What Grows Here Features Artworks that Respond to California’s Environment
The rock wall by Ashley Valmere Fischer, 2006; inkjet print on archival paper
"What grows here is limited by water. For the last few years, California has fallen deeper into drought, and this lack of water is changing our landscape. Californians have learned to treasure it." --Ashley Valmere Fischer, Stanford University, 2016 (Photo: The rock wall, 2006)
In February 2015, San Francisco’s newest art gallery opened at Fort Mason Center. Embark Gallery, a 1,500 sq. ft. non-profit art space provides exhibition opportunities to graduate students in Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area, fosters an environment for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and expands the audience for up and coming contemporary art. The gallery represents the diversity of the talented artists studying at seven local art institutions including California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley.
What Grows Here, on view from April 10 to May 25, 2015, features works that engage with the exhibition Fertile Ground: Art and Community in California (on view through April 12) at the Oakland Museum of California—artworks as diverse as California itself. Exhibition jurors Julie Lazar and Michael Zheng found that the artists share a common concern with our state's ever-changing landscape. The works selected for this show consider the history, experience, and consequences of the environmental challenges facing California today, proving once again that the Bay Area is indeed a fertile ground for artists who engage in a socially conscious practice.
Embark Gallery Director Angelica Jardini comments about artist Carolina Magis Weinberg’s 2014 photograph Flat Fog, “Weinberg’s photographs serenely capture the still, blue expanses of San Francisco fog. These are images that inspire meditation on the vast openness of California sea and sky, while infringing human elements perhaps hint to the increasingly rapid disappearance of these tranquil horizons.”
Flat Fog by Carolina Magis Weinberg, 2014; digital print
Artists in the exhibition include Ashley Valmere Fischer (Stanford University); Tanja Geis (UC Berkeley); Scott Hewson (SFAI); Jessica Hubbard (CCA); Tim Kopra (SFAI); Nicole Lavelle (CCA); and Carolina Magis Weinberg (CCA).
Hours: 12–4pm every Saturday from April 11 to May 23, and by appointment only on Mondays.
Upcoming exhibition: From June 12 to July 26, 2015 Embark Gallery will host Perception, an exhibition that highlights the diverse possibilities of a specific medium, in this case performance and installation, with the goal of showcasing work that explores the relationship between the environment and the artist and how shifts in one might change the other.
For more info go to embarkgallery.com.
* * *
Press Preview: Friday, April 10, 5–6pm
Opening Reception: Friday, April 10, 6–8pm
* * *
Media Contacts:
Libby Garrison Carolyn Nickell
libby@sartle.com carolyn@sartle.com
* * *
Embark is a not for profit gallery funded by the Kabouter Foundation, a private not for profit registered in California. Kabouter Foundation also supports Sartle.com, the world’s #1 resource for salacious, sizzling, art history news. Kabouter is a Dutch word which means gnome. www.embarkgallery.com
For more than 35 years Fort Mason Center has served as a unique destination in San Francisco, hosting arts and cultural events, organizations, and programs in a historic campus along San Francisco’s scenic northern waterfront. It is an extraordinary example of repurposing former military land and buildings for contemporary uses, including museums, performance spaces, and a vibrant schedule of art and cultural exhibitions and events. Each year the Fort Mason Center provides more than $2.2 million in grants to local arts groups like Embark Gallery. With more than 1 million annual visitors, the Fort Mason Center is one of the highest attended arts and cultural organizations in the Bay Area. www.FortMason.org.
# # #