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

March 2 to April 14

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!

Pat Durbin: Picture this...

April 20 to May 26

Pat Durbin is inspired by the beauty of creation.  Many of the art pieces are large and most reflect the places in and around Humboldt County.  The familiar medium of fabric and thread are her tools.  She uses them to build works of art that bridge the gap between fine art painting and traditional quilting.

Pat’s style is to complete a pictorial fabric piece by machine quilting it with many threads which add depth and texture to her work.

Pat’s art has been shown often in national shows and exhibited in art and quilt shows locally, nationally, and internationally.  One of her special quilts “Forest Walk” was purchased by the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, for their permanent collection.

You may enjoy walking through the exhibit, “Picture this...” and guessing where the inspiration photos were found by Pat and her husband, Gary.  Many of you will remember walking the same paths through the beauty of our great North Coast as well as some more distant places.

Pat has written several books which share her methods: “Mosaic Landscape Quilts”,  and “Painted  Picture Quilts” as well as a photo journal: “A Walk in the Woods”. Pat and her work have been featured in newspaper and magazine articles and on the online “thequiltshow.com” Show # 2103.

Ian Carey: Blunder-Bus

May 18 to June 30

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.

Miya Hannan: Layered Stories

June 8 to July 14

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. 

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

July 13 to August 25

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

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.

Junque Arte: 25 Years!

October 5 to November 25

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 Dan McCauley from Dan's Custom Metals.

Exhibition Sponsored by Linda Wise & Recology Humboldt County