In the Rohnert Park Series, I started with charcoal drawings that were very abstract. I did these charcoal drawings in response the human figure before me at the time. I used these drawings as a reference point to respond in kind for the next derivation charcoal and gesso sketches. The final color versions are the third derivation, using the charcoal & gesso sketches as a reference point.


AWARD OF EXCELLENCE to Heather Martin from Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle Art Critic

Where: Alameda Art Center, 101 Webster Street, Alameda, CA  510-748-7888
CONTEMPORARY ABSTRACTS, showing August 3-25, 2005

Juror's Statement

For a juried exhibition to make complete sense to visitors, it would have to display all the rejected submissions alongside all those accepted, an intriguing but completely impractical possibility.

Having chosen some 60 objects from over a thousand submissions, through the undependable medium of slides, I am pleasantly surprised to find how consistent and solid the resulting show looks. I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as I did.

Studying firsthand the works I selected, I can see that a few push (or even breach) the limits of abstraction, and so, the parameters of this show. (The photographic pieces, which use an inherently representational medium, present particularly interesting problems.) I might have liked to reconsider the inclusion of a few things once I saw them eyes-on. Never mind, all of us involved felt the constraints that slides impose in one way or another.

The various awards went to people whose work touches most compellingly the essence or the bounds of abstraction as I understand them.

Kenneth Baker