James Heartsill in “Troll Survival Craft” at Studio Route 29
•Troll Survival Craft• an integrated group show featuring artwork made by artists with and without disabilities.
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James Heartsill
NIAD Windows // “Heart & Soul of Richmond”
“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …
NIAD Main Gallery Exhibition // “a clearing”, organized by Mel Prest
“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …
April NIAD Opening Reception + Artist Talk // “a clearing”, organized by Mel Prest + “Danny Thach: Best Buddies” + “Heart & Soul of Richmond”
“Walking down a narrow path, you’re surprised as you reach a clearing.This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing.” Read More …
NIAD Gallery Exhibition // “Feeling Language,” organized by Kate Laster
This show is all about comfort text: resilience in everyday words, writing and reading. Expression can also be wordless, the use of line and color as new vocabulary, pushing a thought out onto a surface, making marks and continuously trying to communicate with the world.
We tell stories to sustain ourselves and find each other. These messages embedded in art become an emotional telegram– a signal flare with a flame of memory trailing behind it. “Feeling Language” is about books, lists, slogans, language, gesture, touch and the trust given in sharing. Read More …
Online Exhibition: Diverse Findings, selected by Paulette Nichols
About the exhibition Here is a picture by James Heartsill of what looks to be a house, except it has teeth, and there is a sky and trees and the roof looks like it has a hair cut, and a tongue is coming out like a door mat. Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart wrote a song called My Head is My Only House Unless it Rains, and that’s what this mixed media on canvas piece makes me think of. We walk around in our heads that protect us like little houses. We inhabit our bodies. They are our homes, and we may own Read More …
Online Exhibition: Words And Feeling, selected by Nicole Shaffer
About the exhibition When going through the NIAD archives, I was struck by a number of works that pair text with image in ways that shift language and illustration from a familiar, functional use to something more expansive. I access a similar experience of forming unexpected and generative correlations when I observe my sensations through movement. For this online series, I selected works that opened up my thinking about language and sensory experience. About the selector Nicole is a current MFA candidate at San Francisco State University and has exhibited in Bay Area spaces such as Southern Exposure, Wolfman Books, Read More …