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After several years, Sullivan Goss has decided to focus its social media energies on FACEBOOK. This content will remain online for historical purposes, but we will no longer update the blog. Thanks to all of the people who read the blog and commented in years past. (A special thanks to Rico Targa!)
We’ll see you on Facebook…
First off, let me say thanks for coming out on Thursday night. What a huge delight to see such a large crowd at the gallery. I am very pleased that you were able to meet Leon Dabo, we’ve been dying to share him with you for months! Stay tuned for a mini blog-tour of the exhibition that will come in the next week. Congratulations to Jon Francis. Nicole Strasburg, and all the artists that participated in 100 Grand for another great opening for your shows!
Nathan Vonk leads the monthly Art Crawl all over State Street. Here he instructs his crawlees about the work in 100 Grand. There are still a few weeks left to see this show, make sure you see it before it comes down!
If you didn’t get a chance to come by on Thursday, don’t fret! The Drawings of Leon Dabo will be on display through March 31st, so there’s plenty of time. Make sure you do swing by though, because these drawings are critical in gaining a full understanding of Dabo’s oeuvre.
If anything, you should come out on 1st Thursday to see what work of art Ted Mills will choose to stand by for his monthly portrait. I think this one’s a winner.
It’s been such a busy month (actually a busy year) at Sullivan Goss. Has it felt busy to you? The opening reception for 100 Grand seems ages ago, but really it has only been a little over two weeks! Let’s take a look at some of the beautiful faces that came out to celebrate this unique exhibition curated by Susan Bush.
Artists Ingrid Holden and Erdy stand in front of the east wall of the gallery.
Jeremy Tessmer and Susan Bush smile with the artists they represent!
Diana McNeill and Susan Bush pause for a photo behind the contemporary desk. Thank you Susan for putting together such an incredible show!
Artist Blakeney Sanford and a friend at the opening.
Edgard Rincon made this beautiful sign for our front window. Jeremy Tessmer designed it. We think it’s wonderful.
Zoe Nathan made an incredible little bronze sculpture for the show. Come see it!
Local college students came out to support their classmate, Casey Underwood, for his first show at Sullivan Goss.
If you haven’t seen the show yet, I highly recommend you make a trip to the gallery! So much to see. For more photos from the evening check us out on facebook by clicking here.
December 2 ,2011, Mayor of Santa Barbara, Helene Schneider came to Sullivan Goss with a purpose–to install our annual candy sculpture. Helene’s thoughtful installation, “Questioning Authority” covers a lot of ground (literally and metaphorically).
The punctuation marks represent making a statement. “You can’t make a statement without a punctuation mark,” the mayor noted. She installed a glittering purple question mark, a golden semi-colon, a firey hot red exclamation point and some peppermint parentheses.
In life and in politics there are things that are sweet, things that are bitter. Within every group you have different textures, consistencies, flavors, and colors. Much like the political scene that Helene is so familiar with, these candy groupings represent her experience as mayor. The Venn Diagram of Necco Wafers represents three opposing groups. Some groups agree with each other and another is left out, but the concentric circles unite in the middle and that’s where the money is (i.e. a gold chocolate coin).
If you look closely, you will see a single rogue candy in each part of her installation. Helene purposefully placed a rogue to remind us of the person who seeks to stand out from or speak up for the general public. Again it can be bitter or sweet.
Helen chose to create straight lines with the candies. She also created a few twisting and turning lines but the candies were still contained. She contrasted those parts with strawberry fields on the far left where she let the candies exist in chaos because sometimes it is better to live in whimsy than in rigidity.
Helene’s favorite candies were grouped in a pile behind a plinth that houses a James Haggerty ceramic vase. She called this her “hidden agenda”. It’s the best candy, which means she needs to keep it to herself until the right moment.
Gallery owner Frank Goss particularly loved the little pile with a tootsie pop totem pole. Helene called this the multicultural center because all of the candies are from different parts of the world, have different languages, flavors, and consistencies, but it’s the differences that bring them together!
Thank you Helene for your time, energy and ingenuity! What a treat to have a mayor who knows how to have fun!
Last night we had a dinner at the Arts and Letters Cafe that celebrated LA’s RISEN and honored artists like Hank Pitcher, Ken Bortolazzo, Miriam Slater, and Harry Carmean.
