Building Bridges: Breaking Barriers: Part One

11 February - 8 April 2021

    • Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers exhibition is a call for attention and an attempt to address the profound issue of ageism engrained in our society.  The pandemic era has not only helped unmask, but negatively fueled the already existing ageist sentiment, promoting the troubling narrative about the value of older adults in our society.

       

      This two-part exhibition series aims to help break barriers in perception by recognizing the unique agility and skill possessed by professional older artists at the pinnacle of their careers, their continued value and contribution to the arts and society, leading us to building bridges of an intergenerational nature.

    • The exhibition highlights artists who are particularly notable for their ability to transform their oeuvre in the thick of their careers. Each artist displays a selection of works that represent evolution and, sometimes, rupture from earlier works, demonstrating a compelling ability to take risks, break new grounds and shape attitudes through their artistic practice.

       

      Drawing artists from a range of disciplines, from quilt-making, drawing, painting, ceramics, to photography, the exhibition reveals that curiosity, unbound imagination, and inventiveness are defining characteristics that only come with age.

       

      Artists: Beth Fein, Howard Hersh, Joan Schulze, Keith Wilson, Corey Weiner, Liz Mamorsky
      Curator: Hanna Regev

       

       

      Press Release →

      Artwork List →

       

  • Beth Fein

    Beth Fein, Broken Painting Remains Unfinished, 1987 

     

    Beth Fein

    There’s a tradition in ceramics that emphasizes and even embraces unexpected faults such as cracking, breaks or glaze crazing; sometime these flaws are enhanced with gilding. The cracks emphasize the unpredictability of working with clay and the acceptance of these chance encounters. This was a homage to that attitude of that imperfection has it’s own beauty. It is also a reference to the question: when is a work finished?

     


    CURATORIAL COMMENT 


    Beth Fein's work draws upon the old Japanese practice of Kintsugi when a breakage is repaired to emphasize strength and beauty. It holds a strong message about the power of accepting imperfections and flaws as a way to build bridges. As we overcome challenges, be it ageism or otherwise, we too become stronger, more resilient and more united.

     

     

  • "Sheltering in place has altered the physical space and the community that contextualizes my art practice. The Dream works were created while in quarantine. They capture the emotional stress of working in isolation while the world is spinning out of control with COVID-19, the ongoing protests and politic chaos that surrounds us. These prints layer my subconscious, my photographs, pinhole photographs and my hand-pulled etchings & screen prints." 

     

    Beth Fein

  • Howard Hersh

    Howard Hersh, Straight Forward Curves, 2006

    Howard Hersh

    I've always combined, mixed, and matched the geometric and the organic. The proportions of the two have gradually changed, but consistently in the direction of the geometric. For me, change does not have to be explained or even understood. It is about listening to muses and following passions. I accept change because I believe that the life of an artist is a journey, not a destination. 

      

    By embracing change and evolution, our work can be seen as fresh, relevant, and timeless. For the maker and the viewer, connections are made, feelings are experienced, and we all feel a little closer, whatever our ages. 

     

    CURATORIAL COMMENT


    Breaking barriers is an evolutionary process. Hersh is attuned to changes and moves with the flow intuitively, both creatively and technically. The artist has moved away from his two-dimensional encaustic large paintings, crossing disciplines and fusing paintings and sculpture to create his now-signature three-dimensional “structural paintings", an example of artistic expertise and skill.     

     

     

     

  • "As a full time artist in my senior years, I equate my age not negatively, but with an accumulated wisdom, both creatively and technically."

    Howard Hersh

     

  • Joan Schulze

    Joan Schulze, Cloud Riding, 1983

    Joan Schulze

    1983 was the year of constant rain, flooding and leaky roofs in California. I conceived of Cloud Riding in response to the constant refrain of deluge. In the 1980s I dyed my own fabrics and began to investigate printing images on cloth. The technology was not ready yet. I continued experimenting. 

     

    CURATORIAL COMMENT
     

    Joan Schulze is a quilt maker who throughout her career has been incorporating non-traditional, innovative and interdisciplinary practices in making her quilts. Starting from her early works in 1980s, like the groundbreaking Cloud Riding, Schulze began to experiment with dying fabrics, image transfer processes, collaging of materials, embracing the digital age with innovative new technologies that she bend to her vision. Following decades on improvisation, and inspired by San Francisco's changing city landscape, she expertly marries all of these elements in her new series of mirage-like, layered works represented here by Fata Morgana.

     

     

  • For 20 years my San Francisco studio had a panoramic view of the south-facing city. Things changed in 2016. The...

    Joan Schulze, Fata Morgana #4, 2020

    For 20 years my San Francisco studio had a panoramic view of the south-facing city. Things changed in 2016. The land was sold, cleared and for 3 years I watched from my window as the buildings took shape. What was left of my view was minimal. Of necessity, I was having to change my focus to developments across the street. I was also experimenting with distorting photos in the camera, in real time without Photoshop. The images became non-traditional, more cubist, unsettling. A whole new world opened up.

     

    Two thought lines created a new series. Photos made as the light changed when images from the neighborhood were reflected in my window and the construction images combined to become the Fata Morgana* Series.  

