GRO Exhibition Press Release: September-October 2023

PRESS RELEASE. For immediate release
Contact Lisa Foote at 510.730.0594 or lisa@galleryrouteone.org
Download Press Release PDF

GALLERY ROUTE ONE EXHIBITIONS:

1) Charles Anselmo: Palabras Perdidas
2) Xander Weaver Scull: College to Fatherhood
3) Laurie Sawyer: The Nature of Place
4) Zea Morvitz: The Book and the Hourglass

On exhibit Saturday, September 16 to Sunday, October 22, 2023
In-Person Opening Reception: Saturday, September 16, 3:00 – 5:00 P.M. Artist talks begin at 3:30 P.M.

Virtual Exhibition Walk-Through will be available at www.galleryrouteone.org
The gallery is open to visitors Thursday to Monday, 11 – 5

SUMMARY:
Gallery Route One is pleased to present four exhibits: Palabras Perdidas—a site-specific photographic installation exploring the relationship between the percipient and the perceived by Charles Anselmo; College to Parenthood by Xander Weaver-Scull, a retrospective spanning ten years of his evolution of medium and subject matter in artmaking; The Nature of Place—fine art and scientific illustration by visiting artist, Laurie Sawyer, focused on the inhabitants and habitats of the marine world; and an exhibit of altered books by Zea Morvitz—The Book and the Hourglass—exploring how we attempt to record ourselves against the passage of time.

CENTER GALLERY
Charles Anselmo: Palabras Perdidas

Gallery Route One presents Palabras Perdidas by artist member, Charles Anselmo. Engaging ongoing themes related to urban context and the role of memory, Anselmo explores the dissonances of the forgotten cityscape through large scale social-documentary photographs. As new work here presented in a site-specific photographic installation, Palabras Perdidas (Lost Words) is a visual mnemonic of an actual place: a representation meant to explore the relationship between the percipient and the perceived.

A visual narrative in translucent silk fabric and paper prints, the installation is based upon the fragmented detritus of an abandoned newspaper office. An extraordinary architectural relic in the style of Art Deco, this multi-story newspaper building was abandoned in the early 1960s; it is deeply characteristic of the strange dissonances that tend to coalesce around the patinas and textures of broken interiors.

Anselmo writes, “My photographic practice is to capture textured, deconstructed landscapes comprised of the historical fragments and skeletal details which ultimately reference the way in which the dynamic of memory itself changes our perception of the past. Palabras Perdidas is explicitly concerned with this intersection of place, memory and social context.”

Working exclusively with photographic film, Anselmo has traveled to Cuba more than seventy times. Developing collaborative relationships with Cuban arts organizations, he also curates US shows of work by established Cuban photographers and conducts photography field workshops to Havana several times each year. He exhibits internationally, and also speaks regularly at Havana’s Instituto Internacionale de Periodismo and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, Cuba’s oldest art school. He operates Point Reyes Printworks, a photographic art digital printing studio, and continues to photographically explore urban sites that compellingly demonstrate the nascent beauty of forgotten places.

View more of Charles Anselmo’s work.

CENTER GALLERY
Xander Weaver-Scull: College to Fatherhood—a retrospective

Spanning ten years of artwork, Gallery Route One presents a retrospective of artist member Xander Weaver-Scull—College to Fatherhood. The exhibit displays the artist’s evolution of medium and subject matter from oil painting and printmaking to stencils with spray-paint and later, employing natural, homemade inks.

This show exhibits artwork spanning a decade, starting when the artist was in college exploring how to create artwork that would inspire his viewers to be contemplative and curious, and invite them to creatively participate in imagining the narrative within/behind the work. This exploration evolved to creating artwork about threatened and endangered species local to California and the Bay Area, while highlighting species that have “recovered” from being threatened with extinction and now are considered to have healthy populations.

The artist states, “My artistic practice has shifted over the last several years, from studio art to creative parenting. My firstborn is turning three and my second is four months old. As my subject matter evolved, so did my artistic medium: from oil painting and traditional intaglio and relief printmaking to hand drawn and cut stencils used with watercolor and then eventually homemade inks and paints made from local and natural materials.”

Weaver Scull also interweaves some of his creative outlets while parenting: (Raw) audio recordings of improvised flute he played for his first born when she was a baby, as well as small wood crafts and carvings that were created either for his children or while spending countless hours exploring the outside world with his toddler.