Our guests enjoyed appetizers of corn dogs, deviled eggs and crackers with cheese whiz! Specialty cocktails like the Mary Pickford and the Blue Lagoon kept guests fueled for lively conversations about art and life in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in Los Angeles.
The dinner was lovely in the courtyard and Gallery Director Jeremy Tessmer’s speech was inspiring. Hank Pitcher provided the toast, which he dedicated to patrons and J. Paul Getty for funding such a thoughtful initiative in the Pacific Standard Time Project.
After everyone finished eating, they got traditional rootbeer floats with homemade vanilla ice cream! We made signature mugs for our guests’ rootbeers and asked them to pose for a “Mug Shot”–check out the rest of the photos here–Mug Shots at LA’s RISEN
Let’s not beat around the bush here. We obviously want your vote for best gallery in Santa Barbara. Alright, phew, now that we’ve got that off our chest, we can get right into how excited we truly are that the Santa Barbara Independent’s Best of Santa Barbara Readers’ Poll is now happening! Vote once, vote a hundred times–it doesn’t matter how many categories you vote for but it does matter what you vote for 
It’s that whole quantity vs.quality thing. Our bet is that once you get started you won’t want to stop! Enjoy voting and we are looking forward to seeing what this year’s favorites will be.
Deadline for votes is August 19th. Don’t tarry.
Click here to be redirected to the voting website.
Image: Via the Santa Barbara Independent’s website
In keeping with the party theme present in Santa Barbara (it’s Fiesta! for all you slow pokes), Sullivan Goss celebrated the opening reception of our newest exhibition: LA’s RISEN.
Josh Tengan and Allyson Arendsee mused over mid-century Los Angeles Art, while our fully costumed curator, Jeremy Tessmer and local art patron, Nancy Gifford took in the entire exhibition.
Allyson stopped at the Frederick Hammersley for a few long moments–many others followed in suit.
Check out the checked out Ted Mills. What a trippy shirt! The man on the right seems to be beckoning his significant other to come a look at a painting…
The Hammersley dominates the room with its hard-edge abstraction. Ted looks pitch perfect between it and the Edgar Ewing.
Make sure to stop by the gallery and see this spectacularly curated show of mid-century, post-war Los Angeles art.
1st Thursdays are always tons of fun, especially during the summer. Everyone is outside, wearing shorts and riding their bikes up and down State Street, making pit stops at their favorite galleries and museums.
[Lockwood de Forest, Trees and Rocks at Sunset, Montecito, with the Channel Islands in the background]
Lucky for you, we have four truly excellent new exhibitions at Sullivan Goss that will make their grand opening on Thursday, July 7th from 5-8 PM.
Our vintage gallery will feature two new shows: mid-century modern paintings by RICHARD HAINES and an exhibition called SUNRISE SUNSET that celebrates solstice and the enduring allure of transitional light.
SUNRISE/SUNSET
[Howard Warshaw, Three Women]
True to its titular implications, the newest exhibition at Sullivan Goss, Hank Pitcher: Tidal Force, has seen waves of success for both the painter and the gallery.
During the opening reception some people took in each painting for several minutes, considering Hank’s characteristic use of warm and cool colors as well as the echoes of shapes within his landscapes.
These lovely ladies spent hours browsing the gallery.
Never missing a teaching opportunity–Hank Pitcher explains his methods to an eager listener.
Judy Foreman in fine form at the opening.
Gallery owner Frank Goss smiles with his colleague Nathan Vonk and girlfriend Erin Smith.
Local Santa Barbaran Sarah Pappas came to the show and brought her co-workers with her.
Thanks to everyone who came out on 1st Thursday June 2 to support Hank Pitcher and Sullivan Goss. Hope to see you all on July 7th when three new exhibitions will be on display.
Winter Light, 2011, oil on canvas over board, 42 x 54 in
On 1 Thursday, June 2, from 5-8pm, Sullivan Goss will open their first new exhibition in three years for celebrated West Coast painter Hank Pitcher. Painting at sites that are difficult to access, Pitcher’s new exhibition reaffirms his commitment to preserving a painted record of one California’s most pristine and bio-diverse coastlines while preserving and advancing the tradition of representational landscape and figure painting.
