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Exhibition dates: September 1 - October 1, 2011
Oakland Art Murmur First Friday Opening: Friday, Sept 2 from 6-9pm
Artists' Talk: Saturday, September 10 at 2pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, October 1, 4-6pmJulie Alvarado: Camp
image: Julie Alvarado, A Hiking Casualty, acrylic on panel, 8"x10", 2011
Camp is Julie Alvarado's latest series of sinister/humorous paintings focusing on the nature of people's
experience with Nature through camping and attending summer camps. "Nature is beautiful, engaging,
fascinating, uplifting and I want to embrace it with open arms," says Alvarado. "When I am in that embrace,
I also find that Nature has thorns, stingers, horns and some very sharp teeth."Julie Alvarado paints realistic portrait and landscape paintings with subjects that are derived from
photographic imagery gathered from old books, postcards and Internet images. The artist
manipulates these images to form narratives of personal interest and humor. Alvarado uses oil
and acrylic on panel, formatted in a small scale, which references a kind of post card or visual memoir
of places real and stories imagined.Julie Alvarado is originally from the Los Angeles area, relocated to the Bay area in 1993. She has been
making art since 1984 and received her MFA from CCA in 1995. She has exhibited work in northern and
southern California and works as a painting instructor at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA.
www.juliealvarado.com_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jill McLennan: City Strokes
image: Jill McLennan, We Are Living, oil on canvas, 30"x40", 2011
City Strokes is an exhibition of oil paintings, encaustics and prints by Jill McLennan depicting destruction and
construction in urban life. McLennan's images display real places she observes around Oakland, CA and in other cities.
Close-ups of windows and doors are details that tell a story of change and communication over time. The artist
feels that graffiti, tags and layers of marks made in various materials demonstrates the human desire to reclaim our
surroundings. The work in City Strokes points out the dichotomy between productive society and destructive society
and the constant drive of human vs. nature vs. human nature.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._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Peter Honig & Mary V. Marsh: Recent Work
Peter Honig presents large scale photographic work from his series The Fabric of Night. His luminous still-life studies
of small assemblages of junkyard debris provide an elegant platform for a lyrical exploration of the commodification
of loss and desire.
Peter Honig, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Sink, archival giclee print face mounted to plexiglass, 36" x 36", 2010
Born in Boston, Peter moved to Berkeley in 1991 after receiving his degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He worked as an art-educator and professional photographer until relocating to Santa Barbara in 2011. www.peterhonigphoto.com
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Continuing her long-running Reader series, artist/librarian Mary V. Marsh draws people as they read during the daily commute from Oakland to San Francisco. These images are then carved into linoleum blocks and printed on newspaper and fine print paper. The subject, technique and materials used reflect on the changing format of our media and reading habits. Some of the work in this show was printed during Marsh's current residency at Kala Institute in Berkeley.
image right: Mary V. Marsh, Read Here Now, linoleum print on Rives BFK, 23" x 30", 2011Mary V. Marsh was born in Portland, Oregon and has been making art in the Bay Area since 1982. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992. Marsh has exhibited in many venues in the Bay Area and makes unique, small edition artist's books under the imprint of Quite Contrary Press.
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Founded in 2006, Mercury 20 is a contemporary art gallery established, supported and operated by East Bay artists. Mercury 20 maintains a venue for 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, TERRYL DUNN, P.K. FRIZZELL, PETER HONIG, MAYA KABAT, KATHLEEN KING, MARY V. MARSH, JILL MCLENNAN, JODY MEDICH, DAVE MEEKER, CHARLIE MILGRIM, PAUL MUELLER, MARY CURTIS RATCLIFF, JULIANNE STERLING, KERRY VANDER MEER, LAURA VAN DUREN, JOAN WEISS
