Meet the Artists
Alex Rosmarin is an Oakland based painter and draftsman. He maintains a dedicated practice of drawing and painting from life. In his studio work he blends the knowledge gained from that practice with influences from early modern art, comics, illustration and graphic design, and ukiyo-e to create a stylized environment that has some of the heft and detail of reality. He graduated from CCAC in 1998 with a BFA in painting and has been showing in the area ever since. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Alison OK Frost is an Oakland-based painter and draughtsman. She received her BA from UCLA and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been seen in galleries in Oakland, Los Angeles and New York, and a number of places in between. Alison’s watercolor works and oil paintings deal with dark subject matter, often post-apocalyptic in nature, tempered by jewel-like colors and a light touch. In 2011, Frost began delving into printmaking, collaborative works, and curating.
Ben Belknap is an artist and musician who lives and works in Oakland, CA. His art work consists primarily of small scale, richly glazed ceramic sculpture. In 2003 he received his bachelors degree from The California College of Arts and Crafts and has since had art shows at various galleries around the Bay Area and elsewhere.
CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Clare Szydlowski is a printmaker, educator and storyteller who lives and works in San Francisco. She received her MFA from San Francisco State University and currently an Artist in Residence at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Bay Area and is concerned with the ways that industrial processes, theories and terminology have shaped the North American landscape; both the physical world and the collective imagination. Interested in the decay of the U.S. manufacturing industry –a world of concrete and architecture in disrepair as well as the phenomenon of suburbia — hinterlands of credit and commercial sprawl, she can often be found climbing into abandoned grain elevators and over the fences of housing development construction sites. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Crystal Morey — My intention is to explore the human experience of emotion, and its relationship with the environment. I want to study the tenuous, symbiotic balance between human necessities and the health of our natural habitat of forests, oceans, mountains, and deserts. Everyday we strengthen the disconnect between what we use in our lives, and the destructive effects it has on where we live, the air we breathe and the water we drink. We have made a departure from nature and the balance that should exist has been broken. In my work I want to reveal the ephemeral quality of human life and show our dependence on an increasingly delicate ecosystem. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Giles Goodhead-I am interested in the screens – television, computer, phone – that increasingly mediate our lives. Instead of going out photographing the world, I point my camera at the screens that bring it to us and separate us from it. Soccer from London, wrestling from Akron, blow-hard pundits, You Tube oddities, soaps, infomercials, and the strangest programming of all, ‘reality.’ A term of art in computers is ‘WYSIWYG’ – what you see is what you get. I disagree. We are deluged with high-definition media but we no longer trust it. How can we penetrate the glossy but dead surface of produced images, and uncover raw but true emotions lurking underneath. My technique may seem compulsive. To find subject matter I scan hours of recorded programming at high speed, and then toggle frame by frame. My shots make visible the individual screen pixels. Once I have a large print, I deconstruct it literally, slicing it into small squares. These I re-assemble on specially machined boards, re-building the image as a mosaic of super-pixels. As a result, the final piece is an exploded, intensified version of the original shot. Perhaps because I’m colorblind, I work with saturated, garish colors. Digital photo editing offers endless ways to perfect or prettify an image. I prefer to enjoy the noise: halos, moiré effects, and distortion. In these imperfections I seek the human. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Jeanne Lorenz has had solo exhibitions at White Columns, New York City and Mixture Contemporary Art in Houston. She has shown her work at P.S.1/MOMA, the Drawing Center; and P.P.O.W. in New York City. In 2008 her collaborative print Stars that Shine Darkly was included in biennale of American prints at the University of Richmond Art Museum. In 2002 she was a fellow at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. She was also the recipient of the Helen Winternitz Award for Painting from Yale University. Recently, she has been a visiting artist at U. C. Berkeley, U. C. Santa Cruz, Sonoma State and the California College of the Arts. In December she will be a visiting lecturer at Occidental College in Los Angeles. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Kelsey Robinson creates sculptures, paintings and screen prints, drawing inspiration from nature and its endless catalog of shapes, patterns and color. She received her BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design ( RISD) in 2003. Her fine art has been shown on the east coast and the Bay Area. While living on the east coast, Kelsey managed the soft tissue department of a company making anatomical medical models in Massachusetts. She is currently the founder of a custom wedding and sculptural cake design company servicing the Bay Area, www.thewholecake.com. She now works and lives in Oakland, CA with one cat, one dog and one scientist. Click HERE to watch VIDEO
Kim Frohsin has worked in the realm of painting, photography, printmaking, drawing and collage over her last 28 years as a full-time visual artist. She has lived and worked in San Francisco since 1985; over the years, her figurative work has been likened to a new generation of The Bay Area Figurative in style and tradition. Yet, her extensive and intensive collaboration, especially for this last decade, with live models (Muses), reveal that her line, an innate color sensibility, a very independent spirit make it difficult to place her in one visual fine art catagory. She feels the “gestalt” she does as interdependent. She is a singular, studio artist who likes to push her own boundaries at will, drawing upon ever-changing subject matter, and media. Kim is inspired by literature, dance , personal experiments in photography and a myriad of autobiographical resources and experiences. She grew up in The South (Atlanta, GA) and has lived in France, outside of Minneapolis and in the San Diego, CA area, as well. Ms. Frohsin ‘s works are now the collections of The San Jose Museum of Art, The Crocker Art Museum and the De Young Museum, all in CA. She has been in many solo juried and group shows and has work held in numerous corporate and private collections, worldwide. Some of these include The Morgan Flagg Family Collection,The Gerald H. Buck Foundation, Texaco Corporation, Adobe Systems, Keker & Van Nest and Nordstrom. (Photo taken by Walter Swarthout, 2008)
Lena Verderano Reynoso is an artist, antiquarian, and a PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley. Her artistic and academic work is centered around nineteenth century American sideshows and popular culture. Her art has been exhibited internationally and has been featured on E! Online, Gawker, the WB, TMZ, the Rumpus.com, Alameda Magazine, Oakland Magazine, Apartment Therapy, and many other publications and newspapers. She has published articles on folklore and Early American amusements in Proverbium and the Early American Review. She owns a gallery in Oakland, CA with her husband. Click HERE to watch VIDEO
Martin Webb came to the East Bay from England in 2003. Previously a painter and art teacher, he worked as a designer and installer for commercial concrete art projects in the USA, Canada and Mexico. His studio work has been exhibited in the Bay Area and beyond, and he has completed several public art commissions. Much of Martin’s art reflects on the experience of travel, man’s interaction with the natural landscape, and individual stories of migration. He has developed a simple vocabulary of abstract forms, patterns, representational symbols and figures. His has an aversion to art-stores and predominantly works with construction materials – cement, industrial pigments, reclaimed wood, and found metal objects. Click HERE to watch VIDEO
Masako Miki is a native of Japan and now lives and works in Berkeley. She has exhibited throughout the Bay Area, including Root Division Gallery and Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco, the Berkeley Art C enter, Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland, and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. Her work is also available at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery. Recently she has finished an artist residency at the Contemporary Artists Center in Troy, New York. Masako Miki received her MFA from San Jose State University.
