GRO Exhibition Press Release: March–April, 2024

PRESS RELEASE. For immediate release
Contact Lisa Foote at 510.730.0594 or lisa@galleryrouteone.org
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GALLERY ROUTE ONE EXHIBITIONS:

Ellen Vogel – Swallowing Sky
Patti Trimble, Visiting Artist Program – The History of Nature
Vickisa – Vickisa’s Love Supreme

On exhibit Saturday, March 23 to Sunday, April 28, 2024

Artists’ Reception: Saturday, March 23, 3:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.

The gallery is open to visitors Thursday to Monday, 11 – 5

The exhibition will soon be viewable online: www.galleryrouteone.org

SUMMARY:
Gallery Route One presents three exhibits opening Saturday, March 23, 2024: Swallowing Sky—mixed media works exploring physicality and impermanence by GRO artist member Ellen Vogel; The History of Nature, by visiting artist and poet Patti Trimble, an exhibit of paintings and text, telling three stories from science, philosophy, intuition, and walks in the wild; and Vickisa’s Love Supreme by GRO artist member Vickisa, featuring mixed media, painted drawings, and artist fold-out books that first begun as onsite sketches at outdoor music festivals.

Center Gallery:
Ellen Vogel: Swallowing Sky

Gallery Route One presents Swallowing Sky, an exhibit of mixed media works by Bay Area artist Ellen Vogel. Vogel is interested in the tactile, the physical, and the impermanent nature of things; contrasted with the available immensity of our consciousness. Cracks, openings, textures, and veiling become the abstract language she explores this experience with.

The artist explains, “Perception is turned inward; my process is both a physical and intuitive exploration of what lies just below the surface of everyday life.”

In the current body of work, newspaper is used as a means to integrate heartbreaking stories read globally. As in the Buddhist practice Tonglen, the artist’s intention is to take in thestory, let it sit, and send back a deep breath or a moment of light. Vogel created sets of prayer beads made from stories she’s collected as an attempt to recall the sacred in all humans.

Ellen Vogel is a New York transplant, living in California for over three decades now. She is a graduate of John F. Kennedy’s MFA in Arts and Consciousness Program, holds a certificate from the NY Studio School, as well as having studied at California College of the Arts. She has a deep connection to nature, philosophy, and the wonder of being in a body, in this time and place. Her art gives her a physical means to communicate with the multi-level experiences of being conscious. While working as a studio artist, she taught art in several places including the Metropolitan Museum, Cerro Coso Community College, and finally 25 years in Middle School in the Bay Area. Her objective as an instructor has been to introduce her fervent belief in the innate, unique gift of creativity we all have as humans.

She has had pieces shown at Sanchez Art Center, Falkirk, San Jose Museum of Contemporary Art, Grounds for Sculpture, SOMARTS, Richmond Art Center, Oakland Museum, Bolinas Museum, and is currently an Artist Member of Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station.

To view more of Vogel’s work, please visit ellen-vogel.com

Project Space:
Patti Trimble: The History of Nature

For decades, Pattie Trimble has been thinking about humanity’s place on the planet, sharing stories as a science writer, poet, and painter. In early 2023, she began a painting-as-research project. She called it “The History of Nature,” wanting to throw herself fully into the human dissonance surrounding climate change, merging science with intuition and the kind of absurd intelligence of art, as well as her experiences in the wild. She was inspired by scholar Donna Haraway’s call to writers and artists, asking for many new stories of life on Earth that tell of our complicated webs of relationship.

The series of twenty paintings in the exhibit is presented in a timeline, a storyboard that begins before timekeeping and ends in the present. Texts accompany the storyboard, including words from Darwin, Pythagoras, Heidegger, and others. The paintings represent a means of thinking, and the images are drawn from memory, intuition, science, play, myth, and even a bit of AI.

Regarding the art-making process, the artist explains, “Painting as thinking is a conversation with memory and materials. I trust my body to to think, ask questions and let mystery appear, watch the thoughts of my intuitive heart and mind. It is the history of nature according to me…I hope it sparks conversation.”

Patti Trimble studied environmental science at UC Berkeley and worked as a seasonal interpreter for Point Reyes national Seashore. In her early twenties, she turned to art, with surrealist John Anderson as a mentor. She moved to Manhattan where for a decade she showed paintings and worked as a part-time studio assistant to abstract expressionists JamesBrooks, Hedda Sterne, and Richard Pousette-Dart. Her paintings were nominated for an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and she received an MFA from Hunter College.

In the late 1980s Patti began writing science and literature textbooks for McGraw-Hill etc., a day job that lasted three decades. She and then-husband Bill Horvitz returned to West Marin to start a family. Patti began performing lyric poems with Bill, (at a MALT benefit) and went on to perform with musicians in many festivals and venues in the USA and Europe. She co-founded Tuolumne Poetry Festival (Yosemite); her poetry has been staged for museum installations and theater; her recordings are available on CD, Spotify, and her website. Patti lives in Petaluma and Sicily with her husband Douglas Kenning. She is painting and (slowly) writing a memoir of her ab-ex mentors: thinking through their studio conversations and postwar art practices in relation to today’s conversation about humanity, nature, and technology.

To view more of Trimblel’s work, please visit www.pattitrimble.com

Annex Gallery
Vickisa: Vickisa’s Love Supreme

Vickisa, a longstanding Gallery Route One artist member, includes paintings, painted drawings, and limited-edition accordion-style artist books, created using mixed water media including acrylics and watercolor pencil, and collage in her upcoming exhibition at Gallery Route One called, Vickisa’s Love Supreme.

The artist has chronicled countless music festivals, starting her works in front of a live audience including the New Orleans French Quarter Festival and her favorite, San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, as well as the music stage of the Mill Valley Art Festival, which are depicted in her artist-crafted, fold-out accordion books. Vickisa has created more than 60 of these books, largely focused on the music events she has attended, some of which will be presented in this show.

She explains, “My passion is creating accordion books from these festivals. My love supreme is Music and of course Art. At the recent Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, I found myself right in front of the stage sketching the exciting activities swirling around me, and taking some photographs too, which I often include on the back pages of the books. The process of sketching, collaging, and creating a handwritten story is something I never tire of.” This exhibition is all about music.

After attending Bard College and the University of Arizona, she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Vickisa also teaches and hosts a radio show, “Coastal Airwaves,” on KWMR.

To view more of Vickisa’s work, please visit www.vickisa.com

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. For more information, please visit: https://galleryrouteone.org/