23rd Annual Junque Arte Competition & Exhibition

September 23 to October 29, 2017

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!

This year’s juror is Monica Topping. Monica is the coordinator of North Coast Open Studios and owner of Rock Chick Designs -- she has been turning used and discarded materials into wearable art since 2004. "Around 2004, I was going to a lot of live concerts and started collecting used and broken instrument strings. The bracelets I made from those guitar strings were the beginning of Rock Chick Designs," Topping says. "I find creative inspiration in items that have lived their original intended lives, and love the challenge of making those items into something fun and wearable," she adds. Over the last decade, Topping has expanded her materials to include vinyl records and record jackets, rubber motorcycle tire tubes, and salvaged copper electrical wire. This year, she won the Victor Jacoby Award, which she's using to build her own glass studio and make lovely colored beads out of recycled liquor bottles. 

Humboldt Arts Council Annual Member Exhibition

September 2 to October 29, 2017

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.

We invite you to submit one piece of your artwork be included in this year’s exhibition. Open to current members of the Humboldt Arts Council or join on entry day. Submissions are $15 per entry, limit one entry per artist. Work can be from the visual arts discipline-drawing, painting, photography, ceramics, sculpture, fiber arts, and mixed media. Entries will be accepted at the Morris Graves Museum of Art on Wednesday, August 30th from 12 to 5 p.m.

This year one submission from each artist will be accepted into the exhibition. The public will be able to vote for their favorite pieces. The People’s Choice Awards will be presented at 5:30 on October 7th prior to Arts Alive for Best of Show, First, Second and Third Places.

Suk Choo Kim: Big Picture II

August 12 to September 17, 2017

"I see large prints as a different medium than smaller prints just as black and white photographs differ from the color photographs.

When I create smaller prints, I am seeking an emotional impact through the subject matter as well as lighting, composition, and tonal range. But I am also consciously eliminating all unnecessary elements that are not part of storytelling. When I show smaller prints in the gallery, I only expect my audiences to look at the photographs for a short period of time regardless of how much they might enjoy the photos. 

Larger prints are quite different.

When I create big pictures, I am recreating environments so that one can feel the place as if they were there. Instead of eliminating elements, I try to include as many details as I can. I want my audiences to be immersed in the environment, and to take a long time to look around and discover many of the details I captured in the photo. As I travel around the world, I am always searching for surroundings with as many different elements as possible. To be able to capture all of the details, I sometimes take more than one hundred shots, overlapping one exposure to the next, so I can stitch them together in my studio.

I've seen viewers of these big pictures spend a long time looking around and discussing with others what they discovered in the print. When I see this, I feel I am accomplishing my intentions for my work: creation and communication."

Suk Choo Kim

Ann Holsberry: New Navigation

July 8 to August 27, 2017

“We need instruments for a new navigation.” -Morris Graves

Ann Holsberry is a painter who works in a variety of media. Her experience growing up on the Gulf Coast of Florida and journeys since then have been central to her work. She finds inspiration in the mystery of the natural world, and is fascinated by the movement of humans and animals across the globe. Cosmology also fascinates her as the movements of planets and stars complement these earthbound migrations. The transit of bodies across distances large and small, in conjunction with her love of found maps and scientific papers from bygone eras, is the inspiration for this New Navigation Installation.

Holsberry currently works with cyanotype, an archaic photographic process that starts with a spontaneous application of chemicals onto paper or canvas in the darkroom. She then develops the work in outdoor sunlight, often using elements from nearby surroundings in the exposure. Due to the iron-based chemistry involved, a deep Prussian Blue predominates. These works are then brought into the realm of painting by the application of pigments, as well as wax, ink, and embroidery. Throughout the process, she often reverts to the simple goal of letting this be an exploration of blue.

As she work outdoors with materials that are responsive to the elements, She feels a deep personal engagement with nature. This engagement is furthered by working with large canvases at the edge of oceans, rivers, and other bodies of water in an attempt to capture their ebb, flow, and sedimentation at that particular time and place. Through observation of these natural phenomena, Holsberry has gained an acute awareness of the changes in our ecosystem that require both humans and animals to adapt to new ways of navigating the world.

