Harum Scarum — Teaser #4: Translation from Shaun Roberts on Vimeo.

David Ball

David is a collage/ mixed media artist located in San Francisco.  His interests range from observed relationship dynamics and social commentary to more introverted personal works, all in surreal, other-worldly landscapes driven by character and narrative.  David creates both fine art and illustration works with the help of his talkative cat, Cho Cho and lots and lots of coffee.

Katherine Brannock (below)

ART WORKS AS AN AGENT,
COMBINING OUR SENSES IN WAYS THAT BROADEN
THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR EXISTENCE.

I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY
TO COMMUNICATE WITH ART
FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF OTHERS,

AS I ATTEMPT TO UNCOVER AND UNDERSTAND
THE DIALOGUE THAT DEFINES
OUR TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY.

WORK WAS DESIGNED FOR THE FUNCTION OF ALL PEOPLE
IN THE WAY A GEAR WAS DESIGNED FOR THE FUNCTION OF AN ENGINE.

WE ARE INTENDED TO CONDUCT AND CONSTRUCT OURSELVES
IN A WAY THAT PROPELS US FORWARD,
WHEREVER THE DESTINATION IS NECESSARY.

MY WORK CONSTRUCTS COMMUNICATION
FOR THE PURPOSE OF CONDUCTING CONNECTIVITY.

REACHING TOWARD OTHERS ON A COMMON GROUND
IN ORDER TO IGNITE AN ATMOSPHERE OF EVOLUTION,
IS NECESSARY TO ME.

Jesse Balmer (below)

“I’m always trying to convey my general distaste toward civilized society’s planet-sized shit storm we get to look at and take part in every single day – and the inherent helpless feeling that comes with being one in 6.5 billion. I’m also interested in mortality, and whether or not I should think it sucks.”

http://jessebalmer.com/

Peter Solmssen began his career as a photographer for LIFE magazine, working with such photographic icons as Alfred Eisenstadt and Andreas Feininger.  In the 1960’s, while serving for five years as an American diplomat in Brazil, he photographed and filmed the cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Salvador, capturing the very distinct personalities, cultures and people of these three very different communities.

While Rio and São Paulo are only some 200 miles apart, Peter found that moving from one to the other was like moving from one country to another. The climates, populations and activities are markedly different.  Rio is the capital of “tropicalismo”, with life centered on the beaches and samba and a very fun-loving people.  São Paulo is cooler, less colorful and focused on its role as a major industrial center.  Peter felt that Rio wanted to be photographed in color, while São Paulo seemed to call for black and white.  Each was tremendously stimulating in its own way, he found.

Peter concluded his long diplomatic career as Deputy Ambassador-at-Large for Cultural Affairs in the U.S. State Department, guiding major international cultural efforts such as the King Tut and Chinese Bronze Exhibitions.  He became the founding President of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and continues as its President Emeritus.

A group exhibition featuring the uniquely different styles of: Alphonzo Solorzano, Josh Lawyer, Wednesday Kirwan, Ryan Malley, Tim Dangaran, Crystal Sylver & Lindsey Kustusch

Crystal Sylver | csylver.com

Native to the San Francisco Bay Area, Artist and Designer, Crystal Sylver paints colorful, exotic women with a dark side and a secret.  Using Oil and Encaustics on wood, her emotional and erotic figure paintings are an expression of life and beauty, inspired by Couture Fashion, dramatic costumes, color, and design.  Her work is as refined as it is expressive.

Lindsey Kustusch

Lindsey Kustusch’s work is a study of observation, a perpetual search for balance between “realism” and the infinite abstract harmonies shaped by form, color, and space in which it’s created.

She’s inspired by the seemingly endless possibilities of paint and the city that she lives in. The streets of San Francisco have been a favorite subject of hers for years. Whether it’s drifting below the wires along an iconic SF street, the silhouette of a crow, or a Friday night arranged neatly behind the bar, the daily influences are impossible to ignore. Every encounter is reflected on the canvas.

“The Northern Raven found all over the bay area are one of my most favorite subjects to paint. They’re opportunists and survivors, a force of nature with a presence that commands respect.”

Each subject is engulfed with it’s own mood, executed with it’s own set of tools, resulting with a unique life of it’s very own.

Ryan Malley

Ryan Malley uses a decidedly realistic approach to spotlight subjects that we often overlook in our everyday life. These are the people and objects that create the world around us, sometimes literally. In our culture we are so often wrapped up in digital chatter that we don’t acknowledge the importance of these things that make life possible. Malley seeks to remind us that every thing has a story to tell.
Ryan was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his BFA from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco in 2003. Malley currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Wednesday Kirwan | photo credit: Purebred Studios

Wednesday Kirwan’s work plays on classic painting genres from turn of the century portraiture to pin-up art of the 50′s but with a whimsically dark twist on the subject. The female protagonists of her paintings display varying mixtures of comeliness and fierceness, interacting with the viewer, not as passive beauty to voyeur but as predator to prey. This current series is inspired by pop culture zombie films, a field rife for the exploration of the themes of beauty, decay, attraction and repulsion. Wednesday studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and works in San Francisco as a fine artist and illustrator.

Alphonzo Solorzano

Alphonzo Solorzano is a visual artist whose current work can be traced to early ideas and themes found from his creative explorations as a child. His earliest drawing experiences would include comics, animation and endless drawing sessions with his 2 brothers. From these experiences, the use of graphic line work, typography, and the element of narrative would emerge as major components to many later works.
His current work is interested in creating objects that explore the relationship between early memory and its context on present day. These works provide a bridge that foster reflection, celebration, and understanding in these memories that exist independent of time. He hopes that they may serve as a vessel towards a state of time travel, to a place of childhood wonderment.

Alphonzo Solorzano currently resides in San Francisco where he continues to experiment with new medias that combine illustration, fabrication, three dimensional elements and other technologies.

Tim Dangaran

People often comment that my work looks like a photograph, and though I do use photographs as reference material, I don’t consider my work to be photorealism. As an artist I observe the unique details of the subject. I will deliberately omit undesirable effects and imperfections while enhancing those that I find important. My process begins when I take photographs for reference but my observation and interpretation of the reference photograph as I create the final art is what makes it unique.  I do not draw what I see exactly. In fact I often use several photos in creating a single piece.  My work is a combination of the information from the reference material and the emotions or feelings for the subject that are not captured through the lens. It’s the unique little details that I strive to capture in my art. I focus on those particulars of the subject that a camera cannot distinguish as important. The transformation results in art that cannot be created by a camera.

Joshua Lawyer

A bay area native, this freelance artist is self-taught, with a background in street art. Joshua draws a lot of his inspiration from his street art. He paints people juxtaposed to a grey industrial background, to symbolize the great bright beauty you see in this gray cement world, if you just look hard enough. His subjects are mainly females trying to tell a story through small phrases and images found in the background, the shape of their bodies, the things being done to them, and the look on their faces.

Joshua works in a wide variety of mediums from acrylic paint and pencil, to wheat paste and aerosol. He usually works on found wood and makes them look as if they were new frames, an almost Cinderella story for discarded wood.

Solo Exhibition by Merkley???

like the zzz’s we catch when we check into the tripleZ hotel. that’s where all the fun shit happens, also the murderous shit and the shit where you are naked at work or on the bus. People sometimes say, merkley???, i’d give anything to have a brain that could go nuts and be ridiculous. I like to ask them for a few texts worth of details what they did last night while they were snoozing.

Yeah we all have brains like that. ALL OF US.

What I did last night + what she did last night = ZZZ???

ROB REGER | solo exhibition | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | VIEW THE ART

Born Again (Again) is a transformative and figurative mixed and multi-media art exhibit featuring the collage work of Rob Reger.

Rob Reger – creator of Emily the Strange

The 3 STATES of BORN AGAIN (AGAIN)

1. Original collage state: (mortal, shortest life span, the child)
2. 2D prints on wood and panel with original paint: (mortal, long life, sometimes larger than life, the adult)
3. Collage animation: (new spiritual life, digital, freedom, the spirit)

“Select areas of imagery are first dissected, then carefully brought back to life one connection at a time through the surgical practice known as collage. This life, as these frankensteined “originals,” is similar to childhood- finite in time that it exists, given the nature of the materials used. That childlike existence is then captured and brought into adulthood when I create a second life as these “characters” are re-imagined and printed and painted on wood.  Finally, if their Creator is inspired enough by their previous existences, they make it into the spirit-world through film and animation. It is here they are finally allowed to move and have everlasting life. I am interested in taking these collages to a “larger than life” place by physically reproducing them on a large scale, and animating and projecting them. In the past, similar collage works have only been shown in small frames with a magnifying glass. Now the work will be accessible from anywhere in the room.”
-Rob Reger, artist

*SPECIAL GUEST: Winston Smith collaboration (1-3 pieces)

“I invited Winston Smith to collaborate on a few collages with me. [The] collages he created for the Dead Kennedys shaped how I created collages from an early age. Over the years, Winston has become a good friend, and continues to inspire me through his own work. I invited him to join with me to “play” God, and give new life to imagery we find worthy of the cause.”

