Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery

Each year the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery explores a variety of contemporary and historical issues in art and design, by exhibiting the works of professional artists and designers, collections of historical of art, and through collaborative programs with other art institutions in the Bay Area. Thompson Gallery exhibitions have traveled to other museums and galleries nationwide, and are documented by catalogues that provide in-depth interpretive analyses based on original scholarship.

In addition the School of Art and Design has galleries and displays dispersed throughout the art facilities, continually displaying the ongoing artwork of our students. The smaller galleries provide a place to display what our students are passionate about, what they work on every day, and give us all a glimpse of the future of art.

Hours:
Tuesdays 11 am - 4 pm, 6 - 7:30 pm
Monday, Wednesday - Friday 11 am - 4 pm
and by appointment

Location:
Art Building, First Floor

BEAN FINNERAN:
POLKA DOT PLATEAU

Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery
April 17 - May 18

Bean Finneran individually rolls out tens of thousands of thin and subtly curved ceramic coils that are then hand painted and interwoven with each other to create intricate, albeit temporary, sculptures. Balanced together without glue or other adhesives, the works derive their structural integrity solely from gravity and the strength of their interconnected linkages. In this exhibition, which Finneran is creating especially for the Thompson Gallery, she will create a landscape of curves, geometric forms, and contrasting dots of colors. The work is about time – slow time. She explains, “Looking to nature and natural process my sculptures are always about change and the possibility of transformation. The forms are constructed slowly on site, curve by curve, a performance resulting in a temporary landscape of contrasting color and form. I create a temporary composition and relationship between the forms, colors, light, and the space.” With Polka Dot Plateau, Finneran will work with contrasting forms and colors to create a polka-dotted landscape within the gallery.

Finneran has said that she finds constructing the intricate works “repetitive and meditative” but not tedious. Coming out of a theatre background, she responds to the “absolute possibility of transformation” that these built-up works provide: “Both [theatre and creating a site-specific installation] are about arriving in an empty space and putting something together for a limited period of time. And in both, you have a sense that you’re not totally in control. I think that’s a wonderful thing.”

Finneran studied at Goucher College, the University of Michigan, the Museum School run by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She has had several solo exhibitions on the West Coast and beyond, and her work is in the collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO, and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others.

In conjunction with the opening of this exhibition, Bean Finneran will lecture on her work April 17 from 5 – 6 pm in Art #133. This presentation and the following opening reception are free and open to the public.

Jo Farb Hernández, Professor and Director
Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery