Collection: "Separating Sand" organized by Lena Gustafson

About the Exhibition

Separating Sand represents a grouping of 13 paintings and drawings by NIAD artists. The title refers to the impossible task of trying to categorize/organize something that refuses to have structure. A kind of articulating of chaos.

The images selected in this show all straddle the line between abstraction and representation, and together remind us of the absurdities of everyday objects and animals in the world around us.

Shawna Kinard's two works Banana and Hot Dog couldn't be more representational, yet somehow invite us to rethink everything we thought we knew about these everyday foods.

About the Organizer

Lena Gustafson (b. San Francisco 1989) is a painter and multi-disciplinary artist living and working in the east bay, CA. Her paintings depict scenes of transformation often with figures or botanicals merging with their environment. Primary themes in Gustafson's work include body memory, corporeal systems, sequential evolution and reciprocity. In 2011 she received her BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in Illustration and Art Therapy in 2011. Gustafson is currently presenting her sixth solo show Midnight Hour at China Heights in Sydney, Australia.  She has presented solo exhibitions at Park Life Gallery in SF and pt. 2 Gallery in Oakland, CA. 

In 2011 she co-founded Night Diver Press with her husband Peter Calderwood. Together they use silkscreen and other alternative printing techniques to create and publish multiples in the form of prints, books, zines, and monotypes. They have exhibited work at Art Book Fairs in Mexico, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area.