Opening Day - Reconstructions

Intricate collage, shapes and openings within fields of texture rich with symbols greeted visitors to the Mauve? Office today. Lani Asher's "Reconstructions" will be on view for the next four weeks, and gallery-goers are already planning repeat visits to further explore the various nooks, crannies, twists, and turns of the work.

About the show:

In my mixed media works, collaged papers, drawings, and photographs operate like metaphorical apertures. The visual architecture of the work uses personal signs and symbols leading through symbolic doors and windows, constructing a poetic and meditative space. Some of my recent paper based works are delicate, textured, and irregularly shaped collages. I also have a series of 5 X 7 boards that use pencil, collaged paper and paint. These are based on the New Mexican landscape and traditional textiles called colchas, composed of found pieces of fabric quilted together and stitched, which can be traced to Turkey and Sephardic Spain.

About the artist:

Lani Asher grew up in Los Angeles and studied painting at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and has an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres. As a community based art teacher, she has worked for various Bay Area non –profit art organizations. She currently maintains a studio in the Mission District.

www.laniasher.com

Join us at the Mauve? Office for a reception with the artist, Friday, November 16th, at 7pm.

Opening Day - Lining

Visitors to Mauve? today arrived to a scene of stitched paper scars, spherical sculpture, and moments of mauve both structural and floating, as the cubicle exhibition space was transformed into a less sterile environment ripe for exploration. Chelsea Pegram's "Lining: A Positive Re-Imagining" will be on view through November 4th.

About the show:

Chelsea Pegram complicates the notion of organic in her exhibition of new work at Mauve? Office of Exhibitions. Sculptures of plant and human-like forms recruit the formal elements of the cubicle to take on subjects of healing and growth. This disruption of the pacified, economical design, suggests that, despite the effort to advance human activity and labor, a new artificially natural, and therefore unpredictable, world exists. Through the work, a relationship is created between the spontaneous and persistent resilience of nature and the neutralized capitalist condition. At least for the duration of the exhibit, the native occupants, and visitors, will inhabit in this sensitized environment.

About the artist:

Chelsea Pegramʼs work employs the materiality of subject and form to investigate the role agency and curiosity play in the negotiation between our natural and industrialized worlds. Her sculptural work and installations have been exhibited around the Bay Area including the Sonoma State University Art Gallery, Swarm Gallery, and Pro Arts, with an upcoming show in the MFA Selections Exhibition at the di Rosa Gateway Gallery in February 2013. She graduated from Mills College with an MFA in Studio Art in 2011. Chelsea lives and works in Oakland, CA.

We'll be hosting a reception with the artist on Friday, October 19th, at 7pm, and hope to see you there!

Opening Day - Didn't You Get the Memo?

Masterminded by returning collaborators Luca Antonucci and Carissa Potter Carlson, Colpa Press guest curates this month with a group exhibition in the tradition of small print goods and the recent history of the office space.


About the show:

This exhibition will look at the influence of the office aesthetic in independent publishing. The works selected for this show are either made with office materials, or reference the work environment in a pertinent way. These artists have used materials developed for the workplace to craft deliberate hand made books. As the office space becomes increasingly efficient, these artists address the relics of office production: the fax machine, the dot matrix printer, even the file folder.

Featuring work from:  Eric William Carroll, Luke Fischbeck, Sternberg Press, The MIT Press, Daniel Glendening, Amy Harris, Vanessa Hope, Josh Keller, Maciej Makalowski, Marfa Book Co., Paper Monument, Nickolas Mohanna, Publication Studio, Dexter Sinister, Carmen Winant, Daniel Yovino, Melissa Gordon, Christian Marazzi, Andreas Koller, Luca Beeler, Nicholas Miller, Tim Belonax, Luke Stettner, Matthew Scott Gualco, Luca Nino Antonucci, Paul Branca, Barbara Ess, Fillip, Rob Giampietro, Marc Handelman, Zach Houston, Adam Katz, Julia Sherman, Brian Kennon/2nd Cannons Publications, Chosil Kil, Alex Klein, Marisa Olson, Paul Pieroni, Laurel Ptak, Eileen Quinlan, Mihcael Smoler, Jamie Stewart, Oraib Toukan, Lia Trinka-Browner, Jen Delos Reyes, Rafael Rozendaal, Ryan Waller, Amy Yao, Jordan Stein, Glass House, Tarak Shah and Maggie Lawson, Rachel Zoller

