On July 25th, 1912 United States world chess champion (1909 – 1936), Frank James Marshall, sacrificed his Queen (Q to G3), beating out opponent, Stefan Levitsky, in what is considered one of the most brilliant twists of game fate in recorded chess history. This move, now canonized in chess terminology as a “swindle,” is the achievement of a win or a draw from a distinctly losing position. Shotgun Shells and Pinecones presented at the Meyer Oakland Library brings together the aesthetics of chance and gender. Curated vitrines offer a selection of books, photographs, and texts from the library archive in addition to found artifacts, images, and books from a family archive. Presented in conjunction with Angela Berry’s CCA MFA Thesis exhibition on view at the Perry Family Gallery until April 2nd, Shotgun Shells and Pinecones, is a playful counter-point to Berry’s thesis body of work Rough Weather Makes Good Timber, which looks at different processes of resilience in the ancient forest habitat of the Blue Ridge…
Weatherlore is a process of divination and exchange between human culture and environment, through which we attempt to predict the weather, and to decipher meaning from it in turn. Abstraction is another means of reciprocal exchange through which signs, symbols and materials conjure meaning and metaphor. My work captures the sightlines, spatial relationships, and color conjunctions where the land meets the sea. Through paper, cotton, and paint, I translate experiences of atmosphere and seascape into their most essential, distilled expression, creating formal objects that are embedded with fragments and traces of memory, as if sunwashed by time.
Experiencing a transition from working primarily with clay here at California College of the Arts, John Boychuk has created a series of sculptures that present the intricacies of the way the body, physics, and art are interwoven.Wrapping the pieces around his body in what the artist terms a “dance”, Boychuk’s actions themselves are written in the graceful sweeps of the wooden bands. The wire twists in all directions around the wood, both securing the pieces together to create the larger form and shaping the voids that his body had once inhabited. Displayed within the library are books that have motivated Boychuk’s practice, including the 19th century satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions . In Flatland and in the sculptures on display we see the examination of dimensions taking a central role in the work. Situated both on the ground and in the air, the delicate lines and negative space of the objects navigate one’s eye through the artist’s study of dimensions and the body’s interaction in sp…
From idea to process to completion: the latest exhibition in the storefront window of the Meyer Library, curated by Hannah Novillo Erickson, a graduate student in the Curatorial Practice program and the library’s new Assistant Curator for 2015/2016, follows the work of a team of six students at California College of the Arts as they created a new mural on the Martinez Hall mural wall this summer, which addresses the arts and cultural diversity at CCA. A section of the pounce pattern and other materials and inspirations used in the creation of the 2015 mural are on view. - - - Inside the library various pieces from CCA/C's archive encourage viewers to explore the rich history of the Martinez Mural Wall in an exhibit curated by Jennine Scarboro. CCAC’s first mural was created in 1971 and for the past 44 years a changing array of visions have graced the Martinez Hall mural wall. This exhibit tell the story of the history of the mural at CCA/C highlighting both the murals created and also how these works ref…