Coast Highway Artists


Gallery at 284 Main St., Point Arena, CA 95468 - 707-882-3616


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VISIT OUR GALLERY



Artwork & Gift Shopping



CHAC GALLERY



MONTHLY ARTISTS' RECEPTIONS



SPECIAL EXHIBITS



MULTI-MEDIA ART



CHAC GALLERY SCHEDULE





2022 (Updated Jun. 1)


January, Gallery maintenance


February 3-27, (TBA) Group Show: Insight Into Love, A Valentine's Day Exhibit, Reception: Fri. Feb. 11, Noon to 5 PM


March 4-28, Reception: Sat. March 5, Noon - 5 PM, Exhibit features Deborah Threlkel, Abalone Queen Jewelry Chris Hagie, painting Carol Frechette, leather


April 1 - 25: Featuring collections of CHAC member artists' work. Special activities and entertainment in gallery for Almost Fringe Festival on Saturday, Apr. 23, 11AM - 6PM

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May 1-30: Reception Friday, May 6, Noon - 5 PM Exhibit features CeCe Case, realistic & abstract figure drawings, and Harald Eric Nordvold, ceramics


June 3-27. Reception, Saturday June 4, Noon - 3 PM, Exhibit features Sharon Nickodem, photo-collage Donnalynne, collage and Mark Chase, sculpture


July 1-25. Exhibit features Barbara Poole, printmaker and painter, and Bea Acosta, ceramic vessels, and Brenda Phillips, ceramic tableware. Reception: July 3, 12 Noon to 5 PM, including during the 1 to 2 PM parade time of Point Arena Independence Day Parade

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August 5-29: Reception: Sat August 6, Noon - 5 PM. Exhibit features Elizabeth B. Solomon, custom clothing & fabric sculptures, multi-media and Linda Green, ceramics & paintings


September 2-26: Reception Saturday, Sept 3, Noon - 5 PM. Exhibit features Geraldine LiaBraaten, Photography, and James Docker, woodworking

October 1 -29: Reception, Sat. Oct. 8, Noon - 5 PM. Exhibit features Kelley Kieve, painting, collage and Peter Bailey, jewelry


November 4 -28: Reception: Friday, 4, Noon - 5 PM. Exhibit features Andrea Allen, Chinese Brush painting and ceramics and Ling-Yen Jones, handmade jewelry

December 2 - 26: CHAC Members' Holiday Gift show, including participation in Point Arena Merchants Assoc. (PAMA) Hometown Holidays Shopping Day, Sat. Dec.10



JULY exhibit - ETCHINGS, PAINTINGS, & CERAMICS, RECEPTION JULY 3, NOON - 5



Declare your independence this year by enjoying one-of-a-kind artwork at the Coast Highway Art Collective. On Sunday, July 3, the collective hosts an opening reception for three local artists, Brenda Phillips, ceramics Bea Acosta, pottery and Barbara Poole, printmaker. The community is invited to stop in right after the Independence Day parade in Point Arena ends after winding its way down Main Street. The parade begins at noon.

Phillips began taking pottery lessons around 2002 after retiring in 1995 from teaching at Manchester Elementary and as a resource specialist at Point Arena High School. She has studied under Paul Stein and taken classes at Brandybuck with Kaye Like and at the Mendocino Art Center. Phillips is showing some new work at this show, including large footed oval bowls and globes. She says “It’s a challenge for me to make new shapes that I haven’t tried before. I love it when a lump of clay can become so many different shapes and forms. Glazing is still fun especially when different colors are layered onto a single piece. I love to challenge myself by mixing my own glazes, then brushing, dipping, pouring, or spraying them for so many different effects.”

Acosta says “My Native American/ Mexican roots have emerged in my pottery. The joy I feel as my hands create with the clay must have connections to my ancestors. I am enamored with the piece as it unfolds and I rarely know how it will look until the final moment when it emerges from the kiln, the firepit or the raku kiln. It evolves as the clay and I create together.” Acosta has experimented with a variety of methods to finish her pottery masks and vessels, which are all hand built, using the slab and coil method. Spontaneity is inherent in all her creations because of the way she works, the material she uses and the process she employs. For Acosta, experimenting with various techniques, burnishing, terra sigillata, sagger firings, raku, horsehair and smolder firings, is an organic experience. Combining the elements of fire and earth (the clay itself) appeals to Acosta’s Native American and Mexican heritage. The influence is obvious in the finished products. Both her masks and her vases suggest the primal and spiritual qualities of indigenous people.

