Blue Marble

Gualala Arts is excited to announce “Blue Marble 2025,” an environmental art exhibit organized by Bia Gayotto and David Susalla to celebrate Earth Day week. The exhibit opens on Friday, April 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. and will be on display through May 4 in the Gualala Arts Center Coleman Hall. 

“Blue Marble” refers to a color photograph taken in 1972 by the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the moon. The vision of the Earth from outer space resembled a blue marble, marking the first time humanity saw what our home planet looked like. This iconic image energized the environmental movement and helped launch the first Earth Day in the 1970s.

Held on April 22 each year, Earth Day now involves over a billion people worldwide in activities supporting environmental protection. This year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, a perfect moment to reflect on our actions’ impact on the Earth and our common future.

For the inauguration of the “Blue Marble 2025” Earth Day Week Celebration, a group exhibition will feature five Sonoma Coast artists whose work offers a reflection on the environment and climate change, and its impact on humans and on the planet.  The exhibition includes large paintings by Marie Van Elder, and by the collaborators Pamela Holmes and Patrick Gourley; mixed-media work by Ann Savageau and photographs by Bia Gayotto. We anticipate this inaugural exhibit to be something to look forward to annually.

MARIE VAN ELDER

From her Northern California coastal studio on the edge of a forest populated with giant conifers and ancient stumps, Van Elder offers a reflection on the environment and climate change, the fragility of the planet as well as ours. Not unlike Monet’s haystack or Morandi’s bottles, the upward, curious, less noticed, branchless, (not so) lonely tree stump and its endless shape variations won the artist’s awe.  Upon close attention, in its (almost) indestructible anchor, temporal reference, and enigmatic existential proposition, the sylvan mount offers refuge and a haven of new life. This extraordinary matriarchal being is a metaphor for interiority, resilience, life, death and sacredness.

Marie Van Elder was born in Brussels, Belgium, graduated from UCL Louvain, and received a MFA in Painting from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Van Elder’s work has been exhibited in California, Belgium and NYC and she has attended art residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito (where she was a Tournesol Award finalist in 2007), the Vermont Studio Center and BigCi in Australia.
Her paintings have been featured in New American Paintings and Studio Visit Magazine. She currently lives between Northern California and Brussels. www.marievanelder.net

PATRICK GOURLEY AND PAMELA HOLMES

Artists most often work alone, but Patrick Gourley and Pamela Holmes have embarked on a collaborative process that entails becoming ‘one’ by tying their wrists together when they paint. Inspired by surrealists and dadaists, they aim to find a place below consciousness, freeing themselves from individual habits, judgments, likes and dislikes, and mental control. These paintings result from a nonverbal experience, made from their bodies’ movement thru space and time, without ego. “Landways” is inspired by the four classical elements: fire, earth, air, and water. These elements were considered the fundamental building blocks of the universe in ancient Greek philosophy, and have been recognized in many cultures throughout history.

Although Patrick Gourley and Pamela Holmes have a history of showing art individually since 1979, their collaborations started in 2023. For them art is a reality, a living presence, and creativity has been their sole purpose of being alive. Similar to nature’s processes, Gourley and Holmes’ collaborative work draws attention to the importance of  shared consciousness and radical interdependence. https://strangerworth.com/

BIA GAYOTTO

After two decades of drought, California experienced bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers in early 2023. This series of color photographs pays homage to over 500 fallen trees on The Sea Ranch, and their upended visible roots. Like an X-ray, Gayotto uses a negative image to unveil the below the surface world invisible to the naked eye. The reversed hues allude to humans’ limited perception of the color spectrum and the nature of seeing. “Uprooted” evokes an entropic state of being pulled from the ground, suggesting connections between macro and micro, above and below. The massive plant’s root foundation when exposed, reveals a glimpse into the psychic life of an otherwise unseen world, beckoning the viewer to reimagine the reality of climate change and the many events that shape our movements, and the changes in our own lives. 

Bia Gayotto is a multimedia artist, curator and educator who lives in The Sea Ranch. Her interdisciplinary practice includes photography, film, and books, combining elements of documentation, fieldwork, performance and collaboration. Her current interest lies in creating artworks that make the invisible visible, deepening our relationship with the natural world.​ https://www.biagayotto.com/

 ANN SAVAGEAU

Ann Savageau is an environmental artist who creates mixed-media sculpture and installations that promote environmental stewardship through the creative reuse of post-consumer waste. Savageau has been collecting and painting with soil/earth on canvas since 1983 to minimize the environmental footprint of her artistic practice. For her soil has multiple layers of meaning: we can not survive without it, yet we continue to degrade and pollute the soils that provide our sustenance. Terra Australis Incognita celebrates the beauty of the soils’ wide color palette, while encouraging viewers to participate in their restoration by refraining from using toxic chemicals and enriching their own yards with natural compost instead of synthetic fertilizer.

Ann Savageau was born in Colorado and spent part of her early years in Iran, France, and Switzerland.  She graduated with honors from Stanford University and received her MFA in art studio from Wayne State University in Detroit.  She taught art for 24 years at the University of Michigan, and design at the University of California Davis for 10 years.  Her work has been shown in over 100 exhibitions, both national and international, and she has given over 100 workshops and invited lectures. She has received several awards for her art, her teaching and her scholarly research. In addition to her university teaching, Ann led an art workshop at Jackson Prison in Michigan under the auspices of Prison Creative Art project. https://annsavageau.com/