Now this is Home

Now this is Home

New works by Kurtis Major in Petrichor

December 13, 5-8pm

It was 5:00 am in Northern California on November 9th, 2018. My phone was vibrating on the floor of my bedroom, instinctively I picked it up. It was my mom; I could hear she was scared yet composed. My parents were being evacuated as we spoke. Mom asked me what she should grab from the house. Without hesitation, I said, “get a few pairs of clothes, water, food, and the things you love.” At that moment, I did not realize that the last bits of our family home would soon vanish into ash.

The Southern California Woolsy fire swept quickly through my childhood neighborhoods, reshaping all of my material memories into an unrecognizable landscape. I had forgotten that time exists within a space beyond our ability to control its consequences. We are only actors bearing witness to its passing in nanoseconds, minutes, hours, days, and decades. The compression of time and space resides between our constructs of what is possible or what we think is possible.

The flesh is bound to the body with tendons, ligaments, blood, and tissue, much like the framework that we place around space and time. These notions of form, shape, and place are but assembled perceptions. In the end, it is all fleeting. Time is driven out of the hourglass by an autonomous force such as a fire. Time as a constraint necessitates to free us from the attachment to materiality and reveals the beauty of the impermanent.

I have not attempted to recreate the power of the wildfire in these sculptures. My intention was to fully inhabit the alchemical space of these materials and through this lens my goal was to examine Nature’s skill in distilling new forms out of chaos. My interest lies in experiencing the molecular structure of form and volume from the remains of our family’s home.

In as much as we can form new memories to a place, materials are also reshaped by the process of melting, bending, forging, twisting, folding, brazing, hammering, and rejoining. These processes ultimately shift our relationship to the space, form, time, and the understanding of the place we call home.

LET THE SEA MAKE A NOISE

LET THE SEA MAKE A NOISE

Petrichor Gallery

265 Gate 5 Road Sausalito, CA 

August 31st, 2019 

Heather Wilcoxon and Lauren Mckeon live on boats in Sausalito’s Galilee Harbor, a community of artists and waterfront workers. Both artists are highly influenced by forms familiar in their waterfront lives, the contingency of living in fluid, and proximity to nature. Their work uses metaphors reflected in physical forces around them to resist psychological forces of contemporary progress. In their suspicion of modern realities, both women make work that is strong and dark. For LET THE SEA MAKE A NOISE Wilcoxon and Mckeon will show new paintings and sculptures in Petrichor’s tiny and uniquely coastal California architecture. Please join us for the opening reception and sunset on August 31st 6-9pm

Heather Wilcoxon lives and works in the Bay Area. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1988. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work is in several permanent collections including The American University Museum, Washington DC, The Fine Arts Museum, Auchenbach Foundation of Graphic Arts in San Francisco, the De Saisset Museum and Triton Museum in Santa Clara and the Di Rosa Preserve in Napa, California. She has received several fellowship awards. Two from the Pollock/ Krasner Foundation, New York. Three painting grants from the Buck Foundation in Marin County and a residency fellowship from the Djerassi Artist Residency Program, a grant recipient from the Tree of Life Foundation out of North Carolina. And recently received The 2019 Distinguished Women in the Arts Award from the Fresno Art Museum. She is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco.

Lauren McKeon received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2014. Coming from a background in dance, McKeon’s work is made as an ensemble. Sculptures are props, framing questions about performance and absence. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Laurel Gitlen (New York), Fused Space (San Francisco), and Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco), with recent solo exhibitions at Land and Sea (Oakland), and Interface Gallery (Oakland). McKeon’s work is in the public collection of Deutsche Bank (New York). She is the creator and editor of SPLITS, a publication to support new collaborations between dancers and visual artists. McKeon lives and works on the waterfront in Sausalito, CA. 

Marin Open Studios

Several artists of Marinship Studios will be opening their studios on Saturday and Sunday 5/4-5/5 from 11-6pm. Kurtis Major’s (Studio E) Birdview Distillery and Terasu (Studio B) will also be serving drinks and bites from 4-6pm on the Saturday outside Petrichor.

265 Gate 5 Road, Sausalito

RSVP on Facebook

Group Exhibition: Captured Space

A group exhibition at Petrichor presented by Tokyo based Kian Gallery in conjunction with Terasu. Works by three artists from Japan focus on the theme of how different vessels impart influence on time and space in our daily environment.

