Emeryville, CA – The Bullseye Bay Area Gallery presents a group exhibition of works that blend printmaking and technology with kiln-glass, featuring: Erin Dickson, Jeffrey Sarmiento, Stacy Lynn Smith, and Kathryn Wightman. Hidden Narratives will be on view April 25 through August 8, 2015.
Impermeable except by light, windows allow us to see the world outside or the world within. The stories on the other side of the glass unfold like silent movies; movement and stillness imply narratives. We are, however, only privy to glimpses and beyond the apparent are the hidden histories, relationships, personal experiences, and emotional lives of people and objects. Artists Erin Dickson, Jeffrey Sarmiento, Stacy Lynn Smith, and Kathryn Wightman create images on and with glass that draw on these hidden narratives, presenting works that push past the inherent shallowness of image into the murky space that gives meaning to the things we see.
Using intricately cut strips of glass, Erin Dickson recreates the exterior views from the homes in which she has lived. These commonplace scenes, removed from the context of the home, are a biography. For Stained (2015), New Zealand-based artist Kathryn Wightman uses screen-printing with glass powders to recreate a carpet from her grandmother’s home. Stains interrupt the pattern, chronicling the effects of human interaction on the objects we live with. Jeffrey Sarmiento’s 2014 solo exhibition Constructions consisted of several works that shifted visually in relation to the viewer, questioning our perceptions. In Flutter (2015), Sarmiento continues this line of inquiry by conflating a Eyed Hawk-Moth with a common Blue Butterfly, creating a hybrid that oscillates as the viewer moves. Stacy Lynn Smith’s work honors cultural ephemera of the city, including the rock show posters that engorge telephone polls in certain neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon. In the past, she has translated the posters into interactive installations and multi-layered compositions in glass. For Hidden Narratives, Stacy uses these images to create juxtapositions that reference her own interior emotional life.