Andrea Bergen & Adrienne Heloise: Feral Kingdom

June 24 to August 6, 2017

Feral Kingdom uses two different styles of collage to explore human relationships with the natural world. Bergen and Heloise both use hand cut, brightly colored artists papers and recycled materials to amass dense, layered collages that reflect their backgrounds as painters. The whimsical paint-by-number quality of their collages gives a sense of idealized, playful landscapes that upon closer inspection reveal a darker message. Both artists are reacting to their fears of global warming and overwhelming loss of habitats and wildlife as a result of human consumption and waste.  Both use fantasy, humor and metaphor around these issues to help process the tragedy of what is happening and question on their own culpability.

Claire Rau: Heirloom

May 13 to July 2, 2017

"These home accessories are inspired by the recent move of my grandmother, who was entrenched within a tomb of family artifacts. Many of these objects, furniture and tchotchkes, have descended to her nearest and dearest. Translation: into another storage unit. Heirloom speaks to this burden of stuff, physical and emotional, between generations of people to whom acquisition meant wealth."

Claire Rau was born in Sandusky, Ohio and raised in northeast Tennessee. She completed her graduate work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2004) with the installation Body Plunder. She has taught printmaking and sculpture at several institutions and presently teaches sculpture at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is the recipient of several awards and residencies, including the Book Arts & Printmaking Fellowship at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica (Venice, Italy) in 2005. She is a founding member of The Front, an art collective in New Orleans.

Ginger Owen-Murakami & Vicki VanAmeyden: Heritage Habitats

May 6 to June 18, 2017

Much like making rope, collaboration bonds individuals to create something larger and stronger than they could ever be separately. Ginger Owen-Murakami and Vicki VanAmeyden began collaborating on art works in 2009. Their ongoing efforts have resulted in a collection of six, large-scale installation works that comprise “Heritage Habitats”. 

"Heritage Habitats" is a series of physical spaces for contemplation and invocation of ancestry. Framed around nostalgia and memory, "Kites", "Cairn", and "Hankies" are large-scale, sculptural and experiential installations that engage in viewers’ unique memories and experiences.  In essence, the work emphasizes commonalities that bind people and cultures and serve as an expression of humanism.

Methods for creating these works involve appropriating imagery from our respective family albums and vintage "National Geographic" magazines, and then, framing our ideas around the experience generated from remembering our past. The images we select are iconic in nature. They reference concepts linked to blueprints of identity and help us to find our place in a larger historical picture. We value history and tradition as the staples of human life while acknowledging that representations of realities are altered by elapsed time and convoluted memories.

Representational Art League

April 29 to June 25, 2017

The Representational Art League was formed in 1987 by a group of serious, working artists to create, display and promote representational art in Humboldt County. Styles of the artists vary from impressionism to realism, from whimsical to narrative. Paintings are in oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastel, and colored pencil.

Jimmie Nord: Elevated Topography

April 1 to April 30, 2017

Jimmie Nord's work is influenced by his background in forestry, natural resources, and art movements like German Constructivism, Bauhaus, and The Memphis Design Movement, along with a splash of Surrealism. He explores materiality and form, looking to express elemental qualities of specific materials. Elevated Topography is an unrealistic portrayal of how we might overcome rising sea levels. The concept of scaffolding and construction materials used is meant to illuminate the challenges we face moving forward and the necessity to think beyond our current solution methods. 

Kaye Buchman: Around the Whirled

April 1 to May 7, 2017

Around the Whirled is a collection of nature-based works by Chicago-based artist and educator Kaye Buchman. This grouping of large-scale pen and ink drawings, mixed-media paintings, and thematic artist books represents spaces, places, forms and concepts related to the expressive and destructive energies found in our embattled ecosystems. These works were developed through years of sketchbook research, the study of fairytales and vintage illustration, and an ongoing dedication to the vast and unrestrained world of visual discovery. 

Kaye Buchman received her BFA in Printmaking from Illinois State University and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work in solo and group shows nationally, received numerous awards, taught at many institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and attended several artist residencies. She is the founder and director of KB Studio, an urban center for arts education and imaginative projects.

