Mercury 20 Gallery
475 25th St. (at Telegraph)
Oakland, CA 94612
510-701-4620
Hours: Thursday-Saturday 12-6pm and by appointment
Exhibition dates: August 5 - 28, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, August 6 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)
Jill McLennan | Cycles of the City
Tractor, 2010, encaustic on wood
Oakland artist Jill McLennan displays a vision built from intimate details, personal histories and diverse stories of the Oakland experience. Her current show presents oil paintings, pencil drawings and a variety of encaustic works based on themes of construction and destruction in the urban landscape including the use of graffiti tagging as a human method of claiming abandoned structures.
Artist and educator Jill McLennan attended Hampshire College and received an MA in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works in Oakland, CA where she teaches for the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) in Oakland's elementary schools.
Mary Curtis Ratcliff | Small Worlds...& Large
Lumen, 2010 54 x 40 x 4.5 inches, mixed media
Mary Curtis Ratcliff’s current work emerges from two worlds; photographic vision and her own handwork. The artist begins by taking photographs that combine a feeling of peace with mysterious complexity. Sometimes, she leaves the images untouched, but more often she transforms them with colored pencils, transfer, collage and layering “I am always looking for abstraction, shadow, and reflection,” Ratcliff says, “because those images are the ones on which I can build.”
Ratcliff attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She has exhibited in nineteen solo exhibitions and over 80 group shows. Her work is in more than 80 private collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts and the Oakland Museum of California.
Eric Bohr, Chela Fielding, Julie Alvarado | Diverse Directions
image: Julie Alvarado, Chela Fielding, Eric Bohr
Exhibiting a recent series of paintings combining found object and papier colle, painter Eric Bohr explores the possibilities that are yet to be found in the still life genre.
The intense realism, rich color, and small scale of Julie Alvarado’s painting reference a kind of postcard, especially in their visual account of her travels to interior places. The artist creates realistically rendered scenes as a vehicle for the exploration of imagination, memory, and cats.
Sculptor Chela Fielding is re-using some of her existing sculptures, transforming/recycling them into new work. Using primarily found objects, the artist assembles pieces into whimsical, provocative compositions incorporating both personal reference to her childhood past and imagined narratives.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Founded in 2006, Mercury 20 is a contemporary art gallery established, supported and operated by East Bay artists. Mercury 20 maintains a venue for its member artists to exhibit, develop, and advance their work and is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content. Exhibitions rotate monthly and the gallery presents a well-attended opening event every first Friday in conjunction with the Oakland Art Murmur. ARTISTS REPRESENTED: JULIE ALVARADO, JO ANN BIAGINI, ERIC BOHR, MARGARET CHAVIGNY, CHELA FIELDING, POLLY FRIZZELL, PETER HONIG, MAYA KABAT, KATHLEEN KING, MARY V. MARSH, JILL MCLENNAN, DAVE MEEKER, CHARLIE MILGRIM, JAMIE MORGAN, MARY CURTIS RATCLIFF, JULIANNE STERLING, LAURA VAN DUREN, JOAN WEISS
For more info: mercurytwenty@gmail.com, 510-701-4620, http://www.mercurytwenty.com