Through Humboldt Fog: Atmospheric Watercolors of the North Coast Landscape

NOVEMBER 30, 2019 TO JANUARY 12, 2020

Jim McVicker, Steve Porter, Jody Bryan, Ken Jarvela and Paul Rickard, also known as the Humboldt Open Air Watercolor Painters, are inspired by direct on-location painting. From the windswept beaches to the mountaintops, the artists meet weekly to paint the mundane and the magnificent in an association of friendship and artistry.

Exhibition Sponsored by John & Sally Biggin

HAC Member Exhibition

NOVEMBER 2 TO DECEMBER 15, 2019

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.

Junque Arte: 25 Years!

OCTOBER 5 TO NOVEMBER 25, 2019

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!

Jack Sewell: Dance Like Nobody is Watching

SEPTEMBER 7 TO OCTOBER 27, 2019

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.” 
― William W. Purkey
 

The process of creating art is different for every artist, but the urge to create is common to all of us who call ourselves artists. Sculpture, especially figure sculpture, is my most compelling means of artistic expression. Conditions of the human predicament are easily conveyed using the human figure.  My work can show beauty, grace, movement, struggle or humor, all aspects of the human condition. I use sculpture to illustrate particular moments of life. The time that I spend creating these images is intense, stimulating, thought provoking, frustrating, and ultimately, rewarding.

This collection depicts people dancing as if they are free in the moment. I enjoy watching dancers: the focused concentration of the professional, the practiced grace of a couple moving seamlessly together, and the wildly free movement of the street dancer. My dancers are children and adults, moving to their own rhythm, as each of us must do in life.

I’m drawing these figures in three dimensions using steel rods, many of which were salvaged from old factory uses. For this project I use a primarily constructionist process, in that I begin with nothing and bring the materials into alignment and fix them in place to create the image. The forms of the figures are created by the positive surfaces and negative spaces, and I aim to animate the steel in this fashion. These pieces combine representational imagery with abstract expression.

Children’s Author & Illustrator Festival

THROUGH OCTOBER 27, 2019

As part of the Children’s Author & Illustrator Festival, select works from winning illustrators will be on exhibit to demonstrate the processes of illustration in children’s literature.

Laura Corsiglia: Points of View: Everything Happening All at Once

JULY 13 TO OCTOBER 27, 2019

Point of View: Everything Happening All at Once is a use of drawing to explore wildness, belonging and reciprocity - to notice our participation in a deepening network of points of view. The exhibition is made of large drawings on paper, an installation inviting viewers to enter with their faces, an immersive piece made of light and artist books.

Scale: We are big, our nipples are small. We are tiny, our mountain is shelter. Every starling sees us go to the store. Redwood crowns fly by as we sit in a box.

While we are talking a chipmunk has given birth. A Peregrine falcon eats a small duck, perched on the post above the bridge. Feathers fall slowly past the trucks. Turns out there are spiders who nurse their young. My love’s face is the size of a constellation and his hair turns like a guitar. Fog is taking away our edges. We’re surrounded and seen. And we surround others at all times. That was a loon. This book folds in and out at the same time.

Lynn Beldner & Steve Briscoe: Asking the Same Question Twice

August 17 to September 29, 2019

We decided to exhibit our work together as a way of sharing with others what it means to lead a creative life together. Amidst the domestic regularity there is always the question of art and the discussion of what we are working on. Our work is always installed together in our home and is in conversation with each other across time and media. In the more formal environment of the museum we are showing works that represent the work of the past 10 years and hope that the conversations can still be heard.

Lynn was born in Philadelphia and migrated to California during the 70’s tech boom. Steve grew up in Stockton in the Central Valley. We met, as many people do, in college and became fast friends over discussions of art, artists and punk bands in San Jose. Later we attended the San Francisco Art Institute (photography for Lynn, sculpture for Steve) and set up our studios in Oakland where we lived for many years.  Recently, we have moved our home and studios to Woodland near Davis. We exhibited together earlier this year at Artspace 1616 in Sacramento.

The Sculpture of Dan McCauley

December 1 to August 25, 2019

Artist and welder Daniel McCauley of Dan’s Custom Metals learned the art form and technique of welding as a child in his grandfather’s machine shop. “I was always up there and got interested because I could take raw materials and make something,” McCauley says.