About the guest curators:

COLPA is an independent publisher and small press based in San Francisco, CA. Colpa also runs Edicola, a repurposed newsstand selling art books, magazines, records and limited edition prints on Market and 6th St in downtown San Francisco. For more info, visit: colpapress.wordpress.com

Print is not dead!  We look forward to receiving you at the Mauve? Office:  Friday, September 14th at 7pm.

Opening Day - Discipline

Paloma Checa-Gismero will be inhabiting the Mauve? cubicle for the next two weeks, as she settles in to her new temporary home as Mauve?'s resident artist. She'll be creating work related to her reflections on what an office space is, culminating in a publication and the exhibition that will consume the following two weeks of the Mauve? month.

About the show:

During a four week-long residence at Mauve?, Paloma Checa-Gismero engages in an inquiry on the office space as a place where the body, the individual, and labor relate to each other in specific ways. As a result of the time spent at Mauve?, she will craft a publication containing materials related to her reflections on what an office space is.

Office Schedule: Mondays & Thursdays, 10:30 am - 1:30 pm.

About the artist:

Paloma Checa Gismero has a BA in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. She has a MFA in Art, Production and Research, and she is currently involved in the writing of her PhD dissertation on The Presence of the Crafts Paradigm in Contemporary Arts. She works as an artist, cultural manager and educator. Until July 2011 she has been a resident artist at Rampa production space in Madrid, Spain. She is currently a guest researcher at University of California at Berkeley and works as an art critique in various Spanish media.

A closing reception will be held Friday, August 24th at 7pm, to review Paloma's monthly report. Laser pointers and interrogating eyebrows welcome.

Opening Day - Still Point

Clare Olivares' "Still Point - Acts in Natural History" opened today. Visitors quietly considered the lives and deaths of birds, reptiles, and rodents, as they perused a colorful hanging library of re-contextualized specimens.

About the show:

Clare Olivares is an Oakland artist. The Still Point series reflects her interest in natural history and her experiments with plaster and color. With emphasis on stillness, these pieces incorporate photographs Olivares took of biological specimens when she worked at the University of California’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

“Working at the museum I would randomly open the specimen cabinets to see what was inside. The small rodent and bird specimens evoked mystery and elegy. The beauty of the specimens moved me; there was a poignant quietness to them. These works speak to the fragility of stillness.”

Words from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Four Quartets, inform these pieces:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshness; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement.

About the artist:

Clare Olivares was born and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She earned her undergraduate degrees in studio art and art history from Cal and her MFA in painting from Mills College. At Mills College Olivares continued art history coursework with an emphasis on Eastern art. This led to a trip to India that proved pivotal for Olivares’ artwork. She began exploring the symbolic and spiritual qualities of color. Color continues to play an important role in all of Olivares’ work. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the University of San Francisco, Richmond Art Center, Museum Without Walls, Alexandria Museum of Art, Laguna Gloria Art Museum and Gallery Irohani. Olivares lives in Oakland. www.clareolivares.com

Join us at the Mauve Office for a closing reception Friday, July 20th at 7pm, to share animal eulogies.

Opening Day - Remote Landscape Explorations

Renee Rhodes, director, choreographer, cartographer, and body-space specialist, provides us with a unique opportunity for marking personal movement as travel.  (Geological accoutrement to complement this trip are provided). The terrain of the body, with its range of motion, is overlaid onto the fractal experience of a coastline--folding, extending, akimbo, annotated . . . You Are Here.

