Cybele Rowe: This Woman's Work

Featured artist at the Art Foundry Gallery:

Cybele Rowe
This Woman’s Work

February 2 – March 5, 2011

Describing clay as the most honest and sensual of media, Cybele Rowe’s love affair with the medium began in her birthplace of Sydney, Australia. As a young graduate of the highly regarded City Art University of New South Wales, she landed a show at the oldest and largest gallery in Sydney; an art grant soon followed from the Australian Government, which enabled her to travel the world. She later moved to New York, where Rowe exhibited her work and lectured at the Smithsonian Institution.

With the birth of her first child she and her husband, illustrator Peter Bollinger, moved to the West Coast and remodeled a 100-year-old dance hall in Southern California to encompass her dramatic, large-scale sculptural works. Rowe found a ceramic patron in Bryan Dansell of Mission Clay in Corona, California, and creates many of her huge abstracts inside the enormous beehive kilns at the facility.

Equally comfortable working in bronze, vitrified clay, or polymer media, Rowe creates bold, enigmatic forms imbued with the mysteries of fertility and the female. Husks addresses the archetypal question of a woman’s purpose after creating life; while the recent series, The Evolution of the Curve or Curvelution accentuates the power of the curve as it bends and curves into an erotic, colorful, and playful form.

“There is nothing sexier than a curve, there is nothing more simple than clay, there is nothing more thrilling than huge amounts of thermal energy and the alchemy that comes with it.”

Opening Reception:

Second Saturday, February 12, 2011

6 - 9 pm

For more information go to artfoundrygallery.com

The Gift Of Art - Now Showing!

Art Foundry Gallery
December 2010

“The Gift of Art: Paintings, Prints, and Sculpture"

December 2 – December 31, 2010

Second Saturday Reception: Dec 11, 6-9pm

Exhibiting Artists:

Jack Alvarez
Brenda Boles
Anne Bradley
Lynne Cunningham
Eric Dahlin
Roma Devanbu
Julie Didion
Hugh Gibbons
Taylor Gutermute
Andrew Hindman
Donna Hunsberger
William Ishmael
Judy Jacobs
Maggie Jimenez
Lee Kavaljian
Zbigniew Kozikowski
Bruce Leavitt
Shirley Manfredi
Craig Martinez
Anthony Montanino
Christina Pate
Dianne Poinski
Cybele Rowe
Nancy Russell
Craig Schindler
Mick Sheldon
Leslie Smith
Leslie Toms
Jean Van Keuren
Katherine Venturelli

Fernando Garcia

For more information go to:

http://www.artfoundrygallery.com/

Leslie Smith - Video Slideshow

Leslie Smith

"Liminal Spaces"

Be sure to turn your speakers on!

Mark Bowles - New Video Slideshow!

Mark Bowles

"Paintings"

Be sure to turn your speakers on!

Mark Bowles & Leslie Smith - Gallery View

Showing at the Art Foundry Gallery

Paintings

September 9 - November 6, 2010

Mark Bowles

&

Leslie Smith

Mark Bowles

Leslie Smith

Mark Bowles

Leslie Smith

Mark Bowles

Leslie Smith

Mark Bowles & Leslie Smith

September 9 – November 6, 2010

Preview Reception:

Thursday, Sept. 9th, 5 - 8pm

Second Saturday Reception:

Sept. 11th, 6 - 9pm

Mark Bowles

"The West" 48" x 48"

Leslie Smith

"Joyous Response" 48" x 48"

The Art Foundry Gallery presents a dual exhibit shared by two life-long friends, artists Mark Bowles and Leslie Smith. Over the course of their shared history and friendship they both have pursued their passion exploring the language of painting.

Visitors will discover two unique styles of abstraction: While Bowles and Smith have collaborated as one would expect friends to do over the years, when it comes to putting paint to canvas, each presents imagery uniquely their own. Perhaps most exciting about these two exhibits is each artist’s use of color. Bowles’ work focuses on classic California landscapes whose presentation is in no way ordinary. His current work is a summation of all he has done before, but now expressed at a new and even more exciting and intellectual level. Smith’s work communicates movement and energy from a more abstract psychological perspective and in some instances includes surprising textures which result from multi-media layering. It is apparent both painters love the exploration of color which evokes emotion and engages their viewers.

Leslie Smith

Opening September 9th at the Art Foundry Gallery: Leslie Smith

About the Artist :
Leslie Tucker Smith is a California born artist who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and now resides in the Sierra Nevada Foothills. A graduate of San Jose State University, she holds a degree in graphic design and at graduation received an Award of Merit for her portfolio.

As a commercial artist in Northern California, she won top recognition for her work in black and white print advertising.

Smith has always had an affinity for a range of visual and textural media. Early in her career as a clothing designer and fabric artist, the San Francisco Chronicle’s fashion editor applauded Smith for her hand made silk screened fabrics and dress designs, reminiscent of Finland’s contemporary Marimeko Designs. It was during in this time frame Smith also explored the use of wax resist techniques in fabric dying in created large wall hangings for interior and exterior spaces for which she was commissioned by the Artist in Residence at San Jose State as well through private collectors. Later, Smith expanded her interest in textiles by studying dying techniques. She followed her interest by spending time with the women of a small village on the Northern Border of Greece who had formed a small cottage industry dedicated to spinning, dying and weaving fabrics for export. She continued her interest in textiles by exploring the range of colors that could be derived from natural plant materials. Later her work was included in a group show of natural fiber spinning and plant dyes at California’s Richmond Art Center.

In the area of ceramics, Smith shared a studio in Benicia, California where she excelled in hand built stoneware that was both functional and sculptural. Later in Sacramento, her sculptural work, judged by Yoshio Taylor, received the Award of Merit in Mixed Media in a show by the Valley Sculpture Artists.

Smith has been commissioned for her work in jewelry making as well. She studied and utilized the lost wax centrifugal method of casting which she studied both as an undergraduate student at San Jose State and at the Mendocino Art Center. Smith used theses opportunities to explore and express concepts of “natural” design.

Smith has always considered herself to be a painter first and foremost. Today she uses acrylics, pastels and sewn objects in her canvases and considers herself to be as an abstract expressionist. As she describes it, “My work is a living process. It keeps me connected to something basic within myself. It sometimes takes the form of being a visual journalist, telling my life story experientially. I am a process painter in that I am captivated by how the canvas changes as I work”.

"Joyous Response", acrylic/oil crayon/pastel, 48" x 48"

In 2008 Smith’s paintings were part of a group “Color Show” at the Art Foundry Gallery Sacramento. One of her pieces was then selected for display in Sacramento’s City Hall.

Smith also holds a Masters of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy. She currently works as a psychotherapist in counseling where in she utilizes all of her capabilities and art training in her work with her clients.