New ceramics at Market Street Gallery

“Between Absurd and Obscene” by Sherri Cavan

“Locked Mystery’s of Our Ancestors” by Maggie Malloy

“The End of The Mechanical World” by Maria Sosina

by Ekaterina Levina

You won’t find a single vase or a plate at this show of ceramic sculpture.
Instead you’ll see a ceramic ship with words of wisdom written on it, ceramic bones and locks, an abstract shore house and amazingly real looking parts of rusty plumbing system.

The show runs until April 30 (Market Street Gallery, 1554 Market, San Francisco, http://www.marketstreetgallery.com/index.html)

The exhibit was fun and I enjoyed it!
It gives you an idea about the wide range of things that artist find inspiring – from conversations with God, meditation, personal memories to politics and mechanical creatures. Every piece there deserves a story about it.

I loved deeply spiritual sculptures of Maggie Malloy.

Check out her website:
http://www.mesart.com/maggiemalloy

I watched how surprised people were to find things looking like something from under the sink on a gallery wall. They obviously wanted to touch and check out if it was really a clay sculpture.
I saw how Maria Sosina explained the process of creating “The End of The Mechanical World” .

Find more Maria’s art on a website:
http://www.segmentusart.com/

I was lucky to share an art studio with Maria last summer. I watched her working on this installation and how she combined different things to build a new visual world.
I had a few conversations with Maria during our lunch time. Once she mentioned her childhood in Moscow and told a story about beauty and challenges of living in a XIX century building with an ancient plumbing.

The gift of the show – you’ll find and see the beauty of places like the one on this picture.

On the wings of friendship

“Night butterfly”

My friend’s airplane

by Ekaterina Levina

I miss my friend. I terribly miss my friend.
He’s a graphic designer in Moscow. We used to work together, well… long time ago.
Was it 1996 when we met? It looks about right.

He’s insanely busy with his work. The biggest downside being a graphic designer working for a video production company, besides crazy hours and clients who never know what they really want, is that everything must be done “yesterday”.
I’ve seen two types of designers: one is a nervous wreck, who screams at the computer screen, and another is a Zen philosopher who says, “This could be even worse… and it’ll be”.
My friend is a Zen type. He’s wonderful.

I remember when he made this screensaver picture with an airplane with words from a song written in 1943 (he was interested in the WWII history):

"Мы летим, ковыляя во мгле,
Мы ползем на последнем крыле.
Бак пробит, хвост горит и машина летит
На честном слове и на одном крыле...”

Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Though there's one motor gone
We can still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

I loved the picture because it perfectly described my emotional state at that time. I think that I’ve told my friend million times about how much I admire his picture. For me, it’s symbol of my life 10-15 years ago.

Now it’s spring and my friend is in love. It’s about time.
My friend’s had his share of troublesome relationships in the past. I hope he’ll be happy this time. I cross my fingers and wish him luck.
I’m waiting to hear his story (there’s nothing better than a love story)!

I can reach him in my dreams when my imagination flies across the ocean under night sky. I imagine butterfly wings which take me there.

Friendship doesn’t care about time and distance.
The wings of friendship can bring people together anytime and anywhere.

I can’t wait to get his e-mail.

Somebody had to make the first apple!

“The First Apple”

God as architect of the world, a moralized Bible from Paris, ca. 1220-1230.
(from Gardner’s Art through the Ages)

by Ekaterina Levina

A few years ago I wrote a term paper for a Medieval Art History class about an illustration from the Bible “God as architect of the world”.

A medieval artist clearly understood that such complicated thing as creating a new world required some thought, planning and draft drawing.

Artists imagine and create impossible things. They paint gods, angels, dreams, nightmares, moods, and even things that don’t have names.

I imagined how the first apple was made.
First, there was a thought, an idea, then a plan, then a draft (a drawing on the right side of the painting). Now, add some light, some color, some juice and substance – and you have your very own apple, at least on the painting!

