Art Gallery

The Mendocino College Gallery is proud to host our first annual Dia De Los Muertos Pop-Up show, featuring:

• Skeleton Sculptures and other artworks by MC student, Mia Uribe
• Altars by Juvenal and Yolanda Vasques alongside the DDLM Committee+ students
• The Frida Kahlo Series, assemblage art works by Esther Siegel
• Skull by MC Ceramics student Lesa Oswald
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Mendocino College Gallery presents
Seeking the Light | A Long Strange Trip

Susie Racecar  and  Bob Comings

Please join us for the opening reception on
Thursday, September 5th, 4:30 – 6:30 PM 
Light refreshments will be served. 

September 5th - October 27th, 2024

Mendocino College Gallery is thrilled to present ‘Seeking the Light | A Long Strange Trip' a two-person show featuring select works by Bob Comings and Susie Racecar.

The ‘back-to-the-land movement' of the 1970's swept many young people out of urban centers to seek sanctuary in rural settings, including Mendocino College Gallery’s featured artist, Bob Comings. In the early 1970’s Comings and his wife, artist Linda MacDonald, moved to a 14-acre forested property north of Willits which they named ‘Nada Farm’. 

Self-taught artist, Susie Racecar, of the same generation, has always lived off the beaten path. From her 301-acre hill-top property above Laytonville, Racecar has been making large-scale paintings in relative isolation for the last 30+ years. She is a rare, hidden gem of the ‘outsider art’ genre. 

Racecar and her musician boyfriend, Rique, refurbished the Laytonville Fire Station building, turning it into a private gallery for 100+ of her paintings and recording studio. Her work has never been shown beyond 30 miles from where it was created, until now. 

Comings, on the other hand, hails from an academic arts background. He received his MA from San Francisco State University in 1968 after which he taught design and life drawings there. Once settled in Willits,  Comings started teaching in the newly formed Mendocino College Art department in 1977, a job he loved until he retired in 2004. 

Comings and Racecar share in common a love for high-key color and the organic complexity of textural and patterned mark-making. Beyond that, their work diverges in concept and style. Racecar's richly narrative works will take viewers on a journey, whereas Comings works introduce modern and surprising modes of mark making, including decalcomania. Coined a Visionary artist by author and critic Thomas Albright in his book Art of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945 - 1980, Comings “creates systems that are alive, open ended and require the viewer to participate”.

Both in their early 80’s, Comings and Racecar bring a breadth of experience to share, benefiting Mendocino College students and the broader community with their rich and unique personal styles and perspectives in art making. 

Opening Reception: 
Thursday, September 5th, 4:30 - 6:30 PM.
Light refreshments will be served.

Regular Gallery Hours:

Tuesdays: 12:30 - 3:30 PM
Wednesdays: 10:30 - 12:30 PM
Thursdays: 12:30 - 3:30 PM
and by appointment 

Mendocino College Gallery is located in the Center Theatre Lobby: 
1000 Hensley Creek Rd., Ukiah

You can also hear more about this show and the artists on a KZYX interview with Jazzminh Moore, gallery director, at: https://www.kzyx.org/show/art-waves

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Mendocino College Gallery presents
'CREATIVE STREAK: Works in Series'

February 18- March 21, 2024

Please join us for the opening reception on
Thursday, February 22, 4 – 6 PM 
Light refreshments will be served. 

Mendocino College Gallery is excited to present ‘CREATIVE STREAK: Works in Series’, curated by Jazzminh Moore.

The exhibition features a wide range of practices, from assemblage to cyanotype printmaking, ceramic sculpture, intricate pen + ink drawing and oil painting.

A common thread is that these artists all make their work in series. ‘Working in series’ means that the artist creates a number of different pieces that all look similar, or have the same thematic content, but are not identical.

Working in series allows an artist to think deeply about a certain subject and potentially make better art through the process. In order to tell a larger story, or to refine content, artists will explore a theme in depth across a number of pieces through variations in design elements.

