Patter Hellstrom: Structuring the Unstructurable September 21, 2012

Please join us for a conversation with Bay Area-based artist Patter Hellstrom.

On September 4, 2012, Hellstrom and The Arts at CIIS unveiled a 40-foot long mural entitled, "Grief Path," which is on view through the end of 2012 in the 3rd floor gallery of the CIIS main building at 1453 Mission Street.

On September 21st, the dialogue will address questions about mapping states of being such as grief, risk-taking in one's art practice, and balancing intersecting influences from Buddhism and calligraphic brushwork, to Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism.

In this installation Hellstrom mapped the emotional, psychological and cognitive dimensions of grief as they're experienced through time, complicating conventional ideas about grief and loss, be it suggestions that it should last only a fixed period of time, or that there is an uni-directional path of healing that will be common from one individual to the next, or even one experience of loss to the next for the same person.

For "Grief Path" the artist integrated techniques developed over a fifteen year study of Chinese brush painting with very contemporary materials; Hellstrom put to use a wide range of tools, working with everything from house brooms and broad old-fashioned wall-paper paste brushes, to Japanese sumi brushes. To achieve the viscosity required to work upright on a wall at this scale, she used house paints from the hardware store to achieve her lush, translucent, and emotionally evocative finishes. The artist balances structure and chance, and artistic influences that span the remote villages in the Bihar region of Nepal and Agnes Martin's measured abstraction.

The mural will be on view to the public through the end of 2012.

Artist's Website:
http://www.patterhellstrom.com/

Official Website: http://www.ciis.edu/arts