Sadly, Art Waves Gallery is Closing

In the 2008 archived pages of artwavesgallerysf.com there was a notice stating:
Art Waves, a neighborhood favorite for nearly three years, closed its doors the end of 2007. Art Waves owner, Kathy Dybeck, will continue to run FOGBELT STUDIO : www.fogbeltstudio.com/

However, although the actual Art Waves Gallery closed its doors in 2007, I bought its domain with the goal of resurrecting as much of it's content from its 2007 archived pages. This is really a nostalgic stroll back to December 2007, when Kathy Dybeck announced on the website that it was to be the last show to be presented before closing down.

This is a celebration of a delightful neighborhood gallery that introduced us to many fine artits' works. We thank you, Kathy, for enlightening and expanding our appreciation of all things ART.

I remember the first time I wandered into the gallery. I was showing a friend who was in San Francisco for a conference on custom application development for large and small companies around the city. We had just visited the Golden Gate Park. My friend was regaling me with horror stories of companies who had security breaches that happened when hackers took advantage of known weaknesses in their off-the-shelf software. She told me that many companies stick with the status quo for so long before finally creating custom applications. And once they have a team come in, such as herself and fellow tech members who create custom software development that it can be scaled up or down as needed, the inefficiency of what they had been using become glaringly clear. We had just crossed Judah Street, at 44th Avenue, and there was Art Waves.

Susan Black  Watercolor Paintings
Watercolor Painting

I moved to San Francisco in 1996 with my husband and my son. Born in New York City and living in suburban Connecticut, I had a 20-year New York-based career in public relations and corporate communications after I graduated from Connecticut College in New London with a BA in Literature.
After having made my living for so long using words, I found that California's light, scenery, attitude and whole way of life awakened in me a desire to communicate in visual terms. This eventually led me to enroll at City College of San Francisco in early 2003, and I have been a student of drawing and painting continually since then.
My focus is watercolor, both alone or in combination with pastel. I describe my style as "recognizable abstraction". I seek simplification -- distilling my chosen subject, emotion or thought to what I feel is its basic sense -- preferably in a way that would not occur to anyone else. For that reason, I most admire artists and poets whose work expresses their independence, especially Winslow Homer and Emily Dickinson.
I belong to several Bay Area art groups, and my work has appeared in local, regional and national juried shows since 2005; I also exhibit through City College. Among my non-painting creative pursuits, I row a single scull in Richardson Bay, play the piano, write haiku and knit.
Please contact me at susanb224(at)aol.com

Kathy Dybeck           Monotype Prints, Collage, Fiberarts
Printmaker, Collage, Fiberarts

Website: www.fogbeltstudio.com
Printmaking, which is one of four emphasis areas of my art degree, is usually what I list as my medium. I have an old manual Griffin etching press (32 x 48 inch bed) for primarily doing monotype and collagraphic printmaking. But I often incorporate my own handmade paper, cyanotypes, and transparencies of my photography (along with textiles, wire, thread) as collage elements; doing more a mixed media approach to art.

I have no agendas in my artwork. I work best when I'm happy, and while I do a lot of black and white work, I love bright colors, plants, and houses, which figure in much of my work. I work both 2D and 3D. I thoroughly enjoy teaching, and have taught these techniques at my FOGBELT STUDIO and in Bay Area schools and art centers since 1996.

Bringing art and creativity into the community is something I feel strongly about, and having opened Art Waves Gallery in the outer Sunset of San Francisco in 2005, I am able to provide people and the neighborhood with a place to view, enjoy, and purchase good art, affordable art. Art Waves Gallery is a place where local artists can show a body of their work, host their receptions, and not pay a commission fee to the gallery. This was truly a dream of mine that is now a reality.

Richard Herring      Acrylic Paintings
Painter

I started painting a long time ago – science fiction landscapes in junior high/high school; got a BA in Fine Arts at UC Berkeley and spent some post college years exploring spray paint and collage as a punk rocker in the flatlands of Berkeley circa 1980-85. Eventually developed a painting style influenced by classic animation and cartoons (Krazy Kat and 1930’s-40’s Warner Brothers) and by the minimalist styles of late 70’s-80’s underground comix; expressionism, surrealism and its predecessor, dada, also played a part. All poured into a blender and whipped into frothy brightly colored existential cartoons – simple forms and simple compositions in out-of-the-tube colors.

As one observer commented during an Open Studio event some years ago, “I think you have a problem with color;” an assessment I have been pleased to live up to ever since.

Over a lifetime of painting I have developed a style of distorted reality, a bright coloring of the everyday. I wish I could paint a ‘serious picture’, vast somber canvas of dark color fields brooding on the wall, but invariably I would be impelled to place a small, vividly blazoned four-wheeled pull toy in the corner.

The world itself can be a vast, somber, brooding place, but even (especially) then it’s usually pretty funny if you look hard enough.

Nikki King     Collage and Vintage Pins
Collage and Vintage pins

Nikki King is a San Francisco artist who has won awards in the California State Fair three years running for her collage work. Nikki was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1934. She received a B.A. from Mills College and a M.S. degree from San Francisco State University.

Nikki is drawn to mysterious, somewhat disquieting images as well as those that are humorous, colorful and joyful. Although she works from a selection of random images, her finished pieces are carefully assembled using formal compositional elements.

Now Nikki has embarked on a new artistic venture designing wearable art made from vintage buttons, beads, and precious and semi-precious stones. These small artworks are individually created three-dimensional collage brooches/pendants that reveal a harmonious fusion of form, color and texture.