CREATIVE STREAK: Works in Series features:

• Mona Cliff (Aniiih) is a Multidisciplinary visual artist. She explores the subject of contemporary Native American identity and culture through her use of traditional Native crafting methods such as seed bead embroidery and fabric applique. Based in Kansas City, Cliff is an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribe (A'aninin/Nakota Nations) she is Frozen Clan (Aniiih) and of the Medicine Bear Clan (Nakota) of Ft. Belknap, MT. Her works have been exhibited widely and will be featured in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 at theNational Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.

• Linda MacDonald makes intricate and detailed portraits of the interiors of redwood trees, coast and sequoia, in pen + ink drawing as well as watercolor and oil painting. The history of aging is there in the wood—marred, burned and charred, graffiti-laden, smooth, textured or curly. MacDonald has shown extensively in the US and Japan and has work in the collection of The White House, the City of San Francisco, the Museum of Art & Design (MAD) in NYC.

• Shannon Sullivan creates sculptures, wall pieces and installations using a core visual vocabulary rooted in the prevailing ways of nature. Sullivan's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. She is currently a Professor of Art at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California.

• Spencer Brewer + Esther Siegel create assemblage works both collaboratively and independently. The husband and wife duo have lived on their Redwood Valley ranch for the last 39 years, where they maintain a robust studio practice. It’s hard to identify where art ends and life begins there. In fact, the entire property feels like walking into a massive art installation. What appears to be an outdoor seating area becomes an Alice in Wonderland themed water fountain with the flick of a switch, water gushing out of tea pots, across cups and saucers and cascading onto the ground. Brewer and Siegel recently published a book of assemblage art, Lost and Found, which won the First Place Ben Franklin Award for 'Interior Design' at the 2023 Independent Book Publishers Association.

Opening Reception: 
Thursday, February 22nd, 4 - 6 PM.
Light refreshments will be served.

This exhibition will be open for ticket holders for the following event: 

• The New World String Project on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2 PM at the Mendocino College Center Theatre. 

Tickets are available online at www.ukiahconcerts.org and at Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah and Mazahar in Willits. For more information, please contact the UCCA at 707-463-2738 or email info@ukiahconcerts.org

Regular Gallery Hours:

Tuesdays: 3:00 - 6:00 PM
Wednesdays: 12:00 - 3:00 PM
Thursdays: 3:00 - 6:00 PM
and by appointment 

Mendocino College Gallery is located in the Center Theatre Lobby: 
1000 Hensley Creek Rd., Ukiah

 Welcome to Mendocino College's first (2020) Virtual Spring Student Show!

The challenges of the Covid Pandemic prohibited mounting our annual Spring Student Art Show in the gallery so our college graphic designer Tony Novelli has created this online version. Enjoy!

If it inspires you to be involved it is easy to join in by sending your submissions to: gallery@mendocino.edu

Any creative works will be considered for inclusion from Culinary Arts, to Circus Acts to Oil Paintings, the only stipulation being that you need to have been enrolled in a Mendocino College class in any class during this 2019-2020 academic year. The work does not have to be made for an assignment, just that you are or were a student at the college this academic year.
 

Two-Dimensional Arts

Three-Dimensional Arts

The Mendocino College Art Gallery Welcomes Artist Manuel Fernando Rios’ Exhibit Everyday People Feb 13 - Mar 15, 2020. For information about this exhibit please visit: 

/article/mendocino-college-art-gallery-welcomes-artist-manuel-fernando-rios%E2%80%99-exhibit-everyday-people

Join the Mendocino College Art Gallery for an Artist Talk with Rios and a gallery tour on March 12, 2020 from 2:30 - 4:30 pm.

Synergy:  Artist + Educator

Doug Browe & Lisa Rosenstreich

November 9 – December 14, 2017

 The Mendocino College Art Gallery is proud to announce its new exhibit, Synergy:  Artist + Educator: Doug Browe & Lisa Rosenstreich which opens with a reception on Thursday, November 9 from 4-6pm.  Come enjoy refreshments prepared by students enrolled in the Culinary Program and meet Lisa and Doug who, along with a committed group of part-time faculty, run the art programs at Mendocino College.  In addition to teaching full time, both maintain an active studio practice which in turn, influences their work with students.

