Current and Upcoming Shows:
2005
Napa Valley Open Studios
Clare
Carver’s studio will be open
October 1st and 2nd
10am to 5pm
1438
Calistoga Ave. Napa CA 94559
for
more information please visit:
artscouncilnapavalley.org
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Works also shown at ...
presents:
New Works by Clare Carver
35 E. Napa Street, Sonoma, CA 95476
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Visit
Esquisse Winery to view more works of Clare Carver
http://www.esquissewines.com
Shows
’99 281 G. Gallery, SF,
CA: one-woman show
’99 Head and Soul, SF, CA: one-woman show
’99 CMMG, SF: one-woman show
’99 Connexions Gallery, St Helena and Sausalito, CA: group show
’00 The Artful Eye, Calistoga, CA: group show
’00 281 G. Gallery, SF, CA: group show
’00 SFSU Gallery, SF, CA: group show
’00 Placebo Gallery, S.A. Australia: one-woman show
’00 Artfully Yours Gallery, S.A. Australia: group show
‘00-’01 Artique Gallery, Willow Glen, CA: group show
’01 Loscome Gallery, SF, CA: one-woman show
’01 BACCA 1010: Bay Area Center for the Consolidated Arts, Berkeley, CA: group
show
’02 Olive Restaurant, SF, CA: one-woman show
’03 SoCo Gallery, Napa, CA: one-woman show
’03 Esquisse Winery, Napa CA: figurative show with Vicky Long
’03 Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery, Sonoma, CA: one-woman show
’03 Napa Valley Museum, Napa, CA: Plein Air Biennial
’03 -‘04 Esquisse Vineyards & Winery, Napa, CA: one-woman show
’03 Octavia’s Haze Gallery, SF, CA: one-woman show
’03 -‘05 diRosa Preserve, Napa, CA: Annual Invitational Auction Show
’03 -‘04 Napa Valley Museum, Napa, CA: Invitational "terra infirma"
‘04 Napa Valley Land Trust, Napa, CA: Invitational Auction Show
‘04 Nicholson Ranch Winery, Napa, CA: Group Show
’04 Sotheby’s International Reality, SF, CA: One woman show-"emerging
artist series"
‘04 Napa Valley Museum, Napa, CA: Invitational "take a chance on art"
‘04 Sonoma Enoteca Gallery, Sonoma, CA: One woman show
‘05 Crocker Art Museum: The Crocker-Kingsley Exhibition – Finalist
’05 Nicholson Ranch, Sonoma, CA: Artist in Residence February-April
’05 Octavia’s Haze Gallery, SF, CA: one-woman show
Press
SF Guardian ‘99 Best of
Bay Issue: reviewed in lead article in Arts section
The Herald: covered "Barossa inspires San Franciscan Artist"
The Leader: covered "Barossa art finds home in America"
The Adelaide Review: reviewed "Return to Eden"
SF Weelky and SF Guardian: covered "Examining Consumerism" show
Art Scan: SoCo Gallery Profile "Industrail Icons in America"
Art related organizations and projects:
Guest Lecturer Off The
Preserve Gallery - 04’
Donated work to Napa Valley Land Trust -’04
Donated work to Napa Museum Fundraiser -’04
Donated work to Bridge School Fundraiser -’03
Napa Museum Volunteer ‘03-‘04
Napa Valley Arts Council Participating Member ‘02-‘05
Donated work to Art for Aids Auction and juried into live auction ‘99-’01
Guest Lecturer and Critique at U.C. Berkeley 01’
Juried Member of New Artist Guild of San Francisco ‘99-’00
Juried Member of Pacific Art League ‘01-‘03
Juried show at Nuriootpa High School ‘02
AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Artists) ‘93-’98,
GAG (Graphic Artist Guild) ‘96-’98
some pictures from shows enjoy!
