Terra Cognita : Nature in Art

Terra Cognita: Nature in Art

Terra Cognita : Nature in Art Kay Bradner . Cristina C贸rdova . Charles Eckart . Kristen Garneau . Lisa Kokin . Frances McCormack Gretchen Jane Mentzer . Nora Pauwels . Carole Pierce . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Helen Stanley

Terra Cognita : Nature in Art Kay Bradner . Cristina C贸rdova . Charles Eckart . Kristen Garneau . Lisa Kokin . Frances McCormack Gretchen Jane Mentzer . Nora Pauwels . Carole Pierce . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Helen Stanley July 1 - July 30, 2015 Reception for the Artists: Saturday, July 11, 5:30 - 7:30 Front Cover: Alexander Rohrig, Oak Tree, 2013, spackling compound, ink and charcoal on wood board, 24 x 24 in Back Cover: Lisa Kokin, Beginnings and Endings, 2013, cowboy book pages, thread, beeswax, wire, mull, cotton

batting, 69 x 26 x 12 in Photo Credits: Lisa Kokin: Lia Roozendaal, Jagwire Design Frances McCormack: Joe McDonald Nora Pauwels: Kim Harrington Carole Pierce: Jay Daniel Jane Rosen: Scotty McDonald Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415-384-8288 seagergray.com All rights reserved.

Terra Cognita : Nature in Art Kay Bradner . Cristina Córdova . Charles Eckart . Kristen Garneau . Lisa Kokin . Frances McCormack Gretchen Jane Mentzer . Nora Pauwels . Carole Pierce . Alexander Rohrig . Jane Rosen . Helen Stanley

In the words of Wassily Kandinsky, “If the artist has outer and inner eyes for nature, nature rewards him by giving him inspiration.” The exhibition, Terra Cognita takes a look at artists whose work reflects the natural world. Whether it is in the celebration of the landscape as in the works of Kristen Garneau and Alexander Rohrig or in the glorious abstracted references to nature in Frances McCormack’s Hunting Grounds, Charles Eckart’s Spring or Carole Pierce’s Luminous Tree, nature is at the heart of all these talented artists’ work.

In pieces like Jane Rosen’s exquisite blown glass Big Cash Wall Bird, the intention is to explore nature at its very essence in capturing the elegance and nobility of California’s birds of prey. The fascinating floor installation by Gretchen Jane Mentzer conjures associations with river beds and the flotsam and jetsam left on the shore by receding waves and the carborundum prints on flowing silk by Nora Pauwels replicate the subtle movement and variety of leaves from trees that have played a role in her life.

Works on clayboard by Helen Stanley reveal a lifetime of drawing the delicate beauty and whirling patterns of birds and nests she has observed in the natural world, from her childhood in New Mexico to her adult home in Marin County. Kay Bradner’s mixture of crisply drawn lines and colorful abstraction give harmony to her realizations of magnolia and oak trees. Finally, we have the masterful clay Lobo (wolf) of Cristina Córdova, the bone white skull imprinted with the markings of time while the horticultural pod form of Lisa Kokin’s Beginnings and Endings returns the pages of pulp cowboy novels to their origins as wood and plant fiber.

Kay Bradner Magnolia, 2015 13.75 x 20 in (36 x 50 cm) oil on paper mounted on aluminum

Kay Bradner (right) The Carole’s Maple, 2015 22 x 30 in (56 x 76 cm) oil on aluminum

Kay Bradner There is an unmistakable quality to Kay Bradner’s work.

Crisply incised lines define the shapes of the central objects, while abstracted fields of color deepen the space around them. She often uses several media in a single work to achieve the effect she wants. Rich abstracted fields of color using a monotype-like technique contrast with the sharp intaglio line drawn into the surface. Many of these recent works are created on aluminum. The surface is one that as a printmaker, Kay is very comfortable with.

The evolution of painting and incorporating the many techniques she had mastered is uniquely hers.

Bradner was born in Foxboro, Massachusetts. She attended Oregon State University where she studied geology. She soon realized that it was not just the

“logic” of landscapes that engaged her, but the beauty of them – in her words, “Beauty informed by logic.”

She turned her focus to making art. She received her Masters in Fine Art from the CCAC (California College of Arts and Crafts) in 1975. Bradner has taught at at CCAC, UC Davis and The San Francisco Art Institute.

