Current Exhibitions
MAIN GALLERY • ​MAY 31 - AUGUST 2
LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND
Landscapes of the mind are perceptions of our physical environment as seen through our eyes. Landscapes for this exhibit are viewed as a metaphor for the processes of daily living: creating shelter (putting down roots), growing food, survival (harsh elements of air, land and water). Landscapes can also be seen as cultural expressions (cracks in the sidewalk of a declining neighborhood) or can reflect political, ethnic, and social strife (wars over territory). Finally, landscapes can be viewed as expressions of dreams, hopes, and sacred places for calming the mind and creating serenity.
Receptions: Saturday, June 8 • 3-5 pm
Saturday, July 13 • 3-5 pm
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Reception: Saturday, July 13 • 3-5pm
SIGNATURE GALLERY • JULY 5-AUGUST 2
Nancy Brandt, Adele Aced, Kitty Muntzel
COLLAGE: Cut Three Ways
​Cutting, tearing, pasting, painting and layering, three local Alameda artists explore the possibilities of mixed media Collage. From whimsical to contemplative, their unique vision has created a show of both playful variety and interesting perspectives.
LAZY, HAZY, CRAZY DAYS of SUMMER
At The Frank Bette Center
by Karen Braun Malpas
As loose and messy as it often looks, watercolor is a very difficult medium to master. As familiar as it is, the human figure is also very difficult to draw and hard to fake because everyone knows what it looks like. Images of water are also extremely difficult because they try to represent a still moment of what is a constantly moving and shifting phenomenon. Nonetheless, KATE PEPER rose to the challenge and makes large expert watercolor paintings of figures in and around the water.
“Immersion” features swirling, splashing, reflecting, refracting pool water being experienced actively or passively by anatomically correct and expressive figures. Their faces register the bliss of floatation or submersion in the healing element of water. The distortions resulting from disrupted water make beautiful abstract images of dis-integration. This is a masterful show beautifully hung in the back room of the Frank Bette Center.
In the front room is a group show called “Landscapes of the Mind” though most of the landscapes seem to be of actual places one could visit and say, “Oh yeah, this is where the
artist was when they painted that view.” Eddy Lehrer’s photograph of a “Sunset at Marina Park”captured a sky that was not a predictable orange. Similar colors of a gray sky shot thru with shocks of light were captured in Paul Feinberg’s oil painting of “Burning Through.” Nature has a boundless imagination and color palette.
Andrea Bishop and Frederica Colla show quiet sylvan settings where Thoreau may have sat pondering nature while mosquitoes bred in the still shallows.
Kris Warrenburg illustrates a compositional lesson for us in two soft watercolors. In “Acoaxet Marsh,” the blue waterway starts front and center of the composition, inviting and leading us to deeper space where it empties. It is the visual equivalent of “Welcome In” with which salespersons often greet incoming customers. In contrast, her “Merrill Lake Sanctuary” puts a prohibitive soggy, boggy marsh in the fore through which the viewer is not inclined to slog in order to reach freer water. Reid Haataja emerges as a designer, not an illustrator, especially with his photo “Globules”
which looks a lot like it feels when random thoughts arise and float around in the landscapes
of our mind.
Upcoming
July 29-August 3
The Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout hosts up to 40 juried artists for a week of painting tree-lined streets; stately Victorian homes and shops; picturesque marinas; historic naval ships and naval air station; as well as beaches, lagoons, parks, and San Francisco and Oakland skylines in the island city of Alameda, CA. The week includes a welcome reception, a luncheon and a quick draw and an outdoor exhibit and sale of all the paintings on Saturday. A selection of the unsold paintings from the sale are exhibited and for sale in the Frank Bette Center for the Arts Gallery through September.