From the HAC Permanent Collection: Morris Graves, Glenn Berry, Bruno Groth, Melvin Schuler & Romano Gabriel

“Selections from the Permanent Collection” features highlights from the HAC's superb holdings of North Coast fine art from the twentieth century. It incorporates a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, decorative and folk arts. Though the exhibition is ongoing, the installation is updated regularly.

Looking at Fire

January 15 through February 16, 2014

The artists in this show come from varying backgrounds, but all have one common thread—working with Ferndale ceramicist Conrad Calimpong and his wood fire kiln. As Calimpong states, “Over the years, I have been blessed to have family members, former teachers, mentors, and old friends come and share this labor-intensive experience of splitting and stacking wood, and stoking the kiln.  It’s been a fulfilling experience to see their work emerge from the process. Students from schools near and far have also come to participate.  This coming together of different generations of artists becomes a special learning experience for all of us through the sharing of personal perspectives, ideas, and methods of working with clay and some have only recently come to wood firing.” Wood fired pieces will be exhibited alongside work fired in gas and electric kilns.  This will allow the viewer to see how the wood firing process influences and informs each artist’s ceramic work differently. 

Jessica McCambly: The Gentle Act of Disappearing

February 26 through April 20, 2014

Investigating ideas of connectivity, sentimentality and the ephemeral, coupled with an innovative exploration of materials, McCambly’s work aims to invite pause and reflection.  Through a process rooted in precision and repetition, the work seeks to encourage an intimate experience with beauty and nuance within the language of reductive formalism. The Gentle Act of Disappearing is descriptive of McCambly’s desire to explore the idea of splendor and the sublime within a set of simplified compositional constraints.

Michel Martineau: The Inversion of the Worlds \L'inversion des mondes

February 26 through April 6, 2014

Dominated by bright colours, Martineau’s work is a fusion of rhetorical and abstract forms interlaced with playful shapes. From Quebec, Canada; Martineau’s vision unites fragmented pieces representing a dislocated story and the work focuses on content as the driving force of expression.

Christopher Troutman: Dividing Time

February 26 through April 20, 2014

In Troutman’s recent body of work he focuses on drawing as his primary means of expression, exploring imagery from his memories of the U.S. and Japan, amplifying everyday subjects by presenting them from extreme vantage points.  He also divides drawings into multiple sections to suggest the passage of time and to examine the similarities and differences between his two homes, juxtaposing visual and spatial features unique to both locations.

13th Annual Northwest Eye Regional Photography Competition & Exhibition

April 16 through June 14, 2014

The Northwest Eye is a five-state regional fine art photography competition and exhibition highlighting the current trends in the art of photography. This exhibition showcases the creativity and beauty caught by some of the finest photographers in the Northwest.

Phyllis Thelen: Journeys of the Imagination

April 30 through June 22, 2014

Phyllis Thelen, a Marin County artist with a successful career in painting and printmaking, began making three dimensional sculptures after the tragic events of September 11.  Her little retreats, or sanctuaries, offer a symbolic place of safety and simplicity in turbulent times.  Her vessels, symbols of passage and transformation, suggest imaginary journeys of the spirit.  Her strange and wonderful creatures appear as unusual beings encountered along the way.

5x7 Exhibition and Art Splurge

May 30 through June 28, 2014

Dozens of recognized artists are being invited to create work for an open, non-juried exhibition. Five X Seven is an exhibition and art sale benefiting the HAC exhibitions and Youth Arts Education Programs. The artists create unique works of 2D art on identical 5” x 7” boards or 3D works of the same size.

Each 5×7-inch artwork is only $150, or $100 for HAC/MGMA members (yet ANOTHER great reason to become an member today !). 30 first-pick tickets will be sold at $50 each prior to the Splurge on a first-come, firs-tserve basis. After the 30 first-pick ticket holders have chosen their pieces to buy, the artwork is
available to purchase to all. With lots of works to choose from, this is your chance to build or add to your art collection. All pieces are displayed anonymously – only when you purchase a work of art will you discover who created it. One of the North Coast’s most unique artistic events…you can’t afford to miss it!

Interested in participating? Click here for the Call for Artists!

Exhibition Sponsored by Lewis & Lucy Quinby

Five x Seven SPLURGE: Saturday, June 28, 2014, 6:00-8:00 pm at the MGMA

Susan Li O’Connor: All Things Great & Small

June 25 through August 24, 2014

Sculptor Susan Li O’Connor repurposes newspapers and other common materials to make her own surprising and whimsical 3D artworks. Her work deals with the accumulation of everyday objects and the transformation of them into sculptural forms and installations. While the transformation of the mundane is the first thing a viewer sees, O’Connor is also entertaining ideas of identity, consumerism and consumption within our culture. O’Connor is an adjunct faculty member at the Columbus College of Art and Design in the Foundation Studies department. She holds a BFA degree from the Columbus College of Art and Design and an MFA degree from the Ohio State University. She lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.

