Home
Gualala Arts
Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961.
Archive of past events: 2004 through 2014
|
2009:
Festival -
Entertainment -
Map -
How to Enter -
Judges -
Awards -
Sponsors -
Quilt Raffle -
Volunteers
Each year, Gualala Arts the judges not to limit the entries,
but to select which art pieces should win
awards in each category,
plus a grand prize winner and their own special favorites. Along with the Judges Awards and critiques, which are given on Friday at 6:00 p.m., there are special awards given by environmental groups (also announced on Friday), and the Most Popular Award, which is voted on by the public during the Festival and announced on Sunday afternoon.
Ana Lisa HedstromAna Lisa Hedstrom has taught at programs around the country, including Penland School, the University of Minnesota Split Rock Arts program, Haystack School of Craft and San Francisco State University. Her work is held in the collections of several renowned public institutions, including the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the American Craft Museum, the Aichi Shibori Research and Study Archive in Nagoya, Japan and the De Young Museum. About Ana's artwork
Hedstrom further manipulates her textiles by piecing together different shibori patterns to form intersecting lines and geometric shapes in dazzling jewel tones. Drawing on diverse themes ranging from music to global warming and the environment, she creates work with a sense of energy and movement. While Hedstrom's work is heavily influenced by Japanese history, the final forms are uniquely American, owing to her use of quilting techniques and modern geometric forms.
Her newest series of work, titled after the seasons, is a response to issues of global warming and man's influence on the environment. Works such as "Spring" are created with polyester fabrics, which are manipulated and colored with heat-transfer dyes. The pieces of fabric emulate natural forms, encouraging the viewer to question the representation of nature in daily life. Hedstrom's skilled use of color and pattern make these arrangements richly detailed and unique.
Miriam Nathan-RobertsMiriam Nathan-Roberts, B.S., Textiles and Design, Cornell University; M.A., University of California, Berkeley, was one of the early members of the art quilt movement in the 1970s. Her quilts have won awards throughout the USA, Japan and Europe. Since 1965, she has taught art and design at the college and secondary level, as well as at quilt conferences and festivals.
Her quilt "Changing Planes" was judged one of "The Twentieth Century's 100 Best American Quilts," for the historic 1999 International Quilt Association book and exhibit. She has been featured in Art/Quilt Magazine, Quilter's Newsletter, and American Quilter, along with many books including America's Glorious Quilts. In 2003, Miriam was honored in Japan as one of "The Thirty Distinguished Quilt Artists of the World." Miriam's recent quilts utilize digitally-manipulated and digitally-printed images. She lives in Berkeley and maintains an active schedule of studio work, as well as traveling, lecturing and teaching. Artist StatementI have been interested over the years in creating illusions of three dimensions on the flat or semi-flat surface. Perhaps this is partly because I had no depth perception until I was thirty years old; without prisms in my glasses, my eyes don't achieve normal fusion. I am also interested in repeated images. Things lined up on shelves, stacks of logs, rows of bicycles --- such patterns have always drawn me. Since the early 1970s I have worked in multiple styles. The interweave series is very controlled and intellectual; the structure is tight. I found that as I worked on this series, I needed to rebel and let loose. Thus was born another group of quilts I call the architectural series. These pieces use wild fabrics, which I love, and relatively little pre-planning. A third direction has been a departure from the first two series. I emphasize unusual fabric combinations and the play between colors throughout the quilt surface. I either do my designs ahead on paper or compose on the working wall; all fabric choices are made on the working wall. I purchased my first copy of Adobe's Photoshop in 1992 and started taking classes at the community college in 1994. I have been fascinated by Photoshop and what it can do ever since, (still taking classes). Starting in 2002 I started to make, show, and sell archival fine art prints. In the past few years, I have completed several quilts based on photographic and scanned images which were digitally manipulated within the computer. The final image was digitally printed on fabric and then machine quilted. I am continuing to explore the crossover between digital design and digital printing on textiles.
Visit her website,
www.miriamnathanroberts.com.