In the artist’s own words, “The way I paint is less a process of creating and more one of finding the images.....and nudging the loose and splashy underpaintings into some kind of relationship with my crisp line drawings. I use stencils, scraping and painting to try to get to that tipping point where things seem very real but where the motion and abstraction of the initial painting are not lost.”

Cristina Córdova Cristina Córdova was born in Boston Mass in 1976. Her parents were Puerto Ricans completing their studies in Medicine at Harvard University. They returned to Puerto Rico when she was 6 months old. She holds a Masters degree from the NY State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and a B.A., magna cum laude from the Colegio de Agricultura y Artes Mecanicas in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Her work is in the collections of the Renwick Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico, the Fuller Craft Museum, The Mint Museum of Craft and Design – to name a few.

Córdova’s subject matter is often mythical and archetypal, as in this skull of a wolf, Lobo. In some cultures’ creation myths, the wolf is the first creature to experience death. This symbol of the wolf as a skull, its bone-white surface marked with the reflections of the grasses and clues about the surrounding culture fits Córdova’s work which has been described as “a compelling strain of magical realism... laden with ideas of creation, crucifixion and the difficult nature of existence.” She is interested in the internal struggle of her characters and creates symbolic representations of that struggle, constantly challenging herself to extend the boundaries of what can be done in the clay medium.

Cristina Córdova Lobo, 2015

11 x 8 x 15 in (28 x 20 x 38 cm) ceramic, resin, metal

Charles Eckart Growing up in Yosemite Valley in the 50s, Charles Eckart was surrounded by majestic beauty in a place where long hikes and the change of seasons might well turn the creative mind inward. Eckart’s concerns are metaphysical - with questions of being and becoming. His forms and images emerge from the energy of the paint itself.

The paintings in this exhibiiton, one an earlier work entitled Spring and a more recent series - Ground Cover explore in pure oil paint the magic and mystery in nature. In Spring, Eckart captures the power of a rainstorm by allowing liquid paint to come down in drips while the leaves and branches seems to shake in the wind, capturing the power of the natural world coming out of winter hibernation and bursting into life. In Crow’s Nest, Ground Cover #46, the density of brushstrokes and glorious palette replicates the multitudinous variations found in dense stands of trees.

Charles Eckart attended the University of the Pacific, the Art Center of College and Design in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Art Institute.

He exhibited regularly with Charles Campbell Gallery from 1980 to 1989 and then with the Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery from 1990 to 2000.

His work has been reviewed frequently by writers from Alfred Frankenstein and Thomas Albright to Mark Van Proyen and Kenneth Baker.

Charles Eckart Spring, 1993

70 x 56 in (178 x 142 cm) oil on canvas

Charles Eckart

Crow’s Nest, Ground Cover #46 35 x 35 in (76 x 76 cm) oil on canvas

Kristen Garneau Although the paintings of Kristen Garneau begin with actual experiences in nature, she is influenced as much by Abstract Expressionist masters as she is by the more traditional painters. She simplifies forms and reduces shapes, allowing her to explore more freely. She is interested in what she calls the “in between times” at dawn or dusk or when fog rolls in or a light rain diffuses or intensifies the light.

Garneau grew up in California’s Contra Costa County riding horses along the watershed lands that inpired a lifelong love of nature. In the 60’s she enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts, completing two years there. She feels that it was 20 years later, however, that she finally found her voice. She credits her mentor Chester Arnold with whom she studied over a 12 year period with helping her develop her own style, softening colors and shapes and finding the subtle magic of particular times of day.

Kristen Garneau (left) The Soft Rain, 2014

48 x 48 in (122 x 121 cm) oil on canvas

Kristen Garneau (upper right) Windbreak, 2014

12 x 14 in (30 x 35 cm) oil on linen

Kristen Garneau (lower right) Giacomini Wetlands, 2014 8 x 10 in (20 x 25 cm) framed 15.5x17.5 in oil on board

Lisa Kokin In 2013, Lisa Kokin had a one person exhibition entitled How the West was Sewn. The source material for the exhibition was cowboy novels from the 40’s and 50’s with their romanticized vision of the shoot-em-up cowboy and the glorification of a gun culture that Kokin finds abhorrent.

The machismo and violence were so overt and over the top that they begged to be rearranged and recontextualized. In Beginnings and Endings, Kokin returns the beginning and ending pages of the novels to their original life as trees and plant fibers. The horticultural forms become, in her words, “life-affirming.”

Kokin’s work is often a critique of the socio-political status quo imbued with a healthy dose of levity and a keen sensitivity to materials and processes. Sewing and fiberrelated sensibilities play a key role in much of Kokin’s work, which she attributes to growing up in a family of upholsterers.