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Industrial Icons in America
Landscape paintings, etchings & monoprints
A memo board in Clare Carver’s kitchen has a
hand-written note: "Every day is an opportunity to make art, enjoy life, improve
yourself and your world." There is something about Clare that clearly
demonstrates she believes and practices this philosophy wholeheartedly. And
reflecting back on that quote, it also seems to perfectly describe the true
American artist – a soul that is driven to create with the confidence that
whatever that creation turns out to be, it will change both the world and the
artist.
Because Clare exudes such an aura of happiness and sincerity, there is an
immediate desire to see her work, and she is very willing to share. Her
abundant paintings fill up her home much like they did when I first visited
during the 2002 Open Studios Tour. Although she is fairly new to Napa, Clare
has prolifically captured the local landscape and the admiration of many fans.
Those familiar with Clare’s work will note that her distinctive style and
careful consideration of her subjects shines through in her solo exhibition
"Industrial Icons in America". Those who have yet to discover her talent can
expect a thorough introduction to Clare’s remarkable potential.
Clare applied to exhibit at the SoCo Gallery in the summer of 2002, giving her
the time to create a new body of worked shaped around the concept of the modern
American landscape. Clare has always been drawn to objects that have a physical
and psychological impact on people. Her landscapes often include freeway
overpasses, factories, wind machines, and other similar structures. She states
that she likes to "take on the challenge of industrial objects that aren’t
traditionally beautiful" and by using color, reel the viewer in to
contemplate the relevance of these objects. Clare’s choices are also guided by
her belief that contemporary paintings should reflect our modern life. The
objects she paints have as much importance to our reality as the horse and plow
did for turn-of-the-century painters. Perhaps someday, historians will be
referring to Clare Carver’s landscapes to sum up the early twenty-first century
lifestyle.
For this show, Clare has selected sites that are "pieces of our American
Landscape"—a tank, a train, a barn, a boat, a road, and a roller coaster.
All of these objects can exist in America because of the vastness of the land— a resource that
many Americans don’t fully appreciate. In her compositions, the land takes up
two-thirds of the painting, with the object sitting near top, in order to
illustrate the object’s relationship to the land and therefore its significance
in our lives.
_ _
"These are commonplace objects in our landscape, yet somehow we dissociate
from them. Acknowledgment of all the elements of our landscape, not just the
traditionally beautiful parts, may help us to be more respectful of our land as
a whole. Awareness of these functional objects, including what they do for us
and against us in regards to the environment, may teach us to integrate them
more seamlessly into our environment".
A parallel concept contributing to this show is the integrity of the artistic
process. What is special about this show is the fact that the viewer will be
able to see the sketches, plates, prints, and the final paintings. Clare has
been working with artists Luc Janssens and Vicki Long, and experimenting with
printmaking as part of her study in color.
"I knew I wanted to combine printmaking and painting for this show in
order to investigate the power of two colors working against each other. Using
the etchings, I could try different combinations and work in a way that’s
separate from oil painting, my usual medium."
The sequence of preparation for Clare’s show went something like this: First
she chose the six subject sites – all of them are within twenty miles of Napa, but
they could be anywhere in the U.S. Then she studied the sites and made hundreds of
sketches. She selected the strongest sketch of each subject, and created
etchings of each on copper plates, which she used to make the prints. Clare
made two different types of prints: in one, she combined the traditional
technique of etching with monoprinting by adding a light layer of color
directly onto the unetched areas of the plate before creating each print. In
the other, she made some hand-painted etchings by first creating the print from
the etching, then painting onto the finished print.
Meanwhile, Clare was returning to her chosen sites with canvas and paint to
capture the light and local color and overall feeling of the place. Finally,
she brought the paintings back to the studio to work on all six simultaneously,
hoping to achieve a kind of continuity never previously planned in her work.
Clare is tremendously excited to present this body of work. When asked what she
hopes the show will achieve, she says, "I want people to first to love the
color and be drawn in, to look and just enjoy – and therefore appreciate the
subject matter. When I asked people what they considered to be American icons,
they mentioned eagles, flags—traditional symbols. But when they see my
paintings, I hope they will realize that these objects are also American icons
— our modern landscapes."
