Where to Go This First Thursday: December 2015
Erika Sanada, Wait for Me, hand-built ceramic and underglaze.
Image: Courtesy Abmeyer + Wood
Erika Sanada: Balancing Act
Abmeyer + Wood
Some animals are soft, and fuzzy, and perfect for cuddling with on a cold winter night. Those are not the beasts that Erika Sanada sculpts. She dabbles more in nightmarish sights. The San Francisco-based artists latest collection of creepy ceramic critters highlights both her ability to find a perverse cuteness in these ghost-like animals and her perfected sense of color which accentuates each extremity and slit of the pale creatures. Opening reception from 5–8.
Mark Rediske, Inception, mixed media on board, 22 x 48 in.
Mark Rediske: Distillation
Foster/White Gallery
Mark Rediske doesn’t paint the type of landscapes you see hanging in hotel lobbies. Dark, dripping color washes over his encaustic-on-panelboard scenes, focusing on blurred detail rather than the panoramic scope of a place. For more than two decades, the Seattle artist has been exhibiting his creations at Foster/ White Gallery, and his latest collection, Distillation, draws on memories of his youth in Minnesota and the interaction between water and sky in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Opening reception from 6–8.
Roger Shimomura, Great American Muse #41, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.
Image: Courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery
Roger Shimomura: Great American Muse
Greg Kucera Gallery
Drawing inspiration from Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude series, Roger Shimomura builds dense layers of familiar pop art imagery with the paintings of Great American Muse. The chaotic juxtaposition of Asian traditionalism, famed artworks, cartoons, war, and sex makes each piece a disorienting vision that forces the viewer to sort through their own associations with each element in a recontextualized light. Opening reception from 6–8.
Cable Griffith, Weyauwega, WI, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 in.
Image: Courtesy G. Gibson Gallery
Cable Griffith: Sightings
G. Gibson Gallery
The truth is out there, but in Cable Griffith's Sightings there's nothing to fear. Inspired by his own sighting in 1983 and using actual UFO reports, Griffith's paintings strip any sense horror from the notion of extraterrestrials, instead presenting a vision of wonder as the unexplainable flying objects hover above almost cartoonish soft and romanticized landscapes. A heartwarming sense of playful optimism penetrates each mysterious image. Opening reception from 6–8.