Gaviota Coast, Spring, oil on canvas over board, 24 x 48 in
Paintings, like coastlines, are formed in a gradual process of accretion and attrition, with warm colors and cool colors pushing and pulling at each other like warm and cool ocean currents. In no other painter’s work are the dynamics of attack and retreat over time harnessed to a more resonant or beautiful effect than in the work of Hank Pitcher. Both his process and his paintings reflect his long and harmonious relationship with the California Coast as a painter, teacher and surfer. Over thirty-five years as a professional artist, Hank has seen a number of currents in the art world; he has seen the “death” and “rebirth” of painting again and again. With typical California cool, he has done his own thing just the same. He has gone outside and made paintings of mountains and sea, of surfers and their rides, of life in California.
East Beach, 8-12-10, oil on canvas over board, 12 x 24 in
Blending an East Coast figurative sensibility reminiscent of Fairfield Porter with a West Coast tradition that shares as much with late Bay Area Figurative painting as with Southern Californian proto Pop experiments, Pitcher has developed a language
of form, color, stroke and iconography that sets him apart in the history of American art. Furthermore, the reductive quality of his flattened shapes and his use of un- modulated colors recall the sparse Realism of Edward Hopper. With tidal force, he continues to bend the trajectory of American landscape and figure painting.
Come down to Sullivan Goss and see the exhibition for WPA artist & Oak Group founder, Ray Strong, featuring paintings from the early 1930s to works created in the 1980s, when he was actively teaching Santa Barbara painters about the art of the plein air landscape.
The exhibition will be up until July 3, 2011 so you still have plenty of time to make a trip to see these breathtaking works by the beloved Ray Strong.
[Ray Strong, Toro Canyon Rock, 1977, oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inches]
Strong was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1905. While he attended high school, Strong began painting plein air with Clyde Keller of Portland. Realizing his passion for art, Strong enrolled first in the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco (now the San Francisco Fine Arts Institute). Strong then went to New York, and studied with Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League.
In the early 1930s, Strong returned to San Francisco where he helped organize the Art Students League of San Francisco. There he studied and taught with Maynard Dixon (1879–1938), Frank Van Sloun (1879–1938) and George Post (1906–1997), and eventually opened an Artist’s Cooperative Gallery. During the Depression, Strong painted murals for the WPA. Some of his 1930s paintings are now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
[Ray Strong, Silver and Gold, 1955, oil on panel, 24 x 34 inches]
In 1960, Strong and his wife Elizabeth, moved to Santa Barbara, California, for “the birds and the banks.” Strong had been commissioned to paint the backgrounds to dioramas in the Bird Hall of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, as well as some paintings for local bank. Until his death in 2006, Ray Strong was recognized as one of the leaders of the preservationist painters collective, The Oak Group in Santa Barbara County.
SGTV presents FLORABUNDANCE: Three Artists for Spring. Narration is provided by curator Susan Bush who explains how these three contemporary artists put a modern twist on the Dutch floral still life tradition to produce gorgeous paintings just in time for Spring.
Opening on First Thursday, May 5, 2011 is our newest exhibition:
FLORABUNDANCE: THREE ARTISTS FOR SPRING
This exhibition takes an up-close look at the subject of the flower, a subject that has been painted for centuries in every kind of configuration remaining timeless and fresh.
Jane Willis Taylor, Berlin Rose, 2006, Oil on Canvas
Jane Willis Taylor’s photo-realistic flowers read as contemporary mandalas. The paintings provide a contemporary sensibility of deconstruction; the flowers, not rooted to a horizon line, are allowed to float within the space of the canvas evoking a sense of life and energy. These compositions of botanical beauty lead the way into an abundant spring season.
Eric Wert, Roses, 2006, Oil on Panel
Eric Wert takes his time with smaller, more intimate compositions of flowers, both indoors and out. Reminiscent of the 17th century Dutch Masters, Wert’s elegant fabrics, hyper-realistic dew-drops and unexpected arrangements make for a new way of seeing a beloved genre.
John Nava, Callas, 2007, Oil on Canvas
John Nava brings a more traditional approach to the still life floral arrangement. His technical sophistication is coupled with a deep understanding of the history of still-life painting. Drawing from such sources as the Italian Renaissance, Nava creates timeless masterpieces.