Rosenstreich's mixed media work explores both abstraction and figuration. Obsessed with color and pattern, she works in oil, cold wax, acrylic and collage.   Her work reflects an interest in the natural world and human interaction.   Utilizing a vivid, subjective color pallet, she constructs images through the building of layers of paint and paper, often constructing and deconstructing a surface many times before the final composition emerges.   Ranging in size from 6” x 6” to 50” x 122”, this series of paintings and collages focus largely on formal aspects of shape, color and line; in part inspired by her experience teaching fundamental art and design concepts to students. Before moving to Ukiah in 2014, Lisa was a Visiting Professor of Painting at Humboldt State and a drawing instructor at California State University in Chico where she also received a MFA in painting and drawing in 2011.  In addition to managing the gallery at Mendocino College, she teaches painting, drawing, design, and art history.

Browe has been immersed in ceramic work for 40 years: as a designer, maker and self-taught engineer. Currently, he heads the busy ceramic and sculpture programs at Mendocino College while also working in his home studio in Elk, CA. Doug began his work in clay with a two-year pottery apprenticeship at age 20, followed by undergraduate work in ceramics, a yearlong working tour of British potters, and later in life, a Masters in Art from Sacramento State University. His collaborative work with Jan Hoyman at the Hoyman/Browe Studio from 1979-2004, focused on utilitarian ceramic vessels as tools for living.

“The work in this show originates from my own attention to place. As objects, I intend for them to hold that attention and amplify it, resonating and emanating from a physical and conceptual ground zero. The 3 assemblages in this show deal directly with my connection to place as a life force, a true north.  The work previously dealt with utility and the human interaction with objects as celebratory tools. Here the work investigates larger questions of source, material, origin, and the importance of place in the contemporary world.

Regular gallery hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 12:30-3:30 and by special appointment.   We will be closed on 11/22/17 for Thanksgiving.  For more information, call 707.468.3207 or email gallery@mendocino.edu

Tomiko Jones:  the space between here and there

September 21 – October 19, 2017

Mendocino College

The Mendocino College Art Gallery is excited to announce its new exhibit, Tomiko Jones:  the space between here and there which opens with a reception on Thursday, September 21 from 4-6pm.  Ms. Jones will also be giving an artist’s talk on Thursday, 9/28 at 4pm in room 5310 of the Center for Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA).  Following her talk, she will provide a guided tour of the exhibition.

Hatsubon, 2016

Tomiko Jones is a photographer who explores the external and internal geographies of place.

“Almost every summer, my father would pile us into the car and take us to explore the treasures of the nation, our public lands. In the most classic of touristic gestures we would set forth in a camper. We visited “feats of human engineering” --- dams, bridges and buildings were favorite stops on our way to admire “feats of nature” such as Yellowstone, Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Many, many miles of open land lay between our excursions, and watching the American landscape pass by out the panoramic window of the camper shell had a profound effect on me over the years. I would want to stop and explore, but as we were always headed for a destination, there was never enough time. This created in me a longing to return.

The overarching element throughout my work is a relationship to place, a loose mapping of a landscape and interiors that echo the internal terrain of thought. Water is ever present, shaping my identity. It represents generational migration from Japan to Hawai’i to California, to Washington and is imaged in photographic works and as reflecting pools for projected video in site-responsive installations. Growing up in multiple cultures and countercultures, changing paradigms in technology, science and society continues to have an effect on my practice.

Exploring the geography of changing landscapes, I search for places I can feel a sense of communication.  I often work at dusk, when color bleeds from the sky and the sublime reveals itself. As the light of day dims, time and movement become an integral part of the photographic process. I find quiet, yet significant moments in the transitional place between land and water, destruction and reclamation, thought and action.”  - Tomiko Jones, Artist Statement, 2017

Jones received her Master of Fine Arts in Photography with a Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is the recipient of awards including the Center for Photography at Woodstock AIR Program, En Foco New Works Fellowship (New York), 4Culture and CityArtists (Seattle), and Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes (France). Tomiko was an invited Resident Artist at Museé Niépce in Chalon-Sur-Saône, France, and a Fellow at The Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France.