About the show:

In the spirit of expeditions and explorations of days gone by, this is an account of embodied surveys and journeys through places that we increasingly discover and know without ever leaving home. You know, remotely or through a digital interface. Through choreographic maps, a piece of choreography for camera and associated artifacts we follow three women as they move through spaces and times situated on the disorienting edge between reality and virtuality. They explore methodologies for movement as a mapping technology -- a technology that can imaginatively inscribe a physical memory of landscape upon our overly Google-earthed understandings of the places that we inhabit or explore.

About the artist:

Renée Rhodes is a San Francisco-based artist focusing on intersections between dance, technology and natural phenomena. Her video, dance and installation work has most notably been featured at SomaArts, San Francisco, Velocity Dance Center,Seattle, La Sala SAM in Santiago, Chile, Nexus Art Gallery in Manchester, UK, and as a part of the Big Screen Project in New York City. Her writing, Moving Makes a Map was recently published in Media Fields Journal. See what she makes @ reneeArhodes.com

Stop in Friday, June 1st at 7pm, on your way to the Murmur, to meet Renée Rhodes in life and behind the lens. 

Opening Day - Hidden in the Earth

Rose Heineman's soft pencil and white ink drawings on black fields are her portraits for underground mineral accretions. In terracotta and turquoise tones, Rose divines diagrams of banded agate growing within ribbons of water or white-hot lava washing by. These may very well be accomplished cave paintings of metamorphic formations, waiting to be unearthed.

Amateur archaeologists are welcome to stop by the Mauve-hollow and let their eyes adjust to the dark.

About the show:

This new series of drawings is part of the evolution of my drawing practice. The white ink and colored pencil on black paper is something I began working with a few years ago. I like the graphic contrast created with these materials. I was originally concerned with finer line drawings of abstract shapes and forms, however this new series is more sculptural or solid in form.

The compositions of the new drawings continue to grow spontaneously out of themselves, building intuitively. I thought about the shapes of stones and water, or plants growing or moving around those stones, as well as fossils and geodes hidden under the earth. The colored pencil lends itself to a soft, powdery, stone-like quality on the black paper as the white ink lines flows around the colored pencil shapes. I attribute the layering of colors around some of the shapes to the layers of minerals compressed in rocks and geodes.

Walking in nature, I find an infinitely interesting and creatively inspiring alive quality, which takes some tuning into, as in meditation. I hope to impart some of this intimate knowledge through the process of creating this work.

About the artist:

I was born in San Francisco, however I grew up in Connecticut and Maine. After high school I attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD where as an undergrad I became interested in video and fiber arts primarily, however I also studied painting and drawing.

In 2005, I began drawing from nature and interpreting these forms. My drawing evolved into an expression of the intangible, intuitive knowledge I initially investigated in nature and then found entirely within. Because I draw so many lines, I relate my process of drawing to a spider spinning a web, playfully coming into focus.

See more of Rose's art at: http://roseheineman.com/

Join us at Mauve? this Friday, April 27th, at 7pm, to meet Rose Heineman and tour the show. 

Opening Day - Out to Lunch

Come one, come all!

Mauve? Office of Exhibition celebrates its 3rd anniversary with “Out To Lunch,” a month-long art exhibition at Wire + Nail in San Francisco.

Mauve? Office of Exhibition, an unconventional art gallery that occupies two office cubicles in downtown Berkeley, is celebrating its birthday by transplanting its cubicle sensibility to the Wire+Nail Gallery on 3150 18th Street (at Treat). Mauve? founders Sabina Nieto and Tarak Shah are curating a 4-week retrospective March 17th to April 15th.

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 24th, from 7 to 9pm.
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, from 1 - 3 pm, and available by appointment.

Featuring local artists who have shown at Mauve? in the past year, working in a variety of media including photography, installation, performance, beaded embroidery, drawing, writing, screen prints, and digital prints, the show looks to suggest the playful elements of the office work day: daydreams, small escapes, vacations, vices, snacks, reappropriation of office supplies.