Matthew Pugh is an Oakland based draftsman, sculptor, and painter. He attained his BFA in Illustration from CCAC in 2004. His current body of work focuses on a combination of sculpture, drawing, and painting. These mediums serve as visual development for an ongoing narrative he is constructing as a way to merge the world around him with one developed in his imagination. He is particularly interested in exploring the unknown through a combination of materials and process. The experience of collecting, repurposing, and deconstructing found materials play a crucial role in his work. He navigates this mixed media series using what he has learned from traditional media as well as the study of nature and the human form. He has donated his work to the NASA space program, and has shown at galleries in the North and South Bay Area. He is currently working on a sculpture to celebrate the importance of Earth Day at the Civic Center in San Francisco.
Matt Reynoso works in a variety of medium including wood, metal, painting, printmaking, illustration, and murals. His work ranges from intimate forged jewelry to building sized murals. He has done numerous commissioned works for cities, businesses, and private entities. Some of his notable projects include a reclaimed wood conference table for Numi Tea and a downtown mural for the city of Fullerton. Click HERE to watch VIDEO
Patricia Gillespie is a mixed media artist who lives & works in Oakland, California. Throughout her career & personal work she has always “made stuff”. Her projects have ranged from Art Direction, Illustration & Graphic Design to Film & Theater Scenic Design to Photo Styling & Floral Design, & much-much-more. Patricia has exhibited her work both nationally & internationally. She also has worked with various clients in the world of publishing, music & entertainment.
Renee DeCarlo Johnson was born in Englewood, Colorado in 1972. She moved with her family every 2 years until settling in NW Washington where she finished high school. She attended San Diego State University where she received her BFA in 1996 and her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2000. Both degrees were in sculpture, however while finishing her MFA she discovered alternative processes in drawing-a deviation that has enlightened and refreshed her studio practice to the present. Currently, the majority of Renee’s work is on paper, however she incorporates a diverse and non-traditional selection of materials to the genre constantly looking for balance between materials and processes. Renee has participated in group and solo shows throughout Oregon, Colorado, Washington DC and San Francisco, and is in collections throughout California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and New York. She currently lives and works in San Francisco with her husband, chasing around their 2 boys. Click HERE to watch VIDEO
Ryan McJunkin is a mixed-media artist specializing in painting, screen printing, and digital art in Berkeley CA. Born in 1977, he started painting early, and continued art making in community college before transferring to art school. In 2004 he graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. McJunkin describes his work as being particularly inspired by his many backpacking trips into the narrow canyons of the southwest, and his most recent works are inspired by excursions to Yosemite and Joshua Tree in California. McJunkin’s techniques are frequently developed in imitation of natural elements. Often pouring, dripping, splashing, and spraying paint, he allows chance to blur the borders between intention and chaos. His subject matter varies greatly from the figure and landscape, to the abstract and political, often intertwining meaning and symbolism that can become as layered as the geologic buildup of his pigments. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Tallulah Terryll produces bright, upbeat fields of glyphs. Her interest lies in making small visual vacations for the eye to wander about. Tallulah’s work has been known to cause head bopping and the occasional full body sway. A partial list of her influences includes the rings left by cups on tables, repeating words over and over until they become absurd, a job which forced her to sort and count beads in meditative monotony, and the work of Kathleen Rabel. Tallulah’s work has been exhibited in Seattle, New York City, Oakland, and Nagoya, Japan. She lives, works and plays in Oakland, CA. CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO
Thomas Christopher Haag was born in wichita, kansas into a family as vast as the sea. He took math classes for some reason at the university of kansas and then he quit that and started hitchhiking. He has lived in southern mexico, switzerland, india, the pacific northwest, the great american southwest and now, oakland, ca. When He’s had to work, he’s been a commercial diver, a propman, an art director, a low-volume smuggler, a curator, and a gallery owner. forced to name-drop, he enjoys mentioning that he was recently in a group show with the likes of shepard fairey, chaz bojorquez, henry chalfant, gaia, swoon, and slinkachu. He also once worked for eleven days in a dog food factory where they made kibbles ‘n bits. He prefers to paint.
The Compound Gallery is pleased to present ART IN A BOX, an art subscription service featuring Bay Area artists. Operating on the model of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) or wine subscription service, Art in a Box offers amazing original works of art instead of vegetables or wine.