Punk Surrealist Collage Artist Winston Smith first became famous for the logo and artwork he created for punk legends Dead Kennedys, and is more widely known for his Green Day album cover and his published work for magazines such as The New Yorker,  Playboy, and Spin. Winston has designed over 60 album covers and most recently collaborated with recording artist Ben Harper for Harper’s Relentless 7 album “White Lies for Dark Times” (Virgin). Winston works on custom commissions and special projects from his North Beach Studio.  To view more of his artwork please visit: WinstonSmith.com.

James Dirschberger is an independent animation and filmmaker who runs Eighty Four Films, a Los Angeles based production company. His goal is to create original films and animations through collaborative efforts with other emerging artists and filmmakers. To date James has produced over 75 films including the animated web series The Forest City Rockers, The Seafarers and Hot Garbage. His first feature film “Honest Man: The Life of R.Budd Dwyer” was release 2010. For more information, please visit EightyFourFilms.com

Biography

Born: Anaheim, CA, 1969
BFA, Printmaking, University of California Santa Cruz 1993
MFA, Printmaking, San Francisco Art Institute 1995
President of Cosmic Debris Etc., Inc.
Creator/Creative Director of Emily the Strange
Lives and works in Berkeley, CA

Solo Exhibitions

2011
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Born Again (Again)
La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Hollywood, CA, Encyclopedia of Hallucinations

2010
Switcheroo Gallery, Pasadena, CA, Facing Strange
Ooma, San Francisco, CA, Recent Paintings

2009
Varnish Fine Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Change of Strange

2008
Accident Gallery, Eureka, CA, Live? Strange!

2007
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Strange Beasts
Sistyr Moon, Hong Kong, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Jackal HQ, London, England, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Sydney, Australia, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Melbourne, Australia, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Brisbane, Australia, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show

2006
Colette, Paris, France, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
WWA Gallery, Culver City, CA, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Comic Con, San Diego, CA, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Galleria The Arts New Italica, Milano, Italy, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
OSLO, Mekaniske Verksted, Oslo, Norway, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show
Shock, Gothenburg, Sweden, 13^th Anniversary Emily Art Show

2003
Emily/Tygun Store, Tokyo, Japan, Emily vs. Tygun
Matt Gonzalez Office, San Francisco City Hall, Recent Paintings

2002
The Hideout, Tokyo, Japan, Strange Art For Strange People

2000
Rite Spot, San Francisco, CA, World Premiere

1999
Rite Spot, San Francisco, CA, Short Stories
Rite Spot, San Francisco, CA, Recent Paintings

1998
Carmichael Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Humes

1997
Gallery Alafi, Albany, CA, Walls with Art

1996
Diego Rivera Gallery (SFAI), San Francisco, CA, Metamorphosis
- Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA, MFA Show

1995
Vesuvios, San Francisco, CA, City Scapes

1994
Center for Psychological Studies, Albany, CA, Worlds Apart

1993
Porter College, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA, BFA Show

1992
Café Stevenson, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA, Things I’ve Seen, Places I’ve Been

Group Exhibitions

2011
Gallery 27 (Brooks Institute affiliate), Santa Barbara, CA, One Night Stand

2010
Creative Growth, Oakland, CA, Strangerous
Gallery Extraña, Berkeley, CA, Art of Emily the Strange
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Excellent Condition
Gallery Extraña, Berkeley, CA, Show & Tell – My Summer Fantasy

2009
Varnish Fine Art Gallery, San Francisco , CA, Project Wrecking Ball
Smokey’s Tangle Gallery, Oakland, CA, Beatlenuts

2008
Harold Golen Gallery, Miami, FL, Subjective Reality
Fabric 8, SF, CA, Landmark Show
ArtHouse, McCallen, Texas, Before My Rushing Heart
Gallery Extraña, Berkeley, CA, Defiant Optimism
WWA Gallery, Culver City, CA, Where the Wild Art Is
Harold Golen Gallery, Miami, FL, Kaiju Monster Invasion: Miami

2007
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 20×20
Artistic License Benefit Show, Pasadena, CA

2006
111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 20×20
Gallery LeLe, Toys Save Children Benefit Show

2005
Rite Spot, San Francisco, CA, Strange Art for Strange People

1999
Mission Badlands/Balazo Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Balazo Group Show

1998
Mission Badlands/Balazo Gallery, San Francisco, CA, American Pie
Tomo Gallery, Arcata, CA, Land’s End
Artists Television Access (ATA), San Francisco, CA, Highwired

1997
Six Rivers Brewing Co., McKinleyville, CA, Figure 4

Henry Lewis

As a tattooist, my painting work pokes fun at the social, cultural, and political issues in the tattoo community. I execute my ideas by deconstructing traditional Americana and “flash art,” giving new life to these antiquated images. For this body of work I am teaming up with a longtime brother in arms, Lango Olivera.

Lango Olivera

My artwork is made out of the necessity and urge to express myself outside of the tattooing world. With each piece I plunge into a new, unexplored dimension where fantastic beasts fight through mythological scenarios representative of the human experience. After years of working together in the tattoo shop, sharing a studio, and spending long nights seeking inspiration from heavy metal, Henry Lewis and I now join forces to see what hybrid creatures we can create.

Alec Huxley continues to explore a wide range of subject matter through a detailed but softened figurative style. His creative skills were honed while drawing inspiration from living in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square and southern industrial neighborhoods. This combined with his love of light and shadow, the geometry of structures and spaces, as well as the innate and oftentimes enigmatic drama of life and art. A self-taught painter, he captures cinematic-like cityscapes and intimate, familiar interiors. Ghostlike figures wax and wane through the scenery and at other times, well-dressed men and women donning space helmets drift amongst the distinctive architecture of San Francisco. Working methodically through photographs, many works are filtered by a dominant color, contemplating the diffusion of light through each space.

After many years in the Pacific Northwest he recently transplanted to San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood. His background includes graphic design, photography, studies at The School of Visual Concepts and The Photo Center Northwest, both in Seattle, a BA from the University of Puget Sound and a career in the printing industry before committing to art full time in 2009. Alec is also the founder of Adult Flavored Pudding. His work can be seen at alechuxley.com.

Two man show w/ graffiti legends, RISK & COOZ

The first major collaborative exhibition by Kelly Graval and Nathan Ota, aka RISK and COOZ, reunites these artists whose friendship began before they would respectfully become graffiti legends in the streets and revered artists in galleries and museums across the globe.

Risk and Nathan Ota collaborated together over 25 years ago when they were classmates in high school. After high school, they went their separate ways but reconnected once again through their mutual friends in the artist community. Two friends with similar beginnings eventually going into two different paths coming back together again with their newfound skills and maturity doing it again!

In a career spanning 28 years, RISK has impacted the evolution of graffiti as an art form worldwide. Risk is one of the most prolific graffiti artists to date. Los Angeles based, RISK gained major notoriety for his unique style and pushed the limits of graffiti further than any writer in L.A. had before: He was one of the first writers to paint freight trains, freeways, buses, and he pioneered writing on “heavens,” or freeway overpasses. At the peak of his career he took graffiti from the streets and into the gallery with the launch of the Third Rail series of art shows, and later parlayed the name into the first authentic line of graffiti-inspired clothing which led to the birth of the street wear genre.

Risk focuses on the traditional aesthetics of letter formation. He combines this with his unique deconstruction and color layering to achieve a visual texture of color and surroundings. Risk majored in Fine arts at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles Ca. 1992. Risk is currently working on an installation for the Museum Of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles.

For years, Nathan Ota has been pursuing new worlds, both dark and fantastic, to explore in his paintings. Ota has used his stand-ins – a blind bird, a drunk monkey, a one-eyed robot lost in the woods – to travel through dreamlands that hold fantasies and tragedies, even landing him in the unlikeliest destination – the world inside the artist’s own studio.

Nathan majored in Illustration and received his Bachelors degree at Art Center College of Art and Design, Pasadena Ca. 1993. Ota currently teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and Santa Monica City College.

“That Was Then, This Is Now” is Risk’s and Nathan’s first full body of work together after collaborating on a mural last year for Hurley.

