July, 2014 | Beverly Shipko, Artist

San Francisco Mural Tour

July 14, 2014 by Beverly

I have a new appreciation for public mural art after a recent vacation in the San Francisco Bay Area – a blend of everything from folk art to graffiti seen from multi-cultural viewpoints.While my husband, Jay, and I visited a number of museums, some of the most dynamic and unexpectedly powerfully art was outside!

Our self-led mural tour started the first day at Coit Tower with its recently restored indoor frescos by 27 on-site artists dedicated to equality for all. While waiting in the elevator line, we got a good look at these more traditional images reflecting the influence of Diego Rivera, a prominent painter who led the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art, and who received several SF commissions including one now at the SF Art Institute. Rivera’s original mural at Coit was destroyed to make room for an image of Lenin. As you can see, rural and urban industry was an important theme here.

As the week progressed and we spent more time outside, and we started paying attention to outdoor murals like this in Chinatown

One afternoon we went to Clarion Alley Murals in the Mission District, the area with the highest concentration of murals in SF. The Clarion Alley Murals Project (CAMP) is an artists collective first formed in 1992 to help other artist create murals in Clarion Alley and surrounding areas that focused on the theme of Central American struggle. Here we see one of the more visually complex works referencing film.

Popular icons were often incorporated, as in this simple but moving tribute to Michael Jackson so appropriately executed in “Black or White”.

You can see how the quiet Michael Jackson memorial stands out when surrounded by murals packed with large splashes of intense color.

This thought-provoking mural juxtaposes a beautiful image with eery creatures and a reinterpreted Uncle Sam to make a statement. How do you interpret this one?

Then there were images of pure poetry.

Next on our agenda was The Women’s Building Mural, which is striking in its creative design and strong integration with existing architectural elements, literally wrapping around them. You can read more about this multi-cultural, multi-generational collaboration of seven women artists in 1994 here.

Murals were everywhere in Mission and we made a number of unplanned photo stops on the way to Balmy Street, including this recreational center.

Like Clarion Alley, Balmy Street was covered in murals!

Here’s one of the most hauntingly beautiful creations on a garage door.

Occasionally, we found murals like this one which incorporated iconic images from famous works of art, like Picasso’s epic “Guernica”. Which elements do you recognize?

On our way to dinner in North Beach, we came across this vivid depiction of life in the countryside outside of the US.

A few blocks away we found this tribute to contemporary jazz in the US. Never a dull moment!

For those of you who have the opportunity to visit San Francisco, I would suggest taking a Mission District Mural Tour offered for free by SF City Guides, which came highly recommended. Or look for another tour operator. There’s so much to see that a tour guide with expertise would be welcome.

Our newfound awareness and admiration for this popular and fairly commonplace art form in SF gave us a context for the murals we encountered during our upcoming Facebook Tour, which will be the subject of one of my next posts. To be continued…

Bites in Print

July 7, 2014 by Beverly

Today’s blog focuses on various ways to execute bites from Oreo Cookies. If you were expecting bites from The Vampire Diaries or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you may want to look elsewhere…. I finally took the plunge into the whole new world of prints, opening the door to a new area of exploration – along with a new gallery in California and a July group show in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

After working almost exclusively in oil for many years, I began a series of 6 x 6 inch Oreo cookie drawings. Since it is easier and quicker to draw than to paint (think no messy oil paint brush cleanup!), I am able to explore a larger variety of possibilities and whimsical compositions using this particular icon. Here are 10 drawings in cello bags, along with some of the original subjects.

My initial concept was to make prints of single original Limited Edition Giclée Art Prints based on the Oreo drawings, like this one.

While looking at the initial array square Oreo drawings on the table (shown above), I started playing with the tiles and arranging them. A composition eventually emerged. For the next two days, I intermittently rearranged the drawings, when I finally realized I was looking at my first composite print of 9 Oreo Cookies called “Oreo Mandala”. “Oreo Mandala” made its gallery debut at SuperFresh Food Art Gallery in Novato, CA, which Jay and I visited on the first day of our recent San Francisco trip. Let me introduce you to one of the co-owners, Jennifer Carden, a California food stylist, who coincidentally went to art school at SUNY Purchase. It’s a small world!

Don’t you just love the big fork next to the Oreo print?

Imagine being in a room surrounded by exquisite food, without gaining any weight… I have Cristine Kossow, a fellow food artist who I met through our local Art Card Group, to thank for telling me about this gallery.

Now that I am officially an artist who works in print, there are a plethora of opportunities to exhibit prints and drawings that were previously unavailable, such as the PaperWorks 2014 juried show at Upstream Gallery in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, currently on display.

PaperWorks 2014 featured in the RiverTowns Enterprise – with a delicious surprise!

The two Oreo prints accepted into this exhibit are part of a series showing participating entries from my Oreo Cookie Contest, held during the RiverArts Open Studio Tour a few years back. Since the “biter” of the bottom Oreo neglected to leave their name, this “portrait” is titled “Oreo Cookie #2 – Anonymous”. The top print, “Oreo Cookie #8 – My Bite”, was my own contribution to the series and thus is my Oreo “portrait”. Can you see the resemblance?

Stop by the Upstream Gallery before July 27^thfor a closer look!

Thank you to all my loyal fans who have encouraged me to stretch, to be more adventuresome, and to try a new media. In other words, thanks for inspiring me to take a bite out of life!