LAURA CORALLO-TITUS
Paintings
CINDY STOKES
Installation & sculptural photographs
ARMINÉE CHAHBAZIAN
Works on paper & sculpture
In The Studio, July 21 through August 28, 2022
Gallery Hours
Thursdays–Saturdays | 10 am–4 pm
Sundays 12–4 pm
We ignore climate change and its impact on life and environment at our own peril. In this exhibition, three artists use innovative techniques in drawing, painting, photography and sculpture to speak to various aspects of the climate crisis and the relationship between humans and the natural world.
Laura Corallo-Titus presents multi-media paintings addressing the manner in which the historic expectations of landscape painting have been hijacked by a more chaotic and disrupted visual conclusion. Using sculptural photographs and charcoal drawing, Cindy Stokes’s installation and wall sculpture urge one to contemplate the now ever-present threat of wildfire while acknowledging our dependence on and enjoyment of fire’s domesticated form. Inspired by observations of natural phenomena, Arminée Chahbazian creates large multi-media imagery on paper to explore how recent environmental shifts modulate our desires for nature’s beauty and drama, leading to a sense of displacement; her stone sculpture compositions retain primal memory while offering narratives that shift with time, light and orientation, just as our own relationship to the earth does.
The thread tying these artists’ work together is an intentional examination of humankind’s evolving perceptions about our place on and responsibility for the planet.
Laura Corallo-Titus received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 1990. Her painting practice revolves around ideas associated with climate and changing perceptions towards land and nature and how it is depicted. Her work has been included in group shows nationally and throughout California and she has also had solo exhibits at San Jose City College Art Gallery, Chappellet Winery, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Sanchez Art Center, Acumen Gallery and Tapir Gallery in Berlin in the past decade.
Her work is in public collections such as Monterey Museum, Brand Library and Art Galleries, Crocker Museum, Hewlett Packard and Chappellet Winery. She lives and works in Napa, CA.
Cindy Stokes is a photographer and paper sculptor based in Redwood City, California. She primarily makes abstract black-and-white photographs and sculptural forms that play with ideas of order and chaos and reflect life’s ambiguities better than representational styles. Stokes’ artwork is driven by her view of the world as highly complex and nuanced, a view reinforced by her career in biomedical research that repeatedly demonstrated how intricate and seemingly unfathomable the human body, and all of nature, is. She is a keen observer of the world and creates artwork informed by a deep love of the natural world, curiosity about human behavior, and her knowledge in science and engineering.
Stokes’ interest in visual art began during countless hours viewing and photographing cells through the microscope in graduate school. Over time, photography became a means to explore and express broader ideas, emotion, and story. More recently, Stokes began working with three-dimensional forms and additional materials – shaping photographs into sculptural objects, mark-making with ink, charcoal or paint, and incorporating conceptually related materials – as well as making art installations.
Stokes has exhibited nationally and internationally and been featured at Leonardo art-science programs and Shooting the West.
Arminée Chahbazian has been a practicing visual artist for the past 38 years. She earned her MFA from Yale University, and her BA from Scripps College. Born in Colorado, she has been based in Northern California for over 22 years – this follows influential years spent living and working in France and in the eastern US.
Arminée’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions along both coasts of the US, as well as in France and Holland; most recent shows have been focused in the Los Angeles area at the Brand Art Center and Lois Lambert Gallery, as well as the San Francisco Bay area in such venues as the Napa Valley Museum, Sonoma Valley Museum and Sofie Contemporary Art. Her widely ranging work has been added regularly to many private collections.
Her work as a sculptor continues to inform the process behind her works on paper; composition, form, color and texture evolve through an experimental immersion in the physicality of materials. Through monochromatic and carefully layered presentations, Arminée’s slow-paced narratives inspire quiet contemplation, illuminate changing realities and give voice to the alteration of planet earth.