Steve Johnson was born and raised in Mesa, Arizona, a beautiful yet formidable desert landscape; his childhood memories consist mostly of being extremely hot and playing with the lawn hose to cool off. Johnson moved to San Francisco in 1996 where he lived for almost ten years. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in printmaking and painting in 2003 and received an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from Arizona State University in 2008. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Drawing at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

New works by: Jhina Alvarado, Sergio Navarro-Duran, Rockford Orvin, Tim Schafer
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Jhina Alvarado

Jhina Alvarado is a Mexican- Korean artist who expresses herself using oil and encaustic wax.  She is a self-taught artist and holds a masters’ degree in math education and a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies. Jhina, a native Californian, has lived in San Francisco since 1994 where she paints full-time while also teaching pre-calculus and advanced algebra at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.

In my series, titled “Forgotten Memories”, I use oil paints to depict the untold stories from long forgotten photographs. I paint these images on wood panels using a considerable amount of white space with the images cropped out of their environment, creating a sense of unbalance and emphasizing the need to focus on the individual’s memory, rather than the whole picture. White areas from the images blend with the negative spaces of the panel to create tension and abstraction of each delineated line. Since many memories are shared, the identity of the person within each memory is inconsequential. The eyes are blocked out so that the viewer can take part of each memory as if it were their own. The painting is then covered in encaustic wax to add an antique photo look and dream-like feel to each piece. Because many memories are unclear and somewhat “fuzzy”, the wax also obscures the images as if the viewer, themselves, were trying to recall a past event, yet could not remember all of the details.

I started this series because it made me sad to see so many old photographs sold in thrift stores and flea markets or thrown away, as if the memories no longer mattered, the events recorded no longer important. This series is my attempt to resurrect these memories in a contemporary way.

Sergio Navarro-Duran

Sergio Navarro-Duran is a Colombian-born Graphic Artist based in San Francisco, California, a city that has been greatly inspiring for his latest work. Since his early days of design school he discovered his affinity and interest in “manual” illustration (pre-digital era) and the extent of applications this field had to offer. However, ink, -or the reign of carving shadows- seems to be an early and recurrent creativity channel in the artist’s journeys through his psyche. In most of his hand strokes there is an undeniable appeal for the human subject.

“American Indigenous culture has been a major drive for my current artistic channel. A view away from the classical European academic art, my work embraces the “art” that was being done long before 1492. An art that wasn’t art in the first place, since it wasn’t being done for the sole vain purpose of embellishment, but instead for the purpose of self-identity through an image. This is the first of all languages. The powerful mixture of balanced graphical order and symmetry in both buildings and objects of all sorts, as well as imagery, is in itself a remarkable achievement. It must have been incredible to live in a time where being an artist was an actual respected social position… no universities, no trends. Unadulterated from-the-ground-up thought. Graphic standards that came from instinct, not a class room or a movement, the openness of such spirit are the essence I celebrate in my work.”

Rockford Orvin

Life is bold. It moves forward without permission or consideration of the person involved; and like a sudden gust of wind, it sweeps you off your feet for better or worse. And, true to character, Life is full of contradictions. My art carries a similar attitude. Each piece has a mind of its own, speaking good or bad to whomever it encounters. On canvas, I grab the moments of Life that I believe embrace beauty, simplicity, and truth.

This Black & White show reveals that simplistic beauty of Life. The high contrast, sharp line, and photorealistic depiction creates a view that is raw and direct. Some subjects are posed, some are spontaneous, but all the images render the idea that life can be seen for just what it is. Sometimes, color can be blinding.

Tim sChafer

This body of work is a continuation of an ongoing series of graphite drawings that isolates it’s subject matter by removing all elements of background or foreground in order focus on the direct relationship between the subject and the space around it.  I primarily use images from photographs found online and occasionally from photographs I take myself, either way, the original image has something I deem note worthy. By removing all the excess information from the photograph and recreating the subject within a vacant space a certain amount of importance is bestowed upon the subject. Through the use of the image’s negative space, the seriousness of the subject is paired with a questioning of it’s relevance.

Tim L sChafer lives and works in California.

Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground books and comics in the world, celebrating its 41^st year in business.

Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Mark Ryden, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

As well as publishing, Last Gasp is a distributor of all sorts of weird ‘n’ wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books – supplying them to bookstores on six continents.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first Earth Day, April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics.

Ron Turner’s enthusiasm for underground comics, and in particular their autobiographical aspect, has been the driving force behind many groundbreaking publications.  Last Gasp published Justin Green’s highly acclaimed confessional Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972, a book that became an inspiration to many artists now working in the autobiographical style. “Art Spiegelman, who won the only Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, has said he would never have started to do the autobiographical story of his family (in the graphic novel Maus) unless Justin had done it first. And Robert Crumb said the same thing,” said Turner.

Today, Last Gasp publishes 12-20 new titles per year, focusing on ‘lowbrow’ and ‘pop surrealist’ artists, as well as graphic novels and pop culture titles. In addition to publishing, Last Gasp distributes for large and small publishers worldwide, providing a steady countercultural stream of books and other printed matter that finds its way to customers on six continents.

Last Gasp books have been glowingly reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Juxtapoz magazine, Guardian, Hi-Fructose magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Austin Chronicle, American Book Review, and the Los Angeles Times.

Named “Best Local Publisher” in 2009 and 2010 by the readers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.  Last Gasp’s offices are located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Featuring the work of Kelly Nicolaisen, including her photographic collaborations featuring the artists, Mars One, Erin Eisenhower, Skinner, Nate Van Dyke, Kelly Allen, NoMe Edonna, Merkley, Henry Lewis, Charmaine Olivia, Adam 5100, David Choong Lee, Romanowski, John Wentz and Micah LeBrun. Also incorporating the large and dynamic work of guest photographer, Robert Vo.

The photographs of Kelly Nicolaisen speak of her penchant for precise composition and extraordinary sense of color. On a higher plain than traditional photography, the painterly qualities present in her work, balanced by an apparent confidence within her creative process, are just a few reasons why she was chosen to be the sole photographer to conduct collaborations with fourteen artists, widely known as painters, but moreover for their consistent progression and iconic styles throughout the Bay Area, nation and internationally.

What is not to be missed in this exhibition are the stunning results from these artists who have seamlessly created yet, more beautiful imagery in a medium unfamiliar to all and largely unrecognized. The end result on display gives birth to an unbelievable comprehensive body of work which projects the brilliant conceptual techniques of the participating artists, illuminated by the striking simplicity of light.

Throughout this past winter and over the course of two months, the fore mentioned artists collaborated with Kelly Nicolaisen to create uniquely different images using many styles of light techniques, contrasted by some iconic and some more mysterious, outdoor, Bay Area locations.

Kelly Nicolaisen | large images

“Light painting is a photographic technique in which long exposures are made usually at night or in a dark setting, by moving a hand-held light source.”

Kelly Nicolaisen | light paintings w/ collaborating artists

Also on display at the MOMENT exhibition will be the vibrant color and stunning texture of Robert Vo’s photographs which are balanced with an urban understanding and anchored by their impressive scale.

Robert Vo

An interesting mix of contemporary new works by Ian Robert Mullen, William Edwards, and Mike Kimball. February 3rd – March 6th, 2011

	IAN ROBERT MULLEN was born into a rich family history of master tradesmen that have claimed the city of Philadelphia home for eleven generations. After striking out to attend the painting program at Boston University he found himself right back where he started, working with wood. Curious and inventive by nature, Ian still continues to explore the world around him through his woodworking, oil painting, sculpture, and anything else he can get his hands on.  “Whether it be with wood, plaster, or oil, I derive much of my inspiration from nature. An avid outdoorsman, I am always looking for new elements to implement into my next piece.” – Ian Robert Mullen
	WILLIAM EDWARD’s work is an exploration of the alchemy of ceramic materials. Glazes create textured fields of color often reminiscent of nature. The natural phenomenon of the glaze creates a chaotic surface of patterns. Through the inherent transmutation of chemicals the uncontrollable and unexpected occurs; instability creates a game of chance. Like the toss of a dice, a moment in time is captured. As a mark outgrows its bounds set by a brush, drips crawl and overtake a surface like oil slicks spreading over the ocean. Within the kiln, each glazed work comes alive, seeming to have an innate sense of purpose. Then in an instant, all is frozen. What is left is a window of chaotic patterns of uncertainty, irregularity and imperfection, a result of a vast shifting set of unique circumstances.  Courtesy of Toomey Tourell Fine Art
	MIKE KIMBALL is an artist in love with the city. He is best known for his paintings and prints of urban landscapes that seem to inhabit the worlds of both representation and abstraction simultaneously. The subjects of his artwork have been the urban and industrial environments of San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Osaka. “Whenever I look at the city, I end up seeing it in terms of patterns and textures and layered geometry. Its all in plain sight if you think to look for it.” says Kimball.  His artwork focuses on the underlying geometric abstraction of the architecture and design found in the urban landscape, as well as the curious effect that time and chaos has on that geometric order as it moves towards disorder and entropy.

Our massive year end group show, celebrating 111 of our very talented friends, family members and artist favorites. Each artist will have 1 single contributing piece to the show, collectively making it an eclectic, interesting and fun group show.

