Virtual/Window #2 May 2020

 

Avenue 12 Gallery currently has this impromptu exhibition in our windows:

We asked artists to submit work in reaction to the pandemic. This month we have new work from Yuriko Takata and Jenny Wantuch. Artists from last month include: Chip Sullivan, Deirdre Weinberg, Eden Gallanter, Tamsin Smith, Jennifer Marie Keller, Lynn Sondag, Rebecca Nie, Rachel Murray Meyer, Jeff Petersen, and Angela Chen.

This is an ongoing exhibition so we will rotate in new works as they become available. If you, or an artist friend, would like to submit work(s) for consideration, please email.

In our 12th Avenue Window are works by Maeve Croghan.

Scroll down for images of the individual works.

Please Take Care and Stay Healthy!

-Vince and Rachel

Jenny M.L. Wantuch
Man In Spring 1
10″ x 8″  Oil on panel $450

Jenny M.L. Wantuch Artist Statement:

This painting titled “Man in Spring I” is part of a new series of paintings with a solitary figure in landscape. I was interested in expressing the mental state that life’s challenges reveal. The landscape with the energizing light of the sun suggests springtime, a time that is symbolic for love and growth but also a time for personal change and renewal.  I am interested in the visual poetry and story telling that a solitary figure in landscape evokes, and it is a theme that I frequently revisit. The Bay Area Figurative movement, particularly painters such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff, influence my figurative work. I use my sketches from life model drawing sessions as reference for the figures and I paint the landscape out of my memory of places where I have visited. I chose the natural landscape as a vehicle for my expression of healing and hope. 

Yuriko Takata
Winds of Change #1
Watercolor on Paper
20″ x 15″ $800

Yuriko Takata
Winds of Change #2
Watercolor on Paper
20″ x 15″ $800

Yuriko Takata
Winds of Change #3
Watercolor on Paper
20″ x 15″ $800

Yuriko Takata
Winds of Change #4
Watercolor on Paper
20″ x 15″ $800

Yuriko Takata Artist Statement:
My work is definitely influenced by the feelings I’m experiencing at the moment. This moment in time is both frightening and extraordinary. The “ WINDS OF CHANGE” windmills are whirling a bit too fast, at the mercy of a brutal and mysterious killer in the air we breathe. The lights are on inside,…signs of fellow human beings, sheltering in place. What needs to be changed to go forward and stay alive?

Chip Sullivan
Ascent from Covid 

Ink and watercolor on paper 16″x12″  Original: SOLD

Signed and Numbered Fine Art Prints Available $200

Chip Sullivan Artist Statement

Ascent from Covid is a contemporary reinterpretation of the Myth of Persephone. While gathering flowers, she was forced to descend into the Underworld, only to reemerge with the birth of Spring.

Our COVID journey is also a reliving of the ancient Rite of the Eleusinian Mysteries in which the community descended into Pluto’s Cave, engulfed in the darkness of the Underworld, experiencing Terror, confronting Death, then just as all hope is lost – remerging into the sunlight and bountiful Spring!

This Rebirth takes onto a new journey illustrating the regenerative potential of nature and the creation of new plant pieces for maximum bio-remediation!

This new garden of Eden is tended by giant bio-bots, surrounded by a revived nature. Ultimately we see a metamorphosis into a higher form of consciousness and hope for a new future at the summation of society’s journey”

-Chip Sullivan

“I approached the very Gates of Death, I set one foot on Persephone’s threshold, yet was permitted to return, rapt through all the Elements”

Apulius 2nd century AD

 

Deidre Weinberg
Blue Medusa
Acrylic on Canvas 12″ x 12″ $250

Deidre Weinberg
Coyote
Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 12″ $500

Deidre Weinberg Artist Statement

Blue Medusa addresses the struggle of women to be heard, to be taken seriously, to feel validated and to accept them (our) selves as we are- sometimes angry, sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes not as we want to see ourselves and have ourselves be seen.

Coyote There have been coyotes at Buena Vista Park for a long time, but they seem to be getting bolder. This one was drawn from a recent sighting where I felt stared down and challenged

Eden Gallanter
Flower Iteration I: Calla Lily
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
12″ x 12″ $450

Eden Gallanter
Flower Iteration II: Tea Flower
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
12″ x 12″ $450

Eden Gallanter
Flower Iteration III: Coriopsis
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
12″ x 12″ SOLD

Eden Gallanter
Flower Iteration IV: Geranium
Ink and Watercolor on Paper
12″ x 12″ $450

Eden Gallanter Artist Statement:
Making these “Flower Iterations” has felt very healing during these dark days. In repeatedly overlaying different perspectives of a single flower, I inevitably lose track of which layer is which, and discrete forms start to fall apart. I have only shattered pieces. At this point, I can start to shape the essential form of the flower from the fragments. I end up with a new, coherent flower, composed from a jumble of broken-down perspectives that blend and dissolve into one another.
The process of analyzing a flower into pieces and then resurrecting it again in a way that shows its fundamental nature—it’s essential colors and architecture—gives me a feeling of hope. It’s a reminder of what lasts, and what doesn’t.

