The Texture & Specificity of Life

drawing the world again. starting to.

It has been a long month already. Lot of work and and time and energy went into open studios and opening Branches Gallery and working for the man to pay for these endeavors, and trying to squeeze in a bit of art making or at least thinking of art making. The other night, after spending a few hours in the studio breaking it down to get it ready to start working in again, tidying up my books, and finishing the last piece in the commissioned "Looking" series that I began working on in the winter, I gave myself a good half hour of just sitting and looking at myself via what I have done. What I have made. I am proud of my work. It is not easy to stay dedicated to it, day in, day out, pouring money and time and energy into it, and for what...? To have some pretty pictures? To prove something to somebody, to myself? Or, to "deal with my issues", give myself play therapy because mommy and daddy invariably disappoint? Maybe to avoid dealing with my issues? Or, perha...

Madeline Tonzi "This body of work is an investigation into the significance of memory and place in relation to a newly invented term, solastalgia. This term was created in order to describe the lost sense of place that people experience in the wake of environmental changes. It is a feeling of displacement without having been displaced. Each work of art is based on a story I collected from various individuals. I asked each person to reflect on a place that has transformed thus reshaping his or her physical, spiritual, emotional, or cultural relationship to that place. From each response, I began to extract the most vivid imagery in order to reconstruct their memories. I implicated the use of vibrant colors in order to reflect the life experiences that are the essence of memory and place." Jenn Collins Jenn Collins relocated about a year and a half ago to Oakland from New London, CT by way of a horse-wrangling stint in the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming. She is a mixed medi...

I make art because it is a nice, roundly solipsistic answer to that nagging and eternal rhetorical question (think Charlie Brown) "Oh, what is the point" Self Portrait Poject @ Open Studios last weekend: Everybody (a gaggle of my artist neighbors, well wishers and passers-by) draw their reflection, exactly and only, with a sharpie, on the reflection on the chintzy (is that a bad word (?)) plexi-glass window of my studio, during open studios. Then, out comes the paint...you aint artsier than me, swear. Palimpsest project 1, go

This weekend Sat 11am-6pm & Sunday 11 am-5pm 2934 Ford St, # 8 Oakland, CA 94601

Jordan Quintero Madeline Tonzi Jenn Collins Sunday, June 13th 5pm-8pm 2900 Glascock Oakland, Ca 94601