Participating artists include: Neil Berrett, Mic D’Bernardo, Katie Hoffman, Maggie Lawson, Alexis Lopez, Jackie Hancock, Michael Ifland, Bridget May, Matt McKenzie, Natalia Melikova, Jenny Odell, Alissa Polan, Eduardo Valadez, Chelsea Ryoko Wong, Amber Jean Young, and Daniel Yovino.

--

In commemoration of this birthday, and in line with the production of an annual printed good, this year Chelsea Ryoko Wong has designed with Colpa Press printing (Luca Antonucci and Carissa Potter), a limited number of posters and shirts. Per Mauve?'s mission, wares are sold at-cost and 100% of sales from artwork goes to the artist.

Opening Day - Where are you going? Where have you been?

Alexis Lopez lovingly embroiders and beads salty sayings in an autographic illustrative style, that merges an opulent domestic mode with vintage tattoo iconography. Both decorative and narrative, she telegraphs messages through needle and thread. Whether her images are sinking into skin or across muslin, Alexis continues to reach out through these pictorial sampler-of-sorts with hopes of further defining herself and finding others to connect to. These drawings capture our spurned and crow-like attention with shining, glimmering "Dear John letters" from life.

About the show:

Have you ever thought about where you belong? I mean really thought about it?

I believe a large part of one’s self is our ability to connect and interact with another human being on a deeper level. Though we are constantly linked technologically, we have all but lost the ability to make a personal and intimate connection with one another and ultimately ourselves. Yet, in all this social hysteria there is still a thin and fragile line that can be drawn from one person to another. We all have had similar experiences in life, love and loss that connect us emotionally.

Most artist’s true reasoning behind making their art is to bring that connection out, to make aware to anyone that will listen, what truly defines them in relation to the world. My artwork is an inside look at my own journey to self-awareness. The message is simple and clear, but the intricate media that it is executed in is a parallel representation to our complexities. Worked by hand, I force my viewer to slow down and make a personal relationship with me that also resonates within him or her.

Each stitch is a line I’m drawing from me to you. Each gem and bead denotes our need to portray a pretty image to avoid rejection from those we seek acceptance from.

About the artist:

Alexis Rae Lopez was born and raised in Delta, Colorado in 1982. From a very small age she was influenced by her artistic lineage and would draw for hours on the couch with nothing but a markers and a notebook. Growing up she learned as much as she could about drawing and painting and in the summer of her 18th year, she moved to sunny California to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts (currently California College of the Arts). There she studied under many artist greats such as Barron Story, Robert Hunt and the late Dugald Stermer. She graduated with a BFA in Illustration in 2005 and has since continued to work, live and show in the bay area and California.

More of Alexis Lopez's work may be seen at: arlopez.com

Stop by the Mauve? Office this very Friday, February 17th at 7 pm, to meet Alexis Lopez and to debrief Valentine's Day adventures both solo and tandem.

Opening Day - Goldie Gallop's Chaos Destruction & Shovels Extravaganza

(detail of "Victory (Breaking Ground at Lonely Cactus)")

Alissa Polan's "Goldie Gaollop's Chaos Destruction & Shovels Extravaganza" opened today, and visitors took turns exploring and posing in a Goldie Gallop scene while delighting in Goldie's own adventures.

About the show:

Goldie Gallop is a new kind of Western heroine. She stands and poses. The pose becomes a photograph. The Wild West as we know it became popular for its gunslingers, heroes, villains and trail riders through believable storytellers, exhibitions, photographs and drawings. Later, Hollywood made the West infamous and synonymous with an elaborate fantasy that still resonates today.

Growing up in the shadows of Hollywood and the birthplace of the Wild West show- stopper identity I envisioned my own Wild West character for the contemporary city. Much like the Wild West, she would be bold, brave and adventurous. She would go through trials and tribulations. There will be drawings made about her escapades, photographs taken of her in her trailblazing outfits. The show is complete with a simulation of one of her scenes for exhibition goers to pose and participate.

