Lori Goodman’s new installation centers on two large, contoured forms that protrude from the wall. These vaguely tent-like structures are spaced so that they almost touch at their shared boundary. Their rugged surfaces are fashioned from handmade, hand-dyed paper dressed over flexible armatures, the material Goodman has long favored for her constructions. Scale lends these […]
Art Beat
Artists, galleries, museums, arts nights and shows around the county.
Posted inArts + Scene
Speed Round
This month Arts! Arcata plays it forward. Sights on the north side of the bay include a number of intriguing shows with opening receptions on Friday, Nov. 10, so wear walking shoes. Lineage: Living Traditions of Line, Shape and Design, opening at Humboldt State University’s Gou’dini Native American Arts Gallery (Humboldt State University campus, Behavioral, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Three Native Artists Carry the Weight
What They Bring, What They Carry brings together artworks by Brian Tripp, Brittany Britton and Robert Benson — artists of Karuk, Hupa and Tsnungwe descent, respectively, who grew up in and around reservations in the Hoopa and Two Rivers regions. Tripp and Benson, who have exhibited regionally and nationally for decades, use process to articulate […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Paul Rickard’s Plein Air Progress
This month, watercolorist Paul Rickard is staging the last of three successive month-long shows at the Trinidad Coastal Land Trust’s Simmons Gallery. The first focused on the land trust’s properties, while the second presented views from Trinidad. This third exhibition brings together an eclectic assortment of plein-air subjects, all painted on the spot: coastal views […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Water Seekers and Pretty Ones
There was so so much going on my life, I had a desire to straighten everything up,” Teresa Stanley said. Until recently, Stanley had been showing abstract paintings based on botanical imagery. The works in her new exhibition at Humboldt State University’s Third Street Gallery leave those organic forms behind. This new body of work […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Seven Plus Plus
I went to Arcata’s Creamery District on foot before the heat wave broke to lay eyes on the new work of public installation art I’d heard about. It turned out to be easy enough to find. On L Street between Eighth and Ninth streets, you could see from far off that the chain link fence […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Looking at a Statue Looking at the Stars
In John Hylton’s art installations, ravens lend a hand. Wooden pythons whiplash across the night sky. Rough-hewn wooden figures get lost in contemplation of a painted cosmos. This is a humanist cosmos, one that’s accessed via the gazing eye — no tech necessary beyond the retina. Scenarios mark intersections where understandings of the natural world […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Seeds and Surfing
This past Sunday festivalgoers at Reggae on the River reveled in good vibes, positive sounds and gorgeous summer weather. Any storm clouds that might be gathering in Babylon were far from the collective consciousness of this happy crowd. Coot Wyman, the affable frontman of the Chico reggae fusion band Mystic Roots, exhorted us to smile […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Faraway Nearby
Old Town Eureka twanged with the shock of the new last week when street artist Dan Kitchener unveiled an enormous new mural in its midst, the first to grace the city in several years. “Electric-City” is executed entirely in freehand spray paint on the east side of the Buhne Building at the corner of G […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Rediscovering Phillips House
Arcata’s Phillips House is the oldest building standing in Arcata and it has lasted longer than is likely for any structure in a culture that prioritizes change. Built between 1850 and 1855, it stands today as both outlier and relic, having outlived all of its local contemporaries. It was placed on the National Register of […]
Posted inArts + Scene
From Kiln Shed to Skate Park
One person throws a pot, one rides a board. Yet the subcultures that have grown up around ceramics and skateboarding center around membership in a group or tribe. This month’s Arts Alive! provides two opportunities to contemplate this dynamic. Piante Gallery features work by ceramicist Conrad Calimpong, who has been firing pots in his self-built […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Sculpture Garden Variety
Viewing Subjective Realities at the Sanctuary Arcata feels like passing through a wind tunnel time machine. All major 20th-century sculptural tropes come at you at once, revenants with their wires crossed and their channels remixed. Erin Flyer’s neo-primitivist wood relief recalls the shapes Gauguin carved above his hut in the Marquesas; it sits across from […]