DECEMBER 2, 2010 – JANUARY 30, 2011
111 proudly presents (in no particular order)

Kelly Tunstall, Jesse Pollock, Robert Bowen, Bill Dunlap, Jeremy Fish, Alex Pardee, Chris Brennan, Mike Giant, Nate Van Dyke, Audrey Erickson, Micah LeBraun, Bo Heimlich, Tim Schafer, Mike Davis, Matt Furie, Pacolli, Marco Zamora, Jay Howell, Ruthie Swanson, Dave Mabry, Brian Gilbert, Mildred, Junko Mizuno, Jacob McGraw, John Wentz, Deth P. Sun, Jake Watling, Martin Ontiveros, Justin Lovato, Andrew McClintock, Ross Pope, Erin McCarty, Brett Amory, Mario Wagner, Ryan De La Hoz, Jason Jagel, Kinsey, Corey A, Seth Armstrong, Stacey Rozich, Jason Adams, Michael Beinhorn, Ferris Plock, Mia Christopher, Mike Bertino, Aiyana Udesen, Alex Chiu, David Cook, Ryan Coffey, Sean Brimer, Yoni Matayaou, Mike Steffan, Kelly Nicolaisen, Jesse Gidcumb, Isabel Samaras, Hayden Menzies, Russ Pope, Kyle Field, Jeremy Tinder, Arlo Jamrog, John Casey, Ernest Doty, Frank Carter, Rob Reger, Ben Tour, Tracy Timmins, Brian, Dave Correia, Connor Williumsen, Brad K Alder, Andreas Trolf, Rob Williamson, Skinner ,Cody Cochrane,Heather Gabel, Gabe Castellanos, Michael Slack, Brooke Candy, Pakayla Biehn, Mark Mulrony, Annie Galvin, Adam Avilla, Johnny Bonnell, Adam 5100, Matt Crookshank, Taylor Wessling, Darryl Peirce, Charmaine Olivia, Emilly Scannell, Todd Noble Holloway, Jesse Balmer, Gina Contreras, Seth Neefus, Jennybird, David Torch, Josh Yule, Zack Schlemmer, Scott Greenwalt, Parskid, Greg Speck, Ben Johston, David Fallis, Sergio Navarro-Duran, Ian Mullen, GeorgeWebber, Mark Todd, Jason Yim, Jason Cruz, Winston Smith, Jessica Trippe, Rogelio Martinez, Dennis McNulty, Michael Steffen, Leslie Winchester, Sergio Navarro-Duran, Llewellyn Bryan Dawson, Dennis McNulty, Bram de Martelaere.

Saeki works with the terminology of the four-color printing process: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK).  For example, he indicates a woman’s skin tone should be reproduced with 10% magenta, while her nipples should be 60% magenta.  Most of the men in Saeki’s artwork have a skin tone that is 30% magenta, 20% cyan, and 50% yellow.

He calls this method chinto printing – the picture is complete only after it has been printed.  It is a modern version of the ukiyo-e, a genre of Japanese woodcut prints or paintings produced between the 17th and 20th centuries.  Ukiyo-e were works of collaboration between the eshi (artist) and the surishi (printer).  Saeki is paying homage to this style, and considers himself an eshi.

The music world has crossed over to the fine art world, for what promises to be an amazing, first-time exclusive group exhibit at 111 Minna Gallery. “Scream With Me” will be showing original works by an impressive variety of musicians mixed in with internationally known tattoo artists from around the world.OCTOBER 7-31st, 2010

Music and tattoo culture seem to always form an alliance; they practically go hand in hand. Taking her love for music, tattoos and artwork, curator Angela Holmes has mashed them all together to assemble a fantastic line-up of musicians she admires and some of her favorite tattoo artists in the industry.

“Scream With Me” features work by:
Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio), Joby J Ford (The Bronx), Jason Cruz (Strung Out), Chad Van Gaalen, Frank Carter (Gallows), Conrad Keeley (…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead), Jacob Bannon (Converge), Tim Fite, Dallas Wehrle (Constantines), John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees), Tim Presley (White Fence/Darker My Love), Hayden Menzies, David Cook (Marching Teeth), Ross Farrar (Ceremony) Kyle Field (Little Wings), Dan Smith (Dear & Departed) and Michael Beinhorn
+ Uncle Allan (Copenhagen, Denmark), Henry Lewis (San Francisco, CA), Chad Koeplinger (New York, NY), Lizzie Renaud (Toronto, Canada), Todd Noble Holloway (Salisbury, MD), and Bart Bingham (New York, NY)

http://www.sfweekly.com/events/scream-with-me-2168229/

http://tattoosdayuk.wordpress.com/

http://onkelallan.blogspot.com/2010/09/scream-for-me-san-francisco.html

http://tattoosnob.com/2010/09/29/scream-with-me/#disqus_thread

http://www.antilabelblog.com/?p=4163

http://www.pluginmusic.com/news/article/conrad-keelys-artwork-to-be-featured-at-scream-with-me

http://www.explodinginsound.com/2010/09/trail-of-deads-conrad-keely-featured-in.html

http://www.chartattack.com/news/2010/aug/20/i-read-the-news-today-for-aug-20-2010

http://radio3.cbc.ca/blogs/2010/8/Music-Notes-Late-Edition-Aug-19-2010

An exhibition showcasing new works by group of Californian tattoo artists including Shawn Barber, Mike Davis, Mike Giant, Ryan Scott Shaffer, Juan Puente, Regino Gonzales, Daniel Albrigo, Henry Lewis, Don Edward Hardy and Edu Cerro.  ’Everyday’ is an attempt to shine a different light on a group of artists who have been involved in the tattoo practice and part of the shop culture. A variety of other media, not simply tattoo designs, will be on display to capture another side of the tattoo culture, the everyday lives of these artists, which can be viewed as a unique subculture in itself. Viewers will gain a different insight to the artistic commitment, nature and practice through this unique and candid exhibition.

The exhibition was curated by Andres Guerrero (owner and director of the Guerrero Gallery, in San Francisco) with assistance from 111 Minna Gallery Curator Jay Howell and Gabe Scott.

A group show of uniquely diverse, unusually creative and exceptionally inspiring artists from California, Seattle, Toronto, Nevada, and New York. We are proud to host these Hot Freaks for the summer, to display their new works and creative adventures.

Hot [hot] adjective, hot·ter, hot·test, adverb, verb, hot·ted, hot·ting, noun
Freaks [freeks] noun Any abnormal phenomenon or product or unusual objects; anomaly; aberration.

Some info about our Hot Freaks:

JOSEPH ALOI
Joseph Ari Aloi, a.k.a. JK5, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, where he relentlessly develops his visual, textual, and iconographic languages through a diverse range of media. JK5 is a highly respected custom tattoo artist and has been so for the last 12 years.

JESSE BALMER
Jesse was born in San Juan Capistrano, California in 1987. He has been drawing since before he can remember, which was really only much-less-than-the-blink-of-an-eye ago on the geologic time scale. He now resides in San Francisco, California where his dignity remains intact for now.

OLIVER HIBERT
Oliver Hibert is an American fine artist/illustrator/designer born in Seattle, Washington in 1983. From the age of 16, Hibert’s iconic psych-like style of art and design has caught the attention of numerous museums, galleries, big-wig companies and retail outlets around the globe. Hibert’s vivid and colorific artworks can be recognized on many mediums and media such as paintings, sculptures, shoes, skateboards, magazines, books, clothing, and much more. Currently, Oliver Hibert works and resides in Arizona on his desert farm of cacti and albino peacocks.

JUSTIN LOVATO
Rad dude, and killer artist from Sacramento, California.

LANGO NATOR

SETH SCRIVER
Seth Scriver, born and raised in Toronto, attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and received an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts. He is currently living and working in Toronto. Most of Scriver’s art making is based on personal experience and stories told to him. His visual aesthetics push toward a type of fantasy world created through a stream of consciousness drawing style. The drawings present a believable view of a chaotic world in which unknown entities play out small dramas.

FRANCESCO DEIANA ARNOLD

CHRIS BRENNAN
Chris Brennan is a photographer, artist, designer, DJ, and engineer based out of San Francisco, CA.

With a focus on candid event & party photography, fine art, and editorial – Brennan is also right at home collaborating with stylists and makeup artists in the studio or on location. An insatiable appetite for travel has driven Chris to more than twelve countries and throughout most of the continental United States looking for the perfect shot.

