Sonoma Valley Museum of Art Wet Paint Gala 2009
Live Auction Art and Artists
 "As the Wind Blows" 18" x 22" Oil on Linen |
Chester Arnold
|
 "Untitled" 16" x 18" oil and graphite on wood |
Stephen Beal Stephen Beal was appointed President of California College of the Arts (CCA) on May 1, 2008, having served as Provost since 1997. Founded in 1907, with campuses in Oakland and San Francisco, California, CCA is a visual arts college dedicated to the education of artists in the fine arts, architecture, design and writing. In the last decade Beal has played a significant role in the expansion of the college’s programs and facilities and the implementation of key academic initiatives. Beal was formerly Vice-President of Academic Planning and Associate Vice-President of Academic Affairs at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he also served as Chair of the Graduate Division and as a professor of painting.Beal has been the recipient of many commissions and grants and since 1972 has had numerous exhibitions of his work including solo exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center and Bucheon Gallery in San Francisco. Most recently he exhibited new paintings at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art in San Francisco in 2009. Beal has served regularly on external review committees looking at colleges of art and design nationally and internationally. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the College of Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University and the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA., and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Beal attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, and earned his M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. |
|
"Pregnant Void" 44" x 40" Barbed Wire, Re-Bar & Copper Offered in the Silent Auction  "Winterkill" 6" x 6" x 4" Bronze |
Jim Callahan Meet Jim Callahan |
"Poppy Fields, Orvieto" 40" x 34" Sand Blasted Plexiglass Offered in the Silent Auction:  "Two Leaves, Hualalai" 2008 19" x 13" Ultrachrome Print on Japanese Watercolor Paper |
Morley Clark "My visual and written work are an ongoing exploration of the light, space, and form found within nature. I experience light as a palpable, metaphorical entity that shapes the space, time and memory of a moment. The initially drawn lines of ink, sometimes graphite, reflect an underlying dynamic in nature - many layers of pastel are laid into and over the lines - like an ether. There is often erasure - a synthesis of color occurs.The photographs are an extension of the drawings, but fall more between the fine line of representation and abstraction. One recognizes familiar forms within the images, but those forms may move into abstraction. The photographs are shot in black and white film; negatives are then scanned and put into digital format and printed on Japanese watercolor paper. The recent use of sandblasted plexiglass as a drawing surface provides a translucent and subtle transparency through which light may pass. " Morley Clark was born in Seattle, Washington. She grew up in Southern California and New York. She is an artist, photographer, and poet. Her work is found in the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library, The British Museum, The Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts at the Legion of Honor, The Hammer Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as numerous public and private collections. She has exhibited extensively in the U.S. Her art and poetry appear in a number of anthologies, and also appear in the limited edition "Light." Clark received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of California at Los Angeles, and her MFA from Lone Mountain College. She lives in Larkspur, California. |
 "The Pleasure of Your Company" 2009 39 1/2" x 36" x 6" Powder Coated Steel Wire on Wood Panel Offered in the Silent Auction: "Vase Up?" 2009 Variable Size Powder Coated Wire |
