MORE THAN A FACE: portraiture, identity, alter ego

Craig Nagasawa @craignagasawa

D. L. Pughe @https://www.instagram.com/dlpughe/

D. L. Pughe is a writer and artist living in Berkeley.

Statement: The Little Dog in my life has centrifugal force and powers of persuasion.

Diane Ding @dianedingart

Diane Ding, born into a family of artists, discovered her passion for painting at a tender age. In 1985, she graduated with honors from the prestigious Art Institute of Harbin in China. As an artist, her compelling works showcased in exhibitions across notable locations such at St. Petersburg, Florida; Seattle, Washington; Asheville, North Carolina; Palm Desert, and the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Her art has garnered a following of private collectors both domestically and internationally.

Statement: My art invites viewers to reflect on their place in the vast web of interdependence and embrace their potential to shape the world.

Dna Hoover @dnahoover

Born in Timberville, Virginia in 1956, Dna Hoover studied sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University and video/ performance at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1979, he cofounded the nonprofit art space ARE in downtown SF. In 1980, He cofounded the performance art group For Further Information. Over the next couple of decades, Dna collected and built musical instruments/ sound sculptures and released several albums under the pseudonym Kinothek Percussion Ensemble. Currently, Dna lives with his wife, artist Joan Jusell in Vacaville, CA and runs Dna Hoover/ Housewright, a small design/ build construction company.

Statement: Engage- Get the attention of the viewer with bright, shiny baubles. Incite- Give the viewer something to think about. Repeat

JC Garrett @jcgarrettart

I am an adult, born in Troy New York in 1955, now working and residing locally (Northern California) since 1978, and professionally trained and accredited in the visual arts.

Statement: ìWell, Art is Art, isnít it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west, and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now tell me what you know.î Groucho Marx I have been asked to provide a few words about myself, my art, or perhaps even about art in general. As you are probably standing in an art gallery while reading this, the question of whether it constitutes art or whether I am an artist is effectively rendered meaningless by this context. The question remains: Is what you see good or bad art? Am I a bad artist (?) Of course, I would not venture to say myself. That is, not on your behalf. You may have noticed, somewhere in the room, a numbered list or even small stickers indicating prices or assigned values. These help make clear that the objects displayed here are in fact items for sale in addition to any aesthetic, personal, social, cultural, or other value presented. Perhaps their purpose is just to entertain or to decorate home or workplace. As a consumer, or as I prefer, Enthusiast, you get to exercise your opinion merely through the act of acquiring these things. A purchase by you of one of my efforts is in a form, voting for me as an artist. Electing me, you might say. Notice the convenience of size, choice of colors, overall affordability. In a measure, you employ this choice, your choice as a way of expressing your own needs and desires. Of defining self. But I digress. For I have failed to tell you much about myself or the art. Needless to say, I am an adult, born in 1955, working and residing locally (Northern California) since 1978, and profesionaly trained and accredited in the visual arts. The works you see are generated (drawn) on a computer and printed using acid free art papers and pigmented inks employing a laser printer.

Lucy Stark @lucystark

Lucy Stark is a painter and printmaker living in Oakland, CA. In her art practice, she documents food and dishes with personal significance as a way to capture and celebrate the fleeting moment right before a meal commences. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Art Practice, her work has been shown throughout the Bay Area including recent exhibitions at Chandran Gallery, Palo Alto Art Center and Blunk Space among others.

Statement: Lucy Stark is a painter and printmaker based in Oakland, CA. In her art practice, she documents food as the center point of family, home and community. In her paintings she often uses exaggerated color palettes and patterns while at the same time utilizing simple lines and fields of color that flatten the objects, people, and places she illustrates. Most recently, her work has included functional objects such as screen printed tablecloths, ceramic sconces and beeswax candles. She is interested in the intersection of decorative, functional and fine arts, often illustrating personal items and fabricating imagined ones.

Myles Boisen

Myles Boisen is a recording engineer/ producer, artist, and professional musician. His resume includes studio work for MTV, CBS, Warner Bros., Polydor, Tzadik, 4AD, independant film soundtracks, director David Lynch's films "Twin Peaks" and "Wild At Heart", and performances and recordings with John Zorn, Tom Waits, Fred Frith, the Rova Sax Quartet, Henry Kaiser, Ralph Carney, Splatter Trio, Club Foot Orchestra, and more.

Statement: This digital photograph - from Boisen's "Mylar Women" series - was made by shooting the model's reflection in a piece of mylar window film.

Penelope Houston @penelopehouston

On the eve of 1977, Penelope moved from her home in the Pacific Northwest to California to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Within six months her career in visual arts was side-tracked by the formation of the critically acclaimed proto-punk band, the Avengers. Since then she has performed over 1000 shows with the Avengers and her solo bands throughout the USA and Europe. Venues include CBGB’s, The Whiskey a Go Go, Winterland Ballroom, as well as LA MOCA and the De Young Museum in SF. She has released 13 albums with independent and major labels. Her musical career is well-documented in publications from Newsweek to Slash. Despite this detour, visual art has always been anchored in her mind and her return to two dimensional imagery presents a seasoned world view.

