image: Screwed-up Eyes and Screwed-down Hairdo, paper pulp and gauache on canvas, 15 x 30″, 2022
On view in the SFArtsED gallery is a solo exhibition by SFArtsED Artist Mentor Alexis Arnold.
For the artist, the grid is an organizer of visual space, mediating the viewer’s perception of color and form while providing infinite variations of changing imagery. Reinventing analog materials and processes, Alexis creates stationary works with oscillating optics, which often appear digitally produced or even kinetic. Refraction of light and the viewer’s position in relation to the work radically alter what is seen. On view are four series of works that employ varied techniques and material operations to modify images.
The artist’s paper-pulp “paintings” explore how color, pattern, surface texture and material expectation guide perception. A set of light and space wall-works utilize painted and layered mesh fabrics (i.e. grids) to create experiences of moiré patterns – activated by viewers’ movements around the gallery. A series of intricate monotype prints skew and warp matrices, presenting analog techniques which mimic digital manipulations. Cyanotype prints on view riff on reflections of light as observed in architecture, reflected onto themselves when they are activated by sunlight.
About the Artist
Alexis Arnold is a Bay Area artist whose sculptural, installation, and mixed-media 2D artwork explores the subjective perception and experience of light, space and color, geology, and the visualization of time. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in Studio Art from Kenyon College. Alexis has worked as an SFArtsED Artist Mentor in in the public school artists’ residency program, in SFArtsED Summer, and in MSP workshops.