Gallery Route One exhibitions: Dorothy Nissen, Point Guild, Xander Weaver-Scull

Dorothy Nissen: Sign Me Up for Treason, Love & Dissonance During the Decline of Civilization (+ Nature)

Point Guild: Transmittance

Xander Weaver-Scull: Larger Than Life

Friday, October 5th through Sunday, November 11th 

Opening Reception: Saturday October 6th, 3 – 5 PM 

Artist Talks, 2:30 – 3 PM

Closing Reception: Sunday November 11th, 3 – 5 PM

Center Gallery 

Dorothy Nissen: Sign Me Up for Treason, Love & Dissonance During the Decline of Civilization (+ Nature)

Dorothy Nissen became an artist in first grade, compelled to draw red-headed witches to ward off the ambivalent vibrations of a fellow 6-year-olds. In her exhibition Sign Me Up for Treason she shows wildly divergent work, conceived & executed in the crisis — and feeling of loss — we are facing as Americans. 

Using ink, handwriting, found objects, the stuff of dreams, and whatever is at hand, her work is driven by a need to dialog with the unconscious. She seeks to integrate the dark and divine parts of psyche and finds that the encounter of hand with matter induces a dream state, where ego is left behind and error provides a roadmap to becoming all that one is. 

Project Space

Point Guild:Transmittance, multi media installation. Within a dimly lit setting, Point Guild offers sculptural elements with audio, video, photography, and light to transmit the artists’ extreme experiences while travelling in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. From the searing daylight exposure of the altiplano, the blackness of the Atacama Desert at night, and the simultaneous radiance and weight of Pacific currents, Point Guild artists Staci Page and Cristine Poster have made an installation to serve as a sensorial map of inquiry and discovery.

Field investigation can be both a method of research and a protracted performative act. Over a period of six weeks, Staci Page and Cristine Posner made rapid transitions between extreme climate zones and topographies in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. It was an intense survey that stretched their endurance. The artists used their time afield to explore the unfamiliar, to respond to a spectrum of sites, and to tinker with collaborative methods.

In physics, transmittance is the ratio of energy absorbed by a body or surface to that transmitted through it. This exhibition explores the physical and psychological terrain of the expedition as rendered by the artists’ collective memories and retrofitted to the perimeters of the gallery space.

About Point Guild:

Based on an interdisciplinary model of field research and production, Point Guild, established in 2016, is a collective comprised of two multimedia artists, Staci Page and Cristine Posner. As collaborators they engage in human/environmental interactions through various forms: from poetic expression to the interpretation of scientific data. Currently they are staging a series of projects focused on reckoning where and how human activity and remote ecologies tangle. Each project begins with in-depth field investigation, observing, exploring, collecting data and experience on site. Their premise is to become participants within a landscape in order to test the boundaries of human adaptation to the environment.

Staci Page and Cristine Posner each hold a Master’s of Fine Art from the University of New Mexico. As Point Guild they are the recipient of the Post MFA Land Arts Mobile Research Grant in 2016, the Puffin Visual Artists Grant in 2017, Artists in Residence at Ucross Foundation in 2017, and participating artists for the 2018 Visual Curator Series with Central Features Contemporary Art.

Annex

Xander Weaver-Scull: Larger Than Life

Larger Than Life is an exhibit of three large-scale, limited varied-edition portraits of Robin Williams made with hand drawn and cut cardboard stencils and spray-paints. At the time of William’s death, the artist, Xander Weaver-Scull, was struck by a profound note of loss along with gratitude for the joy, laughter, and tears inspired by the actor’s transcendent humanity.

When the rainbow tunnel on Highway 101 was renamed the Robin Williams Tunnel, the idea clicked into place to make a large-scale portrait of Robin and to sneak in late at night and stencil his face on the tunnel. However, after beginning the piece, Weaver-Scull discovered that the tunnel is federal land, and getting caught installing this project would be considered a federal offense and could prevent him from ever teaching in public schools again.

The new focus became creating works on paper as well as finding ways to legally create public murals. Robin was an integral part of Marin County and could be seen unexpectedly biking through San Anselmo or visiting a local coffee shop. Weaver-Scull hopes to spread Robin’s portrait around the Bay Area, so we all can continue having unexpected encounters and glimpses of him.

A West Marin native, Xander Weaver-Scull is a teaching artist in the Bay Area. He’s a printmaker who has been using stencils for fine art since 2011, when he studied how to use visual art for social and environmental justice messaging at Hampshire College. The Robin Williams series diverges thematically from the majority of Weaver-Scull’s recent work, which has been focused on creating non-didactic artwork of threatened, endangered and recovered species that are unable to speak on their own behalf. In a world where fear and apocalyptic framing are widely used to influence people, Weaver-Scull has created work that inspires, and presents issues in a non-confrontational manner. He hopes his Larger Than Life exhibit will give viewers an opportunity to have a uniquely intimate experience surrounded by Robin’s humanity.

http://www.dorothynissen.com/

https://www.pointguild.com/

https://www.xanderweaverscull.com/

Gallery Route One is open 11 AM – 5 PM every day except Tuesday.