in ceramic and mixed media, while artists Colette Crutcher and Taylor Gutermute present innovative wood and metal constructions.
Colette Crutcher
Tangents 29
Wood & Metal
5"x6"
Larry Love
Vessel #10
17"x20"
Taylor Gutermute
Ecco Colors
Fused Pigment on Metal
14" x 15" x 7"
Maggie Jimenez
Clown and His Trusty Crow
Sculptural Mosaic 2008
18"x14"x6"
June 12th through July 10th 2008
Adam Pierce
Adam Pierce’s large canvases host “scenes… where individual perception and unspoken dialog” can flourish and dwell. The compositions are spare and enticing. Pierce
’s instinctual myriad of brilliant color at times provides the textural depth of grass cloth to that of batiked silk.
Discourse
Oil on Canvas
The artist skews gravity and the weight of the paint. Moni Van Camp Kondos describes the technique as kindred to the “…drips and dribbles of Pat Steir but taking a step away from the abstract by adding the figure.”
The series, born out of portraiture, evolved to gesture and absence of features where suggestion can become more emotional.
Adam Pierce received his B FA from the California College of The Arts and has exhibited his work in gallery and group shows in the Sacramento area as well as in Berkeley and Santa Fe. The artist has also taught art at the middle school for the last six years.
Miki Hsu Leavey
Miki Hsu Leavey’s abstract paintings are lyrical poetry, visual prayers. Working in large scale, ephemeral underpaintings float just beneath the bold gestural movement of her brushstrokes. An accomplished artist, Hsu Leavey brings her work to the Art Foundry prior to her upcoming exhibition in Shanghai, China in November of 2008.
Ms.Leavey states, "Good art is visual poetic imagery with all the qualities of its own language.
Peace Obscurred
Mixed Media
My paintings are spiritual prayers that seek to have rhythm and direction." It is this process of making that compels her to finalize the abundance of forms and colors to fruition.
The artist is a first generation Chinese-American born in the early 1950s in New York. Her decision to do fine art evolved via her creative writing and a teaching degree from Wheaton College. She lives in Napa, California with her husband and two children; and in addition to her work in fine art she is an arts advocate and educator, working with Napa Valley Museum, the diRosa Arts Preserve, and Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts.
Shirley Manfredi
Shirley Manfredi’s figurative pieces express the attraction and significance of the figure as subject matter. 
The painting’s compositions explore divided surfaces; foliage, slips of fabric, wallpaper, carpet, and old buildings set the contrast
Bearing Much Fruit,
Oil on Canvas
presenting a vividly crisp view of the subject to the forefront. The last decade has found Shirley Manfredi’s representational oils as a natural progression and culmination of her creative studies
Shirley Manfredi received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1981 and studied under artist Bob Nugent, who then was instructor at the College of the Siskiyous.
A 1990 National Exhibition of American Art, in Chautauqua , New York, Manfredi won an award juried by Jeremy Strick, who was then the Assoc. Curator of 20th Century Art, at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C., and is currently curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles.
* * * *
April 30th - June 10, 2008
Plastic and Bronze
Works by
Jerry Ross Barrish
Curated by Phil Linhares,
Chief Curator of the Oakland Museum
Artists have often been called alchemists, referring to the medieval chemical philosophy involving the transmutation of base materials- such as lead- into gold.
Jerry Ross Barrish’s special gifts of artistic alchemy are imagination and empathy. He is able to create figurative sculptures from the basest of materials: scraps of plastic found on the beach near his home or gleaned from scrap yards. With these shards of our disposable culture he breathes life into his figures through their eloquent poses and gestures.
Barrish possesses an additional gift of good humor, which animates each figure, expressed through color, gesture and a seemingly effortless series of “right” material choices. The new works, created in plastic and transmuted to bronze, extend his abilities in this enduring medium.
Written by
Phil Linhares
Phil Linhares serves as Chief Curator of Art,
The Oakland Museum of California
***
We are delighted to have Phil Linhares, Chief Curator, The Oakland Museum of California curate our May exhibition of Jerry Ross Barrish entitled “Bronze and Plastic.” Barrish works with m
ostly found plastic objects that he uses to create figurative sculptures of animals, birds and humans.
