Close By:
Family, Home & Nature
On March 16, 2020, Alameda county, where Cal State East Bay is located and where many faculty, staff, and students live, followed several neighboring counties in issuing a Shelter-In-Place order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. In early September, that order still has not been fully lifted. As we adjust to a new normal (for the time being) of limited social interaction, many artists making work this year have focused on what is close by - members of their households, partners and children, the home, and the natural environment around us.
Staying close and looking closely can be a way to find comfort and celebrate these parts of our lives that are most essential.
Michael Hall
Coming of Age (Diptych)
Watercolor on paper stretched over panel
12 x 9 inches each
2020
Michael Hall
First Look
Watercolor on paper stretched over panel
24 x 18 inches
2020
Grace Munakata
Masako’s Boat
Acrylic on panel
20 x 16 inches
2020
Started this painting watching light and dark patterns on Lake Hebron as the water began to freeze. A raft of joined, colored shapes is carried along, like a seed in the wind.
Grace Munakata
Sitka Colonnade
Acrylic and wax pastels on panel
48 x 41 ½ inches
2020
My husband, also a painter, spent a month at an art residency among hundreds of acres of old growth forest. He brought home, among other things, a small pinecone. It dropped single winged seeds in my studio and I read about growing conifers. Bedded some seeds in the fridge, and in June put it outside. A few seedlings appeared, but then dozens, finally over 50. Then too late, read about sitka spruce - 50" a year to 300 ft, 15 ft in diameter with 30-40 ft branch spread. No room, they belong in a coastal rainforest.
Started a painting. Read more about forests. Sometimes seedlings form a line (colonnade) when they grow on a fallen log. The nurse log keeps them elevated and nourishes as it decays. These reciprocal connections ... individuals that can live hundreds or sev. thousand years. So a painting can contain generations of forest even if a garden can't.