Group show at the The Albright-Knox Gallery

Honored to be a part of this show - press release below:

Drawing: The Beginning of Everything

www.albrightknox.org/art/exhibitions/drawing-beginning-everything

Saturday, July 8, 2017 -Sunday, October 15, 2017

1905 Building

The notion that drawing is simply a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture has long since been cast aside. The act of placing a pen or pencil to a surface is, for many artists, both a formative and driving experience. With an emphasis on works created within the last 30 years, Drawing: The Beginning of Everything is the first Albright-Knox exhibition to highlight this area of the museum’s collection.

The approaches of contemporary artists to the medium are increasingly rooted in concepts, characteristics, and meditative techniques that result in compelling and intensely personal imagery. Their varied practices promote mark-making as a constructive exploration of surface, space, composition, and scale. Additionally, this exhibition considers the ways in which drawing is employed as a means to push the boundaries that traditionally separate one artistic discipline from another by expanding beyond the page and into the realms of performance, photography, sculpture, film, and video.

Artists featured include Ingrid Calame (American, born 1965), Tacita Dean (British, born 1965), Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic, born 1967), Ellen Gallagher (American, born 1965), Roland Flexner (American, born France, 1944), Mark Fox (American, born 1963), David Hammons (American, born 1943), Nancy Rubins(American, born 1952), Fred Sandback (American, 1943–2003), Tam Van Tran (American, born Vietnam, 1966), and Daniel Zeller (American, born 1965), among others.

This exhibition is organized by Godin-Spaulding Curator & Curator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes.

Admission to this exhibition is free during M&T FIRST FRIDAYS @ THE GALLERY on August 4 and September 1, 2017.

MFA Never: Root Division, SF

Exhibition Dates: 

Feb 10, 2016 to Feb 27, 2016

2nd Sat Reception: Saturday, February 13, 2016 - 7:00pm to 10:00pm

Gallery Hours (or by appointment):  Wednesday-Saturday, 2-6pm

Address: 1131 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA  94103

Presented as a counterpoint to our biennial MFA NOW exhibition, MFA NEVER considers artists that took the non-degree path. This juried exhibition creates visibility for artists who have found a life and practice in the visual arts outside of the academic machine.

The goal of the MFA Never project is to create room for dialogue around alternatives to the MFA route, especially in thinking about how higher education can be exclusive in terms of financial viability, and in representing artists of color, queer artists, "outsider" artists etc.

Selected from over 180 submissions, the 25 artists chosen for this exhibition represent a diversity of mediums, background, age, identity, and reasons for not pursuing advanced degrees in art.

More about MFA NEVER:

For the past four years, Root Division has dedicated one month of our exhibitions programs to a juried exhibition of current Bay Area MFA Candidates in an exhibition and archive project called MFA Now. This project will continue at Root Division biennially with the next presentation in February 2017. This year we wanted to do something a little different, and join in the national dialogue around valuation of advanced art degrees.

This February, we're opting to highlight the many talented and successful artists who have opted out of the degree route for one reason or another, in a counterpoint juried exhibition called MFA Never. MFA Never was conceptualized by Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen, to create opportunity for underrepresented artists, those who are unaffiliated with alumni networks, and may have not had the debut opportunity offered by the MFA Thesis exhibition. MacFadyen is the founder of A Simple Collective, a contemporary arts organization dedicated to, "access, equality, ingenuity, creativity, and independence."

Every artist who submitted to MFA NEVER will be featured in the MFA NEVER archive catalogue. The book includes information about each contributing artist and a compilation of essays by Root Division staff, and the panel of exhibition jurors, serving to unpack some of the issues surrounding decisions to not pursue higher education.

Exhibition Artists: 

Participating Artists:
Jizell Albright
Donna Anderson Kam
Melissa Bolger
George-Ann Bowers
Michelle Brandemuehl
Craig Calderwood
Randy Colosky
Kerri Conlon
Art for a Democratic Society
Lauren DiCioccio
Lisa Espenmiller
Georgia Hodges
Michael Ifland
Rudy Lemcke
Stephanie Metz
Midori
Jeff Morris
Joel Daniel Phillips
Alice Raymond
Roz Ritter
D.B. Ryan
Ron Moultrie Saunders
Andy Vogt
Ven Voisey
Aaron Wojack

New Normal One: March 21 - April 18th, 2015

Very excited to take part in this:

New Normal One, a group exhibition featuring Mario Ayala, James Cordas, Chris Duncan, Linda Geary, Rich Jacobs, Sahar Khoury, Alicia McCarthy, Jeff Morris, Steuart Pittman, Laura Rokas, Dan Swindel, and Jiharri Terry opens on Saturday, March 21st at 5pm at 4115 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland.

Works will focus on flourishing community in Oakland and creating a visual dialog amongst neighbors.  All artists are currently working and living within Oakland and represent a portion of a colorful environment.