"Yellow Nymph"
Bronze,
6' x 15" x 15", 2007
It was Linhares’ encouragement that led Barrish to try casting his plastic found object constructions in bronze. Jerry Barrish’s artistic history in both filmmaking and sculpture shows that he is first and foremost a storyteller. To Barrish, it does not matter whether the work is in plastic or bronze, as long as seems alive.
Barrish grad
uated in 1975 from the San Francisco Art Institute with BFA and MFA, and pursued filmmaking for the next 20 years. In 1986 he received a DAAD grant to live in Berlin for 9 months. In 1989 he started sculpting with found materials, mostly plastic.
"At Ease",
Bronze,
52" x 13" x 13", 2007
Barrish’s films have been shown around the world in many film festivals, and his sculptures have been exhibited widely over the Western United States and most recently in Schwerin, Germany.
Barrish is honored to have his sculptures in the permanent collections of nine museums, including The Oakland Museum of California and the San Jose Art Museum.
Jerry Ross Barrish Studio. Photograph taken by Nancy Mona Russell
****
Three Talented Abstract Painters
Shown April 9 to April 29, 2008
Susan Orr
Susan Orr’s series of mixed media works, “Instar “, are intimate explorations of gesture, texture, discovery and change. In nature, the term “Instar” refers to a stage of change in the life cycle.
The pieces, which include oil pastels on acrylic and pastel with acrylic ink wash, involve the viewer in this intrinsic change. The artist states, “These are the paintings that have manifest during this time, reflections of playful times in the studio where the only intention I came to the media with was “ See what happens”. Enjoy! I did.”
Born in New York, with a MFA in Art Therapy from Vermont College of Norwich University Susan Orr’s work has been featured in numerous galleries and private collections throughout the country and abroad.
Cynthia Hurtubis
With a background in graphic art and interior design, Benicia artist Cynthia Hurtubis spent the last decade of her life devoted to the creating a volume of work that has been described as enigmatic, moody, and enchanting. Circular forms appear and reappear throughout the work, floating through the richly textured space amidst earth tones and rich, deeply layered color.
After contracting a rare blood disease which required frequent transfusions, the artist began to address the research and daily experience with this physical process in her paintings, abstract works which explore blood cells forms and their vital function in the body.
The show, which features both large and small format examples of the artist work, is drawn from the private collection of Cynthia Hurtubis family. A portion of the proceeds from the work will be donated to the Cynthia Marie Scholarship Fund at the Department of Arts & Consciousness at JFK University in Berkeley.
Marianne Kolb
Born in Switzerland in 1958, Bay Area artist Marianne Kolb immigrated to the United States in the 1980’s and entered into a creative community in Berkeley, where she began her early exploration into abstract art.
Featured are large format mixed media works from this talented artist, with dramatic overlaying of tone on tone pigment. Her images are both haunting and dreamlike, with shadowy figurative forms emerging from color fields that are both intensely hued and suggestive of liquid forms.
The artist has shown extensively on the West Coast and, with work featured in many private collections.
Shown March 5th – April 5th , 2008
Eileen Hill: Abstract Constructions
The dramatic, contemporary abstract works of Bay Area artist Eileen Hill will be shown in March at the Art Foundry Gallery. Her constructions are lean geometric images which pair cool industrial materials with vivid, emotional color.
Wall Piece
Mixed Media with metal, corrugated board, paint and pencil
1980's
The show, which includes monotypes, paintings on metal and mixed media works, was featured in a retrospective survey at the The Triton Museum in San Jose in Spring ’07. Hill’s work is featured in numerous museum, corporate, and private collections throughout the country.
Born in New York and raised in California, she studied art in the Bay Area and in 1976 joined the Art Department of Mission College in Santa Clara, and developed the curriculum and the faculty for the Three-Dimensional Art Program at the college until her death from cancer in November 2003.
"#3 With Steel and Bronze "
Mixed media, paint, steel & bronze
Her skill as a teacher was acknowledged when she received the prestigious Mission College Faculty Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence in 1994, and with it the NISOD Excellence Award for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning presented by the University of Texas at Austin.
