Sasha Darling & The BellJar Blog — Art Opening

SOFTLY FALLING
FEATURING NEW WORK BY BELLA BIGSBY

December 18, 2009 – January 14, 2010
Opening Reception: December 18th, 6 – 9PM

Gallery BellJar
3187 16th St. (at Guerrero St.)
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-626-1749

Bella Bigsby is a self-taught artist. She grew up in Norfolk, England and from childhood has been fascinated by nature and has been driven to explore and describe it through art. Gallery BellJar is pleased to exhibit her oil paintings and printed work this winter.

Bigsby’s work is not intended as a reflection of nature. She is interested in an imagined nature, such as that of the world of fairy tale or myth, a place of mystery where trees and animals might talk.

When depicting animals and birds she often isolates them from a recognizable background, surrounding them with a soft-toned and empty space - a mysterious world for them to inhabit. Rather than simply creating a scene from nature, she places the creatures into an imagined realm separate from real time and place, allowing the soulfulness of her subjects to transcend their physicality.

MY HUSBAND
AN ART EXHIBITION
FEATURING NEW WORK BY CAMILLA NEWHAGEN

November 20 - December 16, 2009
Opening Reception: November 20th, 6 – 9PM
Gallery BellJar3187 16th St. (at Guerrero St.)

The BellJar's next show will be a mixed media installation including provocative embroidery, collage, and paper sculpture. Newhagen displays delicate paper cut outs, stitched imagery, and sculptural elements to highlight the taboo, and uses repetition as a tool to deal with “an uncomfortable history of human kind”.

Camilla Newhagen’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions and juried group shows at galleries and museums, both domestically and internationally. She has been shown at The Berkeley Art Center in Berkeley, Root Division in San Francisco; Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s Spring Exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and the University of Contemporary Art in Paris, France.

Newhagen’s work is reviewed worldwide in newspapers and online with publications such as the Danish newspaper Politiken, The Sacramento Bee, The Bay Area Reporter of San Francisco and the art magazine Futuro Contemporary Art in Switzerland. She is also featured in an exclusive interview on Artslant.com

slings and arrows

October 15th - November 18th

Opening Reception
October, Friday the 16th
6:00 - 9:00 PM

Gallery BellJar
3187 16th Street
San Francisco

See his work here




I fear I have no voice. I am awkward and anxious. I don’t remember the details of growing up, but long to tell my story. Making art has become my refuge in which to make sense of the world and my forgotten childhood. Inspired by stories that examine loneliness, responsibility, and choice, I am able to explore the tension between youth and maturity.

My drawings, reminiscent of old photographs, blur the line between the observed, the imagined. While the sculptural work, composed of discarded stuffed animals, suggests the uneasy feeling of lost childhood.

I take the stories I know, stories you may also know, and record them differently. At first glance the work reads like a fairytale, the playful images of children and animals seduce the viewer into the work. Closer observation strips away the innocent appearance and the viewer is confronted with darker stories of skepticism and failure. I combine these peculiar specific images with phrases, which often become titles, to create work that is layered with narrative possibility.

- Michael McConnell

If you did not get a chance to see Micke amazing works please stop buy as the will be up through September 16th- If you forgot to get Sasha Darling a present her birthday is all month-
XO