Thread, which in the past she used to construct and embellish her work has, in her most recent body of work, become the primary material. Kokin explores irony and memory in her seemingly ephemeral pieces, allowing transiency itself to be immortalized in lasting works of art.

Lisa Kokin

Beginnings and Endings, 2013 69 x 26 x 12 in (175 x 66 x 30 cm) cowboy book pages, thread, beeswax, wire, mull, cotton batting (details on right)

Frances McCormack Frances McCormack was born in Boston and received her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. She is Associate Professor in the Painting Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. McCormack was the recipient of the first SFAI faculty residency at the American Academy in Rome, three Buck Foundation individual artist grants and a Djerassi Residency.

Frances McCormack’s canvases are lush, with references to natural places - gardens, forests and woods. The paintings combine stark architectural elements and loosely interpreted botanical forms. She incorporates landscape design drawings into her loose passages and biological shapes. In Hunting Grounds,(left) dark trunks of abstracted trees interplay with floating shapes and coils. The “woods” in this painting are dark and deep, full of surprises, both inviting and dangerous.

Frances McCormack

Hunting Grounds, 2009 80 x 74 in (203 x 187 cm) oil on panel

Gretchen Jane Mentzer Untitled, 2003-15

108 x 48 in (274 x 121 cm) plant materials, plant pigments, paper, ash, foil, patinas and time

Gretchen Jane Mentzer (far right)

Untitled

64.5 x 14 x 7 in (165 x 35 x 18 cm) wire, paper, concrete and paint

Gretchen Jane Mentzer (right)

Shield

38 x 38 x 6 in (97 x 96 x 15 cm) wire structure, paper, papier-mâchÊ

Gretchen Jane Mentzer Gretchen Jane Mentzer is a sculptor and installation artist whose work engages landscape and environments, both natural and constructed. Her work has been exhibited at The Bolinas Museum and the Koahsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan.

She has had residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Hall Farm Center in Vermont among others. Mentzer has created many extraordinary installations and environments throughout her years as an artist, always maintaining a respect for materials and an instinct for natural forms and process. She lives in Mill Valley, California.

Mentzer’s floor installation developed over a 12 year period, beginning in 2003. The spheres, shells and fibers resemble patterns in nature, both on a naked eye and microscopic level.

It was Mentzer who once said that “good art inpires multiple associations.� The installation might call to mind any number of patterns in nature from a river bed, what is left behind when a wave recedes along a beach or cells under a microscope. The fibres might be cilia or connective cords in organisms.

Her other works, Shield and Untitled are inspired by the shapes and textures discovered in travels in the Great Basin Desert of the American Southwest.

Nora Pauwels

Mulberry Morus, 2015 86 x 36 in (218 x 91 cm) carborundum prints on silk

Nora Pauwels Born and raised in Belgium, Nora Pauwels’ work is an exploration of her world here in America and back home.

In her most recent work, Pauwels has focused on plants, which function for her as portraits, each plant having meaning to the artist in a personal way.

In this case, Norway Maple comes from leaves collected for her by her father-in-law in Portland.

Mulberry was created from the tree outside their home.

The works in this exhibition are made by tracing leaves on plexi plates and applying carborundum. The plates are inked and printed on silk. The silk gives the leaves the kind of subtle movement that leaves have in nature and the transparency of the silk replicates the stark outline against the light. The presentation of the leaves one by one might call to mind the patterns in Delft Tiles, especially in the blue works, but it also speaks to how a single shape might be replicated in nature again and again while each remains unique.

Nora Pauwels

Norway Maple Acer Platanoides, 2015 86 x 36 in (218 x 91 cm) carborundum prints on silk

Carole Pierce Carole Pierce attended graduate school at California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) in Oakland, where she focused on printmaking, received an MFA with Highest Distinction. Charles Gill, then chair of printmaking, was a big influence, and Pierce also did an independent study with Cal professor Minimalist painter David Simpson, who helped form her aesthetic.

She also feels a strong kinship with the Hudson River School, painters such as Thomas Cole, who celebrated the majesty of the natural world surrounding them, with its echoes of the sublime, and particularly with the work of Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, whose breathtaking landscapes as Pierce puts it, “have a quality of something that’s not quite right, that’s just a little bit off...”

Luminous Tree reflects Pierce’s interest in the fleeting moment held still, in this case the moment when a gust of wind releases leaves from the limbs of the tree, their surfaces reflecting the light of the sun.

