As a sponsor of the Art Market San Francisco art fair last weekend, Artsource Consulting provided tours to VIP guests. If you didn’t make it to the fair, here’s a few highlights from two of our curated tours:

BEHIND THE ARTIST’S PROCESS: THE INFLUENCE OF MATH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

Charles Gute creates these humorous Western Union telegram tweets himself, having studied historical telegrams in order to best source his own archival materials and create custom ink plates.  Gute was inspired after learning that the last telegram was sent merely three weeks before the first tweet was ever typed.  In telegrams, the writer had limited communication due to the fact that there was a cost per letter, whereas the modern ‘tweeter’ is restricted in characters in a different way.

Charles Gute, “Random Tweets Reformatted as Telegrams”, 2012 Letterpress and mixed media on vintage paper. Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery.

Mauricio Ancalmo is a conceptual artist whose work ranges from sculptural installations, performance, video and works on paper. This piece was part of a larger exhibition titled“Krap Etag Nedlog Reve”, a homage to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Park in a Bottle allows the viewer the opportunity to take the park with them, playing with the notions of archeology, preservation and  placemaking.

“Park in a Bottle” 2014, Apothecary glass bottles, mixed media. Courtesy of Evergold Gallery.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon uses sound, installation, and sculpture to investigate cybernetic systems, or the systems used by animals and machines to maintain control, communication and connection. These types of natural and manufactured systems rely on space and sound to operate. Black Matters is comprised of two mandala-inspired hand quilted black speakers facing each other. Like ocean waves, sound waves affect each other when they hit one another which creates an interesting physical effect as you walk around the two speakers and experience their interactions.

“Black Matters 3” by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon. 2008, hand quilted black vinyl, car audio speakers, amplifiers and mp3 players.  Courtesy of Aimee Friberg Exhibitions.

Craig Dorety’s work is inspired by his experiences with synesthesia (a confusion in the sensory synapsis of the brain that allows him to feel sounds) as well as his intense ocular migraines. During these migraines Dorety sees tiny pixilations of his vision, shapes which he is able to recreate through meditation and targeted concentration.  Quadralateral Hyperbolae – Tropical Fish Tank is one of the artist’s manifestations of these shapes using layered panels and changing LED lighting.

Quadralateral Hyperbolae – Tropical Fish Tank by Craig Dorety. 2014, Custom Electronics, Alupanel, LEDs animated by color information from online media. Courtesy of Johansson Projects.

BEYOND PAINTING:  ARTISTS USING ALTERNATIVE MATERIALS 

Ryan Wallace uses shredded tape, vinyl screens, wax and other discarded studio materials to create collage based abstract paintings.  Each piece is made with splintered, fragmented, and twisted elements, many of which are reflective.  The compositions are a balance between chaos, order and texture.

Ryan Wallace, “Redactor 1”, 2014, enamel, acrylic, crystalina, glass powder, pigment, cold wax, glass film tape and vinyl on canvas. Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery.

Laurel Roth is a self taught artist with a background in natural resource conservation and worked as a park ranger.  This professional experience has influenced her art practice which is about human interaction with the natural world. Roth transforms ordinary materials into fantastical creatures.  These two peacocks are made with a variety of materials found in the everyday world of beauty and cosmetics.  For the body of the birds, Roth hand painted each fake fingernail before applying them to the sculpture. Besides using meticulous techniques, Roth also includes humor in creating her works by placing the animals in striking poses.

Laurel Roth, “La Reina” and “Queen”, 2013 mixed media including fake fingernails, nail polish, barrettes, false eyelashes, costume jewelry, walnut, swarovski crystal. Courtesy of Gallery Wendi Norris.

Randy Colosky often works with industrial building materials, transforming them into aesthetically powerful thought-provoking sculptures.  Ceramics have been at the core of his practice since he was young.  Ice 9 (revisited) is made with engineered honeycomb ceramic bricks that Colosky adheres together and carves into, creating a form reminiscent of Chinese Scholar stones.  As you move around the piece, the honeycomb design in the ceramic bricks allows you to see through the dense areas.

Randy Colosky, “Ice 9 (revisited)”, 2014, engineered ceramic honeycomb and paint. Courtesy of Chandra Cerrito Contemporary.

Nike Schröder‘s textile pieces are abstractions of nature.  Schröder builds shaped canvases and uses sewn threads as her paint.  These three pieces draw inspiration from trees with colors representing the different foliage seen in several hundred threads that hang from the canvas.  The smoothness of the rayon threads allows the light to bounce off the shiny threads creating a shimmering effect and leaving the colors seemingly floating off the wall.

Nike Shröder, “Fragments 4 (Walnut)”, “Fragments 5 (Sage)” and “Fragments 6 (Maple)”, 2013, rayon threads on canvas. Courtesy of Walter Maciel Gallery.