What drives, inspires, motivates artists? It might be said that they are problem solvers. Construed as inconsequential to viewers, artistic problems may pose very personal and all-consuming dilemma to the artist. In turn, artists create questions for the viewer. Questions that might be perceived as thought-provoking, infuriating or even transformational.

Ken Kalman works with metal, a seemingly solid, impenetrable material often manipulated with heavy industrial techniques. But when he asks what will occur if he transforms his approach to problems of form and volume by using the finest metal filaments and the gentle technique of weaving, his forms become lacy and ephemeral.

Mari Andrews has answered this question in her own practice by refining the use of delicate metal wire to create in one dimension the illusion of volume as if she were drawing with fine pencil lines on the wall. Mike Farruggia achieves the effect of line drawing by bending and welding steel to form contours he fills with areas of colored epoxy.

Working with another approach to volume, Cuong Ta transforms his clay constructions with elegant waves of color simultaneously calling attention to the shape of his vessel and transforming it. Questions of color and volume are explored in two entirely different modes on the canvases of Teresa Kolsnoskas and Bonnie Neumann. To this end, Therese Lahaie uses only light.

With regard to the question of light, Ala Agafonov answers the question, with extraordinary water color technique that brings us as close to nature as photographs by Carl Hoard.

Other artists, rather than attempting to find visual answers to expressing volume, line and color, take on political or social problems as in Craig Leonardi’s multiple answers to a frequently asked question. Alternative perceptions of reality are also a concern for Packard Jennings as he imposes words on buildings that completely transform their content and function. Caesar Cueva has found a way to provide a window into his Filipino culture.

Survival is another question not easily answered by the majority of artists. Some contemporary studio furniture makers have succeeded in crossing the craft/art divide. Case in point – Roberto Gastelumendi’s “Not For Everyone Table”.

Emeryville Celebration of the Arts has succeeded in answering another question: how, without the infrastructure inherent to a museum or gallery, can a small community arts organization produce successfully for forty years a sophisticated exhibition complete with catalog and events that offers visibility to a large and enormously varied community of artists?

Kathleen Hanna
Curator, Juror, and Exhibition Designer