DARYLL PEIRCE
Focused on exploring the connectivity within humanity and its claims of control over social systems, habitat, nature, and future, Peirce’s artwork pendulates between the satiric and esoteric, optimistic and pessimistic, scientific and spiritual, bold and poetic. Grotesquely exaggerated human forms, arterial-botanic city organisms, and flowering interconnected urban clusters currently inhabit his psyche and spew into his work. On a more intimate level, his influences instinctively stem from past and current environs, travel, exploration, skateboarding, surfing, dreaming, philosophy, and interacting with all forms of the human animal with a focused lens on the social outcast.

111 Minna Gallery  111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA.
July 1st – July 31st, 2010 | Space: Entire venue | Open to the Public

Better Weather is in full-swing at 111 Minna Gallery for the month of July, which is why we are please to invite you to our first exhibit of the summer!  An array of colourfully bright and stunning pieces will be displayed, which will feel like we invited the sun into shine as well. Better Weather can be thanked for by the 4 talented, unique artists contributing to this month’s show:CHRISSY ANGLIKER
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, her earliest ambitions were to grow to to be a stunt-woman…and to make art.  From a very young age she experimented with stone, clay, and found objects among other materials.  Chrissy has developed a profound understanding of three-dimensional design, relationships between objects, and creating character through form. During her studies at Pratt Institute, Chrissy won many national and international design awards. She was selected for numerous juried shows, including ICFF.

Chrissy has been cultivating her own work in fine art and design, which continues to incorporate her political, spiritual and humanitarian perspective. Her work has been published in magazines and books world wide. Today, she lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

ERIN MCCARTY
My work embraces bold color, texture, and pattern to illustrate the radiant beauty of environments and creatures both real and imagined. Emotive, celebratory, and personal, my work reflects the honest enthusiasm I have for my subject matter. Above anything else, I communicate the excitement, grandeur, and terror of human life and the unknown. The marriage of seemingly opposing forces has always been of great interest to me (the earthly & celestial, adoration & violence, loneliness & communion), and much of my work explores relating themes of duality. Humans, plants, and animals existing as a single entity is another important ongoing narrative within my work.

BILL DUNLAP
Education: I can’t read or write.  I was raised by skunks and wolves.
Work Experience:  Oh, puleeze!

JESSICA DELORME
Jessica Delorme is a Vancouver based artist, with a combined education in both art production and curation.  She is inspired by the thriving city hugged by an ocean and mountains.

111 Minna Gallery presents: “Las Calles Electricas,” new works by Uriel Marin, Rene Almanza and Daniel Berman; working as part of the Oaxacan art collective Artecocodrilo.  Artecocodrilo’s space in Oaxaca, Mexico opened its doors in 2005 and has evolved into a dynamic hub for artists in that region to collaborate with each other and reach out to the larger community, both locally and globally.  We are please to welcome and host this unique collective of contemporary art, cutting edge illustrations, fluid sketches, street art, and graffiti to San Francisco to show their current work.

June 3rd – June 26th, 2010 | Opening Reception: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010  5pm-late.  21+111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA.  94110
416-974-1719

May 6th – 29th, 2010
New Works by: Rob Reger, Mario Wagner, Chris Sullivan, Jason Vivona, Mildred, Will Laren, Tim Shaffer, Vladimir Kato, David Cook, Bo Heimlich, Cody Cochrane, and Graham Robinson ( Beaston ) , Audrey Erickson, Jake Watling, Andreas Trolf, Jim Dirschberger and more…

More

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1940&Itemid=90

http://www.hifructose.com/the-blog/592-excellent-condition-at-111-minna.html

Legendary underground publisher Last Gasp turns 40 this year and to celebrate, they are throwing a party and art show at 111 Minna Gallery.

The Last Gasp 40th Anniversary Art Show assembles a top-drawer lineup of artists – the haut monde of lowbrow.  Over the past four decades, Last Gasp has published hundreds of artists in the underground comix and kustom kulture, to pop surrealism and street art movements.

Opening night photos

Artists in the show include:
Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup Glenn Barr, Robert Crumb, Richard Corben, Guy Colwell, Ron English, Tony Fitzpatrick, Christopher Felver, Camille Rose Garcia, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Rick Griffin, Ed Hardy, Frank Kozik, Joe Ledbetter, Carol Lay, Adrian Lee, Michael Manning, Chris Mars, Scott Musgrove, Junko Mizuno, Liz McGrath, Laurenn McCubbin, Mitch O’Connell, Annie Owens, The Pizz, Mark Ryden, Michael Rosen, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Dori Seda, Winston Smith, Eric White, Robert Williams, Attaboy, Aye Jay, and many more to be announced.

Writers, including San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane DiPrima will do a reading.  Design radicals GAMA-GO will produce a limited edition tee shirt for the event.

Last Gasp founder and publisher Ron Turner is available for interviews. Book covers, interior art, and other images available upon request.

Free and open to the public | (415) 974-1719
www.111minnagallery.com | Contact: Jay Howell  jay.howell@gmail.com
21 + over

About Last Gasp
Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground books & comics in the world, as well as being a distributor of all sorts of weird ‘n’ wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first “Earth Day,” April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics. Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Mark Ryden, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain Rodriguez, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

Ron Turner’s enthusiasm for underground comics, and in particular their autobiographical aspect, has been the driving force behind many groundbreaking publications.  Last Gasp published Justin Green’s highly acclaimed confessional Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972, a book that became an inspiration to many artists now working in the autobiographical style. “Art Spiegelman, who won the only Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, has said he would never have started to do the autobiographical story of his family (in the graphic novel Maus) unless Justin had done it first. And Robert Crumb said the same thing,” said Turner.

Today, Last Gasp publishes 12-20 new titles per year, focusing on Lowbrow and Pop Surrealist artists, as well as graphic novels. The company has 18 full and part-time employees and is based in San Francisco. In addition to publishing, Last Gasp distributes for large and small publishers worldwide, providing a steady counter-cultural stream of books and other printed matter that spreads over six continents.

Last Gasp books have been glowingly reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Juxtapoz magazine, The Guardian (UK), Hi-Fructose magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Austin Chronicle, American Book Review, and The Los Angeles Times.

Co-publishing partners include La Luz de Jesus / Billy Shire Fine Arts, Porterhouse Fine Art Editions, San Jose Museum of Art, Grand Central Art Center, Smokemuse, JaPress, Moulinsart, Presspop Gallery, Ignition Publishing, NewSkool/Analog, Laguna Art Museum, and many more.

The readers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian named Last Gasp the Best Local Publisher in 2009.

First publications:
Slow Death, 1970 (comic); Breather’s Guide to Invisible Air Pollution (book) 1970.

111 Minna Gallery is proud to present “Fort Big Mountain”, an exhibition  showcasing new works by Oakland, CA painters Christopher Russell and Seth Armstrong. The exhibition will run from March 4-27, 2010. The exhibition has been curated by for the 111 Minna Gallery by Curator Gabe Scott with assistance from 111 Minna Gallery Curator Jay Howell.

ARTISTIC HIGHLIGHTS
Through his paintings, Christopher Russell explores his personal perceptions and connections with the natural world by ‘painting outside from within’. Russell’s images of nature communicate his reverence for nature, a ‘reverence tempered by notions of disconnection and disillusionment’. His landscapes are based both on his physical experiences as well as an alternate narrative based on fantasy and imagination. The fantasy is incorporated as an exaggeration of a real experience, allowing Russell to invent a new landscape that is based on the idea or experience of a place rather than sit in front of it in order to capture its essence. Christopher was raised in Boulder, CO, attended the California College of the Arts and is based in Oakland, CA.

Seth Armstrong, another former CCA student displays a compulsion to juxtapose hyper-realistic re-creations of his surroundings with various fantastical segments of his imagination. The resulting narratives contain elements of drama, mystery and humor that “accentuate the theatrical and fictitious characteristics believed to be apparent in everyday life”. He feels that “the actions of the subjects and the circumstances of their environments are often vague, only hinting at the events that are inherently taking place”.  Seth was raised in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Oakland, CA.

111 Minna Gallery are proud to present WONDERLAND – the very anticipated group show, curated by award winning, multi-talented Irene Hernandez-Feiks; founder of Chillin Productions.  Throughout the past 11 years, Irene has provided a platform for thousands of emerging Bay Area artists with Chillin Productions, and watched them flourish into their careers.  Wonderland is a particularly significant project for Irene, as she began her art career at 111 Minna Gallery, in 1998.  Since then she has dreamed of curating a show here, and we at 111 Minna are proud and excited about this incredibly dynamic show she has put together.Wonderland features 60 of Irene’s all-time favorite artists, each have greatly influenced and contributed to the local art community.  This very special exhibition showcases a wide variety of exciting and diverse visual artistic talents, and true Bay Area art icons.