I am interested in how narrative is created through fragments of photographic evidence and psychological context. This work focuses on story making through isolated surrealistic imagery and new kinds of product placement. Goldie Gallop’s Chaos, Destruction, & Shovels Extravaganza is promoting it’s own set of severed Western inspired moments that exist somewhere between action and pose, heroine, sell-out and fake by mixing up signals of the Wild West and the anti-west. I am promoting Goldie’s version, drawing parallels between her life and ours: lives that would be forgotten without validation, documentation and popularization.

About the artist:

Alissa Polan grew up in the suburbs of LA. She received her BFA in Painting/Sculpture from Sonoma State University in 2007. In 2011, she received her MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has participated in exhibitions in New Orleans, California, Portland and throughout San Francisco. Alissa currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

More of Alissa Polan's work may be seen at: alissapolan.com

This Friday, January 13th at 7 pm, join us at the Mauve? Office to meet Alissa Polan in person and to tour this frontierswoman's reclaimed Los Angelean desert.

Opening Day - Untitled: Books That Never Existed

"Untitled: Books That Never Existed" by Katie Hoffman and Matt McKenzie opened last night, with audiences excitedly arriving today to open a collection of thoughtfully crafted handmade books. As they flipped pages and viewed slides, visitors were presented with images and words offering practical advice on wide-ranging matters, thoughts on a folk taxonomy of humans using unexpected binaries, and stories both fantastical and realistic.

If you'd like to see the show for yourself, please feel free to email us and set up a viewing appointment.


Artists' Statement(s): A Short Conversation

K: Well, let's talk about our project. Our project is called "Untitled: Books That Never Existed." 
M: That's right. It certainly is. 
K: But they exist now.
M: I thought about that the minute I jokingly offered that as our show. It's ironic!


K: What do we want to say about it?
M: I want to say that I don't know how to move a new layer in Gimp once you paste it.
K: Why are you using Gimp to make books? Is that ironic in some way?
M: Uh, it's not ironic. It's probably stupid but not ironic. I'm using Gimp to try and create, to make my stencils for my linocuts. There we go. That was a lot easier than I expected it to be. 
K: Do you work well under pressure?
M: No, I do not. Not at all. I like to pretend that I do but it's not the case.

K: Do you have any questions for me?
M: So why did we decide to do an art show? Are we artists?
K: Definitely. Artists who don't allow enough time for themselves. Next time –  
M: Artists Without Effort … like Doctors Without Borders? 
K: If only I could diagnose that somehow.

K: So do you envision yourself in the future, maybe reading these books to your kids? Do you think they are primarily for kids? Who are your readers?
M: They are joke books for children. I don't think most children would care for it. I'm trying to use the aesthetic of what I feel a children's book would be but I don't think that the message is for children. I think it's for children that –
K: For the children inside us as adults?
M: For the children inside adults? 

M: I am stealing everything for this book. Nothing is original.
K: Are you stealing images to make a point?
M: I'm not very talented as a visual artist and I'm not very talented at using the computer either but together these lacks of talent cohere into something that's passable.
K: What do you consider passable? What makes something into craft? What do you consider to be good art?
M: Lanyards are pretty excellent. God's eyes that you make out of popsicle are good craft. Anything that uses a hot glue gun is a craft.

K: Now you ask me a question.
M: If you were me, what question would you ask yourself?
K: Dammit.

Opening Day - How to Wear Mauve

Miss Lawson, neat in appearance and perfectly coiffed, represents a woman’s testament to joining the post wartime work force. By toying with mainstream expectation, accompanied by pseudo-inspirational expressions, she tosses a wry wink toward to crowd with hopes of turning such phrases on their heads through candid conversations.

Today, we are invited to Feminine Career Counseling sessions where dreaming has been pre-approved.


About the show:

How to Wear Mauve--and other helpful hints from the Working Gal, is both a live performance and installation. The Working Gal will be one-on-one advising with interested Cal Fundraising department office workers to share her career and family-rearing advice.