Raphaëlle Goethals-Dust Stories: Tales from the Land

March 11 to April 23, 2017

Focusing on painting as a space of exploration, Belgian-born American artist Raphaëlle Goethals has worked in encaustic as her signature medium for nearly two decades. Known for her signature layered encaustic and pigment abstractions, Goethals established her own unique and sophisticated vocabulary in the form of distinctive groups of paintings, which evolve concurrently. 

From the Collection: New Acquisitions

February 4 to March 19, 2017

From the Collection: New Acquisitions puts on view, in many instances for the first time,selections from collection newcomers. These works have deepened holdings of previously collected artists and serve to introduce new artists to us. The exhibition also serves as a reminder of the generosity of many donors who understand the value of sharing great art with our community.

Humboldt Collects!

February 4 to March 26, 2017

Why are we a nation of storage units, packed basements, and reality TV shows about hoarding?

Humboldt Collects presents extraordinary collections from Humboldt County residents, exploring the fascinating practice of collecting. Celebrating the intrinsic beauty and insightful stories found within the collections and the people who make them, this show examines how the items we collect inform notions of who we are as individuals and a community.

Ellen Litwiller: Natura Morta, Natura Viva

January 28 to March 5, 2017

Rocks appear to be inanimate and dead to us however they go through incredible transformations during their geologic lifetime.  The oldest rocks on Earth are 3.8 billion years ago and they will be here in one form or another long after we humans are gone.  The heat, shifting and uplifting that occurs in geology can all be associated with our own lives and how we also form through personal experiences of pressure, eruptions and erosion. These images of rocks are brought into a more traditional setting to encourage a fresh awareness and affection for the ground beneath our feet.

Brandice Guerra: Animalia

December 17 2016 to January 22, 2017

Brandice Guerra holds a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Humboldt State University, where she coordinates the drawing area and teaches courses in drawing and illustration. Prior to arriving at Humboldt, she was the Grace V. Wisdom Endowed Chair in Visual Art, Studio Art Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. She is represented by Zg Gallery in Chicago.　

"Animalia is a series of small-scale paintings and works on paper informed by my interests in natural history, 19th and early 20th century illustration, and 17th century painting. I am very interested in historical interactions between science and art and in animals as symbols in art and visual culture. My practice is largely narrative - I enjoy telling stories through imagery. Sometimes, my images are illustrations of actual non-human animal behaviors and at other times I bend the truth, using animal bodies to tell stories about human behavior."

Spectators: Photographs by Tom Patton, Words by Rob Davidson

December 17 2016 to January 29, 2017

Rob Davidson is the author of two short story collections, Field Observations (Missouri, 2001) and The Farther Shore (Bear Star, 2012), and a scholarly monograph, The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (Missouri, 2005). Davidson’s awards and honors include winning the 2009 Camber Press Fiction Award, judged by Ron Carlson; a 1997 AWP Intro Journals Project Award; a Pushcart Prize nomination; and having twice been selected Artist-in-Residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, New York. His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in Zyzzyva, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Normal School, New Delta Review, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and American literature at California State University, Chico.

Tom Patton has been actively engaged with photography since 1970. He received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1976), MA (1977) and MFA (1982) degrees from University of New Mexico. He has held full-time teaching appointments since 1982. From 1983-2002 Tom headed the photography program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and was the chief architect of their successful BFA program. Patton joined the Art and Art History faculty at California State University, Chico in 2002, Chairing the program until 2007. With nearly 250 exhibitions and more than 60 publications, Patton’s art has been widely seen. In addition to shows in the USA, he’s also shown in Australia, Japan and Europe. Patton has received fellowships from the James D. Phelan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as numerous University grants. His work is included in several prominent public collections including: Australian National Gallery; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; St. Louis Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and the Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento.

Paul Rickard: A Watercolorist's Perspective from the Other Side of the Tracks

December 3 2016 to January 15, 2017

"I want to record for posterity the decomposing creosote wood piers and rails that run along Humboldt Bay along with the residents who inhabit it. The life for the residents on the other side of the tracks unfolds daily as they wake and rouse to the challenge of the morning light. I paint the landscape and home of these residents with their permission, support, and friendship. My art will share the great beauty of the shores of Humboldt Bay are a significant and challenged population of people.”

Exhibition Sponsored by John & Sally Biggin