Poole says her art is often experimental and based on what she sees and feels. “I notice that I am always documenting, whether it be the passage of time or my surroundings,” observes Poole. Primarily she is a printmaker, but she often makes a series based on the same idea in oil, watercolor and sometimes taking it to 3-dimensions. “I’ve been influenced by other artists, usually printmakers who do unusual techniques, and by my childhood in rural Pennsylvania. My goal is to learn new skills and develop different art methods every year which has led to challenges and many surprises. Since the pandemic my art has become more about the experience of looking at the world and myself in a different way.”


painting, ceramics, pottery





Featured work by the Artists



Paint Tubes



barbARA



Poppies



Barbara



Ceramic Tableware



Brenda



Ceramic Tableware



Brenda



Ceramic Vase w/horsehair glaze



bea



Ceramic Vase



bea



June exhibit - the past & future retold, with visiting artists:
sharon nickodem, donnalynn & mark chase. reception june 4



This month-long exhibit is all about what could be and what was created by three local artists. The Coast Highway Art Collective (CHAC) is hosting a collection of art work that portrays a world made from these artists imagination. Antique photos collide with new ideas, metal is shaped into new worlds, and digital images are crafted as future visions. Mark Chase’s sculptures intermix well with Sharon Nickodem’s and Donnalynn’s collages.


Sharon Nickodem started her artist life as a photographer, but once she discovered collage she was smitten. Her collages include materials taken from magazines, her own photos, collected mementos, the written word from old books and post cards, combined with other media. Sharon says, “The assembled image may recall a past event, a dream or a fantasy. The collage process brings a deeper, more personal interpretation to my subjects.” First, Sharon assembles collage materials in the traditional analog manner. Next, she scans the composition and reworks it on her computer, adding layers and additional elements until she creates the desired result. Lastly, she prints the final piece on high quality archival paper. The result is an integrated image where the elements flow together, telling a story.


Donnalynn Chase came naturally to collage through her obsession with collecting books and all kinds of ephemera. Hunting for that perfect old book or antique ephemera has been one of her favorite things to do. She often feels like a historian or librarian of valuable papers and findings from the past. For over a decade, Donnalynn has primarily used antique & vintage images and ephemera in her art work. As an artist, she feels entrusted to bring old ephemera, etchings, and papers back to life in a new expressive way or keep them safe for the future. She loves the challenge of incorporating her collection of “stuff” into her art. Donnalynn is a traditional cut & paste collage artist. A unique quality of her art work is that she incorporates original paper materials in her artwork, not digital copies. When you purchase or are gifted a piece of her art, you are also getting an authentic piece of the past that is made new.


Mark Chase is a self-taught artist who has been influenced by years of working in aerospace industry with precise and articulate requirements. Brass, bronze or copper and beautiful minerals are the dominate materials in his objects d’ arte. Antique celestial models and instruments inspire the majority of Mark’s work. All of Mark’s art is one-of-a-kind design embodying the marriage of art and science. He started to make armillary spheres when it became apparent that he couldn’t afford to purchase authentic specimens to grace his own growing collection. This exhibit showcases several of his artifacts that could be a solar system discovered in the future or viewed as a historic specimen.



UPDATE #5 OF THE GO FUND ME CAMPAIGN: "SAVE POINT ARENA GALLERY WITH a NEW ROOF



We have finished repairs on some underlying water leakage damage in a wall with your donations received early in the GoFundme campaign, and which we reported on in previous updates. However, before we can even start this last phase, we will have to come up with the funds to purchase the complete lot of asphalt shingles and underlying roof felt needed. The shingles and felt are estimated to cost about $5000, and there will be about $5000 estimated cost for hiring the required labor to finish. We have such estimates from a professional roofer, but Point Arena also has a wonderful reputation for pitching in with volunteer labor for worthy costs that will contribute to the quality of life in our area. We have been contacted by the community leader who had been involved in organizing local volunteer labor to rehabilitate the movie theater, and the original conversion of a former city residence into our art gallery, each done about 20 years ago. These were both considered cultural assets to the entire community, and the annual membership subscriptions for each have helped keep both resources alive since then. Our community leader has agreed that helping us fix the art gallery roof is a worthy community volunteer labor project. If we can at least raise the out-of-pocket expenses to buy the roofing materials by July, we hope to start the work then, using a combination of paid roofer labor assisted by volunteer labor. We need your help. Please consider making a donation if you haven't already, and if you have, thank you immensely, but please consider making another if you possibly can!