Carole Pierce

Luminous Tree, 2014 60 x 60 in (152 x 152 cm) oil on canvas

Alexander Rohrig Alexander Rohrig lives and works in magnificent surroundings in the mountains in San Gregorio. In 2009, he took a position as studio assistant to artist and sculptor Jane Rosen on her ranch, a beautiful natural preserve high in the California mountains.

Under Rosen’s tutelage and with his daily practice of drawing from these surroundings, Rohrig developed a drawing style and vision all his own. Reluctant to exhibit until he felt that he had found his own expression, Rohrig will be featured in three exhibitions in 2015 and was featured in an article in Works and Conversation, an insightful chronicle of California art and artists published and written

by Richard Whittaker. His time has arrived.

Rohrig works minimally, getting the “bones” down before moving on. He has a studied restraint, careful not to cloud the original essence of the thing he is aiming at. His work with Rosen over the years has given him an intimate understanding of materials and the translation from drawing to finished work is sensitive and respectful of his subject matter.

Alexander Rohrig was raised in Northern California and received his education at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

Alexander Rohrig Oak Tree, 2013

24 x 24 in (61 x 60 cm) spackling compound, ink and charcoal on wood boar

Alexander Rohrig

Pescadero Marsh, 2013 9.75 x 10.75 in (61 x 60 cm) walnut ink on paper

Jane Rosen Studio Bird

30 x 22 x 16 in (76 x 55 x 41 cm) egg tempera and ink on paper

Jane Rosen Jane Rosen is an American artist, working in sculpture, drawing and printmaking. While Rosen’s career was established in her native New York in the 1970s and 80s, with well received exhibitions and a teaching position at the School of Visual Arts, a trip to Northern California provided an unexpected pivot for her aesthetic vision and her life. She lived on both coasts and subsequently began a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley. Rosen made the break from her urban existence as an artist in New York to a life as an artist on her ranch in California.

The exquisite blown glass birds by Jane Rosen are a testament to a lifelong practice of drawing from nature and internalizing the aspects which give the form its “essence.� In Big Cash Wall Bird, Rosen overcomes the difficulties of working with the fluid medium of hot molten glass and is able to articulate the mottled white swelling of the chest and the layered multicolored feathers. Rosen is a master of materials - stubbornly reworking and devising new methods until she achieves the exact quality and presence arrived at through her drawing.

Studio Bird is a drawing by Rosen, attesting to the artists prodigious ability to capture her subject matter, not as a form seen from the eyes of the viewer, but as a being looking out at the artist with its own eyes.

The intention is to find the core of the subject matter through intense observation and repeated drawing.

Jane Rosen

Big Cash Wall Bird, 2015 18 x 6 x 5 in (46 x 15 x 13 cm) hand blown pigmented glass

Helen Stanley

Cormorant, 2004 10 x 8 in (25 x 20 cm) watercolor on clayboard

Helen Stanley Helen Stanley creates idealized works of astonishing detail. The adherence to nature in them is astounding, but they are neither from photographs or plein air. They come entirely from observation and memory. An avid hiker and world traveler, Stanley takes delight in the idiosyncracies and humor in nature. Her works are populated by the multitude of “critters” actually there, but seldom included in most artist works, all rendered with amazing fidelity.

Helen Stanley came to the Bay Area in 1966 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. She grew up in Farmington, New Mexico and remembers that her very first oil paintings, created when she was in the fifth grade were of the cottonwood trees that grow along the rivers there. Her late mother, an elementary school teacher, recognized young Helen’s artistic talent and would take her on excursions to New Mexico’s Colorado Plateau so that she could practice drawing the dramatic landscape and develop her extraordinary powers of observation.

Stanley studied with Bruce McGaw, Julius Hatofsky and Stephen de Staebler at the Art Institute and then moved to the print department where she could put her advanced drawing skills to better use. There she was able to work with Kathan Brown and Gordon Cook. After a delay of a few years, she attended Sacramento State for her Masters degree, studying there with Joseph Rafael and Bill Allan. She has been widely exhibited in many galleries including Paule Anglim Gallery, the William Sawyer, Susan Cummins and the Seager Gray Gallery.

Helen Stanley

Red-winged Blackbird Nest 10 x 8 in (25 x 20 cm) graphite and watercolor on clayboard

Helen Stanley

Red-winged Blackbird Nest 10 x 8 in (25 x 20 cm) graphite and watercolor on clayboard