ART EXHIBIT IIIAnna Valdez - Sarah Applebaum

Laura Fischer - Yvette Brown

Curated by Mel Marzahl

The art program at Ntropic aims to inspire with new work from emerging local artists presented in an accessible, exciting, and interactive way. We collaborate with artists and galleries directly, visit their studios, learn their stories, and bring them into our space to share with our friends, colleagues, and family.

Art Exhibit III features four artists working in a wide array of styles and mediums. Oil paintings, installations, sculptures, rope making, and weaving all come together, to create a balanced celebration of fabric and textiles; materials which are constantly stimulating the senses and subtly influencing our everyday lives. Inviting such diverse and talented artists to this show, Art Exhibit III creates a dynamic and playful environment in which the works complement, contrast and speak to each other across the space.

Throughout the show, the vibrant oil paintings of colorful cloth in the still life paintings of Anna Valdez complement the fluidity of the fabrics and strict color palate in the works by Yvette Brown. Valdez paints bright, detailed textiles and patterns into her still lifes, often giving the fabrics as much attention as her main subjects, sometimes more. Using fabrics, plants, and other personal domestic items from her home as motifs representing her individual experience. Alternately, the movement of the fabric around a body is the primary subject of Brown’s multi-paneled paintings. She allows the viewer to interpret whether her figures are floating, falling, or flying while thoroughly taking in the beauty of fabrics in motion.

ART EXHIBIT III

Brown and Valdez’s paintings are displayed alongside the sculptures and installations of Laura Fischer and Sarah Applebaum. Although they differ greatly in scale, both artists work within a monochromatic palate and each artist carefully creates work with attention to detail and gravity. Hanging in the center of the exhibit, two of Applebaum’s pieces Ropes and Chain use contrasting subject and materials making cold, dark, restrictive objects approachable with soft materials. Applebaum also creates sculptural tessellations that challenge the eye to discern between color, shadow and depth. Fischer’s work is compact, process driven and exact, showing the viewer each step taken to create intricate hand-woven designs on her poured concrete looms. By using only black and white threads, she is able to accentuate each stitch and highlight different techniques.

This exhibition runs through October 26th and Ntropic invites you to enjoy the work, meet and read about the artists, and come back to visit the pieces before the end of the exhibition.

Please feel free to contact Ntropic with any questions.

Thank you,

Mel Marzahl

If interested in purchasing any of the artwork, please ask for an introduction or contact the artist directly. All the artists’ contact information is located in the back of this booklet.

Zebra Succulent, 2014Oil on canvas11 × 11 in $450.

Empty Pomelo 2012Oil on canvas11 × 11 in$400.

Plant and Vase, 2014Oil on canvas11 × 11 in $450.

Three’s Company, 2012Oil on canvas11 × 11 in $400.

Blue VaseEncaustic on panel9 1/2 × 9 1/2 in $550.

Zebra Succulent, 2013Oil on canvas62 × 48 in$2,900.

Patterns, 2014Oil on canvas60 × 48 in$2,900.

ANNA VALDEZ Visual artist Anna Valdez was raised in Sacramento, California, in a richly diverse environment. In her neighborhood of predominately second-language English speakers, Valdez stood apart in that English was her only language, and that her parents had strong roots in the United States. This ‘outsider’ perspective instilled in her an interest in how culture is formed and lived out in daily life, which ultimately led her to study anthropology and archeology at UC Davis. It was on an archeological dig in Ireland that Valdez first realized her aptitude for art making. Keeping a sketchbook of the site, Valdez was encouraged to create scale drawings and maps. Visually interpreting these “abandoned sites” allowed Valdez to understand how she could create meaningful elucidations of heritage through image making. Today, working with painting, drawing, print-making, collage, animation and digital media, Valdez explores the meaning of memory and identity. Valdez incorporates articles from her home, such as plants, fabrics, vessels or records into her work as a form of self-representation, and understands the domestic sphere as emblematic of personal and collective experience.