As Visiting Artist and Curator-in-Residence at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, Tomiko developed Cumulus, an exhibition and programming series examining environmental issues. As an educator, Tomiko taught in the MFA Program at CIIS, worked as Assistant Professor and Photography Program Coordinator at Metropolitan State University of Denver, redeveloping curriculum to reflect interdisciplinary practices; full-time Faculty at New Mexico State University; and Visiting Professor at Drury University Summer Institute for Visual Arts. She is a national board member of the Society for Photographic Education.   Currently, she is teaching photography at Mendocino College while engaged in a self-directed residency in the Anderson Valley.  For more information, visit http://tomikojonesphoto.com/

Tomiko Jones:  the space between here and there runs from September 21 – October 19, 2017 at the Mendocino College Art Gallery, Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, CA 95482.  Regular gallery hours are T, W, TH from 12:30-3:30 and by appointment.  Contact us at 707.468.3207.

Dreams, Aliens and Ghosts:  Drawing by Adrianna Oberg

One Week Only!

August 24 – August 31, 2017

Mendocino College

The Mendocino College Art Gallery is excited to announce its new exhibit, “Dreams, Aliens and Ghosts:  Drawing by Adrianna Oberg” which opens with a reception on Thursday, August 24 from 4-6pm. 

The Anchor and the Visionary, 11x14”, ballpoint on paper, 2015

Adrianna Oberg is a student at Mendocino College.  She has been drawing since the age of four and is currently pursuing an Associate’s Degree for Transfer in Studio Arts.   For the last three years she has been working on a series of thirty highly detailed drawings using ball point pen, watercolor and acrylic.  Each drawing is densely layered with imagery and text, evoking dream-like environments with multiple narrative possibilities.  Adrianna describes her approach as “meditative, hyper-detailed and coming out of solitary, emotionally charged periods of time”.

This student solo show is made possible by the newly formed Friends of the College Gallery Foundation Affiliate Group.  This exciting partnership was formed with the goal of expanding the gallery’s role in art education for MC college students and the community at large.    For those who are interested in supporting this effort, donations to the College Foundation can now be earmarked specifically for the Art Gallery.  In addition to providing an opportunity for advanced students to exhibit their work; the Gallery Affiliate funded a trip to see the Matisse/Diebenkorn show at SFMOMA for 24 art students last spring.  For the majority of the students, this was their first time visiting this museum.

Dreams, Aliens and Ghosts:  Drawing by Adrianna Oberg runs from August 24 – August 31, 2017

at the Mendocino College Art Gallery, Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, CA 95482.  Regular gallery hours are T, W, TH from 12:30-3:30 and by appointment.  Contact us at www.mendocino.edu or 707.468.3207

Mendocino College Art Gallery is proud to present, The Annual Juried Student Show

The Mendocino College Art Gallery is proud to announce its new exhibit, eXplorations - Paula Gray: taking the X out of anxiety and other stories, which opens with a reception on Thursday, February 9th from 4-6pm.

Paula Gray has taught visual arts at Mendocino College since 1986, both as an adjunct and full time professor. After retiring from full time teaching in 2014, she dove headlong into studio projects and has created an extensive and exciting new body of work. This show includes over sixty artworks that include three dimensional constructions made from found materials, collages, prints and paintings. The title of the exhibit alludes to a time of change in Ms. Gray’s life that, as often happens, came with an increase in anxiety. She describes a dream she had about the word "anxiety" itself in which the X was missing. This dream became a catalyst for artwork that began with a focus on the letter “X” and developed in myriad directions ranging from the abstract to representational.

