Tait's double exhibit provokes imagination
By Shari Kaplan
As it has done previously with double exhibits, the Los Gatos Museum of Fine Art and Natural History chose for its current show artists who work in dissimilar media but whose objective is the same--to create, as Los Gatos Museum Association member and docent Louise Collins likes to say, "a private conversation between the artist and the viewer."
San Franciscan Kristin Herrera's contributions are inventive, whimsical mixed-media pieces she calls "memory boxes." Viewers are free to interpret the boxes in ways that may differ from her own inspirations. Her artist's statement is simple and open-ended:
"I invent history. A broad claim, I know. But what I do in my work is akin to that. Found objects, abstract from one another, fit together seamlessly like broken pottery fixed; it's hard to tell they're not related. Objects, people, places, lives--all brought together," she writes.
Herrera wastes little in uniting these diverse elements. The artist, who admits she is an antique-shop and flea-market junkie and a bit of a packrat, begins her boxes with plates of glass, on which she often etches words or designs. It's a familiar medium for Herrera, who began her creative career studying glass art and for a few years ran a glass-blowing business.
"As a glassblower, I realized I wasn't making anything that would make a lasting impression," she said in a interview, explaining why she moved on to other pursuits, such as sculpture and art history. She combines both in filling her boxes.
"I use the items themselves as their own canvas. I'll rearrange them until I feel the piece touches something inside me. If I try to work things out on paper or canvas, they die for me," she said.
In "Self Portrait," a shooting-range target hangs inside the box, covered with trinkets, including matches, numbers from a computer printout, clock parts, small animal skulls, a joker playing card, a cookie fortune and an Italian stamp. The stamp was a souvenir from her semester abroad studying art history in Florence, Italy, but the other items are open to interpretation.
Other thought-provoking pieces include "Destiny," in which a series of dominoes hovers above cards illustrating the sun, the moon and planets; "Claudia," which depicts a coyly smiling flower girl inside glass etched with handwriting that speaks wistfully to her; and "Io Fu Gia," which combines a drawing of praying hands, a wooden hand with a wound resembling the Stigmata, a feather (perhaps from a dove) and a dried rose.
O'Hare, a San Jose resident, offers large abstract canvasses splashed with bright acrylic paints. Most are best viewed from a respectable distance. Some of them are evocative of their titles, such as "Garden Series #1: Full Bloom," which looks like a bug's-eye view of a blooming bunch of flowers, perhaps hydrangeas; and "Garden Series #12: Autumn," whose random shapes and earthtones burnished and bright resemble a forest floor in autumn.
Other images are even more abstract, such as "Garden Series #1: Rampant Vine," whose dripping oranges, yellows and greens are reminiscent of Jackson Pollock. There's also "Garden Series #6: Agapanthus," a beautiful melange of blue and purple-hued circles.
Herrera and O'Hare's exhibit runs through Dec. 29. The Los Gatos Museum of Fine Art and Natural History, at 4 Tait Ave, is open from noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. For more information, call 408.354.2646.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