About the artist:

Maggie Lawson is an artist, using photography, installation, participatory projects, and performance to generate deeper dialogues about issues of identity, especially gender. This Working Gal first began with a series of self-portraits in December 2009. These self-portraits are reenactments of Maggie’s grandmother’s experience (whom she is also named after--Marguerite Lawson). Marguerite was a secretary and later housewife in the 1940s and 1950s. Maggie uses photos of her as inspiration, transforming herself through makeup and costume into the kind of woman she imagines her grandmother to have been. The reenactment experience makes clear how few years and little primping separates Maggie’s experience of being a woman from that of her grandmother’s.

In that vein, the Working Gal derives her advice from attitudes and hints passed down to Maggie from the women and men in her family as well as society at large. The Working Gal is a caricature of these inherited limiting beliefs around professionalism and family. The performance is a ritual that uses humor and personal experience to engage participants in their own limiting belief systems with the intention of creating space for something new and more authentic to emerge.

This Friday, October 28th at 7:30 pm stop by to meet the artist in person, as the Working Gal will be disseminating winsome pearls.

Opening Day - Souvenirs from Chernobyl

Neil Berrett's "Souvenirs from Chernobyl" opened today, with some viewers surprised by the unexpected images of greenery at the site of the infamous disaster. Visitors were prompted to meditate on the nature of decay, change, and rebirth as they discussed the show with one another.

About the show:

Instant photographs inside the exclusion zone

About the artist:

The thirty-kilometer exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power station is a changing landscape. The short-lived radioisotopes have decayed away, while longer living radioisotopes remain in the soil, visibly changing some of the plantlife. Some 300 elderly samosets (self-settlers) live a semi-legal life in the area. They are quietly returning to their previous lives as farmers. Based on measurements taken with our guide’s radiation measuring instrument, I estimate I received approximately the equivalent of two airplane flights from San Francisco to London during my stay in the exclusion zone.

These instant photographs will decay at a rate that will have them obliterated in about 20 years. The exclusion zone too is changing, very slowly, for the better: plants are covering the drab buildings, the radiation level is decaying. I smuggled a small green apple out of the zone to measure its levels myself. The site will be slightly closer to a wild garden when I return to Chernobyl in the summer of 2012, while these images will be slightly closer to their demise.

– Neil Berrett

Neil Berrett's work may be seen at neilberrett.com

Stop by this Friday, September 23rd at 7 pm to meet the artist in person.

Opening Day - Plant Matter

Bridget May introduces her private painted slide library.

Hypnotized by her cellular structures, predominately plant in this series, we zoom in to encounter illustrative cross sections of stalks and stems. As our fingers traverse the surface of her paintings, our memories activate for what might be mitochondria or capillaries. These plant cells aren't quietly sliced, rather they are topographically built up with their most central nuclei jutting out towards us in minute cones of color.

About the show:

A group of paintings on wood of images inspired by plant tissue, magnified.

About the artist:

My educational background is in art and biology, and I feel equally drawn to both worlds. My paintings are inspired by the intricacies of cellular structures. I start with imagery from microscope slides of plant or animal tissues, and create patterns using intuitive layers of color. I am fascinated by the way colors interact, be it through their hue, value or saturation; the magic of contrast is continuously intriguing. When viewing reality through a microscope, previously unseen mesmerizing patterns of life become visible and the latent becomes possible. To borrow a lovely notion from Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), there is the potential for an entire universe in every drop of water, every speck of dust.

– Bridget May

More of Bridget's work may be seen at bridgetmay.com

Join us this Friday, August 19th at 7 pm in celebrating science!

Opening Day - Transferred Memories

"Transferred Memories: Prolonging the Past" opens today and Jackie Hancock imprints the experience of the family meal directly onto table linens, photographic ancestral visages fading in and out. An old trunk, shoebox, or salesman's suitcase is opened and we look to find a piece of ourselves in the visual history safely stowed within.