https://www.gofundme.com/save-point-arena-gallery-with-new-roof

July will be an interesting month at the gallery. We will try to accomplish the roofing job at the same time as we mount a new July art exhibit inside the gallery, hoping the roofing will only take a few days in the middle of some selected week. The work will be outside the normal gallery open days of Fridays through Sundays.In addition, we are planning on participating in the 4th of July Independence Day Parade scheduled in Point Arena this year, after a 2-year suspension of the parade due to the pandemic. We hope you will be able to join us. Here is a video of the last parade, held in 2019. It was a wonderfully stirring event!



may exhibit, OPENING RECEPTION, CC case and
harald nordvold, Friday, May 6, Noon - 5 PM



CC Case is an eclectic local artist, showing for the first time at CHAC with her husband, potter Eric Harald Nordvold. Her journey to the coast took 60 years, starting in upstate New York, and including almost thirty years in western Colorado. After graduating from Elmira College she worked in the fields of printing and advertising, beginning as a paste-up artist in New Jersey in the pre-computer days. In the Caribbean, her calligraphy and illustrations were featured on menus and tee shirts, and in western Colorado she was co-owner of a small advertising agency. She left commercial art to work with adults and children with developmental disabilities, craving more interaction with people. She went on to earn an MA from the University of Northern Colorado and become a special education teacher and consultant.


Art was always an interest and part of the journey, first drawing and painting as a young child, taking occasional classes and art workshops through her adult years, and then creating learning materials and environments. Case has participated for many years in life drawing sessions at Gualala Arts and strives to depict the human figure with sensitivity, to render the organic form believably and also capture some sense of spirit or mood. She paints both abstractly and realistically in a variety of media, depicting either the natural beauty of her surroundings or the inner world of imagination, impressions and energy. She also will be showing "photo collage paintings," digitally manipulated photographs. For the past eleven years Case has made her home in Gualala, drawing inspiration from quiet time in the forest and regular walks on the beaches and bluffs, appreciating and gaining nourishment from the peace and beauty of the coastal surroundings.


Eric Harald Nordvold has been a potter for over 40 years, making a variety of stoneware and porcelain pieces using the name Viking Pottery. He splits time between homes in Santa Rosa, where he maintains his studio, and Gualala, where he finds inspiration in the colors, patterns and energy of the natural environment. He is known for his bowls, mugs, vases, trays and plaques and for the luminous multicolored and ash glazes he has formulated and mixes himself, which are what set his pottery apart from other work. His pieces are high fired in a kiln of his own construction to create a durable and vitrified product. The kiln allows him to work with a range of natural materials to develop glazes that have the fluidity of water and blend into each other in various ways as do the colors of nature. He has been working with wood ash glazes for many years with other minerals added to create glaze surfaces reminiscent of tide pools or ocean currents through kelp forests. The interaction of the glaze materials with the manipulation of the kiln atmosphere and temperature create the magical alchemy that brings life and spirit to his work. Nordvold remarks, "Every firing brings surprises, like when one happens upon a brilliant sea star or anemone at low tide."


Nordvold's throws work on the potter's wheel, with consideration for the form and function of each piece, and in recent years has added rectangular and square shapes, and experimented with a variety of textural effects and different clays. He finds great satisfaction from creating pieces that people enjoy using everyday. He says, " Drinking from a mug is a trivial thing we might take for granted- one chooses a mug with a pleasing color and shape, but the touch of your hand on the handle and lips on the rim are intimate and sensual- I find great satisfaction when someone tells me they love to drink from my mug." Nordvold cites the influence of potters Warren Mackenzie, Bernard and David Leach, and Shoji Hamada. Growing up in San Francisco, he was also influenced by his father, a Norwegian immigrant who worked with wood to build cabinetry, furniture and even his own skis, and his mother, who came from South Africa and worked with her hands as a dressmaker. He received his BA from Sonoma State College, and has taught pottery there and at the Mendocino Art Center.




painting & pottery - opening reception for featured artists: cc case, painting, & Harald eric nordvold, pottery and vases



Our video features interviews with the two artists at their reception on May 6, in the Point Arena CHAC gallery. Each artist walks us through a collection of their work on exhibit, describing elements of the idea or conception for each piece, the composition, materials and design, and elements of personal satisfaction with each completed work.



Copyright by contributing artists and Coast Highway Artists Collective. All rights reserved.



Coast Highway Artists Collective 284 Main Street PO Box 444 Point Arena, CA 95468 ph: 707-882-3616 contact@coast-highway-artists.com Follow us: Facebook