Statement: “Muzzlers” is a series of oil portraits Houston undertook in 2017, based on original black and white photographs from police records archived at the San Francisco Public Library, where for years the artist held a day job. She discovered the images in mug books titled “Prostitution” and “Muzzlers” – slang for sex crimes. Each portrait is a diptych – front and side views – with the accused’s name and alleged violation burned into the side panels. Although the series harks to a time when sex workers were “low women” and gay men could be charged with “crimes against nature,” Houston’s light and sensuous impasto treatment performs a kind of literary time travel, drawing these individuals forward to a contemporary sensitivity, revealing and in a sense returning to them what the original arrest documentation took away – their essential humanness. Mixing subtle shadings of emotion – melancholy, remorse, shame, even defiance – with direct looks almost painful to meet, Houston creates a reckoning between subject and viewer: who’s judging whom? “One hundred years before the selfie,” says Houston, “photography was an elaborate proposition and the demeanor of the suspects at that significant but unwelcome moment of the policeman’s shutter click is uniquely unmasking. I was struck by the difference in expressions in the frontal shots – pleading or defiant – and the more withdrawn introspection in the profile shots. I took pleasure in painting them, and in the process of discovering and getting to know these individuals. But more than that, I felt a sense of obligation.”

Sailor Dinucci-Radley @namjunedyke

sailor dinccui-radley is a multi-media artist concentrating in time-based mediums and moving image formats. SHE is currently based in Los Angeles and holds a B.F.A in film and video from the California Institute of the ARTS.

Statement: Her work concerns EXCESS, tranSFEMINIST interiorities, and (QUOTEUNQUOTE ) MARGINAL ORIENTATIONS of THE SUBCONSCIOUS; as mediated through text, form, and data/streams.

W.A. Ehren Tool @Ehren Tool

Born in Charleston, South Carolina (USA) in 1970. Joined the Marine Corps (1989), deployed with 1st Marine Division in Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Gulf War One). Tool was a Marine Embassy Guard in Rome and Paris and was Honorably Discharged as a Sergeant after just over 5 years of active duty. Ehren Tool has made and given away more than 25,000 cups since 2001. His work is heavily influenced by his time in the Marine Corps and the strange ways military and civilian cultures collude and collide. Tool received his BFA from the University of Southern California in 2000 and MFA from UC Berkeley in 2005. Tool is the Senior Laboratory Mechinician and sometimes teaches in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley. Tool has received a United States Artist Grant. Tool has work in museums nationally, including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Museum. Tool has shown and done residencies across the US, China, Vietnam, France and Germany.

Statement: “I just make cups” is the only statement about my work I am really comfortable with. I hope my work can be a place for people to start conversations about unspeakable things. My cups have been called memorials. Peace is the only adequate war memorial. I think most war memorials are failures at best and usually promote war as good and noble. I have made and given away almost 25,000 cups since 2001. Mostly to Veterans and their families or others who have been affected by war. In the face of all of the horror going on in the world making cups seems a very small and impotent gesture. I don’t know what else to do honestly and sincerely. I just make cups.

Wanxin Zhang @wxzhang25

Wanxin Zhang was born and educated in China. He graduated from the prestigious LuXun Academy of Fine Art in Sculpture in 1985. In 1992, after Zhang established his art career as a sculptor in China, he relocated to San Francisco with his family and received his Master in Fine Arts from the Academy of Art University. Zhang had been on the faculty of the Academy of Art University, Department of Art Practice at University of California, Berkeley and California College of The Art in Oakland. Zhang is currently an adjunct faculty at San Francisco Art Institute.

Statement: Zhang's sculptures represent a marriage between historical references and a contemporary cultural context; they carry messages of social and political commentary. His work is deeply influenced by the Bay Area figurative movement and artists such at Peter Voulkos and Stephen De Staebler. As a studio sculptor and educator, Zhang was the first place recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant in 2006 and the Joan Mitchell Grant in 2004. His sculptures have been shown in San Francisco, Santa Fe, Miami, Seattle, Palm Desert and New York City. In 2007, his pieces were part of the 22nd UBE Sculpture Biennial in Japan; in 2008, his sculpture was selected by the Taipei Ceramics Biennial in Taiwan; and in 2013, he was part of the Da Tong's 2nd International Sculpture Biennial in China. Zhang had his first solo art museum show at the University of Wyoming Art Museum in 2006, with solo museum exhibitions following at the Arizona State University Art Museum, Boise Art Museum in Idaho, Fresno Art Museum in California, The Alden B. Dow Museum of Science & Art in Michigan, Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington, and Holter Museum of Art in Montana. His works have been selected to be included in Confrontational Ceramics by Judith Schwartz, and can be found in major art magazines such as "Art News," "Art in America," "Sculpture," and "American Ceramics." Zhang has many public collections, and his private collectors are located both nationally and internationally. In 2012, the San Francisco Chronicle picked Zhang's exhibition at the Richmond Art Center to be one of the Top 10 Exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Randy Hussong @randyhussong

In between and amid many local and national exhibitions, Hussong co-founded the experimental artist space Jet Wave, curated the Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth retrospective at New Langton Arts, received the James D. Phelan Art Award for Printmaking, and was at the influential heart of the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley for nearly thirty years, earning the Distinguished Teaching Award.