All this rain floats our art spirit

You are the Tree exhibits in the North Bay
EcoArt: Envisioning Strategies and Solutions

Exhibition: February 3–March 25, 2023
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Saturday, 1–8pm
Receptions and Art Walks: February 10 & March 10, 5–8pm

You are the Tree in EcoArt: Envisioning Strategies and Solutions

Gallery 1337
Art Works Downtown

1337 Fourth St., San Rafael, California

Curated by Deanna Pindell
In collaboration with Women Eco Artists Dialog (WEAD)

Interactive and often playful, these eco-artworks offer inspiring visions, strategies, and solutions to help our communities build resilience for our changing climate. Each of these widely accomplished artists have created projects in service to the world beyond the gallery.

Several are games that help us solve regional issues; others combine play, work, and education to restore beaches, riparian habitats, and redwood forests. Our love of trees, grief over rising seas and extinctions, concerns about waste, and passions for the cultural histories of our local places are each addressed in enterprising community-engagement designed by artists and architects. Viewers are encouraged to envision a most desirable future.


Immunity by Kent Manske, Dimensions open: 9 x 105”
One word per page reads: When Does Difference Lead To Slaughter

Truth: Artist Books and Broadsides

Exhibition: January 12–February 12, 2023
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Monday, 11am–5pm

Gallery Route One
11101 Highway One, Ste. 1101
Point Reyes Station, California

The Visiting Artist Program at Gallery Route One presents, Truth: Artist Books and Broadsides, an exhibition juried by Sas Colby. The word “truth” has become politicized in the US and continues to take a beating in politics and social media. Can “truth” still mean anything? Can an artist embody or express truth in their artwork?

For centuries, the book, in its various forms, was identified with the notion of “truth” —through encyclopedias, dictionaries, and books of scripture. Because of their visual and material relationship to historical books, contemporary artist books as presented here can be a medium for the expression of political, philosophical, and spiritual ideas.

Sas Colby is a visual artist whose practice includes artist books and work with text. Colby notes, “Truth is a rich and provocative subject in today’s world which one might say is more attuned to ‘truthiness,’ the quality of seeming to be true out of a desire for something to be true, as coined by Stephen Colbert. The concept of truth has long been associated with books, and there was a time when the printed word was taken for truth. In a gentler century, Emily Dickinson wrote, ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant,’ not wishing to shock with the totality of a revelation all at once. Our digital world lacks this subtlety and our culture fiercely defends the principle that we’re each entitled to our own truth.”

Between the Burners by Kent Manske

In the News

Nanette was included, along with Paloma Lucas and Bryan Kring, in a feature article on Bay Area artists who make books.

The fascinating world of book arts: 3 Bay Area makers share their stories by Jessica Yadagaran, was included in a special magazine section called Bookish published by the Bay Area News Group on Sunday, January 15, 2023. Bookish was included in a handful of Bay Area newspapers including San Jose Mercury News, the Marin Independent Journal, and the East Bay Times.


Kent’s photograph Beyond the Reach has recently exhibited at the University of Iowa, the University of Illinois, and P21 Gallery in London as part of the Shadow and Light project, compiled by Beau Beausoleil, a poet and activist in the Bay Area, that memorializes Iraqi academics assassinated between 2003–2013. 


WORKS San José is having their annual community auction. Check it out!
Exhibition opens First Friday February 3, 5–9pm
Exhibition dates February 4 through March 3
Auction night Saturday, March 4!


Entanglements, Nanette’s 2022 curatorial publication, is now available at the following locations: The San José Museum of Art (San José), The San Mateo County History Museum (Redwood City), Gallery Route One (Pt. Reyes Station), The Main Gallery (Menlo Park), and online at Hunger Button Books.

Felicia Rice Interview & Eco Echo Exhibition

Much has been revealed in this engaging and insightful Whirligig Interview with Felicia Rice. Rice is a printer, publisher, writer, visual artist, performance artist and award winning maker of books. She is known internationally for her artist’s book, CODEX ESPANGLIENSIS from Columbus to the Border Patrol, a collaboration with Enrique Chagoya and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Rice recently celebrated 40 years as Moving Parts Press with a retrospective exhibition: Perseverance furthers: Moving Parts Press 1977-2017 at Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz, California. We met up to experience her work, talk about making books, art and working with other creatives.

Read Felicia’s Interview here: whirligig.hungerbutton.org


Eco Echo: Unnatural Selection

March 3 - April 15, 2018

Anne Beck, Barbara Boissevain, Ginger Burrell, Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang, Kent Manske, Michelle Wilson, Nanette Wylde


Exhibition
WORKS/San José
, art and performance center
365 South Market Street
San José, California
workssanjose.org

Gallery hours: Fridays 12 – 6 pm, Saturdays and Sundays 12 – 4 pm
Opening Night: First Friday, March 2, 7 – 10 pm

South First Fridays Art Walk:
Friday, March 2, 7 – 10 pm
April 6, 7 – 10 pm
Eclectic evenings of Arts & Culture in downtown San José’s SoFA district.
www.southfirstfridays.com


Exhibition Programming

Sunday March 11, 2pm
Informal Artist Talk with Kent Manske
Conversation with Kent Manske around his installation Cell Garden. Points of departure will include biology, interconnectedness, life cycles, health, healing and epistemology. The artist will briefly talk about his experimental approach using screen printing to produce one-of-a-kind prints that evolve, mutate and synthesize from blank states to living, thriving organisms.

