Nurture/Nature
$ free
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Friday, April 12, 2013

Nurture-Nature

2nd Friday Reception April 12th, 7-9pm

Exhibit runs through  April 28th 2013.

Ginny Parsons, Jacqueline Cooper and Stephen Keyton exhibit their paintings and sculpture inspired by the natural world.  

Ginny Parsons paints shorebirds dripped with varnish and oils, evoking environmental questions. Jacqueline Cooper’s large-scale drawings of herself as a child are an attempt, in pencil, ink and watercolor, to address vulnerability and strength while Stephen Keyton’s organic sculptures are constructed entirely with found objects.

“Jacqueline Cooper’s drawings seek to identify the moment at which the negotiation between susceptibility and strength became apparent. She uses images culled from old photographs of herself, ideas of becoming that have long since been trumped by the reality of arriving. Cooper notes that her parents neither took, nor kept, many images of her as a child. It’s possible she’s reinventing herself by looking backwards at something that barely existed and forwards to a place that might continually hold promise.”

Make It workshop session with Ginny Parsons

When: April 6th

Where: Rhythmix Cultural Works
2513 Blanding Ave, Alameda

When: 1:00-2:30pm

Ages: 12-18

FREE

More info: Make it workshop

Kids and parents, come and celebrate Earth Day by making art out of recycled materials. Cut, paint, glue and draw a Shorebird square to be included in an Earth Quilt, shown at the April 12th gallery reception.

For more info, contact Ginny Parsons.

Artists’ Bios
Jacqueline Cooper received her Masters Degree in Fine Arts from UCLA in 1998 and has worked for the worked for the last twenty years as an Art Professor, Independent Curator, Art Critic and Gallerist. Between 1995-2000 she worked as the Los Angeles Editor for the Chicago New Art Examiner writing critical reviews and longer editorial pieces whilst also opening an independent artspace, 208 South La Brea Gallery in Los Angeles. Having moved to San Francisco in 2004 she worked as a Professor at the San Francisco Art Institute and in 2007 she opened Autobody Fine Art Inc. on the island of Alameda. Autobody Fine Art Inc. was the only contemporary art space on the island and specialized in showing sculpture and installation artwork. Jacqueline has exhibited extensively, primarily in Southern California, Los Angeles at Sandroni Rey Gallery, in Chicago and with Bucheon Gallery in San Francisco. Her artwork was included in exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Most recently she was named as an emerging curator by Arts Benicia and has spent time organizing and installing artwork at Art Basel, Miami.”

Ginny Parsons is an intuitive painter working with acrylics, bacon grease and other household materials. Raised in Chico, she earned a BA in Visual Communications at CSU, Chico and studied painting at The San Francisco School of Art. Her recent work focuses on Alameda shorebirds, observed from walks and supported by John James Audubon’s drawings. Painting on canvas and found boards washed up by the estuary, Parsons collaborates with gravity through her drips and pours. As an environmental artist, her process begins with nature, by walking along the Elsie Roemer bird sanctuary or kayaying in Arrowhead Marsh looking for the endangered clapper rail. In addition to being an artist, Parsons teaches art to children out of her home-studio near Lincoln Park.  Her work has recently been exhibited at the Gray Loft Gallery, Autobody Fine Art and Zonal in Hayes Valley.

Stephen Keyton is a self-taught artist who has been drawing, painting and making found-object art for the past thirty years. His work is in private collections in New York, New Orleans, the Bay Area, Southern California, Oregon and Costa Rica.