Mercury 20 Gallery

25 Grand Ave. (at Broadway)  

Oakland, CA 94612

Exhibition dates: July 3 – August 1, 2009 

Opening Reception: Friday, July 3 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)

Meet the artists at Afternoon After: Saturday, July 4th from 12-3pm

Wood and Water: Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Anna Vaughan

Mixed media artist and photographer Mary Curtis Ratcliff seeks out images that represent peace, calm, and mysterious complexity. After removing the color from her original print, she applies thin acrylic wash, drawing, collage and transfers to the surface, adding new layers of color and texture. The underlying structures of tree branches, water, landmasses, swimming pools, luminous lights, shadows and reflections are not lost in this process.

Mary Curtis Ratcliff,  Below the Falls, 2009, water color pencil on canvas, plexiglass, photo credit: Peter Macchia

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.

Anna Vaughan is an Oakland-based multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture and ceramics. Her work responds to the interplay between natural phenomena and the manmade structures that surround us. Utilizing the formal elements of line, form, color and space she intuitively draws out points of connection and diversion between these two worlds.

 Anna Vaughan, Blue Leaves, painting on paper,  2009

Vaughan received her MFA from Mills College and her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has curated exhibitions for local galleries and has been included in numerous group and juried exhibitions.

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In the Mercury Twenty's back gallery...

Forecast: Julie Alvarado, Aaron Geman, Kathleen King, Joan Weiss

“We look, we think, we enter the future,” says art critic Matthew Collings. Four East Bay artists combine prescience with presence as they chart the elusive movements of mind and imagination confronting the turbulent patterns of history and time.

The richly colored, realistically detailed paintings of Julie Alvarado’s series Accordion Dreams are inspired by the magical music of the accordion and the artist’s transformative, humorous and spiritual experiences in learning to play it. Alvarado also presents a new video in which she performs. Aaron Geman is an inventor. Presently, he invents art. The artist creates precise, elegant machines from unlikely materials such as junkyard motors and bicycle grease. Sculpting with steel, wood, light, and acrylic, but also incorporating drinking straws and sewing pins, Geman invents thought-conveying machines. Abstract painter Kathleen King constructs compositions with spray paint on large wood panels that experiment with ideas of fluidity and containment. Combining observations of the urban environment with a gritty alchemy, King explores the possibilities and promises of abstraction in a contemporary milieu of multiplicity and risk. Responding to the abandonment of cities such as her native Detroit by social and political support systems, painter Joan Weiss creates works on paper and canvas chronicling the ongoing urban apocalypse. The artist finds the terrible beauty in alienated landscapes, both figurative and abstract.

Mercury 20 is an artist-established and operated gallery located in Oakland, CA. A collective comprised of 20 members, Mercury 20 exhibits high quality, innovative work from emerging and mid-career artists, and promotes art in the community. Gallery hours are Friday 4-7pm and Saturday, 12-3pm, and by appointment.  www.mercurytwenty.com