In the book She Sang Me a Good Luck Song: the California Indian Photographs of Dugan Aguilar, the photographer documents people, places and rituals of the California Indian community. His photographs are featured in an exhibition of the same name at Humboldt State University’s Goudi’ni Native American Arts Gallery in Arcata this month. Aguilar was […]
Gabrielle Gopinath
Gabrielle Gopinath is a critic who writes about art, place and culture in Northern California. She lives in Arcata. Follow her on Instagram @gabriellegopinath.
Posted inArts + Scene
Bookish/Lookish
A large video projection plays on one wall across the room from shelves of the props: painted backdrops, small pen-and-ink portraits, objects made from cut paper and a glass bottle with a handmade label. Watching the video feels like stumbling on an educational channel with weirdly imaginative programming. The pacing is stately, the mood is […]
Posted inArts + Scene
A Little Enlightenment
This week Illustrators 57, a survey exhibition of contemporary illustration art, comes to Humboldt State University’s Reese Bullen Gallery in Arcata. Organized by the Society of Illustrators to commemorate its annual juried exhibition’s 57th renewal, the traveling show consists of 40 artworks selected from among the nearly 500 in the original exhibition held earlier this year […]
Posted inArts + Scene
New Wave
Bob Benson is showing paintings, painted and carved wall panels, and freestanding sculpture this month at Piante Gallery. Benson, a member of the Tsnungwe Tribe who sits on its Elders Council, served as a professor of art at College of the Redwoods for several decades and is now emeritus. He has exhibited extensively, both nationally […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Cabin Fever
This is an homage to a work of art that might not exist. The potential work is open-ended, loosely defined — it’s really more of an art situation than anything else. And it all relates to the tiny, illegal, irreproachable cabin that captivated public imagination when it was discovered this summer in the Arcata Community […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Transfigured
Bodies of Work, curated by longtime College of the Redwoods drawing instructor Dean Smith, brings together recent paintings and drawings that focus entirely on the nude human figure, that most elevated of Western pictorial subjects. The participants belong to Smith’s figure-drawing circle, which has met informally for several summers and shown here twice before. The […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Rock, Paper, Glitter
August is a disunited month in a college town. Summer’s heat may have reached its peak, but minds are already shifting back to school. Many galleries take an August break to prepare for the fall season’s September kickoff. However, this month two local businesses feature one-woman shows worth your while. Cool off with dynamic visions […]
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Fountain of Youth
Young Alumni 2015 features works by 40 recent graduates from the Humboldt State University Art Department. While subject matter and execution can be bewilderingly diverse in a big group show like this, unifying themes surface once you spend time with the work. The show is essentially a core sample of young creativity — and as […]
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The Big Picture at Street Level
Arcata punches above its weight when it comes to art. We’ve witnessed the debut of Lush Newton’s monumental polka-dotted equestrian sculpture and a paradigm-shifting traffic installation that boldly confronted local motorists’ worldviews. Now a fresh crop of wheatpaste posters has sprouted near the plaza. Next time you find yourself on H Street, sashay down the […]
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This is the Place
In the extraordinary life of Morris Graves, periods of travel in Europe and Asia alternated with extended sojourns in two remote and beautiful coastal regions: Humboldt County and Skagit County, in Washington’s northwest corner. Here and There, organized by Skagit Valley artist Ann Chadwick Reid, explores the repercussions of Pacific Northwest geography in Graves’ art […]
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A Little Risk
Talking about art is hazardous. We might be imprecise or get bogged down in biographical minutia or jargon. Talking about surfing is worse. Every surf article published since the 1960s suggests something like Fight Club: you don’t talk about where you surf, lest you betray other initiates. And anyway, surfing’s a transcendent experience, the stoke […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Out of the Gallery
Looking at artwork in the studio is special. It’s like glimpsing a bird in the wild instead of studying a captive specimen or seeing a racecar on the factory floor instead of in a showroom. Otto Von Bismarck famously observed that no one wants to know how laws and sausages get made. However, the growth […]