1/25/2022 – 3/20/2022

Christian Gonzalez‘s exhibition at IAMA is a collective summary of the imagination. It is dedicated to his art teacher Ms. Sharon Maddison who has inspired him in more ways than one could ever hope for. From a young age, Christian’s goal has always been to maintain a creative outlook. Being able to look at regular materials such as a blank canvas or ordinary pieces of driftwood washed ashore on the pacific coast and turn them into works of art that will outlive the organic thought from which the ideas derived in the first place. 

11/9/2021 – 12/26/2021

Dan McGarrah’s artwork is digital art; each created from individual photographs (no compositing) he took of trees or other plants. He then has limited edition archival prints made on canvas or paper for the smaller sizes. Exhibited artworks are from two concurrent series – UNFORMED THOUGHTS and SUBLIMINAL PROCESSING. As images are completed each is placed in the series that he feels it belongs to.

UNFORMED THOUGHTS: There is a time period, however brief, during which our conscious thoughts take shape. At points midway through this process, there is just an amorphous pre-thought – it is unformed. McGarrah feels that the unnamed artworks are reflective of thoughts that still have a wide range of potential destinations and are further along towards forming. The title is reflective of the feeling or thought that, in his view, they have begun to acquire.

SUBLIMINAL PROCESSING: As opposed to conscious thoughts in the process of forming, this art is reflective of what takes place subconsciously inside the mind. Completely uncontrolled and largely inaccessible. Art in both of these series is reflective of a broad range of feelings and senses: from gentle to harsh, from caring to antagonistic. Above all else, McGarrah strives to create art with a strong impact – emotional and/or intellectual. Artwork that very successfully “stands on its own” accompanied, or unaccompanied, by concept. He has no philosophical or social commentary, intentions. McGarrah focuses on making art that can be considered equally hundreds of years from now when the circumstances and issues of today are long forgotten. Timeless Art is his goal. 

About Dan McGarrah
Dan McGarrah received a B.A. from Brooks Institute of Photography (Santa Barbara), in 1981. Subsequently, McGarrah had a career as an advertising photographer, pursuing fine art photography as time allowed. Since 2018, he has been fully committed to creating artwork, currently digital art. In 2020 he completed ‘The Artist Advisory’ 4-month sessions. McGarrah has been a member of the Non-Profit San Francisco Women’s Artist’s Gallery (SFWA Gallery) since late 2016. His work has been accepted to their monthly group shows 28 times to date, and he received a ‘Juror’s Choice’ Award 4 times. His digital art and fine art photography have also been exhibited in other notable venues and online.

9/13/2021 – 10/23/2021

The ZooZoom collection is inspired by the artist‘s interest in animals and the importance of the interconnectedness of nature. These screenshots show different animals in isolation but also connected through the digital world of Wi-Fi. They demonstrate the co-existence of natural and artificial worlds, as the animals are immersed into artificial high-tech dreamscapes as they adapt to survive in this modern age.

7/6/2021 – 9/12/2021

IAMA presents a major exhibition of works by the celebrated expressionist artist and painter Ane Howard, born in Montreal, Canada, and residing in Southern California. The show displays more than ten oil and mixed media paintings arranged thematically in the Tendergold ground gallery. Howard’s impressively vibrant art will immerse visitors in exuberant, saturated colors and raw emotions.

Ane Howard describes her works as “the expression of ideas and emotions that started forming in my mind in 2000 when I first landed in San Francisco and what California has grown to mean to me. I would describe my work as expressionist art, highly emotive and intuitive. Having worked in various art forms in the past, as a painter, I truly focus on the direct relations I have from my deeper self to paint-to-canvas.” Merging her love of abstract and figurative expressionism with the artist’s decades of artistic exploration in different forms such as dance, theater, film, and writing, the works presented are Howard’s major independent work of the past two years.

Howard pushes the boundaries of paintings in terms of their poetic potential, in tandem with her investigations of the power of colors, forms, and feminine principles. Her practice in spiritual and intellectual explorations has led to successive artistic endeavors. Still, paintings seem to be the medium in which her emotive brushstrokes can be stretched to the limit of what they can do and express. Being a self-taught artist, Ane Howard demonstrates an impressive range from figurative to seascape and abstract. Ultimately, her work explores what it means for one artist to fully connect to her environment and expresses what others in the culture cannot.

4/6/2021 – 6/27/2021

Todd Dunning is a pioneering kinetic sculptor in San Francisco. His early welded mechanical steel sculptures were evocative of Jean Tinguely and David Smith. His current works – painstakingly crafted from dielectric elastomers, titanium, carbon fiber, and 3D printed internals – are more organism than machine, moving powerfully and intelligently like a living creature. Their motion is self-determined, never machine-like, and always different. Dunning has exhibited in the Bay Area and nationally and can be found in several private collections, notably the Lester Marks Collection, Houston. Recent exhibitions of his current body include a group show at the International Art Museum of America and a solo exhibition at Gray Contemporary in Houston Texas.

11/2/2020 – 12/28/2020

Donned in discerning patterns, eye-catching colors, and notable designers, people serpentine the coiling streets of cities, challenging the status quo with their innovative styles. The impermanence and ever-changing nature of these concrete habitats offer unending sources of inspiration for Marisa Rheem. Working at an art gallery in downtown San Francisco, Marisa is constantly flooded with inspiration from the street fashion she observes. She views the limitless combinations of colors, texts, and patterns in streetwear as impermanent works of art that are thoughtfully created by the wearer. She captures snapshots of impermanent outfits on the streets and transforms them into permanent archival works of art destined for galleries.

Painting all of these lively combinations keeps her excited to go to the studio day after day. Using acrylic and a slow-dry blending medium, Marisa delicately applies thin layers of paint to create rich, complex, and vivid colors. Through building these layers, Marisa summons illustrious fragments of the human figure clothed in streetwear.

Marisa Rheem was born in 1989 in Washington D.C., USA. She currently lives in the Bay Area and works as an art consultant in the Financial District of San Francisco. She received her BFA in Studio Art in 2014 from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Marisa has received awards for her artwork, and has had her artwork displayed in multiple juried group shows, as well as in public and private collections. In November 2019, Marisa debuted her series “Impermanent Fascination,” her first solo exhibition which premiered in Oakland. Her works are exhibited at the De Young Museum from October-December 2020 in a juried group show titled, “De Young Open Exhibit”.

8/1/2020 – 10/26/2020

Music of Universe

Mihail Kivachitsky is a native of the former Soviet Union, where he honed his skills as a painter, illustrator, and sculptor over the first half of his life. Later, he worked on art projects across the world, including for the Kyrgyzstan government. Today, the 48-year-old Kivachitsky finds inspiration from the variety of cultures he has experienced to create art that is fascinating and unique. The foundation of his art is based on traditional Soviet realism and eastern spiritual influence. These two fabrics, combined as one, give him the hope to show colorful depictions of his life history.

“I do not paint, I illustrate life. My paintings are introspective of one’s self-image, and that is shown through this visual poetry. Reflecting real-life nature and symbols I see in the universe. My focus is to display reality in metaphysical nature. Bordering between reality and the supernatural, life has given me a reason to explicate my own visual reflection. Things that touched my soul. My heart. My mind. I draw all of my life and, in turn, learn how to draw all of my life”.