What defines a creative community? Artwork that is made in collaboration, spaces that encourage novel construction or physical places to practice craft? In the back corner of the Arts and Crafts Cooperative, Incorporated, or ACCI, Gallery on Berkeley’s Shattuck Avenue, 30 artists showcase what it means to be collectively grounded in theme, construction and materiality.
“Bridging the Bay: Expanding Connections” features artists from San Francisco’s Metal Arts Guild. The pieces vary greatly in size and physicality, yet a profound sense of place emerges from the collection as a whole.
Goran Konjevod, a member of the ACCI Gallery cooperative, usually works in paper, but crafts his signature folds and layered pleats in “Copper Bowl” with copper sheets instead. Holly Carter also displays metallics in “Vertebrate,” a wearable chain of sterling silver and synthetic stone — a potentially visceral ornament for the human body which conceals its bones.
Much of the work mentions, either in symbol or title, the Bay Area and its iconic gateway from the Pacific Ocean. Elaine Gerber’s sculptural piece “Nature IS the Bridge” showcases a copper pot with poppies and green stems erupting outward. Tangled brown roots hug the rusty brown pot — the red Golden Gate Bridge and blue waves combine with this garden for a representation of the picturesque landscapes that define Northern California. Gerber’s wirework and sunny flowers evoke a glowing San Francisco day; All those who call the Bay home can feel connected to her piece.
Jo-Ann Maggiora Donivan’s singular jewelry piece “Il Ponte per Connettere” glimmers with Bay Area spirit. The bracelet boasts six panels clasped together magnetically, each with a sapphire sun that is set in sterling silver and gold, cast above the ridges of a Golden Gate Bridge. Even in reversed colors and sparkling stones, the rendering of such a site is clear.
The largest works of the collection belong to Martin Munson, who showcases “Geomantic Compass,” “Windmill” and “Table” — three pieces of reworked mixed metal, including steel and copper in their oxidized and chemically altered states. Munson’s hand in transforming these existing materials is clear; the human tools of a windmill, compass or table are crafted from an old bicycle or from scrap metal. Man’s tools, in nature’s junkyards, can always be given new aesthetic life beyond destruction.
A small yet moving sculpture is visible in one of the gallery’s glass cases. Reed Bowman’s “Three Figures #2” uses bronze to create a red triangular base with three figures emerging from its vertical bar. Climbing or clinging from the bar, these three exaggerated, nearly cartoonish human forms feel playful, intertwined and melancholy all at once. Such miniature size in sculptural work provokes a question about intention: How do we perceive groups of humans when they are so small?
Just as it is one of the most highly consumed forms of metal craft, jewelry is a heavily featured medium in “Bridging the Bay.” Elizabeth Ross showcases a brooch called “Bubble Bridge,” whose face is halved and held together through outlined circles of various sizes. A line, with evocations of landmass outlines from above, is perpendicular to this connection of watery, moving — ever- changing and leaving — connectedness.
Much of this show’s jewelry is stunning in craft; unique stones and blocks of metal are displayed as fine, full-bodied pendants. Miranda Anderseon’s “Ship to Shore Pendant” works with Italian tile, sterling silver, enamel on fine silver, and copper and silver combined with the Japanese metal-working technique of mokume-gane for a gorgeous effect. Such exquisite materials and their careful, color-conscious combination is reflective of Andersen’s eye not just as a jeweler, but as an artist who understands the themes of connection and oceanic physicality which are present in this collection.
Each artist in ACCI Gallery’s “Bridging the Bay: Expanding Connections” seems aware of the importance of theme in their craft. With bountiful mastery of metalwork and material incorporation, the quality of this exhibit is exquisite, not just with gemstones and intensive labor of creation. The 30 artists on display this month are themselves immersed in the Bay Area; they weld and melt their materials and mimic the man-made metal structures which define our space, yet they also see the ways that our community is bound by its natural and ever-changing landscape.
“Bridging the Bay: Expanding Connections” will be up until Nov. 9.