A West Marin native, Xander Weaver-Scull is a teaching artist in the Bay Area. He’s a printmaker who has been using stencils for fine art since 2011, when he studied how to use visual art for social and environmental justice messaging at Hampshire College. He is working on a children’s book about threatened and endangered species that have recovered as way engage with children about protecting and healing the planet without using fear and apocalyptic framing. As a teaching artist, Xander has worked with Artist Teaching Art in Marin and Artseed in SF. He worked as a nature educator with Vilda, a non-profit that takes kids outside and teaches them about local plants, animals, ecosystems and much more, for four years until the world paused for 2020. 2020 was also the year that his first child was born, and later his second in 2023.

To view more of Xander Weaver Scull’s work, please visit his website and Instagram.

PROJECT SPACE
Laurie Sawyer: The Nature of Place

Gallery Route One’s Visiting Artist Program presents The Nature of Place, an exhibit of illustrations observing and exploring the flora, fauna, and culture of here by artist Laurie Sawyer.

Laurie Sawyer has dedicated her art practice to investigating the complexity of the natural world. Focusing primarily on species and habitats of the marine world, Sawyer presents fine art and scientific illustrations rendered on bold black and white ink on clay board, engaging the viewer with the intricate details of life among the ocean’s inhabitants with the hopes of inspiring understanding and respect for the environment which humans both live in and transform. For Sawyer, expanding our understanding of nature is her passion. She uses art to educate, engage and stimulate viewer’s curiosity to learn more.

Sawyer grew up by the ocean in Malibu, found her passion for marine biology in high school, and graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in illustration, combining art and science. She moved to Point Reyes Station in 1988 with her then-husband and children. She was the art director at St. Rita’s School in Fairfax, California for several years. In 1994, she married Terry Sawyer, co-founder /owner of Hog Island Oyster Company on Tomales Bay who is a leading voice for sustainable aquaculture. After years as art director for his company, she went back to school in 2017 and earned a degree in science illustration from California State University, Monterey Bay. Today, Sawyer collaborates with NOAA, Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary and other science and conservation groups. She recently created a vibrant mural to celebrate nature and community on the Dance Palace building in Point Reyes Station. She has served on several art and education boards.

View more of Laurie Sawyer’s work.

ANNEX GALLERY
Zea Morvitz: The Book and the Hourglass

Gallery Route One artist member, Zea Morvitz, presents The Book and the Hourglass, an exhibit of altered books which considers how we attempt to record ourselves against the passage of time.

Each of these altered books plays on the idea of the discarded object. The ruined book with torn out pages, defaced texts, or the archaeological relic, the mystery and the treasure to be uncovered in the junk heap. These are partly accidental images, formed by stains and tears, fragments of a lost whole used now to convey an altered meaning. These are artist-made relics of the present as if they were already deep in the past.

Morvitz selects cheaply made, mass-produced books that the artist rescued from landfill. She uses paper fragments found anywhere and also from the scraps on her studio floor, notebook drawings, and whatever is at hand. She assembles these pieces, not following a pre-conceived idea but in order to see a new, unpremeditated image, in this series specifically on the subject of time as we humans experience it.

The altered book is a genre that utilizes discarded books as the basis for an artwork that can be both a 3 dimensional object and serve as the support for painting and drawing. Books are defining human artifacts: ancient, if you include clay tablets and still being made, now in digital format. The hourglass is also a quintessential human artifact, from the notched stick and the sundial to the iWatch.

The book as magical object: Growing up before the internet existed, and tv was black and white, books were my portals both to the real world and also, and especially to imaginary realms. Illustrated books, like Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland, offered powerful linear images that Morvitz admired and imitated beginning in childhood.

Morvitz notes, “Library stacks were places of mystery where anything might be encountered. I still feel the same wonder towards physical books and enjoy investigating them in my studio.”

At present, Morvitz is still very much engaged in making large ink drawings, and her fascination with old books is ongoing. “I am constantly drawing in one small notebook or another and use these drawings to feed my book-making process. Also, without a conscious decision the image of the book and the image of the hourglass frequently turn up in my artwork. This exhibition is an excuse to look at these images side by side as a series.”

Zea Morvitz was born in Baltimore, Maryland, received a BA in Philosophy from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and a Masters Degree in Painting from the University of California, Berkeley. She moved to Inverness in 1978, where she lives with her husband, Tim Graveson. She and Tim were among the original 25 artists founding Gallery Route One. Zea continues as an artist member and also currently works for the organization as Co-Director of the Visiting Artist Program.

To view more of Zea Morvitz’ work, please visit her website or on Instagram.

A regional landmark since 1983, Gallery Route One is an arts organization located in the town of Point Reyes Station, adjacent to the entry for Marin County’s Point Reyes National Seashore. Besides offering rotating exhibits by member artists, GRO also maintains its various programs as well as exhibitions addressing environmental, immigration and social justice issues.