Catharine Clark Gallery

Inspired by the letters she wrote her father in 1996, at a time where the Mexican American border separated them from one another, Arleene Correa Valencia uses this archive to create a carefully crafted visual language in painting, textiles and soft sculpture that aims to play with ideas of visibility and begins to unthread the complexities of undocumented immigration.

Katherine Vetne imagines scenes from an opulent banquet in a series of uneasy new still lifes. Her drawings and sculptures of distorted objects and vacant spaces are permeated by eerie undertones that may conjure tricks of the eye, hallucinations, or apparitions. Using high craft methods executed with traditional materials, Vetne fuses memento mori with contemporary stories of class, gender, and power, as told by objects.

In “Night House”, Taylor observes the darkness of night altering the boundaries between her family and the walls they live within, and the luminosity of objects that anchor them in their most private moments.

Prints by Arleene Correa Valencia, Sherrill Roland, Kali Spitzer, Stephanie Syjuco, Masami Teraoka, Storm Tharp, Marie Watt, and more.

Catharine Clark Gallery opens its summer program with Masami Teraoka: Waves and Plagues Redux, on view from June 17 to August 19, 2023, in the North Gallery. The exhibition takes its title from an important monograph on Teraoka titled Waves and Plagues published by Chronicle Books in 1988 and offers a rare opportunity to see watercolors, drawings, and multiples from two iconic bodies of work: the AIDS Series and Waves Series, as well as a selection of important studies and watercolors from projects created prior to 1995. From 1960 to 1984, Teraoka lived and worked in Los Angeles, during which time he produced his signature ukiyo-e (or “pictures of the floating world” generally rendered as woodcuts in the Edo era of Japan) compositions that reflected on cultural hybridity, represented in series such as McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan, 31 Flavors Invading Japan, and New Views of Mt. Fuji. The onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s brought a new urgency to Teraoka's work and inaugurated a five-year span in which he created monumental watercolors on paper, screens, and canvas, such as American Kabuki/Oishiiwa (1986), a multi-panel watercolor mounted to a folding screen in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. These compositions depicted figures with visible symptoms of infection, such as lesions caused by Kaposi sarcoma, dressed in Kabuki-style make-up and costumes, and set in tumultuous and often menacing landscapes. Teraoka was one of the few major American artists creating work about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s. His paintings were particularly radical at a time when the American government willingly ignored public health data on infection and transmission rates, and all but refused to address a public health crisis that disproportionately impacted queer people and communities of color (a scenario re-visited during COVID). Work from this era of his practice was included in the recent exhibition and attendant catalogue Art, AIDS, America. The exhibition (and catalogue) was the first comprehensive overview and reconsideration of 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It foregrounded the role of HIV/AIDS in shifting the development of American art away from the conceptual foundations of postmodernism and abstraction toward a new, more political, and autobiographical voice. Art AIDS America surveyed more than 100 works of American art from the early 1980s to 2015, reintroducing and exploring the spectrum of responses to HIV/AIDS, from activism to elegy. It also introduced and explored the spectrum of artistic responses to AIDS, from the outspoken to the mournful. Art AIDS America was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and co-curated by Jonathan David Katz, Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program at the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), and Rock Hushka, Chief Curator at Tacoma Art Museum who contributed to the catalogue. For Teraoka’s part, in 1984, seeking respite and solace from the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on his artist community in Los Angeles, he began traveling between LA and Hawaii, and eventually moved to the island of Oahu, where he continues to live and work today. Finding escape and comfort in the natural beauty of Hawai'i, Teraoka began painting evocative waterscapes, some of which are mounted on traditional Japanese scrolls in between making works that addressed the insidiousness of HIV/AIDS and its devastating effects. Drawing inspiration from Edo-era, historic landscape prints by artists such as Hokusai and Kunisada, Teraoka created this new series of meditative works as a counterpoint to the intensity of his AIDS Series watercolors. In the process, Teraoka continued to experiment with scale and materials, resulting in larger and even more expressive works that eventually evolved into the large-scale triptychs that emerged in the later 1990s. Waves and Plagues Redux features several important unmounted watercolors on canvas, including AIDS Series/Father and Son (1990). These canvases, nearly nine feet tall, portray figures in the end stages of infection. Two of the paintings depict a mother and father tenderly holding infants who have died, with their eyes cast downward and away, capturing a moment of overwhelming and indescribable loss. These canvases are among the last of his ukiyo-e style works and represent the culmination of his AIDS Series. Waves and Plagues Redux offers an important survey of this period of Teraoka's work, which continues to have a lasting impact on art historical conversations surrounding HIV/AIDS. In conversation with Teraoka’s exhibition, the gallery continues to feature three videos by Deborah Oropallo: White As Snow, Wolf, and Dirty. As their point of departure, the videos use fairy tales such as Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Fantasia, the related costumes from cosplay, and Disney films to weave together cautionary tales of a more dystopic nature (they complement the collaborative work created by her and her husband Michael Goldin in exhibit in the South Gallery titled American Gothic). On July 22, in concert with the opening of Yes, it is an original, the gallery presents a Media Room screening of Trina Michelle Robinson’s video work in a show titled Revival. A follow-up to Robinson’s acclaimed Emerging Artist Program presentation at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Revival features a suite of three video works that reflect on histories of slavery and emancipation, as well as celebration and joy through acts of rediscovering family genealogies. Robinson writes that “the suite of videos was inspired by a years-long effort to connect to my ancestors after discovering my maternal family roots in Kentucky. The earliest film in this series, Berea (2021), was inspired by an urgent need to excavate the lost memories of my family’s history, including this history of David French, my great-great grandfather who studies at Berea College shortly after the Civil War. The piece contains archival audio and film footage, including Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 silent film Within Our Gates, Learning to Live, a promotional film from Berea in 1937, at a time when the school was segregated due to a 1904 law in Kentucky that forced the segregation of schools, as well as audio excerpts of an interview with anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.” “Elegy for Nancy” (2022), by comparison, pays homage to my oldest known ancestor, a woman named Nancy who was born in the 1770’s or 80s, likely in Virginia, before migrating to Kentucky where she was enslaved. I first discovered her identity in 2021 in a series of 19th century manuscripts, and after largely following the stories of the men in this family line, I knew I had to turn my attention to her story. I have incorporated the texture of Super 8 film footage and archival film footage to do this and incorporate multiple rivers, including the Sacramento, Ohio, and Ogun Rivers, as guides to evoke themes of healing, creation, and ancestral legacy.”

