62nd Annual Art Guild Members Show & Awards Artists Exhibition

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The venerable Art Guild of Pacifica is doing it again! The AGP presents its 62nd Annual Members Show, plus the 61st Annual Awards Artists, at Sanchez Art Center. Both exhibitions open Friday, Nov 6, and run through Sunday, Dec 13. Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 1–5 pm, beginning on Friday, Nov 6. Safety protocols for the health and well-being of guests, volunteers, and staff include face masks, physical distancing, and limited numbers of people in the galleries. (Due to the pandemic, there will be no opening reception.) Visits are by free appointments that can be booked online at http://SanchezArtCenter.10to8.com.

Art Guild members will show their work in the East and West Galleries, while the four award winners from 2019 will share an exhibition in the Main Gallery, curated by Misha Flores. The 61st Annual award recipients, Kristina Ayala, Jamey Brzezinski, Barbara Kibbe, and Kimmi Risk, were selected by Professor Bridget Fischer of Skyline College. The awards juror for the 62nd Annual Members Show will be DeWitt Cheng, a San Francisco–based independent curator, critic, and art writer. The AGP artists he selects this year will share the Main Gallery space with an exhibition in 2021.

Kristina Ayala paints and creates ceramic sculptures that are colorful, lively, and whimsical, all based on her love for animals and her passion for aquatic and oceanic life. Ayala’s work is immediately engaging, and wonderfully well done with a fine eye for detail and a sense of each sea creature’s personality. Her deep regard for oceanic animals definitely comes across to viewers—each piece expresses an individual creature’s personality and sense of agency. The sculpture that she received this exhibition award for is a delightful, bright orange octopus, whose intelligence and presence of mind are at once apparent. Besides ceramics, Ayala also does printmaking and painting on clay as her canvas. A studio holder at Sanchez Art Center, she also teaches, offering workshops in linocut as well as other forms of relief printmaking, and teaching art to some lucky middle school students in Foster City.

Jamey Brzezinski, an Emeritus Professor at Merced College and former studio holder at Sanchez Art Center, creates beautifully nuanced acrylic paintings. He won this exhibition award for his painting titled Rocks, Sand, Water, Lichen, Moss & Fronds #4, a shoreline scene with sea foam, sand, and ocean-polished stones. Brzezinski’s fascination with this subject matter comes from several long-held goals: first, to find a dynamic balance point between abstraction and realism; and secondly, to explore ideas of orientation and perception. Many of his works show views from an aerial perspective, and many can be hung any side up. Brzezinski’s Rocks and Seas body of work began as small black and white prints. Now he paints the same subjects in color in these larger paintings that can create a quiet space for viewers to reflect on the changeableness of nature and of our lives.

Barbara Kibbe is a printmaker and an art quilter. She studied printmaking first, earning a BA in art, and only later became fascinated with fiber art. Kibbe taught herself quiltmaking after her daughter Rachel was born. She saw that quiltmaking offered the potential for making large-format artworks, without the mess and toxicity of printmaking materials. She now works to interweave and integrate these modalities, and finds herself printing on quilts and stitching through prints. She loves to discover the surprises that arise when experimenting with new techniques and found materials. Kibbe also earned a law degree, and has supported the arts community in various capacities, including serving as Executive Director for Bay Area Lawyers for the Arts (now California Lawyers for the Arts). Her artworks are rich in color and texture, with a depth of feeling and breadth of wisdom that comes from her multifaceted life.

Kimmi Risk creates exuberantly colored paintings, densely patterned with circles of glossy acrylic paint. Her work has been compared to Tim Burton’s whimsical and quixotic music and films. In fact, Risk played one of the characters in Tim Burton’s film James and the Giant Peach. She had originally studied theater arts, but when her son was diagnosed with lymphoma, she found that painting was how she could express her fear, anger, and frustration. (Thankfully, her son is now well and attending UC Davis.) Risk calls her bright circles of acrylic paint “blobs.” She layers them, lets each layer dry, and then coats the finished work with resin. Her influences? Besides Burton, Warhol and Dali, Risk is also inspired by connecting with the people who fall in love with her work, and is most delighted when a collector expresses the joy that her art brings to them.

You can hear these four award-winning artists talk about their work at the Artist Talk, to be held on Zoom at 3:30 pm on Sunday, Nov 22. Visit www.ArtGuildofPacifica.org to register for the Artist Talk and for exhibition updates.

Sanchez Art Center is located at 1220 Linda Mar Blvd in Pacifica, about a mile east of Highway 1. For more information: info@SanchezArtCenter.org, www.SanchezArtCenter.org. To learn about and join the Art Guild of Pacifica, visit www.ArtGuildofPacifica.org.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.