About the show:

Photographs capture a moment, which quickly becomes the past. Family photographs are marvelous pieces of history. My parents each became the proud owners of a set of my grandparents' family photographs; they arrived in boxes. During a trip home, a quick shuffle through the boxes turned into hours of slowly examining each piece. An album is being made, but there must be another way to display these beautiful black and white tokens. One thing I remember about my grandparents' homes was the fabric displayed throughout, for both use and decoration. I decided to transfer these nostalgic images onto beautiful fabrics. To do so, I took new 35mm black and white images and produced negatives of the old photographs, coated similar fabrics to those found in my grandparents' homes with liquid emulsion, to finally project and develop the images on the fabric in the darkroom. The process and materials represent my family's past and prolong their memories.

About the artist:

One of my grandfather’s worst fears was that when he passed away his memory would be lost. We, his family, knew that would never happen. Most of my projects focus on the present and future, but once I saw my family’s old photographs, I was captivated with the past. Having received my BFA in Photography at the University of Michigan in film and traditional dark room procedures, I've concluded that the process of traditional wet photography is the best way to keep my family's past alive. Currently, I am working toward my MFA in Photography at the Academy of Art University, focusing on digital techniques. This project is the perfect opportunity for me to get my hands back in the darkroom and prolong my family's memories. – Jackie Hancock

More of Jackie's work may be seen at jackiehancock.com
She is concurrently exhibiting as part of the Academy of Art Spring Show 2011 at 1849 Washington Street, now through August 15th.

If you'd like to stop by to see the Mauve? show, drop us a line.

Opening Day - Office Space

"Office Space" opens today and Chelsea Wong invites you to join her in vacationing from your office chair and to visit her visions of aggregate intergalactic fairgrounds, amassing familiar floating objects and alien headdresses. Admission to day dream is free.

About the show:

How far can one possibly travel from the seat of an office chair? These works explore fictional day dreams of outer space, alien villages, and other worlds from the vivid imagination of an office worker.

About the artist:

Chelsea Ryoko Wong is a visual artist, printmaker and illustrator who loves to use her imagination. She works and lives in San Francisco. More of her work can be seen at chelseawong.com

Do join us for the evening opening Friday, July 8th at 7pm. Hope to see you here.

Opening Day - Magic Medicine

Today Magic Medicine opened, featuring a collection of sketches and folk assemblage inspired by musicians and movement from AfroCuban encounters. Dominic Alleluia roots himself in comfortably capturing the lively human form: faces drawn with bold line and caran d'ache color are pulled from the crowd of percussive performances. His found wood sculptures draw upon imagination, constructing a personal anthropomorphic zoolatry. These are some of the healing artifacts from the Alleluia mythology. The office audience shared their own talismans.

About the show:

These works are inspired by early modern period Africa, Cuban folkloric music and dance, as well as American Jazz. There is a short video compilation of these works used in a performance context.

About the artist:

Dominic Alleluia is a painter and interdisciplinary artist, born in New York City, who has lived in San Francisco since 1959.

For Alleluia's past work, visit: soundpoetry.org/artistalleluia

Please feel free to set up a time to stop by and see the show.

Opening Day - The Book Report: The Art of Reading How to Read a Book

Daniel Yovino's The Book Report opened today with the artist on-site to meet and greet the office community--fielding questions about analytical and other non-fiction reading, illustrating helpful steps with his quietly waggish how-to storyboard.

About the show:

1940: Simon & Schuster publishes How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler.
1972: Adler re-writes an updated version of How to Read a Book with quiz show celebrity Charles Van Doren.
2008: Renée Green recommends How to Read a Book for her seminar Spheres of Interest: Experiments in Thinking and Action.
2011: Daniel Yovino delivers a lecture about How to Read a Book called The Art of Reading How to Read a Book.

The Book Report: The Art of Reading How to Read a Book is a collection of Daniel's lecture notes, reference books, and writings from the presentation. Although Daniel is not an avid reader, he hopes that visitors will take away a tip or two for reading books, non-fiction in particular.

From the artist:

How vexing is statement-writing? It is easy to feel as though I have to summarize my thoughts completely, and that task becomes more difficult as I live longer and complete more thoughts. Of course, I am probably making a mountain out of a molehill––which, by the way, sounds like an artistic project in itself. ("I make mountains out of molehills. . .")