New Normal One is the first presentation of three at 4115 Telegraph Ave, a temporary gallery and creative space. The second presentation will continue to expand upon the notion of being neighbors - specifically with San Francisco - gathering artists from both east and west sides of the bay. The final presentation will focus back on Oakland and its thriving community of positive and progressive ideas.

New Normal One has been organized in collaboration with Guerrero Gallery.  www.guerrerogallery.com

'Shoebox Orchestra' Reviewed by Kenneth Baker in SF Chronicle

from the SF Chronicle...

About two years ago Ampersand International Arts, a Dogpatch mainstay of the San Francisco not-for-very-much-profit exhibition scene, closed after the death of its founder and proprietor, Bruno Mauro.

Defying the recent contraction of the local gallery landscape, Ampersand has now reopened on the initiative of Mauro’s eldest daughter, Theodora.

The inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s second life honors Bruno Mauro’s memory in an obvious sense but also in an oblique one.

Displeased some time ago at seeing the name Ampersand popping up everywhere, Mauro contemplated changing the gallery’s name to something wildly individual, such as “Shoebox Orchestra.” Hence the title of the reopening show, representing seven artists Mauro championed.

The objects on view produce the sort of slow-burn surprise, often tinged with humor, that regular visitors to Ampersand learned to anticipate.

Jeff Morris’ “Pair” (2014) offers sculptural equivalents of the dust devil symbols that indicate fuming frustration when they appear above the heads of comic strip characters.

The two dangling components of the piece, one predominantly red, the other orange, consist of found bits of smashed auto taillights, ordered by size and strung on monofilament that hangs from the ceiling. Even repurposed, these materials exude a whiff of road rage.

“Pair” evokes the scavenging spirit of the so-called Mission School and the redemptive impulse felt in the work of found-materials master Tony Feher.

Morris’ piece connects popular addiction to speed and a distant echo of Old Testament caution about reaping the whirlwind.

The ingenious simplicity of Morris’ piece makes it keep good company with Andy Vogt’s work, especially “Shadeshape 5” (2014). A leaning sculpture in salvaged wood, the work’s completely lucid geometry seems to defy analysis, at least for a moment or two.

Lauren Davies’ small sculptures made of plaster, paint, pulverized glass and flocking masquerade as mineral specimens, igniting the desire to heft them.

Davies’ idea of faking bits of the earth smilingly satirizes the traditional notion of “nature” — that is, the visible world — as art’s proper subject, linking it with current anxieties about human artifice as a menace to life on its home planet.

Those anxieties find a very different sort of expression in Arngunnur Ýr’s landscape paintings of her native Iceland. We who have never visited Iceland do not know how literally to take the stylization of her portrayals, an uncertainty charged with realistic fear only in our lifetimes.

Group Show September 20th: Oakland Museum of California

Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California

September 20, 2014–April 12, 2015

Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California illuminates local histories and social forces that changed the face of art in—and beyond—the Golden State. Weaving together art and ephemera from the collections of the Oakland Museum of California and SFMOMA, the exhibition tells the stories of four creative communities at decisive moments in the history of California art: the circle of artists who worked with, influenced, and were influenced by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in San Francisco in the 1930s; the legendary painters and photographers associated with the California School of Fine Arts in the 1940s and 1950s, including Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Minor White, and Imogen Cunningham; the free-spirited faculty and students at UC Davis in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley, and Bruce Nauman; and the streetwise, uncompromisingly idealistic artists at the center of a vibrant new Mission scene that took root in the 1990s through the present, including Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Amy Franceschini,  Ruby Neri, Alicia McCarthy, and Rigo 23, along with many others. Focusing equally on the artworks and the contexts that fostered their creation, Fertile Ground presents an intimate and textured history of personal relationships, artistic breakthroughs, and transformative social change.

http://www.museumca.org/

Group Show Sept. 19: Shoebox Orchestra at Ampersand International Arts

Shoebox Orchestra: September 19th - November 14th, 2014

Lauren Davies, Lori Gordon, Amanda Hughen, Jeff Morris, Sarah Smith, Andy Vogt & Arngunnur Yr

Curated by Theodora Mauro

Ampersand International Arts (ampersand) is thrilled to announce Shoebox Orchestra, a group exhibition composed of an ensemble of artists whose diverse approaches give the exhibit a dynamic cadence. Each of the participating artists have been included in past shows under the direction of former gallery director Bruno Mauro. This first exhibition curated by Theodora Mauro is a look back at the lasting impact ampersand has had in the Bay Area arts community. From painting to sculpture, mixed media installation and works on paper, the variety of mediums and inspirations of these seven artists encapsulate the excellence that ampersand continues to encourage.

Please join us as we celebrate the continued commitment to bring artists and art enthusiasts together in the transformative setting of ampersand international arts.

Exhibition dates: September 19th - November 14th, 2014

Opening Reception: Friday, September 19th, 2014 6pm-9pm

Gallery Hours: Thursdays & Fridays 12pm-5pm or by appointment

1001 Tennessee Street

San Francisco, CA 94107

http://www.ampersandinternationalarts.com/