Her collages and brooches are available in unique shops and galleries and by special order.

Jean Lannen Photographs and Mixed Media
Jean took her first photography class back in high school, and continued on with her education by receiving a BFA from The Center For Creative Studies, in Detroit. She enjoys creating work for both commercial and fine art clients, along with private commissions.

Jean’s current body of art work is about recreating her childhood memories. She gives new life to the old, lost and forgotten dolls and artifacts that she has been collecting over the years. She first photographs the objects and then alters the images digitally before applying paints and collage to the surface of each final print. Her use of “spot varnishing” on the surface of each print, is a metaphor for the reclaimed power, confidence and love that she rekindles in each doll and object. The shiny surface is a sort of “power shield” with special powers that hold universal knowledge and deflect negative energy, a sort of homage to the Star Wars “force” and Harry Potter’s magical spells.

She currently lives and works in Pacifica, find out more about Jean and her work at: www.TheOtherJean.com.

Monte Leach Monotype Prints
Monotype Printmaking

An art appreciation class taught by Wayne Thiebaud at UC Davis opened the world of art to me, and helped me to see the physical world in a new way.
A drawing class in college proved to me that I enjoyed creating art.
The extraordinary spiritual paintings of British artist Benjamin Creme showed me that art could enlighten as well as inspire.

Seeing in person the work of the great Renaissance Masters Veronese, El Greco, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt, and their modern-day disciples such as Turner, Van Gogh, and Matisse has inspired me greatly.

Years of graphic design work in the corporate world sharpened my visual skills.
Discovery of the “painterly print”, the monotype, with its spontaneous, surprising results, has opened doors to a new world of artistic discovery that I’m only beginning to explore. I hope that my own joy in creating these works comes through when you view them.

Contact Monte at monteleach(at)hotmail.com.

Tim Leary     Acrylic Paintings
Acrylic Paintings on Fabric

The perception of color is a gift humans possess. The way light hits a color, the type of light used, and angles of refraction created by texture, all contribute to our perception of colors and shades. They may appear to be accidents, but are really gifts of art. I engage the creative spirit by allowing it to emerge in the studio and in the work. Before beginning I plan a direction, then go to the studio knowing mostly that I want to watch colors and textures emerge on my canvases.

Elizabeth McClellan            Illustrations, Drawings, Paintings
Illustrations, Drawings, Paintings

Elizabeth is in her 16th year of teaching art to children in San Francisco. During this time, she pursued her art interests in a variety of ways.

Her mixed media work was used in television advertisement and for the Canadian Cirque du Soleil promotions.

Elizabeth's love of drawing went in new directions on the Etch-a-Sketch medium. Her work hangs in private collections in California, Oregon and Colorado as well as in the Etch-a-Sketch offices in Bryan, Ohio and New York.

In 2005, her illustrations were published by Chronicle Books. This collection of watercolors illustrates a 'postmodern' fairy tale entitled, "Stop This Birthday".

Elizabeth continues with illustration projects and portrait commissions - people, pets and plants are her favorite subjects.

Denise Stukas           Ceramics
Ceramics

Working in clay for over 20 years, my main focus has been wheel - thrown raku fired vessels. Raku firing is an ancient Japanese firing method where the glazed pieces are fired to 1900 degrees F, then removed very quickly from the kiln to a covered container with straw and newspaper. This post - firing reduction creates unusual one of a kind effects.

My work in clay is a reflection of the harmony and balance I strive to achieve amidst living in a very chaotic world.

Sandra Vrooman       Photography and Ceramics
Sandra Vrooman is a woman of undetermined age with a deceptively normal appearance who has lived in the San Francisco South Bay for the last 35 years. She dabbles in many art forms but doesn't sit still long enough to master any of them. Now retired, she hopes to master something.

She writes under the pen name of Kitsune Miko, a medieval Japanese courtesan. The name was created as an internet persona and can loosely be translated as trickster/visionary. Her interest in things Japanese began with the study of Bonsai and branched out into reading Japanese mythology, and the works of Lady Murasaki, a poet from the Heian era in Japan.

Her artistic interests include photography, ceramics and painting. Currently she is combining photography and poetry is a style referred to as Haiga, the combination of art and poetry (in the traditional sense hai is poem and ga is painting).. Although there is no official name for this combination of photo and poem there is a movement to call it shai (photo) hai (poem).

Born in Chicago, Sandra has written poetry most of her life. Her first published work was in her freshman year of High School where one of her poems appeared in the National Anthology of High School Poetry. She also won a hair drier in the late 70's from the Woman's Day Beautiful Idea Contest for one of two poems submitted. Since then her works have appeared on line in several Iceflow publications, "Juice" an online poetry journal, and "40 Plus". Her Shai hai have been published in "Canadian Zen Haiku".

Roxanne Worthington        Photography
Photography
I love that I can express myself with photography in creative ways, ways that go beyond what I have been able to do in other art forms. Photography is rich and has so many possibilities. I'm attracted to making both black & white and color images, to using traditional, alternative and digital processes. What matters most to me is the image, not the process. My most recent body of work is color digital. It falls in the genre of staged or constructed photography. I have exhibited in group and solo shows and sell my work in galleries and shops in the Bay Area. I am a member of BAPC, often show with The Nocturnes, and teach classes at Fogbelt Studio.

More of my work can be seen at www.roxanneworthington.com