Penny Nii
Penny Nii has been making artists books for about ten years. Before she became immersed in writing and creating books, she was, from 1962 until 1992, a computer scientist. For most of that period she was a researcher in the field of artificial intelligence at Stanford University. From 1993 until 1996 she owned a contemporary-quilt gallery, first as a physical one and later as a virtual one. While running a gallery she held exhibitions that combined quilts, fiber arts, sculptures and other art objects at various venues around California. In 1996 she decided to focus her energy in her first loves - writing and art making. She discovered she can do both in a field called artists' books, where narrative, art and craft are combined. Since then she has been making books. She has served on the board of the San Francisco Center for the Book where she founded and ran their imprint and artists-in-residence programs until earlier this year. Penny interprets the words "artists' book" as both 'book' whose narrative contents are revealed sequentially, and 'art' that are viewed as objects. Book is interactive, capable of being read, seen, touched and felt, all at one's own pace. However, when exhibited, artists' books often become hands-off objects with only the covers or, at most, few pages in view. Instead of fighting the tradition of viewing art as untouchable objects, Penny has been attempting to create books that are both readable in conventional ways and displayable as art objects on their own right. So in addition to researching and writing the contents of books, she engineers book structures that can be viewed as sculptures. Her books have been exhibited widely.
Visit her website,
www.penny-nii.com.
Robert Rhoades
During his 35 years of full-time teaching studio arts, Professor Rhoades has taught drawing, figure-drawing, painting, both oil and watercolor, all forms of printmaking, experimental ceramics, sculpture, color and design, illustration and paper making. The latter was his focus during a sabbatical in Japan in 1996, where he studied with master paper makers in Kochi on the island of Shikoku. Kochi is the home of the national hand-made paper-making institute where scholars worldwide come to research ancient techniques in papermaking. Printmaking is Robert Rhoades' favorite medium, in which he earned his MFA at the University of New Mexico, studying with master printers from the famed Tamarind Institute. Professor Rhoades' prints have been exhibited nationally and internationally. His current work in sculptural paper and prints are being exhibited in Japan along with work from other northern California artists. Travel is a major influence in his art work. His sabbatical to the United Kingdom was focused on ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge and Avesbury Circle. During this five-month journey, he lectured to students at Glasgow School of Art, Chelsea School of Art and Central St. Martins in London. The UK travels resulted in a series of monotypes inspired by the ancient sites. Other trips have yielded a series of collages on portals (doorways) from France and Italy, woodcuts of bridges from Italy and mixed media windows inspired from throughout all of Western Europe. A piece from the portals series is included in the current show at the Gualala Arts Center.
In addition to teaching, Professor Rhoades along with his wife, a school administrator, lead yearly art and culture trips to destinations such as Paris, Vienna, Prague, Venice, Florence, Provence, Nice, Barcelona and points in between. When a destination is not rich in museums and architecture, the instruction is in drawing and painting. The group will spend the morning lakeside in Bellagio on Lake Como or cherry orchards in Lourmarin in Provence. These travels have found Robert lecturing in the Getty, LACMA, Hammer, SFMOMA, DeYoung, Louvre, Kunshistoriche, Prado, Picasso, Rodin, Dali, Matisse and Chagall Museums to name a few. Information about current travel and classes can be found on his website:
www.creekwoodstudios.com.
For more information please call (707) 884-1138 or e-mail to info@gualalaarts.org.
The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA, |
||||||
Ana uses shibori, the ancient Japanese art of resist dyeing. By binding, stitching and folding fabrics with unique variations on traditional methods, Hedstrom creates a myriad of patterns in cloth. She specializes in arashi shibori, a technique that involves folding and wrapping fabric around a tube before placing it in a dyebath. Depending on the pleating and binding, different striped patterns can be created.
Miriam's ground-breaking quilt "Lattice Interweave" (1983) began a series noted for stunning optical illusions and arresting use of color. It won Viewer's Choice Award at Quilt National '85. Her piece "Spin Cycle" was chosen Best of Show at Quilt National '99. Miriam's quilts have won two first place awards at the American Quilter's Society in Paducah, Kentucky, and she has exhibited many times at Visions. For Quilt National '05, she served as one of the three jurors.
Professor Robert Rhoades,
recently named faculty member of the year, has just retired from full-time teaching after twenty-seven years with the College of the Redwoods, Mendocino Coast Campus. Robert Rhoades has been a frequent juror of art shows and exhibitions in the county and state. Bob was recognized as "outstanding citizen for the arts" in 2008 by the Art Council of Mendocino County.