Valdez received her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2013. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States. Valdez’s work has been featured in New American Paintings, Daily Serving, Dialogist, Big Red and Shiny, 365 Artists | 365 Days and VIA Publication. Her work has recently been exhibited at Masur Museum of Art, the Danforth Museum, Boston University Art Galleries, Gallery Bergelli and The Sanchez Art Center. In 2013, Valdez’s work won a juried prize at the Danforth Museum.

Structural Fabric2012 Wood, paint, canvas 65 x 100 in flat$2,200.

Tessellating Pentagons2011 Felt, thread, cardboard 42 x 60 x 42 in $1,000.

SARAH APPLEBAUM Sarah Moli Newton Applebaum lives and works in Oakland, California. This collection of work focuses on her love of form and structure through her textile related work.

Her pieces have been shown locally, nationally and internationally in such diverse spaces as The LAB in San Francisco CA, Vanderbilt University in Nashville TN, Nordic House in Reykjavik, Iceland and the Triennale Di Milano in Milan, Italy. Her work has been featured in many national as well as international publications and books throughout China, The Netherlands, UK, Germany and Spain as well as others.

Chain, 2011Yarn, foam,

cotton batting, armature wire

25 ft long$2,000.

Ropes Handmade ropes from yarn and stringVarious sizes$1,400.

“no. 15”2013 concrete and thread14” x 14” x 14”$2,600.

“no. 14”2013concrete and thread14” x 12” x 12”$2,600.

“no. 18”20146” x 6” x 6”concrete and thread $2,100.

“no. 17”2014concrete and thread6” x 6” x 6”$2,100.

“no. 5” 2013concrete and thread7” x 8” x 7”$2,100.

LAURA FISCHER Laura Fischer’s sculptures are intended to be building sites, or places of production, where she can perform patience, discipline, and work. Her tendency to seek discipline and control through the means of a systematic process is often met with her other tendency to act intuitively and seek the beauty of a finished object. Inconsistency and contradiction—despite proper planning and attentiveness—are outcomes that she often faces in the studio, and are welcome characters in her series of sculptures.

She holds an MFA in New Practices from San Francisco State University and her work has been exhibited at Headlands Center for the Arts and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.

“no. 7”20138” x 9” x 9”concrete and thread$2,100.

“no. 2”2012 concrete and thread9” x 9” x 9”$2,600.

Chloe Oil on Multi level canvas 36 x 60 in $5,500.

Bethany Oil on 3 canvases 32 x 38 in$1,800.

Maria 60 x 28 in Oil on Multi level canvas $3,500.

YVETTE BROWN My work is about the deep psychological and physical responses people have to motion. I create images that tap into the rich vein that lies between our dreams of flying and our nightmares of falling out of control. My paintings hover somewhere along the invisible line of tension between awkwardness and grace. I strive to capture the frozen moment in which balance is either lost or regained. I tend to avoid faces because they give too much away. I want to leave more for the viewer to interpret. Is a figure filled with the elation of soaring? Or is there a violence bubbling just beneath the veneer of beauty? What are those secrets behind the beauty? It all depends on what we bring of ourselves to the viewing. I often break my figures up into multi-canvas construction of varying depths in an attempt to contain aspects of the image- much in the same way that each of us tries to impose some kind of structure on the chaos of our lives. But that structure, as hard-edged as we try to make it, is an illusion. It distorts the picture we present of ourselves in ways that can be both flattering and grotesque. But the truth is that, like the figures I paint, we are all bodies in motion, flowing around and over the rigid boundaries we try to erect. Life is not so easily contained. This is not such a bad thing.

Two Blue Oil on Multi Level canvas 24 x 66 in$5,800.

CONTACTANNA VALDEZwww.annavaldez.com

Contact: Gallery Bergelligallery@bergelli.com

SARAH APPLEBAUMwww.sarahapplebaum.cominfo@sarahapplebaum.com

LAURA FISCHERwww.lauralivingstonfischer.com

lauralivingstonfischer@gmail.com

YVETTE BROWNwww.yvettembrown.com

ycolour@me.com