This Land is Your Land

July 5 through August 24, 2014

This Land is Your Land is an group landscape exhibition of artist who have lived or worked and /or have been influenced by the greater Sacramento Valley. Featuring work by: Gregory Kondos, Wayne Thiebaud, Pat Mahoney, Boyd Gavin, Mel Smothers, Mark Bowles, Melissa Chandon, Jian Wang, and Fred Dalkey.

Open Country and Keep on Truckin’

July 2 through August 24, 2014

Open Country is a revisionist history of the origins of Country-Western music created by Jesse and Glenda Drew. The roots of Country-Western music lie firmly in classic American traditions of resistance to capital, freedom from government interference, and in defense of the right of workers, poor farmers, and the dispossessed to live their lives in dignity. The premise of this project is that the identity of modern Country-Western music, like much of the popular culture in our nation, is heavily influenced by corporate ownership of radio and media outlets.

Keep on Truckin’ is a video and photography exhibition that investigates the dreams, hopes and aspirations that exist for truck drivers; including long hours and long periods of time away from their home base. Through the use of photography, video and audio, artists Glenda Drew and Melissa Chandon examine the role of the truck driver within the vast transportation of warehouse goods including "classified" or non-disclosed materials. This project has taken into consideration the complexity, diversity and wanderlust that exist within the industry — including the demands the job place on partners and home life, to understanding the idea of ‘home’ itself. The artist team, driven by curiosity, conducted research at truck stops within the Central Valley of California, yet the subject’s travel and live across the United States and comprise a work force that is not defined by gender or race.

Mark Bowles: Time

September 4 through October 19, 2014

Mark Bowles’ paintings are subjective, simple and filled with light and color, a harmonious balance between the Western landscape and his passion for abstraction. His landscapes are individual statements that have emerged from a rich tradition of California landscape painting. The large scale results in a vast visual picture plane with bold areas of color intermingled with subtle painterly areas. The reward for the viewer is resonating landscapes whose color and expressive brushwork evoke a vibrant sense of place.

Celebration of the Arts Auction

September 3 through September 22, 2014

Artwork and packages donated in support of the HAC will be on display for early bidding prior to the Annual Celebration of the Arts Gala on Saturday, September 20th honoring Gregg Gardiner & Kathleen Cloney-Gardiner for the Outstanding Contributions to the Arts Award for 2014.

Joseph Bellacera: Disconnecting the Dots

September 27 through November 2, 2014

An alumnus of HSU, Joseph Bellacera has devoted his life to making art. His paintings and sculptures are concerned with qualities of space, light, and pattern -- how together they inspire experiences of infinity and transcendence. "I employ elements of the landscape along with micro and macro configurations inbothrandom and deliberate arrangements. Fluid and atmosphericlayers of oils, acrylics and epoxy resin are contrasted withhard, opaque materials such as wood, concrete, clay and metal.These alchemical concoctions provide an opportunity to renew the mystery and awe of discovery."

Paula Wenzl Bellacera: Taking Flight

September 27 through November 2, 2014

Captivated by their freedom of flight and dominant place in the ecosystem, birds of prey have taken a strong position in Paula Wenzl Bellacera’s artwork. Her charcoal drawings and ceramic sculptures portray personality, attitude, and whimsy.

Aldaron Laird- Aldaron’s Walkabout: An Artistic and Scientific Exploration of Humboldt Bay

October 3 through November 30, 2014

Aldaron is an environmental planner and photographer who has extensively explored Humboldt Bay, its history, land use, ecology, and recently its future as we and the Bay adapt to sea level rise.  In 2013, Aldaron completed a comprehensive inventory and mapping of Humboldt Bay’s shoreline.  In order to ground truth his mapping, Aldaron walked or kayaked the entire shoreline of Humboldt Bay.  Aldaron’s shoreline exploration provided him a unique opportunity to document all 102 miles of shoreline, amassing over 15,000 photographic images

20th Annual Junque Arte Competition & Exhibition

October 29 through November 30, 2014

Designed to celebrate artistic creativity on the North Coast, and heighten the awareness of renewable resources in the art making process, each artwork in this juried exhibition is made from 100% recycled materials…reclaimed, reused, recovered, secondhand, salvaged, anything un-new!

Natural Inclinations: Marks & Mutations

November 12 through 2014

Susan Belau, Timothea Campbell, Barbara Foster, and Cherie Raciti are linked by their collective regard for the seeming irregularity and fragmentation of nature and the built environment, wedding process and content, creating marks, shapes, and space that materialize in layers of meaning of the re-imagined natural world and observed environment.

Humboldt Arts Council Annual Member Show

December 6 2014 through January 4, 2015

The Annual Humboldt Arts Council Member Show is a juried exhibition designed to highlight the fabulous art being produced by HAC Artist Members. As always, this exhibition is eclectic, surprising and enjoyable.