Pamela Merory Dernham Pamela Merory Dernham is an Oakland, California-based artist whose work is collected internationally. This year her work was featured at Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in an exhibit titled “Go Figure.” In 2007, she was the alternate choice for a lobby sculpture at 545 Madison Avenue in New York. She was also a featured artist for Mowen Solinsky Gallery at the “SOFA: Sculptural Objects and Functional Art” Exposition in Chicago and was in an exhibit devoted to wire sculpture at the Mowen Solinsky Gallery in Nevada City.In 2006, Merory Dernham was proud to be invited to include her wire sculpture in “The Family of Clay: Fifty Years of Ceramics at California College of the Arts, 1950-2000”. Her work was featured on a tour of the work of Dallas architect Bill Booziotis in the home of collectors Cheryl and Keith Hughes. And her large-scale works were in the exhibit, “InSights" at the St. Supery Winery Gallery in Oakville, CA. Her inspiration has always been the human figure, probing the subtleties of interpersonal relationships. While continuing to use the figure, Merory Dernham’s work is evolving in the direction of abstraction. Each sculpture is less literal in the presentation of the body and more a play of the forms of the body against each other to suggest physical and psychological tensions. Click: Meet Pamela Merory Dernham |
 Piece in Progress Size undetermined Either Acrylic on Glass or Pigmented Inkjet on Rag |
Donald Farnsworth Born in 1952 in Palo Alto, CA, Donald Farnsworth received a B.F.A. from the SF Art Institute in 1974 and an M.A. from UC Berkeley in 1977. Farnsworth is known internationally as an artist, master printmaker, an authority on the history and manufacture of handmade paper and more recently as an innovator in digital technology and weaving techniques. Farnsworth has designed and led the building of a handmade paper mill for Nyumba Ya Sanaa, a nonprofit in Tanzania, founded (in 1981) and still directs Magnolia Editions--a Fine Art Publishing company and collaborative studio in Oakland, CA and has taught art at universities for many years. Farnsworth's work is a testament to his years of experimentation with different mediums, synthesizing the historic and the unorthodox, and employing hybrid technologies in collaborative projects with his wife, Era Hamaji Farnsworth. His work is in collections including: The Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, San Francisco, CA; The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, IL; The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.; The David & Lucile Packard Foundation; and The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. Click: Meet Don Farnsworth |
 "Habitat II" 2009 24" x 48" Oil on Canvas Offered in the Silent Auction:  "Sycamore Shadows" 2009 20" x 20" Oil on Canvas |
Anne Hysell  "My surroundings are the subjects of my paintings. The images of landscapes have evolved over time due to my never-ending search to see and express their spirit.I absorb the shapes, color and rhythm of the land, sky and water by the simple act of sitting, looking and sensing. I feel their presence and try to capture that presence through a combination of reality and abstraction in painting. Oils and pastels are my chosen media, and each lends itself to my way of working which includes the layering of colors as Nature layers her colors. Often the subject itself dictates the medium to use for that particular painting. Archival pastel paper is taped to the studio wall and a stretched canvas is on the easel with sketches to provide new thoughts or a different way to approach a specific idea. CD's of jazz interchanged with classical and a bit of Western music complete the studio setting." |
 "Gathering Momentum"
72" x 52" Diptych Acrylic, oil, enamel and resin on panel Offered in the Silent Auction
 "Present" 60" x 20" Oil on canvas |
Brigitte McReynolds
Working both figurative and abstract is what I love to do. When I work on a theme, like stripes for example, I explore it in oil, acrylic and encaustic, working figurative and abstract until it exhausts itself, or leads to another theme. I apply what I have learned, from working with shapes, forms and lines in my abstract paintings, to find the simplicity that is needed for abstracting a figure. Similarly, my abstract work profits from my figurative experience.
I work in layers of paint, creating luminous color, depth & voluptuous texture. Painting for me is a dynamic, intuitive process. A drip or smear can reveal part of that process. I like that!"