Red X, Mixed Media, 2016

Employing her keen and dry sense of humor, three-dimensional X-shaped constructions are created from game parts, railroad signs, toys, and other odd bits and pieces of our culture. They take a whimsical stab at the often debilitating effects of anxiety. Collages are sourced from saved letters Gray sent to her parents when she went away to art school and from love letters exchanged between her parents during WWII. In these, the use of X's and O's as substitute symbols for terms of endearment easily adapt into the work and become part of the formal element of pattern. Likewise, postage stamp cancellations harvested from these saved letters become a beautifully patterned record of personal experience as well as a reference to a historically intense time and place.

Biblio Burro, Acrylic on panel with gold leaf, 2016

Many of the paintings in the exhibit feature a subject matter for which Ms. Gray is well known. In her words, “Animals, with their grace and devotion, have always been partners to my existence and well-being. Their presence is centering, their communication direct and uncomplicated. I noted that burros have played a subservient role as bearers of burden for people throughout human recorded history. Giotto, considered to be the father of modern painting, depicted burros in his religious frescoes, which made me think he must have had the assistance of one in his own travels and vocations, and as a model. I read of burros being used in South and Central America as rural "bookmobiles." I thought that a ‘Biblio Burro’ might also be employed to bring significant knowledge in our digital era of anxiety. I wanted to honor some animals and the stories they participate in to serve as reminders for us to ‘Act Balancing,’ that ‘The Race is Not to the Swift,’ (both names of paintings in the show) and that the heart is, after all, a drum that we dance to, even in times of anxiety.”

Gray grew up in a house on the sand dunes of Moss Landing, California, a small fishing village on Monterey Bay. Her parents came from farming backgrounds in Alabama and Missouri; in Moss Landing, her father ran a fish cannery and her mother was the postmistress and operated a branch of the county library out of a spare room in their house. Paula showed two aptitudes from an early age - a winning way with animals, and an ability to draw. She's been drawing portraits of people and animals as long as she can remember. Her artwork drew the attention of a syndicated cartoonist who suggested she apply to the Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, where she was accepted and received her BFA in Fine Arts.

While attending Chouinard, she went to work for Walter E. Disney Enterprises, fabricating attractions for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. She later attended graduate school at UCLA and received a Master's Degree in environmental design. But instead of plunging into L.A.'s art or design world, she went back to the country, this time to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she served as a curator for the Museum of Northern Arizona. While there she was influenced by her exposure to the Hopi and Navajo people and their art, especially their sense of design and the way they abstracted natural forms in their pottery, paintings and weavings.

After three years, she returned to Los Angeles and worked for the Citywide Mural Project, supervising the creation of thirty murals around the city. She also got to indulge her longtime love of cartooning as an illustrator for the Constitutional Rights Foundation, writing and illustrating comic books and film strips. In addition, she has worked as a fashion photographer, book illustrator, public school art teacher, and a freelance graphic artist. In 1980, Paula moved back to northern California, began teaching art to youngsters and adults in Mendocino County and built her own house in Yorkville. She has remained committed to her own art practice, participating in over 100 exhibitions over the course of her career.

eXplorations - Paula Gray also marks the official start of the Friends of the Mendocino College Art Gallery, a new affiliate program with the Mendocino College Foundation. This exciting new partnership has been established to help the Gallery further enrich student’s exposure to contemporary art by bringing in guest artists and speakers from outside of the area, providing tickets and transportation to museums/galleries in the SFBA and adding additional hours for gallery operation to promote increased access for both the college and greater Mendocino County community. Ms. Gray has generously donated a piece of artwork to be raffled off in support of this new affiliate group. Raffle tickets can be purchased throughout the run of the show for $5 each or five for $20.

eXplorations - Paula Gray: taking the X out of anxiety and other stories runs February 9 - March 26, 2017 at the Mendocino College Art Gallery, Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, CA 95482. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 12:30-3:30 as well as by special appointment. Contact us at www.mendocino.edu or 707.468.3207 for more information.

Travelin' Dave presents the Bigfoot Family Band
an art installation by Lush Newton

11/3/16 - 12/8/16

Fresh Ink: Contemporary Printmaking
works by Harry Frank and Jonathan Palmer

9/15 - 10/13/16