Jeff Petersen
Podman with Mask
Carved Cedar 11″ x 4″ x 4″ SOLD

Jeff Petersen
Social Distancing (#3 of 3)
Linocut 12″ x 10″ $275

Jennifer Marie Keller
From The Fountain Of Youth
Oil on Wood 14″ x 11 (framed 17 1/2″ x 14 1/2″) $1500

Artist Statement Jennifer Marie Keller

I have just finished this still life called, “From The Fountain Of Youth”. It’s a glass of water from the fountain of youth that has been drunken from with eyeglasses on the table that are no longer needed as an added side effect.

I think a lot of people can relate to this painting with either wanted to drink of the glass themselves or give it to loved ones.

Lynn Sondag
Lake Street Evening Walk April 4th 2020
16″ x 12″  Watercolor on paper mounted on panel $700

Lynn Sondag Artist Statement:

Over the past few years my studio practice has shifted from working alone in my studio to creating art in public spaces alongside community members. During the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, communities both local and global are collaborating by physically retreating from one another, working together by being apart. Art requires humility and a capacity for surrender, which is also what this time calls for. Making art for me is a way to know the world, the soul of a place and time. And so, I begin this series of paintings about evening walks on Lake Street to mark these times. The Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr spoke about the “Sad Beauty” of life where there is both tragedy and joy. This paradox plays out in these walks, which reveal the beauty of our neighborhood surrounded by spring scents and sounds, backlit by the luminous evening sunset, all the while we are amidst great suffering, loss, and uncertainty.

Rachel Murray Meyer
Lake Market Visitor
Archival Print 5″ x 5″ image. Framed 10″ x 10″ $250

Rachel Murray Meyer Artist Statement

Down a short flight of stairs is my darkened studio behind Avenue 12 Gallery. There I set up vintage overhead projectors and combine my created transparencies with objects to which I am drawn. The Lake Market image taken while remodeling what is now Avenue 12 Gallery. Making it into a color transparency, I loved saturating the colors and how they projected on the wall. A figure used in my recent constructions was placed into the projector platen. After photographing the projection, I pinned up the print in my studio as a touch point, where it resonates today more than ever. When COVID19 moved the Gallery to a appointment-only model, and going to the grocery store became a shared source of concern for so many reasons, this ghostly image reminded me of the simpler recent past: people that used to come to the corner market freely and without fear. And myself, at night, a visitor, going into the darkened studio.

Rebecca Nie
Don’t Know
Acrylic on Canvas 36″ x 48″ $2070

Rebecca Nie
Flooding the Sky
Acrylic on Canvas 20″ x 20″ $480

Rebecca Nie Artist Staement:

Flow, transition, and change are the underlying commonalities for this group of multi-media abstractions. The energetic pattern of flowing lines and the nature-inspired palette of the “Radiant Deluge” series call forth the resemblance between the mental and emotional states we all experience, given the rapidly changing realities in 2020 and the crashing waves along the Northern California Coast. The artist walks along the shores of the Pacific Ocean to create representations of its charismatic and vulnerable coastline in digital ink. She then integrates her meditation, experiences at the scene, and the lines and colors of the en plein air work into the paintings in her studio. They are the symbols of our rapidly changing world and our original enlightened mind flowing from prehistory through the present day and into the future. The universe is always changing, but the current events make the fact ever more poignant. The earth is shifting right beneath our feet, both literally and metaphorically. The “Radiant Deluge” series is a visual chant of compassion for those who suffer and an homage to this voyage of origination, development, decay, and cessation in the symphony of existence we all share.

Tamsin Smith
I want the word NOVEL back
Acrylic on Canvas 12″ x 16″ $350

Tamsin Smith Artist Statement:

The title of the painting is a line from a poem, which I wrote in honor of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 101st birthday. I hosted a Zoom poetry dinner that evening to commemorate the occasion and to bring my community of poetry writers and lovers together. We were all sheltering in space due to the novel coronavirus. The painting comes with my original poem.

“I want the word NOVEL back” is very much a product of this new reality. Most days are spent alone in my little Noe Valley barn, surrounded by vignettes of art and nature. The tooth of the canvas comes through, as I have no access to my studio and my gesso. The medium is acrylic, as I can’t get to the oil paints that are my usual medium. There is a simplicity and directness in this painting that captures my actual circumstances, but also something of the raw emotion and tenderness that pulses through every day. The title is part of a couplet. It’s followed by this: “I want each of you back”. I do.

Angela Chen

Spring

Oil on Canvas 15″ x 30″ $2,000