Artistic trio shows at Aegis Gallery
By Shari Kaplan
In a cooperative like Aegis Gallery in Saratoga, each month one featured artist--occasionally two--from its roster of more than two dozen gets to exhibit in the front room that faces Big Basin Way.
With several members joining in a matter of months, the gallery has featured all the new artists for March: multimedia mask maker Gerri Russell and painter Ed Lucey, both of Los Gatos, and photographer Norma Fries of San Jose.
Russell has been making and collecting masks since the 1970s. Her formal education is in the theater arts and communication fields, but she also holds a certificate in expressive arts, which encompasses painting, 3-D art, sand tray work, dance therapy and playback theater. The latter uses improvisational theater games to help people improve their interpersonal and life skills.
At the gallery, Russell has crafted masks using paints, fabrics and found objects like beads, charms, seashells and items from trees. One example is Wood Nymph, whose earthy brown face is surrounded by dried leaves, flowers, seedpods, straw and sheer ribbons. Another is Dinah, a copper-faced mask with black feathers for hair and adorned by beads, seedpods and various types of fabric. About a dozen other masks are also on display.
Russell is also organizing four workshops in Los Gatos later this month in which participants make masks from molds of their own faces and then decorate them with a variety of mediums. For more information, call 408.395.0623.
Fries' inspirations also go back to the 1970s, when she and her family saved up bands from her father's cigars and exchanged them for items from a gift catalog. Fries got a 110-format point-and-shoot camera and has been infected by the "shutter bug" ever since.
Half of Fries' photos at Aegis Gallery are hand-manipulated, painted Polaroid prints. She presses on the prints' "skin" with wooden potter's tools, which mixes the pigments underneath and achieves a wavery, watercolor effect. Afterward, she embellishes them further with paint. Among these are Many Untold Stories, Figure 4 and After Vincent.
Fries' other photos are sharply detailed Cibachrome enlargements on rag mat paper. Several were snapped on a trip to North Carolina, including One Standing Out--a close-up of a bed of daisies in which one flower seems to float above the others; and Autumn I and Autumn II, macro photographs of brilliant fall leaves and pinecones, dotted with dew.
Lucey's artistic inspiration came even earlier than his colleagues. As a child growing up in Martinez, he frequently drew the pictures and photographs he saw in magazines and newspapers; he also studied an old series of books called How to Draw. Although educated as an industrial designer, Lucey has painted on the side throughout his life. Now retired, he paints full time, usually in watercolors or acrylics.
Landscapes predominate his Aegis Gallery showing, especially those involving trees or water. In The Road Less Traveled, he captures the allure of a dirt road meandering into the woods, while Tidal Dawning shows a marshland under an early morning sky glowing in hues of peach, gold and periwinkle. Lucey also paints still lifes, as seen in Navels--a bowl filled with plump, bright oranges.
The show is up through March 24. Aegis Gallery of Fine Art is at 14531 Big Basin Way, unit 2, in the Saratoga Village. For gallery hours or more information, call 408.867.0171 or visit www.aegisgallery.com on the Internet.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