Aaron Johnson
Alex Garcia Ferrá
Amandalynn
Andrzej Michael Karwacki
Angela Scrivani
Ben Collison
Brian Barneclo
Brooke Farrington
Chris Stokes
Christie Newman
Cinthia Dennis
Conor Burns
Daniel J. Valadez
David Rozelle
DEEPSI{X}
Erin Schroeder
Faith Allen
Ferris Plock
Fidel Lirio
Freda Banks
“elle”
Gianluca Franzese
GINNE
Hilary Williams
Ian Ross
Jaiv1
Jason Michael Aumann
Jeff Neugebauer
Jeffrey Nemenzo
Jenny Wehrt
Jeremy Mann
Jocelyn Meggait
John Patrick Campbell
Jonah Burlingame
Kelly Tunstall
Kimi Recor
Krescent Carasso
Kukula
Lady Millard
Lee Harvey Roswell
Manny Fabregas
Marcus Herrera
MARIAFATIMA URBI
Mary Syring
Merkley???
Misha Vladimirskiy
Natalia Gomez
Paul Trapani
“Ptah Amen”
Rebecca Peters
Robert Garcia
Romanowski
Samanta Tello
Slava Likhatchev
Spencer Hansen
Steve Javiel
Telopa
Ursula Xanthe Young
Yuri Psinakis
Yvette Buigues

My last solo show was Feb. of 2008; this next opening is pretty much my first endeavor since then. In May of 2008, I left on a year long travel through Central America, Asia, Australia, Africa and Europe. I decided to put down my brush during the entirety of the year and, instead, use a camera as my tool of creative expression. The idea was to inject myself with as many outside influences, experiences, and cultures as possible, over the course of the year. Let it all sink in and begin processing once I crawled back into my studio. What has transpired has been a difficult transition back into painting where I have ultimately found myself exploring several different avenues of development all at once or on top of one another. I’m beginning to see the influence of my travel encounters lacing itself through my current work.

Taking so much time away from painting has created a bombardment of ideas for me, that while processing, has given birth to this show, Resurface. Resurface, for me, is basically picking up a brush again, putting back out for the public, and reinventing techniques which I learned over a decade ago. Resurface offers a variety of  ‘surfaces’ as well. The show consists of a series of intense portraiture of Cambodian refugees, much looser multimedia paintings, which have brought me into an open consciousness form of painting that I have been trying to accomplish for years. There will be work on glass, fine line drawing, charcoals, color studies and in addition, I will be debuting my photography. Basically, the pieces of Resurface have opened up a series of work that have grown beyond the borders of 111 Minna Gallery. Resurface is more than a body of work, but a new style of creating that will go beyond this opening. This show is an opportunity to view the beginning of my next journey.

111 Minna Gallery is proud to host NeighborhoodSF, a group show featuring some of San Francisco’s most exciting and prolific artists, co-curated by Ryan Malley of the ArtPrint.net and Martin Olive of sQuint. NeighborhoodSF is a collection of San Francisco’s finest artists who are each given the task of representing this City’s many unique neighborhoods, showing at 111 Minna Gallery from September 3rd through the 26th, 2009.

San Francisco is without a doubt, one of the most diverse cities in the world. Its neighborhoods are each legendary in their own way and it’s residents are iconic in their varied personalities.

NeighborhoodSF brings a visual life to the people, places and things that create our environment. With over 40 original paintings, illustrations and installations, the artists involved in NeighborhoodSF have created a body of work that is a worthy and relevant representation of of this great City.

To say the show is star-studded would be an understatement… With the likes of Mike Giant, Jeremy Fish, Sylvia Ji, MARS-1, Coro [Justin Kaufman], Nate Van Dyke and Adam 5100 just to name a few, this showcase of local, homegrown talent is going to be one for the history books.

Tattooed women combined with beautiful Black Sharpie line work are just some of the techniques that make up the signature style and imagery of Mike Giant [GIANT ONE]. Mike applies them adeptly to illustrate the best parts of what is dark and beautiful about the Mission. His original illustration will be accompanied by limited edition prints available throughout the show dates.

Jeremy Fish made the move from the Sunset to North Beach and never looked back. Whole-heartedly embracing the neighborhood that hugs him back. His medium of choice, painting on a large multi-layered wood cut that brings together all the best parts of San Francisco’s “Little Italy.” Jeremy sought to give something back to the neighborhood that has treated him so well, so he will also be showcasing limited edition silkscreen prints of a unique North Beach piece which will sell for an unprecedented low price of $40! Proceeds will go the homeless outreach organization; North Beach Citizens.

Coro has spent the last few years calling the Tenderloin home and he wouldn’t have it any other way. His dark vision of one of San Francisco’s most haunting neighborhoods will bring chills down your spine and have you begging for more like a TL junkie on Sunday morning.

Illustrations and an installation from Matt Furie will bring to life the psychedelic nostalgia of the Haight-Ashbury District. It’s definitely a fitting locale for his kaleidoscopic monsters and animals.

With all this San Francisco based talent; Adam 5100, Adam Flores, Akira and Helen, Brett Amory, Brian Barneclo, Collin Hill, Coro [Justin Kaufman], David Chong Lee, David Imlay, Eric Bailey, Ferris Plock, Jay Howell, Jeremy Fish, Lee Harvey Roswell, MARS-1, Micah Lebrun, Mike Giant, Nate Van Dyke, Romanowski, Ryan Malley, Sylvia Ji and Wesley Burt, NeighborhoodSF promises to be an amazing and inspiring showcase that truly represents the continuing story of this most wonderful of cities… San Francisco.

Limited edition prints of work by Mike Giant, Jeremy Fish, Sylvia Ji, Coro, and Brett Amory will be made available opening night and for the duration of the show.

Local band City Light and DJ’s Nick Andre and E da Boss will be performing throughout the evening.

The inhabitants of San Francisco make this city the great place that it is, so please come share great space with us.

111 Minna Gallery is delighted to present Ferris Plock+Kelly Tunstall’s SEA OF LOVE, a new body of collaborative works, from August 6 – 29 2009.

The latest large-scale collaborative exhibition by San Francisco-based artists Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall, SEA OF LOVE is an entirely new body of work that explores relationships between sailors and mermaids, stories of lost love and misguided navigation, the diversity of creatures inhabiting the oceans and their individual roles as different vessels of possibility.

Plock and Tunstall share a studio space in San Francisco’s Alamo Square and their collaborative work for this exhibit exudes a playful, colorful and whimsical tone, with a fluid intermingling of each artist’s point of view.

Working in acrylic, collage, spray paint, pencil, pen and ink, gold leaf and some secret sauce, the experimental, yet classically grounded works live somewhat comfortably in a space between graphic expression, stylized representation, surrealism, and sketch. The simplicity of the messages are enhanced by the underlying vitality and complex layering within the work.

In her studied portraits, Tunstall renders stylized, leggy female figures and their pets, prey, powers, and dreams. Their physical forms and accompanying exteriors represent and mirror internal thought processes ad turmoil. For instance, frequent themes such as mermaids, twins, or extra limbs concede a desire, a reliance, an adaptation, or more simply, an aspiration to something greater than being a painting. Tunstall has gone on to exhibit internationally and nationally. Tunstall’s has been exhibiting regularly at 111 Minna since 2003.

In contrast, Plock’s work centers on the inner animalistic tendencies and reactions reflected by humans (transfigured into monsters, in some cases) in the context of modern life. Disgruntled animals trying to capture clowns, animals teaching their young how to escape their predicament and even animals that don’t always socialize coming together to aid each other feature prominently in this new exhibit. Born in New Jersey, Plock has been showing his work for over eight years.

On July 2nd, Hamburger Eyes presents EXODUS at 111 Minna Gallery. This exhibition will showcase black and white photography from regular contributors of Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine. Photographs will range in size from large murals of 8 feet x 10 feet, to the traditional standard of 8 inches by 10 inches.

The shows title, “EXODUS” evokes not only the feelings of mass migration, but of transmogrification. Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine, subtitled “The continuing story of Life on Earth”, has dedicated their pages to the study of the human condition. And, in this exhibit they intend to display their visions of transcendence from past, present, and future-kind. It is a mission of containing time by setting it free, thus shall begin the EXODUS.

This event will also celebrate the release of Hamburger Eyes Issue 013. Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine is based in San Francisco. It is off-set printed in black and white on glossy stock, perfect bound with a cardstock cover, holding 150 pages at a run of 3000 copies. Hamburger Eyes is carried in shops, stores, libraries, galleries, and museums across the entire planet.

A new installation of epic proportions from Sacramento, CA artist Skinner | June 4- June 27th, 2009

Watch this: http://vimeo.com/4976900
Artwork & Music by Skinner TheArtofSkinner.com
Animation by Jim Dirschberger of EightyFourFilms.com

111 Minna Gallery is proud to present “Worship Thee Kindly The Dark Hand That Guides Me”, an exhibition showcasing new and recent works from Skinner. This full bore installation of sculpture, paintings and mixed media work will mark Skinner’s first major solo effort and will be available for enhanced 3-D viewing on the night of the opening reception.