McCauley’s scrap art is created with material he finds in scrap yards. The artist’s work is nothing if not sustainable. Turning objects that would otherwise end up in a landfill into things the community can gather around and enjoy is the essence of recycling. He also mimics nature’s art, as he builds realistic and life sized mountain lions and bears. McCauley also hopes by sharing his work he can encourage other people who dream of doing art to embrace their hopes and work to see their own pieces in the public eye.

Lida Penkova: Dreams of Far Away Places

JULY 20 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 2019

My show will present a selection of some of my favorite black & white and hand colored linocuts, canvases and painted driftwood sculptures created in the last 8+ years. My art works are memories of different cultures, their customs, ceremonies, myths, as well as honoring their artists and artisans. I lived and traveled in some of them, have studied and admired others. My inspiration comes from self-taught artists of aboriginal Australia, Mexican and Nepalese villages, Inuit communities, from Irish and Indian festivals, etc. They all tell stories reflecting their everyday life, religious beliefs and folk celebrations. Last, but not least, Humboldt County, my home of the last 11 years, has inspired my later pieces. Exhibition Sponsored by Lucy Quinby.

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda: Spirit of the Day

July 6 to August 11, 2019

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a visual artist working primarily on painting. Her multicultural background through travels and immigration from Japan to the United State as a young adult has formed her interests in examining various cultures. To speak to the core of humanity, she seeks the connections among cultures both from the past and present, and she focuses on tracing traditional Japanese activities back to their origins through her research.

Spirit of the Day is an attempt to highlight an oft-forgotten engagement in contemporary society—a deeper connection with their own spirit. The paintings present a moment of this spiritual engagement through mindfully cultivated marks on the surface. Sumi-ink brings out subtle and nuanced shifts in values and highlights a myriad of layers so that viewers may get lost in them and find their core of shared humanity and the core of their humanity.

Miya Hannan: Layered Stories

June 8 to July 14, 2019

For the last 13 years, I have been working on installations, sculpture, and drawings that are driven by my cultural perception of death. After working for a hospital and experiencing death for seven years, I came to view the world as layers and linkages of histories. This exhibition “Layered Stories” depicts this view. Every dead person becomes a part of our land both physically and spiritually, creating rich histories around us. In my home county Japan, people inherit the histories of the land where they live. Whatever happened and whoever died underneath one’s feet become a part of one’s own story. I am interested in stories buried beneath the present layer. 

Wesley Hurd: The Odyssey of These Days

June 1 to July 7, 2019

Wesley Hurd’s painting series, The Odyssey of These Days, explores intimate depths of loss, struggle, grief and hope. The paintings present an abstract visual narrative evoking the intensity of human suffering and our journey beyond it, into hope.

According to Hurd, “This series of abstract paintings formed an unexpected narrative in three movements: shock and struggle, loss and grief, and finally memoriam and acceptance of loss. Rather than focusing on the social, political and ideological, I am interested in how we form meaning from life experiences—good and bad, pleasurable and painful.” The tragic shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College in 2015, occurred in the midst of the making of this work, deeply influencing the final two paintings.

Ian Carey: Blunder-Bus

May 18 to June 30, 2019

This current body of work is a result of my reflections on an often confusing and absurd world.  A world that beyond any existential belief is created by the actions and inactions of all those involved.  I believe that my use of painting and drawing strategies is akin to thinking out loud.  The process of making helps me to navigate my interaction with an extraordinarily complex and conflicting world.  The visual language that exists within my work embodies my perception of human activity that mimics our current reality.  If the free use of gestural marks at one time suggested an internal struggle likened to the musicality of jazz, I believe the intermingling of a painterly and aggressive visual dialogue now represents the progressive attitude of what could be called punk.

Punk may be defined as a cultural and societal critique represented through several similar historical movements offering an ever-fluid opposition to a perceived status quo.  Punk provides a sporadic yet constant reminder of our need to reevaluate and challenge our political realities. It is the creative act (whether visual or sonic) that can aid in our development of an emotional range, informed by our internal understanding, constructing and informing our shared realities. I would like the viewer to enjoy an experience of self-discovery while navigating the images presented.  This activity allows for the spectator to seek out a psychological relationship to the distortion of the image while reveling in the information provided. It is my sincere hope that the work offers an opportunity of a shared thinking experience, one that allows the viewer a time to reflect and perhaps find a greater awakening to the problems that affect all.   In an idealized world, my work acts as a catalyst that may help us all find common cause to create positive change.

