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exhibits > iterations > press release | ||
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Gallery
OneZero Announces Introduction
San Francisco
CA – March 24, 2003 – Francesca Pera and Nancy Warner share
a lifelong fascination with pattern, color, and repeated forms. Their
joint show, opening May 17 at Gallery OneZero, includes encaustic paintings,
shadow boxes, and digitally printed color photographs. The result is a
fascinating visual conversation between two artists working in very different
media. |
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Francesca’s
paintings in this show are vivid abstractions that begin with a simple
pattern in an 8 x 12 grid. They explore the tension between patient repetition
and the unpredictable nature of encaustic (pigmented beeswax), which runs
and drips easily when heated, but stiffens quickly. Built up layer by
layer, with the use of a heat gun, iron, and heated pen to scrape away
or add color, the brilliant, highly textured surfaces express both struggle
and serenity. |
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Pera’s shadow box collages present miniature worlds in beautifully constructed boxes, including drawings on plastic that have been shrunk down and immobilized by thread, center-stage amidst paper artifacts, photographs, and painted surfaces. Peering into these mysterious contraptions creates a feeling of forbidden intimacy, sensual fragments glimpsed through a web of layers and openings. |
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Nancy Warner's big inkjet prints of walls, windows, and other urban surfaces are scanned and enlarged from point-and-shoot APS prints. Culled from thousands of images created as an ongoing visual diary, these digital prints are a new medium for her. A master printer and photographer who is best known for her black-and-white work, she uses these more casual color images to explore color and patterns in daily observation of her urban environment. |
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Painting & Photography Exhibit and Reception: “Iterations” Paintings
& shadow boxes by Francesca Pera EXHIBIT: DATES:
May 17 through June 28, 2003 RECEPTION: DATE:
Saturday, May 24, 2003 LOCATION: Gallery
OneZero Vinton
Court runs west off Grant between Pine and California. Francesca Pera’s interest in pattern and color began with childhood arts and crafts in a family of artists, including an aunt who made her own shadow boxes, each one a tiny, elegant room with miniature furnishings. As a painting and printmaking student at San Francisco State University, Francesca was strongly influenced by some of the feminist artists in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the late 1970s and 1980s. While raising a family and working as a typesetter, graphic artist, and art educator, she has continued to explore her own visual vocabulary in various media, focusing in recent years on shadow boxes and encaustic painting. Her work has been exhibited in several Bay Area venues. Francesca’s comments about the work in this show: “A box becomes a place to dwell. It can be a place to pay homage or a place to remember. With a feeling of intimacy and fragility, one is asked to enter.” “Working with encaustic allows me to lose control while staying present. It is one way I converse with the “fire,” and the medium often talks back in unexpected ways.” Nancy Warner is a fine-art and portrait photographer whose work has been exhibited in the Bay Area and nationally. After studying with Ruth Bernhard, John Sexton, and Martha Casanave, she founded her own portrait studio in San Francisco in 1992. Other influences include Imogen Cunningham, Oliver Gagliani, and Aaron Siskind. The visual diary from which the prints in this show are taken consists of photographs made with a Canon Elph, a tiny point-and-shoot APS camera. This format allow her to make an image easily at any time without having to deal with the bulky paraphernalia of professional photography. The diary has many dimensions. First she mounts a selection of the original consumer prints in chronological order in handmade albums. Sometimes these albums function as sketchbooks, and she returns to a particular place better equipped to explore the possibilities more formally in black and white. As time goes by, she reviews, sorts, and edits the Elph images further, scanning certain groups, working with them in digital form, and experimenting with different papers and printing techniques. Nancy’s comments about the work in this show: “The print is the focus of all my work, whether black and white or color. I still spend a lot of time in the darkroom and continue to explore black and white techniques. My images in this show explore new ways of achieving the same goal I have always pursued: to produce expressive photographic prints." back
to top Gallery OneZero is an exhibit and performance space opened by Nancy Warner and Sean Cotter in 2002. It occupies a portion of Nancy Warner’s photography studio in downtown San Francisco. For a press kit or more information, please contact Sean Cotter at 415 989-9157.
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