Like some fantastical LSD nightmare, the art of skinner is a full bore visual assault that maintains a vicious stranglehold on one’s senses. Rivers of blood cut valleys out of crystal mountains that cradle the battleground of the war for evermore. From the ashes and dust rises one warrior, a very strange warrior, on a mission to destroy preconceptions of visual art and paradigm all the while maintaining a very very dark sense of humor.

Sacramento, CA resident Skinner has carefully crafted a balanced triad of impressive mural work, overwhelmingly intense wall to wall installations and a prolific commercial career. A product of 80′s pop culture, early skateboarding scenes, a broken home, dungeons and dragons and a lot of heavy metal, Skinner’s mind is one full of meyhem driven by a calculated chaos.

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat, 12pm-5pm, Saturday, 1pm-5pm and viewing by appointment. 111 Minna Gallery is located at the corner of Minna and 2nd Street in downtown San Francisco. The Gallery offers a full bar and welcomes ages 21 and over.

Curator Contact
Gabe Scott
415.974.1719
scott.gabe@gmail.com

111 Minna Gallery is proud to present “Berliner Unkraut”, an exhibition showcasing and surveying recent works from some of the top artists from Germany working within the lowbrow / pop-surrealism movements as well as two of the country’s top street artists.The line -up consists of Mateo, Johan Potma, Evol, Pisa 73 and Tina Zellmer. The ARTIST-ATTENDED opening reception on Thursday, May 7, 2009, 6pm-late.

TINA ZELLMER was born in 1974 in the north of Germany. I traveled around Australia after graduating in illustration design at the Art and Design Academie in the Netherlands in 2000 (Academie Minerva) and have been working as an freelance illustrator and designer ever since. In 2002 I moved to Amsterdam and since 2003 live and work in Berlin. My work harmoniously blends dreamy textures and ideas with stark and graphic elements. The artwork combines the strengths of collage, painted textures, photography and handmade pencil drawings.

MATEO was born in San Mateo, California. From a young age he was addicted to the idea of creating his own world full of odd monsters. As it is now, in those days it was not uncommon to see Mateo with pencil in hand, fervently giving life to his next creation. At the age of 20 he had an epiphany. He realized he could continue creating his world of offbeat characters and do so without getting a dreaded desk job! That sounded too good to be true. So he went to school, learned to paint, became somewhat known in San Francisco, then he moved to Berlin, Germany. In Berlin he painted on whatever he could find (old boxes, windows, tins, etc.). He then secured a spot at the flea market, and soon he and his artwork became a well known fixture of the Boxhagener Flea Market and of Berlin. His world of freaks and monsters can now be seen in his gallery Zozoville, alongside the artwork of his colleague Johan Potma. Mateo can usually be found in the back room of the Zozoville Gallery covered in paint, creating new monsters.

JOHAN POTMA’s work is done is acrylic paint and usually consists of more then one material As a kid growing up he learned a lot from skateboarding. It was this sport that opened up my his eyes to his surroundings and see possibilities everywhere. The city was my playground and to this day still is. Also, the world of imagery, strongly connected to skateboarding has clearly giving me direction as where to go with my artwork. As a Dutch artist living in Berlin, Potma has always had a deep interest in old materials to work with and developed the style he works with today during his time at the Minerva Art Academy. The old materials are a big part of my artwork since they, in their own way, tell a part of the story Potma is trying to get across. Stories told through stains, cracks and bumps in the material  usually wood and old paper collage) Inspired by these materials Potma adds layer after layer of his own story, played out by all sorts of goofy, weird and crazy but lovable characters, that take on a central role in his artwork. Recent works by Pisa 73 and Evol will also be on display courtesy of the Wilde Gallery in Berlin. The opening is free and open to members of the public 21 and over.

The exhibition will run from May 7- May 30, 2009

Through the influence of both eastern and western cultures, philosophies, and practices, Ted creates paintings that explore the transitory nature of landscape. Drawing from his background and experience in eastern culture he uses industrial materials such as steel, aluminum, acids, and automotive enamel to create landscapes that simultaneously feel strong and illusive. The austere nature of his materials are softened and rendered into contemplative spaces. Using sumi ink and rice paper each piece is begun employing a chance driven process based on a traditional style of Chinese landscape painting. The monk Wong Mo pioneered this method (the Pomo method) during the T’iang dynasty (618- 906 AD). To this foundation he adds various combinations of painting methods that include, but are not limited to, the use of acrylic paint, epoxy glazes and automotive paint to create a hybrid of Eastern and Western techniques. With the addition of other elements such as the bar codes, binary codes and geometric shapes, the modern is persuaded to co-exist with the ancient. The combination of the abstract organic spaces created by the ink, and the more formal modern elements, helps coerce a visual dialogue between nature and its filtration through technology. In doing so, Ted dissects ideas of censorship, diversion, and manipulation, which are themes that he continues to explore. This work manifested after an intensive study of landscape painting in China in 2000.

A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Ted is 35, lives in Gainesville, and when not in his studio he can be found riding or fixing his bikes and small engine vehicles.

A fresh perspective on two-dimensional creations will be represented from the United States, Brazil, Germany, Slovenia and Australia and will encompass painting, collage, architectural design as well as street installations.Collection assembled by 111 Minna Gallery Curator Gabe Scott, 111 Minna Associate Curator Jay Howell, and Lainya Magana (former Upper Playground Associate Curator.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Robert Hardgrave (Seattle, WA)

Clynton Lowry (San Francisco, CA)[Gallery not found]

Nicole Hagen (San Francisco,CA)[Gallery not found]

Taska Cleveland ( Los Angeles, CA)

Kelly Ording (San Francisco, CA)[Gallery not found]

Mario Wagner (Cologne, Germany)

Sarah Spitler (San Francisco, CA)[Gallery not found]

Jacob Magraw (Los Angeles, CA)

Yellana James (Portland, OR)

Ryan Bubnis (Portland, OR)

Rene Almanza (Oaxaca, Mexico)

Fishnets, tarts and the art of the modern tease

An art exhibition created by Alice Stribling and Jessica Whiteside.
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The pinup girl holds a titillating place in history. She and her sister, the burlesque queen, have long been American icons, evolving with the changing tastes of popular culture.

The Gibson Girl of the Gay Nineties may have been fully clothed, but her poses in popular magazines were racy by the standards of the day. She became a superstar whose name is known even today. The Vargas Girl peeking over her shoulder in magazines of the Forties may have worn fewer clothes, but her popularity was perhaps greater than the Gibson Girl. Vargas Girls graced calendars in gas stations and on barrack walls. She flew hundreds of WWI missions on the noses of fighters and bombers. In burlesque houses across the country, the pinup pose moved to the stage with tauntingly slow strip teases and ‘oops-what-happened-to-my-clothes’ wardrobe malfunctions. The biopic about Fifties pinup star Bettie Page, released in 2006, highlights the current popularity of burlesque and pinup.

The spirit of pinup and burlesque continues to influence new artists. Lingerie clad ladies doing provocative burlesque bump-and-grind pinup poses inspired “Pin It up, Babycakes”, an art exhibition created by Alice Stribling and Jessica Whiteside. The show will hang at 111 Minna Gallery from February 5 -28, 2009.

Stribling and Whiteside met in January of 2008, and were excited to find that both were pinup inspired artists. Both artists made the transition from admiring pinup to performing burlesque, and found themselves dancing in Bombshell Betty’s burlesque class months later. Sometime between doing the hip bump and tassel twirl, the two discussed the idea of doing a show together. “Pin It up, Babycakes” is the result.

The work in the show ranges from sexily clad Samurai sword swinging chicks on hot rods, to charmingly naughty illustrations with a Victorian flourish. Shelves will be stocked with cheeky cowgirls on bowling pins, along with pinups ‘advertising’ products like Catwoman’s whipping cream, purrrfect on pie.

Opening night festivities will be MC’d by the fabulous Kitten on the Keys, and will include tantalizing burlesque performances. Vintage burlesque film clips hand crafted by Stephen Parr of Oddball Films Archive will be shown. And there will be Sexy Merchandise … just in time to make you or your Valentine sweetie squeal with delight.

INSOMNIA / Claudio Ethos
FELIZES / Anderson Resende
December 4-31, 2008
Curated by Gabe Scott

INSOMNIA: Brazilian Street Surrealist Claudio Ethos

San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery presents the United Sates debut of Brazil’s Claudio Ethos with great enthusiasm as the artist comes off of sold out shows in Europe and South America. While a stop in NYC is on the calendar for 2009, the famous street surrealist of Sao Paolo brings an impressive collection of drawings, paintings and installations through San Francisco in order to formally introduce himself to American audiences.

