Julie Alvarado
Heads and Tails: paintings

With her latest body of work, Heads and Tails, Julie Alvarado has painted classically rendered yet humorous portraits of people and animals in oil, acrylic and watercolor. The human subject’s stories are entwined with the artist’s as well as the creatures with which they share their world. For example, the painting of Alvarado’s friend and colleague Stan Peterson depicts a modern-day wood carver whose love of the craft turns the wooden rabbits he creates into living creatures. Alvarado’s portrait of a favorite circus performer and her menagerie are enough to make any cat lover's heart beat a little faster.

Julie Alvarado, Cat Circus, 2009, Oil on wood, 12 x 12 inches

Jo Ann Biagini
New Work: mixed media

Jo Ann Biagini combines image transfer, drawing and collage to create large, complex works on paper that merge multi-layered images with nuanced surfaces. Biagini uses found book material in a variety of ways -- for drawing reference, as an actual surface to draw on and collage with, and as part of a technique where ink from book pages or xeroxes is transferred to another surface using an acrylic medium. Working intuitively, the artist builds up imagery in transparent layers and uses sanding to subtract and blend. Biagini’s pieces create a visual poetry uncovering connections and relationships among juxtaposed elements from the biological and natural worlds.

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Peter Honig, Mary V. Marsh, Jamie Morgan, Anna Vaughan: Encounter: new work
 

Peter Honig is an assemblage artist and photographer. A scrap-yard philosopher, his compositions of melancholic objects embody wit and pathos.

Drawings of people reading, sketched during her daily commute, are translated into prints on library cards and newspapers by artist Mary V. Marsh. Commuters engaged in their own private world intersect with the surfaces of the materials, the nostalgia of the old cards and newspapers suggest expiring mediums and a history of the changing methods of reading.

Painter Jamie Morgan’s interest in the urban landscape evolved from a desire to make art from daily experience and to focus on moments of silence amidst the bustle and change of city life, where the interface of the constructed world becomes seamless with the natural.

Responding to the interplay between natural phenomena and the manmade structures that surround her, artist Anna Vaughan utilizes the formal elements of line, form, color and space as she intuitively draws out points of connection and diversion between these two worlds.
 
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