Art Beat

 Living in Humboldt County, it’s easy to become desensitized to our beautiful surroundings. Majestic redwoods, dramatic seascapes and an abundance of wildlife are all right outside our windshields during just about any local commute. But rushing through our daily lives, filled with appointments and deadlines, it’s often hard to appreciate the magnificence of our coastal […]

Those familiar with the work of Michael Guerriero may be surprised by his latest show, opening this weekend in HSU’s First Street Gallery. The mixed-media works on paper and canvas are different from what you’ve seen from the artist, who works at his home studio on a mountainside near Bridgeville. While he’s known for refined […]

There is something appealing about doing things the way they’ve been done for centuries — sailing, leavening bread, celestial navigation — they offer us a connection to the past, contact with tradition. They help us to place ourselves, to feel part of a continuum. There is also something inexplicably attractive about activities that incorporate primary […]

The late Hobart Brown would undoubtedly approve. The upstairs bedrooms in the Ferndale Victorian that one housed his Hobart Galleries, along with his studio and living quarters, are once again full of art — the walls hung with paintings and more in progress on easels. The gallery space downstairs currently features bronze sculptures by the […]

The Ironside Gallery is one of the newest cooperative galleries in Humboldt County. Formed in 2011, it offers a select group of area artists space to display and sell their work. The work on display rotates among more than 25 local artists and ranges from printmaking, handmade jewelry and photography to sculpture, painting, drawing, mixed […]

For most of us here in Eureka, the trauma of Jan. 9, 2010, has faded into the annals of earthquakes past. Living near the triple junction, seismic shifts are our lot. If we remember the date at all, we probably think that was the day we personally dodged a bullet. Miraculously no lives were lost, […]

An antique iron press with an enormous black wheel anchors the back room of artist Elaine Benjamin’s Blue Chair Press studio, formerly home to the Blue Lake Advocate. The place also came with the oak counter where she greets me, wearing a pair of round tortoise glasses. Obsolete objects are all around, including a row […]

If you’ve ever cruised down E Street in Eureka, done a double-take at the house next to the Labor Temple at Ninth Street and wondered, “Are those really oil paintings crammed at the front door, leaning on the hedges and tumbling out onto the lawn?” … you would be correct. And if you took the […]

Suk Choo Kim smiles like a happy baby. At 62, his hair is wispy and silver, but his broad face is still smooth and rosy like the persimmons heaped on the granite counter at which we sit.  I open one of his folios, a black 8 x 10 archival paper envelope with a dozen or […]

For many artists living and working in Humboldt County, no matter their style or medium, the diverse natural beauty of this place inspires passion. Temperament and craft play their part in the approaches the artists interviewed here take in expressing their environs, be it town or county, with results that are as varied and striking […]

The idea of transforming an outdoor site or the interior of a museum/gallery into a work of art itself is now formally classified as environmental or installation art. The objective is to change the viewer’s perspective from looking at a painting or a sculpture, to one of feeling surrounded by and engaged in a wider […]

The much-anticipated show by local artist Rachel Schlueter at the Morris Graves Museum this month is an impressive celebration of the art and artists that have most influenced her meteoric career. The show, A World of Paint, pays homage to over two dozen artists in that most flattering and yet most difficult genre, portraiture. Rachel […]