Doyle Johnson's work explores the relationship between sexuality and ethics within a sphere of politics and spirituality-with influences as diverse as Jung and Warhol, new combinations are created from both explicit and implicit layers. As spatial terms become transformed through emergent and critical practice the viewer is left with an impression of the ideas of our future.

Johnson

As an artist, I have always been interested by the thin edge between the beautiful and the hideous, the personal and the public, the future and the past. I often give chance the leading role in starting a new body of work. An image, an object, even a line will capture my attention and I will explore its possibilities. I place a lot of importance on the physical and textural properties inherent to the materials I use.

 My current work started from an image I saw in a newspaper of workers in a Belgian rubber plantation at the beginning of the 20th century. I did not know until I came to United States how brutal Belgium had been as a colonial power. Through this work, I hope to show both the dignity of the human race and its horrific treatment of its own, then and now. With this series, I am moving into a more public sphere than usual. Somehow, these ceramic bottles seem a good vehicle for my thoughts.

In a parallel body of work, I am exploring the issue of family history and the impact of childhood experiences on one’s life.

Most of my sculptures spring from a reverence for the natural world. The tree icons honor nature and encourage reflection. Other sculptures explore points of contact where humans appropriate ever more of nature into our service.

Welded steel is my favorite medium - through manipulation, the molten metal flows like lava and reveals its organic character. Sometimes I cast concrete in combination with the steel. Both of these materials possess a physical duality: they may appear quite rigid or very fluid, depending on how they are manipulated.

My concern as a conceptual artist is making the viewer think about something in a new way. I like to blur the line between the medium and the image, and often make pieces that are self referential or involve the viewer as a coconspirator. Aesthetically, I like to use unusual textures and optical effects. My pieces are playful, at least on the surface, but have a deeper, often disturbing meaning. As I've evolved as an artist, my work has become political and philosophical. 

I find found objects fascinating, and whereas many artists use them as elements in an assemblage, I like to feature them as they are, and by embellishing them, they are seen fresh, active perspective. For example, a gas mask is at first frightening, but upon reflection, one is never as vulnerable as when one is wearing one. 

As for involving the viewer, in The Judgement, one is forced to pace back and forth to read the curved text on the heads, just as a prisoner does in a cell. I also have a body of work using objects with lenses. For example, a microscope head mounted on the wall. When you look though it, you see the message “This is how they’ll find out that you’re dying.” A similarly mounted WWII bombsight focuses on text which says “This is how your grandparents’ house was last seen”.

I believe art should move us, either through beauty, emotion, or ideas. 

My art is a poetic exploration of my ideas…an extension of my inner self, allowing me to express myself in ways I can’t easily articulate.  I went through a drastic change in what I thought was my path, before finding glass.  I seek to express that need to be true to self, through my work.

My signature is a technique I developed for weaving glass, which allows me to create large scale sculptures by melting glass in the flame at a table top torch.   I built upon this idea, and have personally developed many of the techniques used to create my intricate, lampworked glass sculptures. This process of weaving, and making components, can take up to 3-4 months, for a large scale piece.  I often combine flameworked glass with pate de verre, in a casting process I learned from the Higuchis.  By working with colored glass powders and frits, I use a painstaking process of layering color, to create a cast leaf or nest.   I have since pioneered an approach for casting and attaching pate de verre components to my lampworked glass sculpture.  I also create much of the subtle color in my work through a process of blending and mixing color, and pulling cane… much like a painter would on a palette. In fact, I view the flameworking and pate de verre process as being very similar to painting. My unique use of color and careful, yet gestural sculptures are a symphonic exploration that continues to lead me in new directions.  It is this exploration, and the freedom therein, that drives my desire to create. 

Technique merges with narratives in my work, to express metaphorical bridges between nature and human beings.  Through the delicate, glass nests, flowers, branches, and leaves in each piece, I seek to depict the cycle of life:  growth, discovery, change, and renewal.  Inspired by the storytelling tradition of woven tapestry and basketry, I see myself weaving with glass to connect the viewer to the story of the natural world.  I bring glass to life, using its fluidity and fragility to express the beauty, vulnerability, peacefulness and decay found in nature's story.  In pieces like "Choice", "Renewal", and "Becoming", I consider the tension between inner strength versus timing and circumstance, and their impact on choice and personal growth.  My eggs, buds, and flowers are key elements that evoke this notion of rebirth, becoming, and transformation of self. 

