Depicting Others: Four Approaches to Portraiture
a multi-media show of projects by four bay area artists whose work challenges and expands definitions of portraiture. Projects by Jack Burton, John Hattori, Susan O’Malley, and Jessica Martin.
The projects in the show include:
The Faux Artists Gallery: A Collage of Art, Image and Fiction, an ongoing project by Healdsburg-based artist, writer, and chef Jack Burton. For over a decade, Burton has collected anonymous paintings and photographic portraits he has found at flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores. For this project, Burton pairs a photograph with a painting, and writes a fictional “biography of the artist,” using the photographs, Burton says, as “the portals through which we can access a slice of lives imagined.”
One-Minute Portraits, an interactive DVD by San Francisco-based artist and teacher Johnny Hattori. The DVD is a compilation of sixty one-minute video clips of individuals who frequent the bookstore and gallery, Adobe Books, located in the Mission district of San Francisco.
Everyone I Have Met and Remember, by San Francisco-based artist Susan O’Malley. The project is a collection of pin-on buttons, each printed with the name of someone the artist has encountered. The buttons are placed in a refurbished vending machine, and can be purchased for a few quarters.
Blind Portraits, by Healdsburg-based artist Jessica Martin, is an interactive project where participants draw a portrait of a friend using the “blind contouring” technique used in many beginning drawing classes. The technique involves drawing a portrait of a person without looking down at the paper, and without lifting one’s pen. The resulting portraits were hung in the gallery for the duration of the show.