The selection of ‘active’ vessels brings to attention one’s perspective of how a vessel’s form and materiality relates to how it may be used or handled. Akihiro Nikaido and Masashi Uda explore plates in ceramic and wood. Kotaro Sakazume takes two very different approaches to spoons and small bowls.

In the fast-paced and busy age we live in, it becomes important to consider the feeling of and meaning behind the material quality and substance of everyday objects.

Artist Kotaro Sakazume will be in attendance from 4/11 to 4/19.

Dates: April 11th Thursday - 20th Saturday 2019, 11am - 7pm, closed Monday and Tuesday

Reception: Saturday 4/13 3pm-7pm, yaki-onigiri and drinks

RSVP to the opening via the event page.

Akihiro Nikaido

Ceramic Artist, born in Sapporo, 1977

Akihiro Nikaido creates a metal like texture that allows him to conduct various ceramic experiments, playing with expression in his ‘rusted vessels’.

He paints a layered facial expression with a brush on each piece, making for delicate modern works that age nicely over time. He has had international solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai and his works are also used in restaurants in New York and Paris.

Masashi Uda

Born in Akita Prefecture, 1983, woodworker

Through experience and knowledge gained in furniture design and performance arts, Masashi Uda currently focuses on making vessels and cutlery out of wood.

His process is sculptural as each piece is hand carved without the use of any machines or sanding, which allows for the works to last and age well.

The works are intended to make one feel daily life.

Kotaro Sakazume

Born in Tokyo, 1988, artist / Ceramic Artist

With a fixation for masks, Kotaro Sakazume pursues the creation of original expressions. As a mask maker, in his more utilitarian works he aims to create unique sculptural forms that become vessels and cutlery.

In recent years he has opened a ceramic studio where people can experiment with a virtual potter’s wheel, freely mixing the everyday and the unexpected.

Studio C Solo Exhibition: Akari Uragami

“Reality Check” a solo show by Akari Uragami opens on November 10th in Studio C and there will be a reception on November 18th from 3-6pm.

Akari Uragami was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. This is the artist's first US solo show and represents work developed on site during her residency at Marinship Studios in 2018. Akari's work is distinguished by her interests in patterns and cloth, which examine the internal and external tensions of the flesh. She uses painting and sculpture to bind surfaces and forms into 2D & 3D. This interplay between primordial human feelings of comfort, or healing, and aggression is formed through the combination of the shapes in her work and the use of dying, tying, and stitching techniques. She aims to explore these two tensions, of the flesh, between comfort and aggression amongst and inside of humans and living organisms.

RSVP via facebook here or for the reception on November 18th here.

Info:

2018.11.10 sat - 27 tue at Marinship studios C open Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12PM - 6PM and by appointment info@marinshipstudios.com

Reception on Sunday, 11.18 3PM - 5:30PM

On the Edge of a Dream Film Screening

October 6th, 6-9pm

Marinship Studios tenant, Terasu, is hosting a screening of a new film in one of our vacant studios by Ellis Ericson and Andrew Kidman with art by Barry McGee.

“Feedback” will also take place in Petrichor, a solo exhibition by Alex Kopps.

The film will play at 7:30 after a few songs performed by Andrew Kidman. There will also be a Q&A with Ellis and Andrew.

Cocktails by Birdview Distillery and some seasonal food by a local chef will be available for purchase.

About the film:

For the past five years Ellis Ericson and Andrew Kidman have been working with George Greenough on the modern evolution of his Edge Board design. 

Ericson and Kidman are both shapers; the book and film charts their journey as they work with Greenough to personalise their own equipment with a design George has been toying around with since the late ‘60s. 

Shot in Australia on the North Coast of New South Wales it features the original venues Lennox Head and Angourie where Greenough’s innovative Edge designs were tested in the early ‘70s. 

Tickets are $10 per person, available on terasu.co

Group Exhibition: Detachment from Craft

A group exhibition at Petrichor featuring Kurtis Major, Ido Yoshimoto, Jorgen Harle, Yoshitaka Nakaya, and Shinta Nakajima

On view through mid July. Please make an appointment by contacting info@marinshipstudios.com

'Petrichor' is a temporary exhibition space currently located on the north west corner Marinship Studios. Petrichor was built by 3 of the 5 artists in the exhibition.

RSVP to the opening via the event page.

Detachment from Craft
The organic, varying forms at play in the artists’ work invite the viewer to discard defined notions of craft. Metal and wood sourced in California and Japan are treated in a variety of ways, blurring the boundaries between artisan and artist.