I have reiterated tendencies, certain go-to forms,” Robert Benson said. “It’s like with any artist: You get caught up in your own style. With me, it’s the tension between angles and curves.” The trope has been evident “forever” in art made by Indigenous people of far northwestern California, as Benson, a Tsnung’we elder, observed. In […]
Art Beat
Artists, galleries, museums, arts nights and shows around the county.
Posted inArts + Scene
Ultra Marine
Multimedia artist Jessie Vala transformed Humboldt State University’s Reese Bullen Gallery for her new exhibition, turning the white cube into a blue sculpture grotto. The Eugene, Oregon-based Vala replaced the usual gallery spotlights with blue lamps, bathing viewers in azure light for an oddly calming effect. The marine implications of all this blueness are reinforced […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Joan Gold’s Dark Materials
Approaching Joan Gold’s installation of paintings at Black Faun Gallery is like walking into an animated conversation. The walls seem to dissolve into vibrating pattern. Fifty-eight tall, modular paintings on paper feature superimposed registers framing all-over fields of explosive, dancing pattern. Short, rounded, color-laden brushstrokes gyrate in formation like synchronized swimmers. Brushstrokes are layered, so […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Room for the Missing
This month Humboldt State University’s Gou’dini Gallery hosts Sing Our Rivers Red, a traveling exhibition that seeks to call attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women across North America. Organized by a group of 10 artists calling themselves the SORR Collective and sponsored by groups at institutions, including North Dakota State University, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
El Maestro en Reposo
In paintings by Anthony “Tony” Machado, people, objects and images from global cultures collide. A young African woman dressed in traditional robes and jewelry stands expressionless in the foreground of one work while a trio of African drummers play. Someone in a furry costume patched in from a different photographic source dances ecstatically nearby. Meanwhile, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Back to Reese Bullen
Maybe geography is destiny. At any rate, the natural world remains a touchstone for Humboldt State University artists: Natural places and their wild inhabitants figure repeatedly in HSU’s new faculty and staff exhibition, which opens this week. Examples range from the inhabited landscapes in Dave Woody’s fine-grained photographs to a tiny cormorant portrait by illustrator […]
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The Figure in Balance
Balance has got a couple of meanings,” Steven Vander Meer remarked, regarding the drawings he had made. “Bodies balance. Stones balance. And there’s another kind of balance in these compositions.” Vander Meer’s new show at Piante Gallery explores balance from multiple angles. A polygonal sandbox hosts precarious looking stacks of vertically balanced stones. Figure drawings […]
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Hot off the Press
Photographs and video from the Families Belong Together march held in downtown Eureka on July 30 stand out for the snappy graphics of the homemade signs marchers carried from “Zero Tolerance for Human Rights Abuse” to “Stop the Racism! Stop the Deportations!” and “Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?” As thousands of protesters marched and made […]
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Living Walls
One of my favorite things about it is the way I am going to be able to use the inherent features of the wall to my advantage,” said Ashland-based street artist XAVI. He was talking about “Living Wall,” the mural he will be painting on the side of the Rodeway Inn in Old Town Eureka […]
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Ebb and Flow
A small show of photographs by Matt Filar, on view at the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center, reveals another side to an active and versatile local photographer who you might already know through his photos for the Humboldt Crabs and the Mad River Union, his work with the cooperative gallery Ferndale Arts and/or his tenure as […]
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Authentic Threads
Old Town Eureka’s newest artspace Canvas + Clay opens this month in the handsomely renovated Buhne Building. The space boasts lofty ceilings, track lighting and pristine white walls, not to mention a logo that rejects the ampersand in favor of a fashion-forward plus. A tour of the sleekly remodeled exhibition space confirms the professional first […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Peeking Inside North Coast Open Studios
It’s the 20th anniversary of North Coast Open Studios and Monica Topping, the event’s hardworking organizer, is in a hurry. NCOS has 17 first-time participants this year, she says, as well as an impressive roster of “charter artists” — those who have exhibited since the inaugural North Coast Open Studios event two decades ago. “We […]