It came as no surprise when Clare explained she has been painting her entire
life and that her family (with eight siblings) has always been a supportive
force. She states, "I feel lucky, because my parents enrolled me in art
lessons when I was nine or ten. I loved my teacher and spent many hours in her
studio painting. She was a traditional East Coast realist who taught me the
fundamentals of painting. I studied with her until I and went away to art
school at age 18."
When Clare began studying at Tyler School of Art, she found that these fundamentals weren’t
the focus of the painting department. "The professors who were teaching at
that time (the early 90’s) had studied in the 70’s when everyone was throwing
out the traditional methods. Painting was my love, but I didn’t think I would
fit in with the painting department, so I decided to major in graphic design
and illustration." When she left school, Clare leapt headlong into a
graphic design career and successfully supported herself for the next four
years, during which time she moved to San
Francisco.
"I eventually came back to painting due in part to the support of my best
friend who encouraged me to just paint. In 1999, we took a trip to Africa. The
month-long trip gave me a good long time to really think about my career."
On their trip, Clare took her sketchbooks and filled them. She had some
canvases and paints shipped to the place they would be spending the last leg of
their trip, and she completed twelve paintings in one week. As they were
traveling and meeting people who’d ask them what they do, Clare found herself
answering, "I’m a painter". She explains, "Once I could say it,
then I started really believing it and embodying it".
Once she had decided to devote herself to painting, Clare dove into marketing
herself, gathering her slides, and getting her work into galleries. Overall,
she says that her career change turned out to be a successful decision---more
than she could have ever hoped for. "Painting is my passion. It is the
only thing that I’ve found that challenges me on more levels than I can list,
and it is what I will be doing for the rest of my life".
Since that fateful trip to Africa, Clare has participated in group shows
throughout the Bay Area and has had solo exhibitions at the Artful Eye in
Calistoga, Placebo Gallery and Artfully Yours in Australia, and in San Francisco
at Luscombe Gallery, Head and Soul, 281 G Gallery, and Olive Restaurant. She
has broadened her training by studying with Camille Przewodek, a highly
respected plain air colorist living in Petaluma whom Clare met during Sonoma’s Open Studios Tour.
Clare considers Camille a master of her craft from whom she gained invaluable
information about color and light.
In the past three years, Clare’s work has continued to evolve, and she is
defining her individual style. Although she admires and has studied with plein
air painters and California colorists, Clare approaches her landscapes in her
own unique way. She explains. "I’m not really interested in rendering
every aspect of a particular place, I’m more interested in capturing the
essence of something with color — simplifying to make it more abstract and
contemporary". In her work, Clare believes that she will never tire of
exploring new methods. "I could easily see spending a lifetime in an
effort to master just one aspect of painting. It’s overwhelming, but at the
same time, it shows me that I’ll always be stretching and will never be
finished. This is what inspires me to keep painting". Ann Trinca
Photo by Porter Merriman
"White Clippers on
Seas of Grass"
A Study of the Old Stornetta
Dairy
now
home of Laura Chenel's Chevre
Octavia's Haze Gallery
for more information,
please call the gallery ~ 415.255.6818
Show accompanied by the writing of Steve Bjerklie.
by
Steve Bjerklie, journalist and Point
Reyes resident
In no common structure are the qualities of form and function interlocked more
eloquently and beautifully than in the barn. We are lucky in northern California to have especially lovely barns
among our local dairies.
Yet our barns do not evoke the image of a "classic" barn: the red,
gambrel-roofed structure that’s an iconic symbol of rural America. North Coast dairy barns tend to be wedges
rather than humps, more ship than ark. And in our painted examples, the color
is almost always white rather than red.
Our barns seem to sail across hilly seas of grass, white clippers gliding
indefatigably before the wind. The steady, even rooflines, the unbroken white
walls, the comfortable, confident presence, occupy both our reality and
imaginations. We are not a farming community without them.