|
“Tiburon” 2007 48 x 48” Oil on canvas Offered in the Silent Auction:  "Idle" 2009 24" x 24" Oil on Canvas |
Sharon Paster Sharon Paster began painting at age 13, completed all her college math and science requirements in high school, and then raced through Brandeis University in 3 years as a painting major, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1976 with a BA degree. She quit painting and began work in high tech marketing communications and advertising, where she climbed the ranks and stayed for 15 years, ultimately returning to her roots after moving to Marin County in the 1990’s. She eagerly resumed her studies at College of Marin, painting with Chester Arnold and sculpting with Emily Lazarre.Sharon’s work is fueled by her interest in capturing a “state of possibility,” where everything in the atmosphere vibrates with life, on the verge of movement and change. She explores chaotic, yet very deliberate interactions: one rock to another, one bush to its neighbor, one mark to the next. Her sculpture is also about the passage of time: the promise of change after a moment suspended. She enjoys the process of exploring and activating real space just as much as working the picture plane. No matter what the media, her work is characterized by its gestural exuberance. Sharon loves the physicality of making art: putting down marks, looking, walking away, crouching down, adding material, taking it away and then putting it back. The process is all part of the vital life force she aims to capture and express. Click: Meet Sharon Paster |
 "Whichever Way the Wind Blows"
2008 53" x 18" x 21" Cardboard, staples, shellac with steel base Offered in the Silent Auction:
"Blue" 2008 37" x 33" x 24" Cardboard, staples, shellac |
Ann Weber
I started working in cardboard in 1991 because I wanted to make large forms and wanted to eliminate the cumbersome process of clay and the weight of large clay objects. Using Frank Gehry’s cardboard furniture for inspiration I decided to use the same material for abstract shapes. The sculptures read as metaphors for life experiences such as the balancing acts that define our lives or how far you can go with something before it collapses. They are large primal forms that can represent seed pods, figures, architecture, relationships, pearls. The sculptures read as metaphors for life experiences such as the balancing acts that define our lives or how far you can go with something before it collapses. Working with a palette of simple forms: cylinders and circles, the sculptures are symbolic of male and female forms and the natural world. The resourcefulness of making beauty from a common and mundane material intrigues me. Working with a palette of simple forms: cylinders and circles, symbolizing life, male and female, the origin of all forms in nature, I am interested in the possibilities of making beauty from a common and mundane material. Transforming the cardboard by casting it into bronze for public art projects enables me to explore the idea of creating something from nothing, turning straw into gold." “Ann Weber’s large sculptures made from woven strips of cardboard synthesize ancient and modern, craft and high art. The biomorphic gourd shapes suggest traditional basketry, but also, with their human size, their open grids and peepholes, pre-industrial coffins or cages, and their probing necks ( smokestacks or chimneys), they’re imbued with life and as anthropomorphic as Giorgio Morandi’s bottles." Click: Meet Ann Weber |
 "Cinzano" 20x16 Oil on Canvas Offered in the Silent Auction:  "North Beach" 36x 36 Oil on Canvas |
Keith Wicks
An artist member of the California Art Club, Keith Wicks’ award winning paintings, which have been jury selected for such prestigious events as the 92nd Gold Medal Juried Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of History and the renown Sausalito Art Festival, have been showcased in various galleries throughout San Francisco. His artwork has also been featured in promotional materials for the celebrated Sonoma Valley Arts Alliance’s “Salute to the Arts” and the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, and he has been the artist of choice for all the promotional materialsand posters for the American Heart Association for several years running. Recently featured in the American Artists Magazine, Keith Wicks’ paintings can be found in a number of celebrity/private collections, as well as public collections, such as the Westin St. Francis Hotel and the Renaissance Hotel. With over thirty years experience, Keith has devoted much of his time to teaching art at the Academy of Art in San Francisco and various charities which promote art education in public schools. As founding member of the Sonoma Plein Air Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding the role of art education, Keith donates his time and paintings to various efforts, such as the Ronnie Lott Foundation’s “All Stars Helping Kids” and the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, where his works are auctioned for charity. After many successful years as a commercial artist in the Bay Area, Keith Wicks now lives in Sonoma, California, where he devotes full-time to fine art. Always moving forward, always looking for that split second of light, for that intensity of color, Keith paints on location, under the vast Sonoma sky or in his Sonoma studio. Working primarily in oils, Keith Wicks masterfully preserves that precise and awe inspiring instant when you behold a thing of beauty for the first time. Click: Meet Keith Wicks |
"My work is a continuous investigation of abstraction & the exploration of the human form. It is a visual diary, a paper trail of a process, spontaneous yet deliberate, personal yet universal.
A masterful painter with the soul of an old master, Keith Wicks is able to capture the essence of the moment with a clarity and intensity rarely seen in contemporary works today. Through a technique all his own, he has developed the unique ability to harness the purity and energy of light, even when it’s dancing in the shadows. 