Saturday, April 7, 2pm
Informal Artist Talk with Ginger Burrell
“Subversive Comfort: Artists’ Books as a Tool for Raising Social Consciousness”
Artist Ginger Burrell will discuss the use of the book format by artists to explore political and social concerns. What is it about artists’ books that provide a unique opportunity and approachability not usually found in other artistic media? How can the selection of content, materials, images, scale and design engage a viewer and communicate an artist’s message? Explore examples of artists’ books that attempt to raise social consciousness, including three works by the artist included in the Echo Echo exhibition.

Sunday April 8, 4:30pm
Panel: “Big Dirty Secrets: Three Photographers Engaging in Environmental Advocacy in the San Francisco Bay”
Photographers Judith Selby Lang, Richard Lang and Barbara Boissevain will discuss their ongoing photography projects that address environmental issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. The panelists will share how the devices they use in their work aim to provoke discourse on local issues and encourage environmental stewardship. They will also discuss the relationship between contemporary photography and environmental and social advocacy, including the “Apocalyptic Sublime.” Managed and moderated by Barbara Boissevain.

Saturday, April 14, 4:30 – 6:30pm
“Constellations in Paper,” Bookmaking workshop with Anne Beck and Michelle Wilson
In this workshop, learn the basic of embroidery on paper. Bring a design of your own or use one provided to sew a design onto a sheet of decorative paper. Embroidery on paper can be a little different that the traditional form on fabric, but still can create a wondrous and exquisite design. At the end of this workshop, this embroidered paper can stand alone, or participants will have the option of turning it into a cover for a handmade book! No embroidery or bookbinding experience necessary, all materials provided.

In addition, Anne and Michelle are Artists in Residence at the San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum through March 24, working on the Rhinoceros Project. Visit www.sjquiltmuseum.org/artist-residency/ to learn how to participate in sewing circles and paper-making happenings.

It’s pARTy time!

Join us at Anne and Mark’s Art Party & Opening Night Gala on September 24th. There will be 300+ exhibiting artists, live music, dance, spoken word, fire arts, fashion shows and food trucks. This event is at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San José, California. Get your tickets in advance at: artpartysj.com

kent_art_party
Kent will exhibit new works from three print series: Conditions narrate states of being and coping strategies. Nests is a series of one-of-a-kind experimental prints. Cells explores imaginary living organisms and microbiome.

Nanette will exhibit four images from On Longing, a series of 50 unique monoprints completed this last summer. Each print is a mandala which contemplates and celebrates the natural world. The series takes its name from Susan Stewart’s book: On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. The Art Party is discussed in the Mercury News, where Nan’s work is also featured.

Photo of the studio while the On Longing series was still in-progress, Spring 2016.
Photo of the studio while the On Longing series was still in-progress, Spring 2016.


Meaning Maker is 10!
Of course, we are trying to make sense of the upcoming November election. Thus we have created a new and improved version of Meaning Maker U.S. Presidential Elections Edition. Download your free copy at the Meaning Maker website, and distribute as you will.

Meaning Maker LogoIn the San Francisco Bay Area, U.S. Presidential Elections Edition was on exhibit and take away in Vote your Subconscious at Works/San José and will be exhibiting in: POLITICS (NOT) AS USUAL at Branner Spangenberg Gallery:
275A Linden Street in Redwood City from Oct 7 – Nov 13, 2016.
Opening Reception: Friday, Oct 7, 2016, 5:30 – 7:30pm.

This Summer we hand-delivered Art Viewing Experience Edition and U.S. Presidential Elections Edition to two significant events in Europe: The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany; and the opening of the Tate Modern Switch House in London. Other European museum and gallery locations which experienced bursts of Meaning Makers include: Brussels, Paris, Dresden and Prague.


Don Drake and Kate Jordahl invited Kent to write the afterword for Kate’s True North Editions, one poem book, no. 6, featuring Don’s poem, End. The book launch for one poem books no. 5 and no. 6 will be at Don Drake’s Studio, Dreaming Mind, on Saturday, October 8th from 2 – 4 pm. There will be readings! 5664 Sun Ridge Court in Castro Valley, CA.

Kent is also showing in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: In Defense of Culture at the San Francisco Main Library, Skylight Gallery, 100 Larkin Street, from September 17 – January 1, 2017.

The Future, an artists’ book collaboration between Nanette and Nora Raggio, will be showing the month of October in Words|Matter, Chicago.

Nanette’s Storyland v2 was invited for exhibition in Shapeshifting Texts, International Conference on Digital Media and Textuality in Bremen, Germany. Her print, Propagare, was exhibited at the Graphic Arts Workshop, Scuola Internaziale di Grafica in Venice, Italy; and she received a juror’s award for her needle felted book, Between Us Two, at The Art of the Book, Sebastopol Center for Art in Sebastopol, California.

Our collaborative photo book, CSI: Las Vegas, was included in 23 Sandy Gallery’s summertime Wanderlust exhibition and subsequently acquired by UCLA’s Fine Arts Library.


On another note, we’ve decided to take an extended leave from facebook. We still want to hear about your Art Adventures, however. Our individual emails are the best way to let us know what you are doing. We continue to engage with instagram: @kent.manske @nanwylde