Farmers in the East and Midwest gave their barns gambrel-shape roofs – a
gambrel is an angled hook from which meat carcasses are hung, and it’s also the
outwardly angled back leg of a horse – in order to house as much hay as
possible during cold winters. The roofline of these barns begins steeply, then
bends shallowly toward the peak. The result is a kind of out-bent elbow shape
that creates extra head space for hay storage high in the barn.
Here, many of our dairy barns are shaped exactly the opposite: the roofline to
the peak of the barn is pitched steeper (typically 30 degrees) than the roof
nearer the barn’s outside walls (usually 15 degrees). That’s because in a dairy
barn the milking stalls are near the outside walls, and not as much head space
is needed for hay storage due to the milder climate and longer hay-growing
season. (The plentiful grass is also why most North Coast dairies don’t need silos.) Thus,
the roofline flares out toward the outside wall. Many local barns feature no
angle at all in the roofline except for the 30-degree pitch of each side. We
don’t need a steeper angle than that, because our barns do not have to bear
snow-weight. In times past, cows were sometimes even milked outside in summer,
and stored, baled hay was needed only for the October-December non-milking
period.
The wedge shape also proved to be a good way to deflect wind, which tends to
slam into a classic gambrel barn. Our barns, and the barns built in wind-swept Wyoming and Utah as well as in eastern Oregon and Washington, parry the wind rather than buffet
it. Early on, farmers who built wedge-shape barns learned to site them with the
long side parallel to the slopes of hills rather than right-angled out, since
wind tends to blow up and over hills rather than around them.
The western dairy barn is the last of the various types of American barn
designs to become established. Prior to the Civil War, dairying was a very
local business -- so local that a great deal of milk wound up in hog slop or in
cheese because it could not be shipped or stored. But the emergence of national
railroads, plus the development of the refrigerated rail car (which hugely
benefited meatpackers, too), created a true dairy economy. Now farmers could
raise large dairy herds and know they could sell, year round, all the milk the
cows produced. Quickly, the stall-lined dairy barn, built for twice-a-day
milking, was born.
Beginning in the 1880s, white became the preferred dairy-barn color as a result
of government dairy certification. Inspectors wanted to see sanitary
facilities; white encouraged a sanitary feel. Some certification programs even
required whitewashed barns inside and out. (Red is the traditional color for
hay and livestock barns elsewhere in America because in the 18th and early 19th centuries, before commercially
manufactured paint became available, it was the easiest color to make at home,
using oxides found in local soil.)
Most older Marin, Sonoma, and Napa County dairy barns are no longer used for
milking, as present regulations require a sanitary-certified barn for that
purpose. The handsome 90-foot two-story barn on Al Poncia’s ranch in Marin,
built about 100 years ago, has undergone several transformations, from milking
barn to calving facility. "Now we use it pretty much just for
storage," he says. On the Poncia dairy, milking is done "in an
efficient little barn," a sanitary facility built in 1947.
On the Marin coast, three outstanding barns are within Point Reyes National
Seashore: the big restored 19th century dairy and hay barn at Pierce Point
Ranch on the north end of the peninsula, the grand red barn near the park’s
headquarters, and the unique barn at the old Wilkins ranch at the south end of Olema
Valley, which is hugged on three sides, rather than the usual two, by
shallow-roofed milking sheds. Many old local barns have unfortunately
disappeared, however, victims of weather, neglect or, most often,
"progress." But driving back roads in northern Bay Area counties, as
well as elsewhere in rural northern California, will locate some still-standing clippers. Looking at a well-designed
barn is like looking at the Pantheon in Rome or the Temple of Athena in Athens:
the pleasing sight of form indistinguishable from and in love with function, of
the visual poetry – barn-line against hill-curve, triangle standing upon
circle, white above green -- of contrast built into definition, of a sail
ship’s grace upon the water achieved without moving at all upon the land.
This article was originally published in slightly different form in the
newsletter for the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.
