Aqua: Art on Water September 15, 2010

ArtZone 461 Gallery makes a splash in opening the fall season with "AQUA: Art On Water", a group show with a line-up of mainly Bay Area artists. Ranging from historic and modern to contemporary and fresh, these works present artists' interest in, if not preoccupation with, water. Dazzling sunsets and serene rivers - elements from nature, share walls with man made pools, piers, koi ponds, pitchers, a car wash and a half glass - all referencing water. These works depict artists' many explorations into the subject and they remind us that water isn't a commodity, it is a natural resource of many forms and purpose; it belongs to everyone. Additionally, we have a responsibility to preserve it.

People are substantially made of water and we live on a planet whose surface is mainly water. Perhaps artists' motivation to document it is because of its' natural lure, a familiarity, the multiple forms it takes, or because it is our life source and life force? Water flows through man's consciousness as evidenced by being in the earliest of imagery found on cave walls; water is a constant. Living in the Bay Area affirms the prominence of water in our lives and our interest in conserving it.

This exhibition presents a wide variety of art about, containing or referencing aqua vitae: A tight realist painting of a car wash; a minimalist, color-field encaustic portraying green waters; an early 20th century Stutz Bearcat parked on the beach and a boy fishing from a pier by the same, relatively unknown Cedric Marshall; a 1962 Paul Wonner beach scene; Dennis Hare's from 1996. Here is a near complete list of participating artists: Jhina Alvarado; Anne Appleby; Agelio Batle; Randy Beckelheimer; Gary Brewer; Christopher Brown; Theophilus Brown; Gordon Cook; Nicholas Coley; Susan Danis; Charles G. Farr; Jane Fisher; Keith Gaspari; Dennis Hare; Noah Levin; Cedric Marshall; Heidi McDowell; Gage Opdenbrouw; Ryan Reynolds; Mary Robertson; Louis Siegriest; Lundy Siegriest; James Weeks; William Wolff and Paul Wonner.