Gualala Arts Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961
By Land, By Sea,” an exhibition featuring artists Monique Risch and Chuck Frascone, opens September 10 with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Jacob Foyer. The exhibition will remain on view through October 3.
The show brings together two artists whose work reflects a close observation of the natural world, one through richly textured oil paintings and the other through intricately detailed ceramics.
Frascone paints in oils from his home studio in San Jose, California. His artistic journey began at age 10, when he won a city-sponsored art competition in his hometown of Canton, Ohio. The prize included free art classes at the Canton Art Institute.
Largely self-taught, Frascone continued developing his skills through workshops with artists Stefan Baumann and Buck Paulson, along with weekly painting sessions with fellow artists.
For much of his life, art shared space with other responsibilities. Frascone served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, raised a family and ran a business. When his youngest child left for college, he was able to devote more of his time to painting.
Frequent visits to The Sea Ranch and walks along its bluff trails inspire many of his works. Ocean views, trees, plants and wildlife provide an ever-changing range of subjects. While his style and subject matter continue to evolve, texture remains a defining element of his paintings. Frascone builds layers of oil paint to create depth and dimension, giving his images an almost sculptural presence.
For Risch, art is closely connected with renewal and the experience of starting over.
After losing every material possession in a 2017 wildfire, she found herself reconsidering both where and how she wanted to live and create. That experience opened the way for a new artistic journey centered on ceramics and close observation of nature.
In this body of work, Risch uses black and white clay bodies, leaving the exteriors unglazed, or “naked,” in contrast with lushly glazed interiors. Her painstaking process includes creating hundreds of tiny sea creatures, an approach she describes as meditative and as an exploration of the delicate boundary of fragility.
Her work also carries a simple invitation: slow down and look more closely. The biology of the earth, she suggests, becomes increasingly remarkable the more time we spend observing it.
Together, the paintings and ceramics in “By Land, By Sea” invite viewers to consider landscape, ocean life, texture and the rewards of paying close attention to the natural world.