Gray Loft Gallery: Landscape Stories opens

We are thrilled to have installed a show on actual walls!
Please stop by FLAX in Oakland to see our pop-up exhibit.

Mosley Avenue
photo by Michael Teresko

Landscape Stories
pop-up show at FLAX art & design

On view until March 30, 2021

Artists’ Opening Reception:

Saturday, February 6, 3:00 – 6:00 pm
Masks and social distancing required

Location: FLAX art & design,

1501 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland

FLAX Hours:

Monday - Saturday, 10 am - 6:30 pm,

Sunday 10 am – 6 pm

Gray Loft Gallery is very pleased to present Landscape Stories – a pop-up exhibit at FLAX art & design in Oakland. The exhibit includes four Bay Area artists' exploration, discovery and interpretation of urban, natural and abstract landscapes and includes painting, mixed media and photography.

About the Artists:

Anthony Holdsworth creates paintings almost exclusively on site over a period of days or weeks. In the process he comes to know the neighborhoods and the people who live and work there. They contribute ideas, history and often pose on the street.

Unlike a snapshot or a brief study, these paintings represent his experience of locations over time. Over the years he has documented the urban landscape in Oakland and the Bay Area under pressure of gentrification, giving us a disquieting testament of our common condition, conveying its original intensity. Though sometimes devoid of people these cityscapes emerge from his interaction with passersby and inhabitants at each site.

Ginny Parsons is interested in dripping, pouring, splashing and moving paint. She works intuitively, using a variety of common household ingredients like beeswax, borax and castoff house paint. She uses whatever surfaces come her way – left by the dumpster, dropped on her porch by the neighbors or washed up from the estuary. Her imagery comes from nature, which is where she feels connection and inspiration.

Michael Teresko's photographic work pursues the study of the interaction between the man-made and the natural worlds explored by the New Topographics photographers. Michael states that photography is less a creative activity and more a reductive exercise, an attempt to filter distractions from the visual world. He tries to find structures hidden in the banal and chaotic spaces all around us, and in them hopefully find images with a dream-like power and mystery. Michael shoots with film as it lends itself to a more measured and thoughtful pace, and it keeps him connected to the magic and craft of analog photography.

Xan Blood Walker's photographic work explores her urban environment and the impact it has on different aspects of our lives; tangible, experienced and sensed. Xan’s photos seamlessly blend humor and darkness. She draws heavily on her background as a homeless, addicted 80s punk rocker. This past experience was a dark time in her life, but it was also a beautiful, authentic and deeply poignant period which has influenced her photography today.

Urban Outings
Mixed Media by Ginny Parsons

Gathering Shade
Oil on canvas by Anthony Holdsworth

Graffiti to the Bay - Albany
Photo by Xan Blood Walker

VIRTUAL EXHIBITS

Gray Loft Gallery virtual exhibits on our website.

The Meaning of Green

Our 3rd annual color themed photography show. This virtual exhibit of green inspired images from a wide array of traditional and alternative photographic processes includes pinhole photography, images made with plastic cameras, cyanotypes, collage, and other photo-based works by Bay Area photographers.

Winter Salon

This virtual online group show of gallery artists includes painting, mixed media and photography by Bay Area artists. We believe that art is essential component in our lives, and our intention was to create an exhibit that could be a visual antidote to the current climate of our world.

Please visit our website to view The Meaning of Green and Winter Salon galleries of art and contact us if you are interested in purchasing work from these shows.

Saving Gray Loft Gallery...

If you are able to help support the gallery during this uncertain time, please visit our GoFundMe page. This would mean so much to us - and to the community of artists and the art lovers who rely on the gallery to exhibit the beautiful and meaningful shows in our unique and aesthetic space.

We look forward to being able to celebrate with you when this pandemic is over!
With gratitude and thanks.

ABOUT GRAY LOFT GALLERY

Gray Loft Gallery - voted "Best Art Gallery" two years in a row - 2016 & 2017 - in the Oakland Magazine Readers' Choice Award - has promoted the rich art culture of Jingletown and the greater Bay Area for 7 years. The gallery has been referred to as a hidden gem in Jingletown, and noted by Kenneth Baker, former SF Chronicle Art Critic, in his Visual Arts Don’t Miss Column as “…A space gaining prominence in the Bay Area…” The mission of the gallery is to provide exhibition opportunities for artists in a setting that is an alternative to the traditional gallery model. We hope to inspire, engage and celebrate artists in our community and beyond. We acknowledge the achievements of emerging, mid-career and established artists – with an emphasis on those who live and work in the Bay Area – in a non-traditional art space. A number of artists began their art career at Gray Loft Gallery.

“I have always enjoyed this gallery, superb atmosphere and lighting. The polished and worn hardwood floors creek slightly in places as you climb to the third floor, providing a granular and unique, organic aesthetic. This is a do-not-miss venue in the East Bay.” – Facebook Review