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Circa
Don Fritz, Marnie Spencer
April 30 - July 3, 2004
Opening Friday, April 30, 6 PM - 8 PM
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Special installation by Bay Area conceptual artist David Ireland
>> Preview the artwork of Don Fritz
>> Preview the artwork of Marnie Spencer
Don Fritz, "Bookends", ceramic, 2003
Marnie Spencer, "Failed Romantic", watercolor, gouache, colored pencil & crayon on thick paper, 2002
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Sweet-Tarts, dominoes, toy guns, doll heads, stamps, cartoon strips, boys dressed as cowboys - these are just some of the images that appear in the works of Santa Cruz artist Don Fritz and Bolinas artist Marnie Spencer. Both artists were born in the 1950s and came of age in the 1960s. Apparent among their influences are the historical transformations and pop culture icons of those times from Ozzy and Harriet to McCarthyism, from the Korean and Vietnam wars to Ken Kesey, Woodstock and Pop Art mixed with the cultural iconography of present day including the influence of television, music and literature.
Both Fritz and Spencer are drawn to drawing. Spencer’s works are free drawn using watercolor, pencil and crayon on thick paper or canvas such as her large collage-like works, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" and "4 Margaret". Her works include, but are not limited to, drawings of planes, architectural salvage, game pieces, random letters, numbers, war medals and reproductions of old postcards. Spencer will often work with repeated imagery such as license plates, "Doing Time", and old latches, keys, and locks in "Neatness Counts". She is seduced by hand-made, one of a kind artifacts and old things that are chipped and worn and marked by the wear and tear of time. Standing in front of Spencer’s works one gets lost in a mosaic of memories. The occasional "Wow, I remember that from my childhood" sweeps past like an old song. Unlikely items are placed next to each other creating implausible juxtapositions and humorous visual conversations. What distinguishes Spencer is how she can create a tapestry from disparate imagery while achieving formal balance in terms of color, draftsmanship and contrast.
Don Fritz’ works range from drawing to painting to ceramic sculpture based on images found in children’s books from the 1950s and 1960s, games, text, and Japanese calligraphy. Overflowing with pop icons from post-war America, Fritz’ work challenges cultural narratives of gender, power and fantasy. Christana Waters, in a review from a group show at the San Jose Museum of Art "Piecing it together: A Visual Journal", writes, " Fritzland is a world of Leave it to Beaver suburban perfection, whose squeaky clean façade is always stained with foreboding. Paradise Lost—filtered through Walt Disney and the Manhattan Project—haunts Don Fritz’ rock & roll imagination. The results are as disturbing as they are sexy."
Fritz’ technique of layering and erasing visual elements and texts invites the viewer to look closely at what has been chosen and what remains beneath the surface. Much like a psychological exploration of what we remember from our childhood to be true and what, over time, has become fantasy. Bucolic images of children playing, skipping, and reading along side burning houses and signs reading "Girls Girls Girls" remind us that puberty and the emergence of sexuality can shake our childhood memories and shape our roles as adults.
In Spencer’s work there is a sense of nostalgia for things past and a reverence for history while Fritz’ colors, images, and choice of text use humor to explore the significance of childhood memories.
"Circa" featuring the work of Marnie Spencer and Don Fritz opens April 30, 2004 at Julie Baker Fine Art in Grass Valley, CA and runs through July 3rd. For more information please visit www.juliebakerfineart.com
This is Marnie Spencer’s first show at Julie Baker Fine Art. Spencer matriculated with a Fine Arts Degree after attending the University of Tampa, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara where she studied with Elmer Bischoff, Robert Hartman and Karl Kasten among others. What followed was as described by Spencer, the "Lost Weekend" where for many years art took a back seat to raising her children. When her youngest son left for college she jumped back in and literally stopped at the San Francisco Art Institute store to get supplies on the way back from dropping him off. Spencer was featured in the San Francisco International Art Exposition this year and exhibited at the Crocker Art Museum in 2002 in the 73rd Crocker-Kingsley Exhibition, a juried exhibition.
Since earning his M.F.A. in 1978 from UC, Davis, Fritz has achieved an international reputation as painter and ceramic sculptor, and has taught many college art courses in the Bay Area and beyond, most recently at the University of California Santa Cruz and Santa Clara University. Current shows include the Robert Berman Gallery in Los Angeles, the Grover-Thurston Gallery in Seattle, San Jose Institute of Contemporary art and the Otaru museum in Japan. Among numerous honors, he received the Pollock-Krasner Award and a Japanese Cultural Exchange grant. Fritz’ work is in many art collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York , Microsoft Corporation and the collections of Cheech Marin, Jim Carrey, and Nicolas Cage.
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