Catharine Clark Gallery announces "American Gothic," a collaborative exhibition of sculpture, mixed media, and video by Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin. On view May 25 – July 15, 2023 in the South Gallery and Media Room, the exhibition pays tribute to the life cycle of a working farm, and the impact of climate change on local and global ecologies. The title of the exhibition refers to an art style that emerged in the United States during the early 20th century. This style is characterized by a dark and foreboding atmosphere, often depicting rural settings as sites of isolation and the macabre. Grant Wood, the painter who popularized this style, created the iconic 1930 painting "American Gothic:" his painting portrays a stern-looking farmer and his daughter standing in front of a farmhouse with a distinctive Gothic-style window. Although Wood's intention was to pay tribute to the rural population of the Midwest and their political history, the painting is often misunderstood as a satirical comment on Midwesterners being out of touch with the modern world. Drawing upon the pathos and parody inherent in this juxtaposition, the showcased works combine the gravity of American Gothic with the humor of Looney Tunes, two genres that emerged in American popular culture during the early 1930s. Oropallo and Goldin crafted their sculptures using materials sourced from their farm in Northern California, including sheep's wool, trees, bones, buckets, and boots. The resulting sculptures are exquisitely crafted and possess a darkly absurdist quality, exploring the tensions between the farmer and the farmed, as well as predators and prey. Moreover, the exhibited works poignantly commemorate Milk Made, Oropallo and Goldin's working farm, which has faced increasing challenges due to drought conditions and climate change. In their own words, Oropallo and Goldin express the underlying sentiment behind "American Gothic:" "Our work in the exhibition stems from sadness and a sense of loss. We grappled with contradictions while creating the artwork, aiming to reflect this precarious moment in time while simultaneously celebrating the beauty of the incredible nature and environment we have been fortunate enough to experience on our farm." "In our work, fairy tales continue to serve as cautionary stories about the environment, industrialization, and threats to sustainability in our political climate. By reimagining stories that have captivated and frightened children for over 200 years, we approach our work as both humorous and elegiac—a tribute to the land, stewardship, and a reminder of the stakes involved in the ongoing climate crisis." Join us for an opening celebration on Saturday, May 27, 2023, from 3 – 5pm, with artists’ talks at 4pm. "American Gothic" is presented simultaneously with Jen Bervin’s "Source", which is on view in our North Gallery though June 10, 2023.