Reworking a classic and long cherished genre, these three artists celebrate the procession into spring with a contemporary twist and unmistakable style.
Sullivan Goss is proud to present FLORABUNDANCE: Three Artists for Spring May 5, 2011 through July 3, 2011. Also on exhibition are works by American Impressionist Colin Campbell Cooper; Oak Group founder Ray Strong; a selection of the Gallery’s Favorite Things.
Now showing at Sullivan Goss: “Stills from a Life’s Cinema” an exhibition featuring Colin Campbell Cooper’s whimsical cloud studies.
Cooper is a major figure in American Impressionism and developed a firm grasp on Realism under the then controversial Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1886 he went to Europe and found himself immersed in the wake of the Impressionist era. Cooper went on to develop a distinctive American Impressionist style gained from his studies at the Academies Vitti, Decluse, and Julian of France. When he returned to the United States in 1895 Cooper moved from Philadelphia to California. Although he lived in California, he maintained a home in New York, which helped sustain a successful bi-coastal career. Sullivan Goss is pleased to present the Estate of the Artist.
A few weeks ago we debuted a new exhibition of work from the estate of Modernist painter Anya Fisher. This body of work demonstrates the strength of Fisher’s vision as an artist through bold colors and strong lines. It is a beautiful group of paintings and we hope you’ll come in to see them for yourself. Check out the video above for a teaser, and make sure to post your comments to let us know what you think.
Charles Donelan has just written a wonderful review of the AMERICANS AT PLAY exhibit currently on the wall in our contemporary gallery. The contemporary room referenced in the article is only up through the end of July, so you may want to come see it. People who have been in have come back with friends. Really, there’s almost nothing better going on anywhere in the city to put you in a fine summer mood.
We’d like to thank everyone who came by for the opening of our exhibition, Americans at Play. It was an incredibly fun evening and the crowd seemed to really enjoy the playfulness at the heart of the show. If you couldn’t make it to the opening, please come by for a tour of the exhibition. Just ask any of us to show you around.
To see the video we produced to accompany the show click here.
Just before the big opening...
...the crowd arrives.
Vintage toys and games were displayed as part of the exhibition.
We’ve recently opened a new exhibit by the unique mid-century modern painter, Frederick Remahl. Frank Goss put together a wonderful video to accompany the exhibit. The video gives a great outline of Remahl’s colorful history and insight into the life of a successful artists in the time of the Great Depression.
Click on the image above to watch the video. Then come in to the gallery to see this show for yourself. And finally, let us know what you think by posting your comments on this blog.
Gallery Director Jeremy Tessmer has finished our newest SGTV video. The video accompanies our exhibition of important American art from 1880 to 1920 entitled: The Last New Century. In the video Jeremy explains the idea behind bringing this group of paintings together and asks us to consider the similarities between the art world from the turn of 20th century to the art world today.
You can click on the image above to watch the video, then make sure to come and see the show again or for the first time.
Finally, make sure to leave your comments on the blog to let us know what you think.
We’d like to thank everyone that showed up for last week’s 1st Thursday event. Between the solo debut of Pamela Hill Enticknap’s work, and Last New Century: American Art from 1880 – 1920, we saw an enormous crowd for the event. We didn’t get any pictures from the event that night, so if you have any please let us know and we’ll try to post them on the blog.
If you haven’t made it in to see these great shows yet, make a lunch date at the Arts and Letters Cafe, and give yourself enough time to stop in to see these shows. Let us know what you think of the new color in the Vintage Gallery. And tell us your impression of Enticknap’s American Beach Life. We’d love to hear from you.
We’ve recently completed a new video to accompany our upcoming solo exhibit by Pamela Hill Enticknap: American Beach Life.
There will be an opening reception on First Thursday, April 1st, from 5 to 8pm. Click on the image below to watch the video, then make sure to mark your calendar for the opening to see these great paintings in person.
The Santa Barbara Independent’s Spring Arts Preview is out and we were pleased to see that the fine folks on the Indy Staff included an image for an upcoming exhibition called AMERICANS AT PLAY. As always, we are grateful to see one of our artists reproduced in the paper. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the artist or the exhibition.
To set the record straight, the painting is called Baltimore and was painted in 1950 by Betty Lane. To learn more about the artist click here.
