current exhibit

Collaborations and Tangents

Joseph Slusky & Katie Hawkinson

On view through November 30th

30 Years of Making and Exhibiting Art Together

August 13th from 5 to 7 pm Exhibit
August 14th at 2 pm Artists’ Talk & Demonstration

The Museum of Friends is pleased to announce the opening of Joseph Slusky and Katie Hawkinson exhibition Collaborations  and  Tangents, 30 Years of Making and Exhibiting Art Together on August 13th from 5 to 7 pm. The artists will be in attendance and refreshments will be served. If you are not fully vaccinated, we require you to wear a mask. The following day on August 14th at 2 pm Slusky and Hawkinson will present an artists’ talk on art public program that includes a demonstration to describe their process.

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Collaborations & Tangents - Joseph Slusky & Katie Hawkinson, 2012

The central work on display is a collaborative mural that Katie and Joseph created in 2012 in front of a favorite local book store, The Builders Booksource in Berkeley. The bookstore was undergoing downsizing.  In the past, Joe Slusky’s sculpture had been exhibited in the bookstore so the owner asked him to “graffiti” the temporary plywood portico across the front to make the storefront more welcoming during its reconfiguration. Joe agreed and asked Katie to work on it with him. Each had half or 15’ to design and paint.  Katie’s inspiration was “an offset half circle pattern used in many cultures in tile work to represent water.” Joe is best known for his whimsical painted metal sculptures made from recycled scrap metal, drawings and paintings. Joe relied on his process of scribbling or exploring realms of the subconscious with a pencil. For the plywood mural he did just that. In order to have unity they agreed to restrict their color palette to black and white. However, as the mural evolved Katie who is an incredible colorist introduced colors with her patterns. As Joe’s scribbles became more complex compositions on wood Katie helped him to fill in some of his larger areas with black or white. This experience freed Katie up to paint in front of the public – one which she did not relish but with time seemed not to mind as the process unfolded.

The temporary murals were on display for about a month until the bookstore construction was complete. Afterwards the artists brought the panels home where they remained for eight years until they prepared them for the move to Walsenburg for the MoF Exhibit.

Brendt Berger expressed interest in showing these panels over the last few years when he visited Katie and Joe. The other works in the exhibit represent 30 years of art making for each individually, and some were created collaboratively. 

Katie and Joe’s paintings and sculptures are in many collections throughout the United States and they have exhibited here, in Europe, Mexico and Japan. He taught drawing and three-dimensional studies at UC Berkeley’s Architecture Department for over thirty years. Katie Hawkinson is a painter and printmaker who teaches painting at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Department and drawing and design at UC Berkeley.

In keeping with the theme of collaboration the exhibits on the 2nd floor feature Ezra Li Eismont’s Happening:Alter State a Celebration of Living Art and Yul Jorgensen’s FAROUT Murals and ArtBox Colorado through October 7th. Please call 719-738-2858 for more information or visit: www.museumoffriends.org

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