Published on 11/20/2019.
The College of the Redwoods Creative Arts Gallery presents the Art Department’s 2019 Art Faculty & Staff Exhibition from Dec. 11, 2019 to Jan. 30, 2020. The public reception for the artists will be held on Wednesday, Dec. 11 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Participating artists include Benjamin Funke, Cynthia Hooper, David Zdrazil, Dean Smith, Erica Botkin, Hannah Meredith, Lindsay Lacewell Kessner, Mary Mallahan, Natalia Margulis, Ruth Jensen, Shannon Sullivan, and Tova Lund. Work shown includes paintings, sculptures, mixed media, ceramic, jewelry, photography, and video.
The 2019 Art Faculty & Staff Exhibition reflects the diverse interests, ideas, and media that CR’s art faculty and staff explore as a part of their personal studio practice. The work exhibited demonstrates the varied skills and level of commitment required for relevant and rigorous contemporary art making. This exhibition affords an opportunity to learn from these practicing professionals, and also to see how these instructors integrate their artistic inquiries into their classroom instruction.
The CR Art Department is pleased to welcome new associate art faculty member Lindsay Lacewell Kessner this fall. This exhibit will feature two of Kessner’s mixed media works on canvas, Spooky Action at a Distance. This set of enigmatic abstract paintings loosely reference landscape imagery, and consider interactions that occur without physical proximity. The title is drawn from a particularly odd phenomenon in quantum mechanics.
Alongside Kessner’s work, gallery visitors are invited to preview an excerpt from Anadromous Architectures, a new in-progress experimental documentary project by art professor Cynthia Hooper. The video on display describes two Sacramento River salmon migration routes—one partially rewilded, the other precariously reconstructed. The fish and the people found in these entangled environments continually strive to create ecological equilibrium.
Also included in the exhibition is new work by art faculty Benjamin Funke, created this past spring during his artist residency at the King Range National Conservation Area in Shelter Cove, CA hosted by the Bureau of Land Management. Funke created, among other works, the three black and white photographs on display; images that give gallery viewers a bold yet intimate glimpse into a stunningly beautiful area of Northern California’s Lost Coast.
The Creative Arts Gallery at College of the Redwoods is located on the Eureka Main Campus, North Entrance and is open Monday through Thursday 12 to 4 pm and by appointment. The gallery will be closed from Dec 20, 2019 through Jan 20, 2020 for the winter academic break. For more information, please call the Art Department office at (707) 476-4559 or visit redwoods.edu/artgallery.
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Photos: Cynthia Hooper, Anadromous Architectures, digital video still, 2019.
Benjamin Funke, Water VII, archival pigment print, 2019, 30” x 30”.
Lindsay Lacewell Kessner, Spooky Action at a Distance: NE, oil, acrylic, pastel, and charcoal on canvas, 2017 35" x 35".