Ethos’ unique blend of conscious and unconscious depicts a remedy for struggle within South America’s concrete jungle. The strain of urban anxiety is often visible in the large, deep set black eyes that reside within the tired faces of his characters. Formulated within a mind that rarely rests, these surrealistic creatures exist in a perpetual state of struggle as they have traveled from the artist’s subconscious to the waking world of the general public. The excessive and meticulous detail that is the hallmark of Ethos’ work is sure to transport the viewer to an examination of one’s own waking dream.

FELIZES: Anderson Resende

Anderson Resende’s rare technical quality and extremely energetic drawing portrays bodies bearing the marks of living. His drawings are like engravings, the paper scored with the same precision and power. Each drawing is unique, with no sketch or draft. The overlapping gestural features in Nanking ink create marks as definitive as the writing of time aging the body. Each line tells a story and leaves a wrinkle on the surface of the paper.  Resende portrays the outside, but shows us what is inside. He draws “aging” to look at “experience,” “death” to address “immateriality” and “body” to talk about “spirit.” The impact of his works is not in the theme, but in the meaning, as profound as the eyes of the figures portrayed. Figures showing vivid images charged
with the age of the soul. Happy because they have smiled and wept— liberated are those who do not fear death.

The artists of “Freak of Nature” adopt natural imagery as a central point of inquiry in their work. Expressions of human, plant, animal, insect life and landscape range from the realistic, mutated, beautiful, cliché, surreal, psychedelic, romantic and kitsch. This reflects a range of responses to the current sentiment of ecological disaster and genetic modification; including appreciation of the elegance of natural forms as well as disenchantment with environmentalist ideals. The use of visual references to science textbooks and commercial illustration are utilized to comment on the commoditization of natural life as an abstract entity to
be manipulated.

November 6-29, 2008
Conceptualized by Lisa Ostanpinski
Co-curated by Lisa Ostapinski and Gabe Scott

These artists investigate the interaction between humans and the environment including both reverence and destruction of the natural world. This highlights the contemporary complexity of human response and interpretation of nature as well as global environmental crises. Many of the artists in “Freak of Nature” celebrate the inherent beauty of natural imagery as well as ask the viewer to consider the current implications of human lifestyle choices. In this context, the expression “Freak of Nature” serves both as a metaphor for the anomalous expression of nature as well as reference to consequences of human interference.

Artists:
Allison Kendall
Amanda Smith
Alexis Mackenzie
Henry Gunderson
Colleen Sanders
Andrew Schoultz
Hilary Pecis
Lisa Ostapinski
Hannah Stouffer
Casey Jex Smith
Josh Keyes
Jacob Tillman
Christopher Russell
Matthew Hart

Curated by Gabe Scott
Oct 2 – Nov 1

FEATURED ARTISTS

Keli Reule
Ms. Reule is a North Carolina born San Francisco resident who will be participating in her first major exhibit @ 111 Minna Gallery. Recently accepted to the St. Martin’s College MFA painting program in London, Reule will be teaming up with studio mate Henry Lewis for “Captain and Commander.”

With this body of work, Reule has chosen to focus on her relationship with the sea and how it relates to internal emotional losses and maintenance of one’s passionate energy. She has set herself adrift into deep, dark water in order to contemplate the effects death, emotional defeats, personal loss and the re-generation of self.  Reule’s sparse palette has been further reduced in order to aid in the alienation of a didactic representation, giving way to a slowness depicted in her blurred imagery.

The artist has long seen herself as a vehicle for narrative memory or as an emulsified canvas for the lapse of time and space. The viewer may feel as if on a train, watching cities pass by with lost monuments or
encountering individuals with displaced physical characteristics.

Henry Lewis
Subtle epiphanies and chance encounters are some of the factors and themes examined by Henry Lewis in his most recent body of work, currently on exhibition with studio mate Keli Reule.

This presentation provides a new angle for Lewis’ long running study of his view of the human condition. A sensitive and impressionable individual, Lewis’ ability to draw strength, an existential purpose and inspiration from his love for the meaningful, random experience is on full display within this exhibit. A slew of street encounters with cab drivers and other urban prophets has provided a significant and positive counterbalance to a dependency on familiarity for guidance. Lewis recently made a difficult decision to leave mentor Mike Davis and Everlasting Tattoo for Skull and Sword; a move geared toward personal evolution both as a tattoo and fine artist. Davis has been a key figure in Lewis’ mastery of oil painting and development of his highly unique baroque characteristics.

GOLDEN: Recent works by Serena Cole and Tahiti Pehrson, a show featuring works by two emerging Bay Area talents.

Curated by Gabe Scott
September 4-27

FEATURED ARTISTS
Consisting of a provocative collection of new works.

Serena Cole
Creates beautifully haunting imagery incorporating the lost gazes of fashionistas frozen in a moment of fantastical escapism. Within these portraits, the constructs of high art and fashion are re-examined in an elaborate deception between a broad sense of idealized beauty synonymous with contemporary pop culture and a desire for the sublime. The work hypothesizes that the result of a life spent in the pursuance of vanity ultimately leads to isolation, sadness and alienation. Her investigation into various forms of conceptual and stylized beauty through colored pencil, gold leaf and watercolor prompt the viewer to be captivated by the eyes in each picture as if examining oneself in the mirror.

Tahiti Pehrson
Quietly obsesses over meticulous detail in the construction of his three dimensional paper structures. Originally enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute for painting, Pehrson has painstakingly rendered his compositions and palettes to the bare skeletal remains. Graffiti, stencils and classical paining all maintain their influence on Tahiti’s work, but the resulting constructs are something entirely unique. This structure contains personal narrative quilted with romanticism, built on an insatiable desire to formulate a semblance of things. Pehrson, after a recent bout with yellow fever, has produced a body of work heavily laden with images from another consciousness, yet still addresses his appreciation of Californianism and all things he finds heartwarming.

Established in 1993 in downtown San Francisco 111 Minna Gallery is in the business of Art & Leisure. The gallery showcases a unique blend of local and international artists, world class DJ’s, live performance, and film screenings in an elegantly urban and ever-changing 4,000 square foot space.

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat, 12pm-5pm, Saturday, 1pm-5pm and viewing by appointment.

111 Minna Gallery is located at the corner of Minna and 2nd Street in downtown San Francisco. The Gallery offers a full bar and welcomes ages 21 and over.

For more information go to www.111minnagallery.com

Curator Contact: Gabe Scott, 415.974.1719 scott.gabe@gmail.com

Curated by Gabe Scott
August 7-31

Featured artists:

Brett Amory
Seth Armstrong
Andrew Hem
John Wentz

BRETT AMORY, a San Francisco-based artist, tackles the cacophony and estranged anonymity of urban life in his “Waiting” and “Passport” series and collection of new works.

www.BrettAmory.com

SETH ARMSTRONG is a Bay Area artist whose painting layer diverse urban and exotic landscapes populated with citizens and tourists masquerading as nondescript superheroes.

www.SethArmstrong.com

ANDREW HEM, the exhibition’s sole Los Angeles artist, portrays thoughtful hipster geishas against the backdrop of iconic landmarks and exposes the urban landscape as fresh, real and complex.

www.AndrewHem.com

JOHN WENTZ, a Bay Area artist, features grey-scale illustrations of post-apocalyptical scenes transforming iconic scenes of childhood by punctuating the atmosphere with vintage superheroes.

The auditory experience at 365 opening features a staggering mix of national talents in genre-bending sounds from electro to breaks to indie-jazz to house-soul to live music in Minna’s two rooms of art and music.

Curated by: Gabe Scott
May 1-30, 2008

Their previous, and first, collaborative exhibition at 111 Minna , Saints and Sinners, was well received, as was their Fall 2007 show, Subterranea, at Fuse Gallery in New York. Further integration of the two styles have resulted in an elegant and expanded view on the masculine and feminine dialogue, as well as evolving their concepts and separate artistic processes into a continually evolving combination of drawing and painting methods.

Working in acrylic, collage, spray paint, pencil, pen and ink, gold leaf (and some secret sauce), the experimental, yet classically grounded works live comfortably in a space between graphic expression, stylized representation, surrealism, and sketch. The simplicity of the messages is enhanced by the underlying vitality and complex layering within the work.

In her studied portraits, Tunstall renders stylized, leggy female figures and their pets, prey, powers, dreams and. Their physical forms and accompanying exteriors represent and mirror internal thought processes ad turmoil. For instance, frequent themes such as mermaids, twins, or extra limbs concede a desire, a reliance, an adaptation, or more simply, an aspiration to something greater than being a painting. Tunstall has gone on to exhibit internationally and nationally. This is Tunstall’s fourth major exhibition at 111 Minna.

In contrast, Plock’s work centers on the inner animalistic tendencies and reactions reflected by humans (transfigured into monsters, in some cases) in the context of modern life. Disgruntled animals tryin