This exhibition honors the life and work of a consummate artist who was an acclaimed teacher and whose talent and ability inspired a generation of Bay Area art students. Over the years Eileen exhibited in dozens of solo and group shows around the nation.
Shown January 5th to February 23,2008
Gregory Kondos
New Kondos Original Oils, Drawings and Limited Edition Prints
The Art Foundry Gallery is privileged to show the largest collections of Gregory Kondos’ original oils and drawings in years.
River Life
Gregory Kondos has long been distinguished as one of the world's most prominent California landscape artists. He has earned many awards and prizes, and his work is included in the permanent collections of many museums, among them the Crocker Art Museum, the Oakland Museum, the Phoenix Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Carmel Beach
His paintings, drawings and prints have been described by Art Harlow, Director of the Hearst Art Gallery at St. Mary's College, as "a visual feast for those who love landscape art and the unique beauty of California's diverse terrain."
Still ruggedly handsome at 81, the gregarious and animated Kondos seems driven by restless energy.
The Caribbean
He has an infectious love of life which is visually transferred to his celebratory paintings of the landscapes of the Sacramento Valley, Greece, the American Southwest and the south of France (not co-incidentally the home of his idol, French post-impressionist Paul Cezanne); all places dear to him and where he has homes and studios. His vivid paintings also capture and reflect the loneliness of land and a spirit of these exterior spaces.
* * *
Inside Alzheimer’s: Portraits of the Mind by William Utermohlen.
Aging Services of California, a leading advocate in the state for quality senior living and care, strives to develop progressive and innovative strategies for Californians to age well into the future. In an effort to educate, initiate dialogue and create more awareness of the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on our loved ones, on our caregivers, on our healthcare system.
Aging Services presents Inside Alzheimer’s: Portraits of the Mind by William Utermohlen. William Utermohlen learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease. “From that moment on, he began to try to understand it by painting himself,” said his widow Patricia Utermohlen, a professor of art history. His indomitable creative expression and self-awareness, captured in a chronological series of self-portraits, provides an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of someone descending into dementia.
First self portrait of William painted in 1996, second in 1997, third in 1998 and the last self portrait painted in 1999.
The Art Foundry Gallery is Sacramento’s most diverse art complex, which features two floors of contemporary and fine art galleries, art studios, workshops and a large bronze art foundry casting the works of top West Coast sculptures. The Art Foundry Gallery is exhibiting all 19 original works of art by William Utermohlen during the month of February 2008.
December 6 to December 30,2007
Farrar Wilson
Artist Statement: From the beginning, my interest wa
s in art, drawing in particular. In high school I was preparing for a major in Architectural Engineering, but a stint in the U.S. Navy interrupted that and gave me a chance to reflect and reconsider. By the time I entered the University of Colorado, Abstract Expressionism was burgeoning and I embraced it.
Nancy Mona russell
Artist Statement: Not obviously representational, without iconography, symbolism or historic reference, these paintings might be considered abstractions. of visual memories, Sometimes
the surface, colors, forms take their own essence, rather than being something remembered, they become something discovered in the process-a distillation of the experience of making the artwork itself. But as each of us will have a singular interaction with the work, there might also be a deep exploration into our own nature as viewers.
November 2 to November 30, 2007
Michael Todd
Almost a decade ago Michael Todd opened the Art Found
ry Gallery with a sensuous collection of his bronze work. This November,in celebration of the Art Foundry’s 9th year anniversary he again joins Alan Osborne by exhibiting his most recent sculptural ceramics.
Michael Todd is a prominent California sculptor who has taught at UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, Cal Arts and the Otis Art Institute. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum in New York, the H. Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Norton Simon in Pasadena and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Known for his wooden “fetishes,” bronzes and minimalist constructions of welded steel, the abstract sculptor started working with clay in 1988. A sculptor and a painter, Michael Todd found a completely new way to utilize his own personal language of geometric shapes—his signature style for much of the 1980s and 1990s. His ceramic sculptures from the early 1990s onwards are extremely sensual and display exquisite manipulation of the medium, creating a personal vocabulary of shapes and form.
Alan Osborne
Infused with brilliant color and strong abstract forms, the
exciting new copper enamel paintings of regional artist Alan Osborne are the most powerful works to date in his recent series. Like a journey through the cosmos, the whirling, energetic circular forms compel the viewer through the pictorial plane, suggesting radiant constellations in deep space.