Sometimes it helps to take things literally. I pay attention to ideas, suggestions, expressions, jokes, etc, no matter how distracting. I tend to begin new projects by imagining a parody, and my sources are often educational in nature. I often approach the lecture format because I see it as a challenge in many aspects. In particular, the learning process forces me to present myself as a teacher. Always flirting with failure, I am willing to lead both by example and non-example.

About the artist:

Daniel Yovino explores methods of personal productivity through mimicry and parody. He graduated with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and received a BFA in Painting from the University of Central Florida. He has exhibited in venues including CityArts Factory in Orlando, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and Koret Education Center at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work can also be seen at danielyovino.com.

Daniel lives and works in San Francisco.

Join us on Friday for an evening opening with the artist: April 29th at 7 pm. Drop us a line if you'll be coming by.

Opening Day - Chance Encounters

Mic DBernardo's "Chance Encounters" opened today, waking workers from their long weekend with bursts of color and prompting curious questions of the artist -- "What is this in the photo?" Visitors were reminded to take time and observe what we might take for granted or overlook.

About the show:

Making the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar. Often times, we overlook minute details or things that don’t represent anything. This collection of photographs captures what is familiar to us from a slightly skewed angle and point of view.

Having grown up in a colonial ancestral home, I’ve always wanted to document events and preserve objects and memories of the past. Life itself is fleeting, passing. I’d like to take a slice of life and preserve it somehow. These images are of objects in our peripheral view. However, when we take time to look at them closely, they offer us myriad ways of seeing, thus creating a “chance encounter.”

About the artist:

A traveler, artist and photographer, Mic DBernardo shares her journeys and experiences through her photographs. In addition to photography, Mic’s passions include acrylic and watercolor painting. While her photographs capture fleeting, passing moments from her travels, her paintings depict a more realistic view of life and objects that we come across in our daily lives.

She is a strong advocate of archiving, preservation, and restoration. Her accomplishments include being published in the Seattle Visitor’s Guide in 2009 and recently showing her work at the 24th Annual Emeryville Art Exhibition. Mic lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For more information about Mic DBernardo, visit: micdbernardophotography.tumblr.com

Join us at this Friday's evening opening, April 1st at 7 pm and meet the artist. Please email us if you're planning to stop by.

Opening Day - "Working"

Amber Jean Young may be the closest thing we have to an Artist-in-Residence at Mauve, joining the workforce through a cubicle-centric occupancy of live knitting and video work featuring her process while she's away from her desk. Her work schedule, which began today with fellow workers stopping by to admire, will continue throughout the month:

- 7 pm, Friday March 4th (tour! See below for details)
- 10 am, Friday March 11th
- 10 am, Monday March 14th
- 10 am, Monday March 21st

Do join us for a public tour this Friday, March 4th at 7 pm of Amber Jean at work. Please email us if you're planning on attending.

About the show:

The piece is part performance, part endurance, part video. In 2007 I began knitting throughout the day, as a method of measuring moments of my life. As the months passed the meaning of the piece expanded and became a method of not only marking the passage of time, but an exploration of the repetitive nature of work. I had to put sometimes mind-numbing work into continuing to knit this piece. The piece is always about marking the passage of time, but it became about the challenge of continuing to work on something that has no foreseeable completion date. When I began to think of the piece as “work” I began to consider the fruits of productivity (i.e. stuff getting done) as evidence of being alive, no matter how mundane.

About the artist:

Amber Jean’s artwork often explores interpersonal and familial relationships, memories, nostalgia, and personal history. She is interested in the circumstances where she believes people should feel psychologically and emotionally safe, and where that security exists in reality. Amber Jean’s work investigates coping mechanisms, and the complicated emotions caused by loving others. The work engages the relationship between fantasy and longing as well as an emotional and psychological haunting. Amber Jean disguises loaded topics in a cute presentation. Her work exposes the juxtaposition of serious and silly, complicated and simple, sad and cute.

For more information about Amber Jean, visit: amberjeanyoung.com