Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Artist Carolyn Briggs puts a feminist spin on her art, including her Bacchus Teapot, which was a second-place winner.

People and nature emerge as themes

By Shari Kaplan

With 78 works from 64 artists, the 1997 Open-Juried Show at the Los Gatos Art and Natural Science Museum showcases the best of Bay Area artists' endeavors in four categories: oil and acrylics, watercolor and pastels, mixed media and sculpture.

The judge, George Rivera, is assistant director and chief curator of Santa Clara's Triton Museum of Art and is an artist himself.

"My goal was to select a diverse range of works which I believed exhibited a high degree of merit in technical and aesthetic accomplishment," he said in his juror's statement.

While the modes of expression--including realism, abstraction and impressionism--vary, a preference for people and nature emerged in much of the subject matter.

Harry Federico's interest in coastal towns is apparent in his bustling "Capitola Village at Dusk" and windswept "Lighthouse of Pacific Grove." Equally windswept is Barbara Bailey-Porter's "Davenport Northward," with craggy cypresses growing on dunes. In "Vantage Point," which earned her a second-place award, Jinda Mulvey looks out upon rolling seaside meadows and a sheltered cove. Her realistic attention to detail even includes individual blades of grass.

Moving inland, Jeannette Tabacco offers a warm, rural scene in "Wine Country Shed," for which she received an honorable mention. Another honorable mention went to Mary Ann Henderson for her "Sagebrush Landscape" splashed with desert color. Opting to recreate cold rather than heat, Phyllis Feemster's "Winter Moon" is dominated by an icy full moon looming over a snow-covered hill, with bare trees lined up like lonely sentries.

Among the artwork involving people is "The Golden Girl," a first-place winner by Claire Schroeven Verbiest in which a child glances pensively to her left. The small splotches of gold, copper and bronze paint in the background can also be seen in the tousled hair and ruddy, freckled complexion of the girl herself.

Maralyn Miller received a third place for "Kirston #2." The subject here is a young woman, not a girl, but she, too, looks rather pensive, her face turned toward a window with a view of purplish hills, green and yellow fields and a cloudy sky. Although not (yet) a person, the dour amphibian in Linda Fillhardt's "The Unkissed Frog" is a humorous spin on the fairy tale hero. It also earned her a third-place recognition.

Many other artists did not limit themselves to canvas.

Carolyn Briggs, who has only been sculpting for a few years, won both first and second place in the sculpture category for "To Thine Own Self Be True" and "Bacchus."

Briggs says much of her work has a neoclassical flavor but with a feminist, modern spin, as evinced by the liberated, self-assured woman of "To Thine Own Self Be True." Briggs' style of empowering women evolved as she took classes in art, history, philosophy, religion and women's studies and became disenchanted with the old views toward women.

"In classical [art], women are either not sexual at all or they're viewed as someone else's property. The 'new woman' is powerful, autonomous, owns her own feelings and is not 'owned,' " Briggs explains, pointing out neolithic markings representative of feminine power on the clothes of her sculpture.

"Bacchus" is a functional clay teapot whose spout is fashioned to resemble the face of The Green Man, an archetypical symbol of ancient origin whose leaf-surrounded face represents the cyclical renewal of the natural world.

Donald Moss's honorable mention, "Plato Verdi," is a large, patina-hued plate whose top layer appears to be warping and peeling off. Rachelle Kaldani's fired clay sculpture, "Between Two Worlds," is a bright salmon leaping triumphantly from the water, while in "Beads of Dew," Helen Riley enlarges a photograph of water droplets atop the cloverlike leaves of wood sorrel.

The Los Gatos Art and Natural Science Museum is located at 4 Tait Ave. Hours are noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday.

1997 Open-Juried Art Show Winners

Oil and Acrylics

First place: Claire S. Verbiest, San Jose

Second place: Jinda Mulvey, San Jose

Third place: Maralyn Miller, Los Gatos

Watercolor and Pastels

First place: Ruenn Chiou Li, San Jose

Second place: Linda F. Harris, Sunnyvale

Third place: Mary Ann Henderson, Saratoga

Mixed Media

First place: Jere Ann Hall, Watsonville

Second place: Nathan Langner, Los Gatos

Third place: Linda Fillhardt, Los Gatos

Sculpture

First and second place: Carolyn Briggs, San Jose

Third place: Grace Purpura, San Jose

There were also 13 Honorable Mentions.

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