Shawn “Beats” Grigsby. Untitled, mixed media on canvas. 20 x 20”
Inner Symbols
Curated by Lisa Núñez-Hancock
September 22 - November 10, 2024
Opening Sunday September 22, 2-5pm
Featuring artwork by Shawn “Beats” Grigsby, Debra Logan, James Mosher, Leslie Pascal, and Frank Gillett — artists working at The Arc-Solano in Vallejo.
Village Window
1503 Tennessee Street
Vallejo, CA 94590
Symbols are a common thread connecting these works by artists from Arc-Solano, a non-profit center in Vallejo for individuals with disabilities.
Humans have worked in symbols from pre-historic times, in cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphs and pre-Columbian and Mayan glyphs, to contemporary urban graffiti. Symbols throughout history have been a way of communicating across cultures and outside of verbal language.
Symbols can be abstract and non-referential, as in the work entitled Butterflies by Frank Gillett or representational in the work of Debra Logan where we immediately identify the imagery of a cactus, cherries and a moon/face. Although we can identify these representational images they remain personal to the artist and mysterious to the viewer, and therein hold their intrigue and attraction as an expression of an idiosyncratic interior visual language.
I’ve entitled this adjunct exhibit at Personal Space - Inner Symbols. Some symbols in these works translate as easily identifiable images, in the case of musical notes and the outline of instruments in Shawn Grigsby’s work. Others, while considered abstract, are universally archetypal as with the circular maze/ mandala painting, imagery which evokes ancient Finnish bronze age stone mazes, Copernicus’ sun centered universe, and modern Jungian descriptions and ideations of the self.
Color is also symbolic. Color has different interpretations across cultures. We may generalize the meaning of color in Western society, but it may have a completely different interpretation in a non-western cultural context. Color too can hold personal meaning and interpretation. Color as well as symbols, become another visual language to communicate archetypal ideas as well as feelings and personal meaning.
I invite the viewer to explore these art works and see what symbols speak to them as a viewer.
~ Lisa Núñez-Hancock
Further Reading:
L’Art brut préféré aux arts culturels - Manifesto, Jean Dubuffet 1947
Symbolism in the Visual Arts - Aniela Jaffé
The Museum of Everything Conversation with Matthew Higgs/James Brett
Exhibition #4
Man and His Symbols - Carl Jung
Bio
Lisa Núñez-Hancock, a self described “natural food chef”, is a culinary arts instructor, writer and food activist living in Northern California. Born in Los Angeles she attended UC Berkeley, Naropa Institute and also studied in Paris, France. Over the years work has taken her to New York, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles and Mexico City.
She has been a collector and advocate of the arts for decades, collecting in a controversial genre, which she now likes to refer to as the “inclusive movement”. Lisa thanks Personal Space for the opportunity to lend her “eye” in curating works by artists from Arc-Solano in Vallejo.