Catharine Clark Gallery announces the opening of "Jen Bervin: Source," the inaugural exhibition in its newly expanded 9,200 square-foot space. "Source" is the artist’s first West Coast survey and follows the acclaimed 2020 survey exhibition "Jen Bervin: Shift Rotate Reflect, Selected Works (1997 – 2020)," curated by Kendra Paitz, Director and Chief Curator of the University Galleries of Illinois State University, and monograph publication. Founding Director Catharine Clark writes: “Bervin’s remarkable solo survey exhibition at Illinois State University opened in 2020 at the height of Covid, and at a time when limited audiences were able to see it. In planning for the opening of our new space, we saw an important opportunity to bring this body of work to the West Coast, which our expanded space makes possible. We are especially proud to feature several of Bervin’s most important projects – including her monumental sculpture "River" (2006 – 2018) – and to offer our audiences the chance to engage with Bervin’s deeply researched and exquisitely crafted work. The artworks in the exhibition encompass installation, sculpture, bookmaking, video, and the range of Bervin’s practice is emblematic of the conceptual rigor and capaciousness that is a hallmark of the gallery and its artists.” Bervin approaches medium expansively: from silk biosensors inscribed with nanoscale poems, to installations in hand-sewn silver sequins that meander and flow across hundreds of feet, her work stems from a restless curiosity about how we observe the world around us. Poet Claudia Rankine writes that Bervin’s work “invites [us] into a search for the unknowable…The science is precise. The method is documented. The structure is informed by interrogated processes, but the experience of the encounter is beyond the stability of language.” Bervin asks us to reflect on those moments just outside our grasp and to imagine what’s possible in that space of ambiguity. Her work directs us away from easy answers or defined endpoints, but instead leads us back to that source anew. Bervin’s ambitious sculpture "River" (2006 – 2018) imagines an impossible vantage: the Mississippi River as if viewed from the core of the earth, its headwaters, alluvial path, and confluence in the delta stretching across 230 curvilinear feet of ceiling and wall. Rendered in hand-sewn silver sequins on mull – a material used to line the spines of books – "River" catches the natural light as it moves through space, evoking light glinting on water. Bervin’s sculpture inspires awe, fabricated at a scale of one inch to one mile; this twelve-year process took her as long to sew as it would to walk the actual river. Bervin describes the Mississippi as a “spine,” a metaphor that suggests this river’s relation to its life-giving support of a body, or an open book to be read. As an immersive installation, "River" evokes the Mississippi’s outsized place in the American imagination, especially as a gateway for westward expansion that is inextricably tied to Manifest Destiny and the violent displacement of Native peoples, as well as the river’s centrality in America’s growth through industrialization, a history that is inseparable from both slavery and environmental destruction. Bervin’s sculpture powerfully reminds us of these cycles of destruction and regeneration, pointing to how our collective histories, like geological time scales, are always in process and take time to understand.