KALEID gallery presents featured exhibits by clayprint monograph artist Martha Castillo and mixed media artist Eric Taggart.

Artists' Reception First Friday June 6th, 7-9pm
Exhibit on view through July 12, 2008.

This reception is part of the South FIRST FRIDAYS artwalk. It is free and open to the public.

Cities and Beyond by Martha Castillo
This collection includes work from two of Castillo's most recent series: “Cities I Have Known”, and “Beyond the Surface”. Mostly large, all abstract, expressive and lively, they capture her feelings about places and ideas.

I perceive life as many of layers of mood, color and texture, and am inspired by the visual evidence of ageing all around us. Those layers, built up over time, and worn down by use, generate the uneven patina of life’s experience. *Clayprinting allows me to be curious, to explore complex interplays of shape and color, surface and core.
The monoprints are textured and complex. I hope you will find them inviting.

*Clayprint-This innovative new technique invented by Pennsylvania Artist Mitch Lyons, is all about layers. The artist creates images by painting layers of white potters clay with pigment added, onto a slab of un-fired stoneware clay. The image is then transferred by hand to canvas, using a wooden brayer and other hand tools, generating a monotype. Every print is a unique, artist made, original.

Martha Castillo has studied with Mitch Lyons, the inventor of clayprinting, on numerous occasions. In addition to exhibiting her clayprints to a growing audience, Castillo teaches workshops in this exciting new medium.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. by Eric Taggart

Eric Taggart is a self-taught artist who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. In undergraduate and graduate school, his focus of study was philosophy, religion and psychology. In 2003, he began to explore these same fields through artmaking in an effort to mend what was deconstructed through my formal education.

Taggart adds: I work in many mediums and tend to be drawn to objects and materials that already have history and narrative. Recent works have included whiteout, wire, tape and string - materials that are commonly associated with mending and repair.

Taggart engages religious, psychological and political themes through his mixed-media work which often includes found objects, personal family artifacts and common materials typically used for household mending and repair.

In the spring of this year, a blue ribbon jury of Los Angeles gallery owners and museum curators (most notably Howard Fox, Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) selected Taggart as one of LA ArtSeen's 2008 Emerging Artists. His work was then hung in the company of works by such highly esteemed artists as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg at the corresponding benefit auction in Hollywood.

Eric has exhibited in San Jose, San Francisco, Mt. View, Los Angeles and San Diego. He has a BA in Philosophy and Theology from Point Loma Nazarene University and a MA in Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. He currently resides with his wife in Los Altos.

KALEID gallery
88 South Fourth Street, downtown San Jose