| Dee
Hooker is an award-winning artist known for her thought-provoking
portraits of real and imagined people. Her work is rich, quirky,
and often humorous, with a bittersweet, even nostalgic, flavor.
Art critic Brian Sherwin said about Dee Hooker's mixed media paintings,
"The characters captured in Hooker's portraits are an intriguing
mix of the real and imagined." In Hooker's own words, "The
fictitious portraits leave it completely up to the viewer to provide
the character and narrative for the image. . . . The imagined person
is a composite of many histories assembled to my liking. In the
end, whether real or imagined, they become a synthesis of both the
subject and the artist, and an example of how history will be skewed
by the historian."
Hooker often refers
to her work as "mixed media paintings," in which has she
combined digital rendering with traditional painting techniques.
This system of borrowing, manipulating, and distorting, using digital
tools, is then integrated with the mixed media world, using everything
from encaustic to rust to smoke. It is indeed a gift to be able
to work in such a complex mix of media, yet produce works that are
eminently engaging and accessible, as her characters often are.
Dag Weiser has been creating installations and multimedia art projects in Santa Cruz County for 30 years. In 2007 he received the Gail Rich Award for his artistic contributions to the City of Santa Cruz. He has created elaborate props and sets for dance and performance artists Therese Adams and Leslie Swaha of Moving and Storage Performance Company/Crash, Burn and Die Dance Company. Each Halloween he transforms his front yard with an installation. Themes include Candy; Math; the Undersea World; Good and Evil; The All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye; Crows; Monarch Butterflies; and The Last Supper.
Weiser has created
large-scale oil paintings that were shown at the Museum of Art and
History, Santa Cruz, and at the Cultural Workers Union, Santa Cruz,
among other places. He has also painted in acrylic and created kinetic
sculptures. However, since 1976, when Weiser helped create the first
and only completely cardboard boat to compete in the annual Capitola
Begonia Float Parade, cardboard has been his medium of choice. But,
as one viewer commented: "You'd never know it's cardboard to
look at it." Notably, Weiser has taken cardboard to the level
of fine art, as in The Sentimental Layer, a large wall-hanging
piece made from cardboard with gold leaf. This piece, with its sure
combination of complexity (texture) and simplicity (the materials
used), is both moving and inspiring.
At 3:30 pm on closing Sunday, Feb 9, the artists will talk about their work with curator Susan Hillhouse Leask at a free Artist Talk in the Main Gallery.
Sanchez Art Center
is located at 1220 Linda Mar Blvd in Pacifica, about a mile east
of Highway 1. Following opening night, galleries are open Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday, 1–5 pm, and by appointment, through Feb 9.
For more information, call 650.355.1894 or email info@sanchezartcenter.org.
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