     

  • "From the beginning of my artistic life, I included non-traditional practices in making my quilts. In the 1980s Cloud Riding was considered groundbreaking. There is never a bridge too far during my search for the new."


    Joan Schulze

  • Keith Wilson

    Keith Wilson, The Ascent of Architecture, 1985

    Keith Wilson

    This small watercolor is representative of a much larger body of work and was the foundation of years of study and development of architecture real and imagined.

     

    CURATORIAL COMMENT


    The intimate scale of the works, Wilson says, aims to "invite close scrutiny, limit distractions, intensifying involvement of the viewer’s imagination with the work", a vision that resonates today more than ever with our current reliance on tablet devices and phone displays to consume visual information. In 2000, Wilson decides to leave his architectural career to focus on painting - changing the medium to oil paint, the subject of his work to pure abstraction, but keeping his focus on exploration of color and constructed forms. Breaking with conventions of the art market and the gallery system of representation is another deliberate decision. “I am attempting to create paintings that are narrative neutral, self-contained and free from reference to commercial, social or manufactured influences: embedded with an aura or a mnemonic coding, ” says Wilson.

     

     

  • Upon completion of the large oil painting, Forest Houses, I selected a number of focused passages or vortices that were...

    Keith Wilson, Forest Houses Series.04, 2020

    Upon completion of the large oil painting, Forest Houses, I selected a number of focused passages or vortices that were singled out and repainted as simple and direct impasto detail paintings. This process of discovery and reworking of the selected crops freed me from the constraints of re-establishing shapes, design and color selection. I was able to concentrate on precise color mixing and application which was accomplished with a collection of palette knives.

     

    The group of resulting details .01-.06 share similar abstracted references to the elements of houses and buildings that are partially observable among the trees and breaks in the Sea Ranch fogs. They are further informed by the colors of the verdant forests, sky, ocean and sunsets.

     

  • "My artistic work has always been generated by an intense internal direction. I discontinued my professional architecture practice in 2000 to devote full attention to painting. Changing medium to oil paint allowed me to develop at a much bolder scale while still remaining focused on color and constructed forms. The direct formal study of architecture faded as a subject of my paintings, replaced by pure abstraction and visual relationships."

     

    Keith Wilson

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  • Corey Weiner

    Corey Weiner, Estelle, 2018

    Corey Weiner

    I have always painted portraits. For me, they bring up the questions of how we see others and ourselves. I continually paint self-portraits as I consider myself an aging, changing self.

    I paint people I know for the most part, that interest me, that I want to understand. I feel people's selves, self-perception, or my perception of them is automatically there if I paint what I see. The viewers see not only the person painted, but more often their own self-image and their beliefs about others, causing both positive and negative reactions. 

     

     

  • In this painting I am beginning to explore how much detail and/or 'realism' is necessary to evoke and portray a...

    Corey Weiner, She Wants Something, But..., 2021

    In this painting I am beginning to explore how much detail and/or "realism" is necessary to evoke and portray a person. I have always felt that realism for me can lack emotion and life. I am trying to find the place that hits that mark, "getting" the person. These expressive images are often disturbing to people. Sometimes it hits us at an unconscious level and may show things we do not or had not intended to display.


    CURATORIAL COMMENT

    Weiner's portraits of a group of older adults call attention to ageism and invite the viewer to think about the way they see themselves, how they want to be seen and to tell us about how we see others. Each of the paintings, with its unique gestures, captures a certain mood that the subject projects, conveying the intrepid spirits and wisdom that only comes with age, challenging the audience to question their own perception of age-ing. It is only when we understand the experiences that lead to breaking barriers, that we may contemplate a vision for building bridges.

     

     

     

     

  • Liz Mamorsky

    Liz Mamorsky, Madrone, 1971

    Liz Mamorsky

    After graduating in 1960 from Bennington College, I headed for New York and was taken on by The Contemporaries Gallery. They represented noted Op Artist Richard Anuskewicz and felt that my biomorphic Op Art paintings would be a good contrast with his very geometric ones. 

     

    Eventually my non-objective work gave way to visionary/surreal imagery, which then morphed into sculpture. I explored and taught myself new skills: woodworking, lighting, joinery, using reclaimed electronics, until 2018 when I discovered iPHONEOGRAPHY.

  • CURATORIAL COMMENT For Liz Mamorsky, the breaking barriers metaphor is personal - the artist had to overcome her fear of...

    Liz Mamorsky, Street Jazz Series, 2020

     CURATORIAL COMMENT
     

    For Liz Mamorsky, the breaking barriers metaphor is personal - the artist had to overcome her fear of cameras and their f-stops, discover a new medium of iPhoneography, reinvent her practice, only to realize that the only barriers she had to break were her self-imposed ones. As for building bridges, the fascination with colors is carried over through decades, from the Madrone biomorphic Optical Art (Op Art) painting into her current photography where the bright colors excite the eye, to form a metaphorical bridge, a symbol of unity.

     

  • "The only barriers I had to break were my self-imposed ones."

     

    Liz Mamorsky