Youth Arts Festival- Celebrating Humboldt County Youth in Visual and Performing Arts

March 2 to April 14, 2019

The Morris Graves Museum of Art in partnership with the Humboldt County Office of Education proudly presents the Youth Arts Festival; a celebration of student creativity in visual, media, and performing arts. This exhibition features various styles of visual artworks in both traditional and communication media created by Humboldt County preK-12 students in their public and charter classrooms during the 2018-2019 school year. The exhibition highlights the promise of equity and access in quality arts education for all students preK-12, in every school, every day, made real by Humboldt County’s Arts Education Plan.  The festival itself is the living portfolio, where all who attend may see for themselves the inspiration and creativity inherent in all of Humboldt County’s Youth. We welcome students, parents, teachers, artists and community members to see, hear, and feel what has been taught and experienced in so many classrooms across Humboldt. Become the beneficiary as you stand in wonder at what our children are capable of; the enormity of their creative dreams becomes immediate and evident, viewed in the context of a historical museum. Join us in this annual culminating event that celebrates the creative power of all students of Humboldt County!

Nicole Havekost: Massed

February 23 to April 21, 2019

Nicole Havekost’s exhibition includes works from her Sewing and Cooking Doll series.  This body of work was begun when her son was small and she was finding her way as a new mother.  Since, the sewing pattern paper of the dolls surface has inspired new works exploring the body in a group of embroidered works and stitched three-dimensional forms. 

Nicole Havekost is an artist living in Rochester, Minnesota.  Her own work is varied in media and technique, but linked by her interest in material and process. Her work has a delicate and feminine quality, but one that is driven by her particular obsessions.  Nicole is a 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant recipient and a 2018 Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council Advancing Artist Grant recipient.  Additionally, Nicole was a finalist for the 2016 Jerome Emerging Artist fellowship and was a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has recently exhibited work in  California, Rhode Island and Texas as well as Tasmania, Australia.  Nicole earned her BFA in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of New Mexico. 

Humboldt Collects!

February 2 to March 17, 2019

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.

Paul Flippen: 36days

January 5 to February 24, 2019

I lost my father to a stroke his third day in the hospital. 

He didn’t die for another month.

36days examines the emotions and ethics of the end of life, through drawings and text describing the narrative of one family’s experience.  Negotiating with doctors, each other, and our own feelings, my family and I sought to do what was best for my father, as he would have defined it.

Thirty-six drawings of pen and ink layered over eroded surfaces of paint weave in and out of thirty-six text panels that detail my relationship with my father and my reactions to his passing.  Shifting from crisp scientific renderings to the atmospherics of memory, the words and images navigate one account of modern medicine meeting family history.

Chris Motley: Feelings in Fiber

January 5 to February 17, 2019

Chris Motley’s sculptural forms use knitting in a unique way.  She takes a familiar medium and expands its possibilities, using texture, color and dimension to explore universal themes.

Often her sculptures tell personal stories.  “Slice of Life,” like a tree, has a ring for each year of her life.  “Living Alone” is about her Mother’s first year as a widow.  “Up, Really Down and Up Again” reflects the changing moods of our daily life. 

Widely familiar in its usual functional form, knitting in her art brings the technique up to date.   Motley has received wide recognition and critical praise for taking the craft of knitting and elevating the process into the realm of contemporary sculpture. 

20 Years: The Victor Thomas Jacoby Award

December 8 2018 to January 27, 2019

Victor Thomas Jacoby was a local artist whose medium was French tapestry. He was internationally renowned for innovation in his field. When Jacoby passed away in 1997, he left a generous bequest to set up a fund with Humboldt Area Foundation, which would support visual artists and craftspeople, and encourage the exploration of new ideas, materials, techniques, mediums, images, and excellence. Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Victor Thomas Jacoby Award and view the work of over 20 artists that the award has supported. The works of these grantees will be showcased along side Jacoby's tapestries and sketchbooks from the HAC Permanent Collection.