Friends and family of Therin Brooks, who died in a car accident on Nov. 15, gathered for a celebration of life in Redwood Park on Saturday, Nov. 23. As tribute to the 37-year-old Eureka artist’s colorful style, attendees were asked to come in bright attire and they did — right down to their pets. See […]
Piante Gallery
Posted inArts + Scene
‘Diary of an Artist’
Media Literacy week at the NCJ presents a welcome opportunity to reflect on the critic’s (frequently misunderstood) role. The critic, here at least, is neither judge nor booster nor native interpreter nor PR flack — just a person who narrates their experience of art in public. In doing so, the critic models the form (but […]
Posted inNews
Artists without Galleries
Frowny-face graffiti sprouted all over Eureka and Arcata last month. The message was a buzzkill, but anyone could admire the economy of the streamlined bummer emoticon: two vertical slashes of spray paint over a judgmental upside-down banana curve. The effect was striking — suddenly the city thronged with this silent chorus of bad attitude, so […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Basket and the Blade
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 […]
Posted inArts + Scene
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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Contents Under Pressure: Graffiti at Piante
Everyone who knows about it is very excited to see what craziness I have agreed to this time,” gallerist Sue Natzler said with a laugh about the graffiti art exhibition opening this month at Piante Gallery. The installation was in the final stages of completion when I saw it and indeed, the place looked changed. […]
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 […]
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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 inPerfect Trips
Perfect Spring Trips
Every day brings more daylight. Make the most of it by exploring some of Humboldt’s best places. The Outdoorsy Type Everyone loves Fern Canyon (Gold Bluffs Beach Road, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Orick). So much so that you might think the place can’t possibly live up to the hype. And yet, it does. The walls rise […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Contemporary Traditions
In the angled October light of his Orleans home, Brian Tripp slips a simple hitch knot over the leg of his latest woodpecker sculpture and raises it to just above eye level. Like many of Tripp’s sculptures, the bird is a deceptively simple assembly of branches, shaved redwood fragments, matte-black acrylic paint and carefully selected […]