The works are further explorations into a process of presenting pure, abstract forms through the rich medium of enamel on copper. Through multiple firings, the vibrant glass coloration is indelibly fused to the copper, bringing the materials into a cohesive whole. The series, entitled “Ascesis”, proceeds from the artists ongoing exploration into pure abstraction 
and movement, drawing inspiration from an ancient Latin term originating from the root word, “ askesis“,which translates literally as exercise and self-discipline.
A dramatic new development in Osborne’s work is a series of bronze bas-relief figurative pieces. Tall and planar, the works feature the human figure articulated in energetic line work. The image is created in wax, then translated through the bronze casting with the artist’s unique patina application, producing an indistinct, tone-on-tone coloration which casts the expressive sculptural drawings into high relief.
October 9 to October 27,2007
2008 Beijing Olympic Landscape Sculpture Tour
Hosted by the Art Foundry Gallery
Exhibit showing the Award Winners of the Olympic Landscape Sculpture Competition.
The Art Foundry Inc. was proud to host the Beijing's Olympic Landscape award winners. "We are the first in the United States to be showing the International Tour of Award Winners of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Landscape Sculpture Competition", stated Alan Osborne, owner and president of the Art Foundry Gallery.
The Exhibition was on view at Sacramento's Convention Center and the Art Foundry Gallery.
Thank you to the sponsors that made this event possible.
Arts and Antiques** Cada** California Arts Council**City of Sacramento**County of Sacramento** KVIE** Master Color**Nehemiah Corporation** Sacramento Convention Center & Visitors Bureau** Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission **
The Award Winning 2008 Olympic Artist, USA are:
**Asherah Cinnamon & Scott Fuller shared a true spirit of collaboration on their entry. Both were graduate students at Maine College of Art and met dozens of times during its creation. Cinnamon was deeply involved to participate as she was born in China after her parents and 20,000 other Jews were saved from the Holocaust by Shanghai’s open immigration policies. Fuller, originally from Auburn, California, says, “Nations are delicate. The Olympics are a diplomatic tool. We tried to create a space where many cultures can come together.”
**Edward Ey
th spent decades of his life refining his skills in figurative drawing while pursuing a successful design career, primarily in Los Angeles. Recently, his creative energies have been focused on figurative sculpture, for which he has received recognition and praise. “My Olympic sculpture represents the extraordinary efforts required in building of one’s own destiny, and the destiny of one’s culture.” He now lived and teaches in New York City.
**Ralf Gschwend—Ralfonso is a Swiss designer of large kin
etic sculptures and murals living and working in Florida and Geneva, Switzerland. He has shown in many solo and group exhibitions throughout the world and received many commissions for public art in Florida. He is the founder of Kinetic Art Organization, with over 1000 members and now the largest kinetic art organization in the world.
**Shray emp
loys the rare Subtractionist technique in her work, releasing the human forms from blocks of clay, and translating the results into bronze. She began her interest in sculpture as a teenager, visiting the Louvre in Paris, and has made the study of art a lifelong pursuit. Her work is exhibited in many prestigious galleries and collected world-wide. “My piece honors the parents worldwide who nurture the Olympic dream.”
**Carole Turner is based in Portland, Oregon. Her figurative and abstract sculptures in marble, bronze, and patinated cement are found in public and private collections throughout the world. After a career in business, and fueled by years of international travel and intent study, she was led to creating art full time. Her voluptuous forms capture a mood or moment, but also express surprising thought and unique stories.
**Mark and Diane Weisbeck are well known artists primarily engaged in large scale public projects, having recently completed the largest fully funded art commission in New York State’s history, three bridges along the highway in Downtown Rochester. They have been designing lighting ”structures” as they refer to them, for years, and the works have been featured in the Museum of Modern Art in New York
**Mark Williamson is primarily focused on large scale stone works. Over the past five years he has been accepted in more than 20 national juried competitions, winning several top awards. “My work brings updated perspectives to stone sculpture. My pieces incorporate innovations and the use of non-traditional materials such that the organic nature of stone is preserved but revealed.”