My sculpture derives from the human figure, whether representational or abstract form. I begin a sculpture by looking for a figurative gesture within the stone I am carving. By working from a gesture I am able to contrast the movement in the form with the solidity of the rock, and to also contrast the texture and weight of the rough stone with the beauty of the final polished stone.

Having worked as an artist for 3 decades, Melissa Shanley's history spans many mediums; however, recent years and recent works bring her to focus on various forms of fiber art sculpture.  Images have also been finding their way to her again through photography. 

Melissa was exposed to the shape, feel and grains of fine wood at a young age by her parents who were restorers of fine antique furniture and worked from their apartment.  This influenced Melissa’s need to create tactile, fiber art and sculptures: work which can be felt even when it is not being touched.  As a child before a Van Gogh painting in a museum in Paris, Melissa told her mother she wanted to make art which made others feel the way this painting made her feel.

Throughout her life, she experimented with various standard and unconventional materials.  At Scripps College, she was exposed to fiber art and the process of wet felting.  She was also immediately drawn to copper wire and has been working with both ever since.  

At the Claremont Colleges, Melissa was also greatly influenced by the artist and Pomona College figural art professor, Charles Daugherty.  He taught her to not merely see and draw the figure, but to explore the line which came off the figure and out of her charcoal-- to follow the line, not the image.  This sense dramatically altered her perception of what she was seeing and how it was translated to the medium in front of her. 

The concept of "nest" emerged for her in the 1990s.  It was at that point that she began to incorporate egg shells and other found objects into her fiber sculptures.  Again, natural texture-- which the viewer can feel without actually touching-- holds importance in her work.  

That texture, however, often has its own natural limitations of size.  Fiber and objects which can produce that exquisite texture and line are of limited (and often tiny) size.  To increase the size of her “canvas”, Melissa is currently exploring the use of 5' to 15' eucalyptus bark with its intense natural undulations and color variations in an effort to surpass the size limitations of most natural fibers and textures.

Until the natural problem of intense texture in small quantities can be solved, however, Melissa endeavors to find other ways to bring the viewer in closer and to spend time with that texture.  One of the ways she has found to do that is to photograph the fiber sculptures.  The images of the fiber sculptures-- capturing light not found in all settings-- magnify and highlight the sensual texture which Melissa strains to bring to the viewer.

It was in this process of photographing her own work that Melissa returned to the use of photography in its own right.  Over time, she began to use the camera in daily life as her "sketchbook".   Thousands of images later, the world of texture, fiber and structural sculpture, as well as the importance of the line, re-emerge for Melissa in two dimensional format in her photography.  She also found that her early exposure to wood, grains and structure came out in her photographic images.  The beauty of line and of texture are magnified and concentrated, again bringing the viewer closer to question what they are seeing.

A new style of image also became prominent in her work at this time of photographic exploration.  Because she often had her sketchbook/camera with her, Melissa found she was capturing colorful, unusual, sometimes fun and often odd anomalies of daily life.  The resulting images often stop the viewer, producing emotional responses-- which is ultimately the goal of all her work.  

Most impressions are captured in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Europe, where she spends most of her time.  She ultimately feels successful with her photography when she hears a viewer laugh or question what they are looking at.  Knowing they are trying to decipher a sensual, tactile state they are inspecting and, ultimately feeling, she feels she has succeeded in bringing the viewer in close enough to interact with the subject.

Although her photographic images will not be mounted for viewing at SF Open Studios 2013, the images will be available in digital format for review and can be ordered, purchased and scheduled for free delivery within the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jason Bernhardt is a native San Franciscan, who has been active in the local arts and music scene for a number of years. Originally a musician both here and internationally, Jason is now also a working artist and sculptor. His organic pieces are reflections of his appreciation for nature and its evolving condition. Self taught, Jason's creativity is unique, leaving raw stone to blend with polished figures simultaneously portraying both life and its decay. Existence is the underlying theme of his works.

     Jason is a reguler visiting artist and teaches at the Urban School of San Francisco, his work is shown locally and has been sold to collectors nationally. As well as creating original pieces, Jason also works closely with clients on commissions and site specific work. To learn more about the collection, where to purchase or how to commission a piece, please contact Jason directly. 

Sculpture and photography are My mediums