I included this painting in my café show last spring.
A local San Franciscan poet Steven Mackin saw it there and wrote a poem:

A History of Apples

Did the First Apple
Stem from a Platonic ideal
Somewhere in the sublime still

Is there a form
The Perfection of Apple
Equation of seed core flesh and skin

From brown leaves black thorns chaos
A Fibonacci derivation
Begins the Second Apple

And how many apples had to fall
From trees in Kazakhstan
Before Apple replaced Fig

As the Fruit of the edenic Tree
Or was it the Grape
Made old Adam Dumb

SPMackin

Steve is a regular feature at the café, and I know that he writes a lot about art.
You can read some of his poems here:

http://poetrymatters.150m.com/index_files/places_files/SacGnds_files/stevem.html

For me it was a wonderful gift to meet Steve and read his poetic response to the painting.

Let's get out!

by Ekaterina Levina

Today I painted en plein air for the first time in California.
I had an outdoor easel and an artist umbrella. Typically for Bay Area, the moment you bring a white umbrella to the beach, the sun disappears and the fog comes in. I enjoyed painting anyway.

I was standing close to a trail on a cliff overlooking a south part of Fitzgerald Beach.
Most passersbys said “Hi!” People were nice; nobody disturbed me when I was actually painting.
After years of painting in Art School with 15-30 people around, I’m not shy about working in public. Sometimes I also draw sketches at coffee shop. I can tune out anywhere.

The moment I stepped back from the easel, different conversations started.
Children asked questions about my “stuff”. Their parents made comments. A few people took pictures. Some asked me about the history of the area. A couple of Russian guys made a joke that they wanted to be my students. One promised to write a poem my painting.

Who knew that a palette and a brush could be such icebreakers.

My friend’s wedding dress

by Ekaterina Levina

I always pay attention how artists paint white objects. It’s fascinating how differently people interpret this color.
I enjoy painting white. One of my painting instructors said that the artist should see green in red and red in green. I think that when it comes to white, it’s up to the artist to see the whole rainbow in it.

Last summer I was looking for an ultimate white object to paint and had an idea to paint a still life with a wedding dress. It doesn’t get any whiter, I guess.

My girlfriend let me borrow her wedding dress a few days after her wedding.
My friend is a beautiful young woman with an incredible kind heart and courage. Her love story is a story of star-crossed lovers. As how poetically our mutual friend said about her and her husband, “they both fell down from the sky to be together”. The adventures of young lovers didn’t stop after the wedding. The new bride had to leave the country for a month, as she thought. But it’s taking much longer…

Now it’s been eight months since she left and couldn’t come back. It’s heartbreaking to see people who are so much in love but have to be apart. I and all her friends hope that she would come back soon and she and her husband would finally get a chance to live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, I finished that still life with the dress. The painting has a bright optimistic spring feeling.

It’s a wedding season again!

Girls’ best friends

Courtyard at the Legion of Honor

by Ekaterina Levina

I wonder how many people in the States know about The International Women’s Day on March 8.
This holiday is celebrated in post soviet countries and in China. Even Austria made it an official holiday about three years ago.

To celebrate the occasion I invited my girlfriends to the Legion of Honor to see the exhibit “Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique”.

No woman could feel indifferent looking at all that splendor of the jewel world! We loved it!

I realized that I prefer Tiffany style, while my girlfriends couldn’t stop talking about the beauty of Faberge eggs and flowers. Amazing craftsmanship! The best of jewels, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, aquamarines, topazes, amethysts, were presented in their most artful forms.

I’ve never seen kunzite before. It’s a light purple stone with a diamond quality to collect light and sparkle even in the dark.

My favorite of the show was a brooch “Belle de Nuit” by a French artist. The brooch is about the size of a palm. It consists of an ivory female nude with bluish grey enamel bat wings and diamond stars. This piece has a mystical feel about it. It probably was made for a beautiful witch…

One of my girlfriends was a jewelry designer, so when we had a glass of wine at the museum café (always a pleasure!), she told us stories about challenges of making such wonderful things. These details added to our appreciation of genius of jewelry artists.