Current News & Exhibits
SITES & NON-SITES | Beth Davila Waldman
Stanford University’s National Accelerator Laboratory
Curated by DeWitt Cheng. Exhibition Dates April 2nd thru October 2nd, 2024.
Curatorial Statement by DeWitt Cheng
"One's Paris room, inside its four walls," wrote Paul Claudel, "is a sort of geometrical site, a conventional hole, which we furnish with pictures, objects and wardrobes within a wardrobe." — Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
The hybrid "manual/digital" multimedia practice of the San Francisco artist Beth Davila Waldman is a dialogue between or synthesis of two realms, equal and opposite: reality, observed and recorded, or remembered; and the aesthetic drive toward completion and closure during the subconsciously driven creative process. Her two-dimensional works tend to read as paintings with photographic interpolations (or invasions), or photographs with drawn or painted remediations. In our tumultuous era of massive change happening worldwide, liminal (transitional) images that juxtapose complex, contradictory architectural structures with abstract aesthetic epiphanies might be said to represent the spirit of the age. Jonathan Curiel of SF Weekly described one work by Waldman as "scenes of an urban horizon where reworked volcanic stones and echoes of modernity merge through pastiches [passages?] of paint streaks. The horizons of windows and white surfaces create patterns and layers one finds around the world ... where the tension between old and new architectures is always unfolding."
The title of this show, Sites & Non-Sites, is borrowed from the Land Artist Robert Smithson (best known for his 1970 earthwork., Spiral Jetty, who denoted as 'non-sites' the artistic interpretations and constructions he made from real-world materials incorporated to evoke and invoke the places of their origin. The Whitney Museum adds to the definition: "Hybrids comprised of minerals, metal containers, photographs, maps, and other documents, they encompass both the geographical source of his natural materials (the “site”) and their packaged relocation in a museum or gallery (the “non-site”), where they become legible as sculpture." Amy Baker elaborates in Artforum: In the late 1960s, ... Robert Smithson exhibited a transitional series of sculptures entitled “Site/Non-Site.” In each of these works, shaped containers built by the artist confine (as does our experience of viewing the work in a formal space) the collected materials. Exhibited along with this usually geological “sample” are maps, notes, and photographs providing the facts and measurements of the original site and describing its locale. By following these guides it is possible, if you take the time and trouble, to experience personally this same site. [Smithson] understood art to exist in time rather than outside of it, and sculpture to be subject to the same cycle of physical modification and decay as any other matter. He recognized constant change as the only constant."
Richard Kearney writes, in his introduction to Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, "Echoing Coleridge's definition of poetry as the balance or reconciliation of discordant qualities, Bachelard maintains that the poetic instant is a "harmonic relation between opposites."
Waldman's Non-Sites in her various series—Ancestral Constructs, Desert Intersections, Inevitable Entails, and Merging Grounds—likewise acknowledge entropy and change, and harness them to the creative imagination.
— DeWitt Cheng
MARIN OPEN STUDIOS: Studio 128, Ground Floor
STUDIO WARMING PARTY & ICB Open Studios Preview | Fri May 3rd 6-8pm
OPEN STUDIOS Sat May 4th & Sun May 5th 11AM-5PM
Over 80 artist studio’s will be open to the public. Details HERE! Free admission. Free parking.
ICB | 480 Gate Five Road, Sausalito, CA
In Flux: Recalibrating the Unknown
Presented by SFAA at the Museum of Northern California Art (MONCA)
Opening Reception Friday, March 22nd 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates March 21st - May 12th, 2024
Museum of Northern California Art (MONCA): 900 Esplanade, Chico, CA
MUSEUM HOURS
Mon ‒ Wed: Closed
Thu ‒ Fri: 11am ‒ 5pm
Sat ‒ Sun: 11am ‒ 5pm
Constructed Landscapes
In this 4 session course we will take found images as well as your own photography, and approach creating collaged photographic work using a constructive approach to photography. This class is open to both physical and digital approaches towards constructing a new series of work. You will be challenged to take one photograph and develop it in three different directions to start. Over the period of the class sessions, you will be introduced to new materials to bring into your photographic work. We will encourage experimental approaches pushing your own personal boundaries of creating. The final class will be presenting both successes and challenges from the creative process you individually experienced in class.
Sign-up for this free workshop on Eventbrite via this LINK
Course Schedule
May 18th 10am – 3pm
May 19th 10am – 3pm
May 25th 10am – 3pm
May 26th 10am – 3pm
Location
Cedar Center for the Arts
44857 Cedar Avenue
Lancaster, CA 93534
