We are really excited to introduce artist Alison Tharp to Art in a Box.  Alison’s artwork caught our eye and we knew she would be a perfect match for Art in a Box.  She is prolific, fun, and her work makes us smile.

Alison Tharp is interested in everything. “I like being in crowded public places and taking the bus. I carry a sketch book everywhere and draw people around me. I write down little bits of conversations I hear. I’m a voyeur sometimes and I’m nosy and curious and never bored. I have lived in Oakland since 1998 and attended the California College of the Arts for illustration and painting. I work with watercolors and acrylic inks and paints. I experiment with a wide variety of media in my work. My art speaks to me through other people.I often hear myself thanking someone for telling me what my painting is about. It’s how I work, I love a good mystery. I love the dice roll of two unrelated objects getting married on the page and making us laugh.”

This piece is going to a subscriber soon!

We are excited to introduce new Art in a Box artist David Spiher.  David is an amazing painter and printmaker, and his works are always fresh, fun, and expressive.

David Spiher is an artist who lives in the East Bay and makes art—currently producing prints and paintings—at the Compound Studios in Oakland. He seroconverted in January 1987 and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1998. “I have been an assistant for a number of artists, designers and crafts people so I am really used to helping others make work. However, very often I have found it really hard to make my own, to justify my own choices, sometimes even to myself,” Spiher says. As a way to free himself from these self-imposed restrictions, he has shifted personae depending on subject matter and interest in various media. From 2004 to 2009, he produced hand-painted pornographic ceramic plates as Virginia Trembles. As David Six, he has been producing figurative work for about eighteen months. About the works shown here, he says: “On a lot of levels I equate my experience of HIV—for myself, my lovers, my friends and generation—with the flooding of New Orleans and the tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan. It sounds crazy because it was crazy… is crazy.

This piece is going out to a subscriber soon!

(March 16th-April 21st, 2012)

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 16th, 6-9pm
Closing Tea + Cake Walk: Sunday, April 21st, 3-6pm

Join us for an exhibition featuring the full size work of artists who participate in our Art in a Box Subscription Service. Our artists work in a variety of media and will be showcasing some of their newest work.

Participating Artists: Alison OK Frost, Ben Belknap, Clare Szydlowski, Crystal Morey, David Fullarton, David Spiher, Elise Mahan, Giles Goodhead, Jeanne Lorenz, Jenni Ward, Martin Webb, Masako Miki, Matthew Pugh, Patricia Gillespie, Shannon Taylor, Steve Ferrera, Tallulah Terryll, Yuki Maruyama

The closing reception will feature an old fashioned cake walk…any purchase of artwork throughout the show will get you a spot in the walk. Cakes made by artists!

*We will also be launching our Special Limited Edition Ceramic Plate Collection at the reception! (You can order on our website here).

The Compound Gallery’s art subscription service, Art in a Box, began in 2009, and has delivered over 1,500 original works of art (made by Bay Area artists) to subscribers all over the world.  For 2013, we are excited to announce the launch of our first limited edition ceramic plate series, and this ain’t your grandma’s plate collection.  We are working with some of the finest Bay Area artists to create a series of one of a kind plates that collectors will love to eat their peas off of.  Our regular subscriptions can be purchased here for $50/month (including shipping).

Our special Limited Edition Plate edition is a separate subscription and each edition consists of 4 plates by 4 different artists, and there are only 12 editions available for 2013.  For $300 (this includes shipping), subscribers will receive 4 original plates delivered to his/her (one plate each month). Each 11” plate arrives inside a hand printed muslin bag along with a lovely certificate signed by the artist.   These plates are works of art that can be hung on the wall, or even put through the rigors of daily feasting (including the dishwasher and microwave).

Art in a Box is offering collectors an opportunity to acquire one of a kind works of art on ceramic plates by exceptional Bay Area artists.  Of course, subscribers will have to appreciate the unexpected because they won’t be able to select which artist’s work they will receive.  (Although, we will be offering collectors the opportunity to select one of their plates in person, at the Compound Gallery during the Outside the Box exhibition from March 16^th- April 28^th, 2013 on a first come basis).

Why have we chosen this delightfully practical medium for our latest project? Because we love functional art and we love the idea of bringing back the tradition of fine artists working with the ceramic plate. Long before there was paper and canvas to paint on, artists all over the world painted ceramic plates for decoration and tradition.  Contemporary artists such as Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Steve Kaufman, and the plate guru Piero Fornasetti, turned to the ceramic plate as a form of expression.

We are making plate collecting a modern experience. Who wouldn’t want to eat his/her mashed potatoes and green beans on a set of magnificent one of a kind plates? We will ship on the 15th of each month beginning in March, once you order, you will receive one plate per month for four consecutive months.

Participating Artists: Alison Tharp, Andreina Davila, Ben Belknap, Clare Szydlowski, Crystal Morey, David Fullarton, David Spiher, Jeanne Lorenz, Jeremiah Jenkins, Lena Verderano Reynoso, Martin Webb, Matthew Pugh, Matt Reynoso, Patricia Gillespie, Shannon Taylor, Steve Ferrera, Tallulah Terryll.

 *Editions will be available on Friday, March 15th, 2013 at 3pm PST 

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PLATES AND ORDER

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