Read Spunk Program - California Shakespeare Theater

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BAR SHACTERMAN works in BY PUBLICATIONS MANAGER STEFANIE KALEM The eighth annual incarnation of our popular Works in Nature sculpture installation is the largest ever offered at Cal Shakes, featuring the works of a record 12 individual artists, all working in ceramics. This year’s exhibit was curated especially for Cal Shakes by Oaklandbased artist John Toki, Cal Shakes Board Member Sharon Simpson, and Mission Clay’s Bryan Vansell. THE ORACLE BY MICHELLE GREGOR This year’s exhibit features a number of striking busts and fi gures. “Just yesterday,” Toki recalled just before the show was installed, “we were loading the Wanxin sculpture on my truck at the Richmond Art Center, and a lady walking by starting commenting on the life-size fi gure. Then, we went to pick up Michelle Gregor’s nearly four-foot-high, beautiful sculpted head. A couple walking by, on the other side of the street, just stopped and watched us load the piece for 10 minutes. Does this tell you about the power of the fi gure? Their fi gures!?” The pieces he’s referring to are Mask, a haunting, six-foottall masked man by Wanxin Zhang that stands on the northwest end of the Sue & George Bruns Plaza’s row of pistachio trees; and The Oracle, Michelle Gregor’s close-eyed bust installed at the trees’ northeast perimeter. WORKS IN NATURE 2012 TOM FRANCO Giant JON GARIEPY What Seems to be the Problem? Thou Art But Air 22 california shakespeare theater www.calshakes.org WANXIN ZHANG Wanxin Zhang came to the U.S. in 1992, having established himself as a sculptor in his native China. He received an MFA from the Academy of Art University in 1996, and is now a working artist and educator in the Bay Area. He was a fi rstplace recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant in 2006, and the Joan Mitchell Grant in 2004; and his work has been seen in solo shows at the University of Wyoming Art Museum, the Fresno Art Museum, and the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art in Michigan. About Zhang’s recent show at the Richmond Art Center, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker wrote, “he long ago mastered ceramic techniques and began applying them to building life-size fi gures with elaborate, ambiguous, often comic details.” Many of his sculptures, Baker continued, “evoke the terra-cotta army of MICHELLE GREGOR The Oracle WES HORN Salmon Trout SUSANNAH ISRAEL Channel Circus MARK MESSENGER Praise of Folly
nature guardians buried with the First Qin Dynasty emperor in the third century B. C.” Michelle Gregor holds a BFA from UC Santa Cruz and MFA from SFSU; she currently heads the Ceramic Department at San Jose City College. You can fi nd her architectural sculpture outside of San Francisco’s Olympic Club and inside the Spa at Pebble Beach, and her fi gurative sculptures in bronze and ceramic are in the homes, offi ces, and gardens of private collectors. In late July, Gregor and Susannah Israel (who has two pieces in this season’s Works in Nature) will create a collaborative fi gurative sculpture in one week at Sierra Nevada College (Incline Village, NV). On the southwest end of the plaza’s pistachios, a more whimsical fi gure stands eight feet high—Giant, by young Palo Alto native (and East Bay resident) LISA REINERTSON Polar Bear/Slip Sliding Away Day at the Beach BAR SCHACTERMAN Baal PATRICK SILER A Saxophone on the Sea Bed AL SINERCO calmTiki Tom Franco. Giant’s materials include found objects, as with most of Franco’s sculptural work, a constant comment on the modern era’s pervasive consumer culture. Franco, too, got his BFA from UC Santa Cruz, and earned and MFA in ceramics fi ne arts from CCA. He is the co-creator and sole director of the Firehouse Art Collective—comprising six locations in the San Francisco Bay Area that include three galleries, three micro store fronts and a bazaar, four groups of studio space, and two groups of shared apartments—and his most recent project is the collaborative incubator Tom Franco Co-Lab. Perhaps the most striking of this year’s fi gurative works is Baal, which can be found at the top of the Amphitheater, by our chair rental station. The piece, by Russian-born artist Bar Shacterman, JOHN TOKI Blue Memory Spring Majesty WANXIN ZHANG Mask TOM FRANCO stands just over four feet high and is part of his “Mythology” series, which depicts god, humans, and supernatural heroes from a wide variety of sacred texts—“Ba’al” has had many meanings throughout the ages, just one of which, in Judaism, began as “God,” but later came to represent a false deity. Shacterman was born in Odessa, but immigrated to Israel when he was six years old. He trained at the Academy of Art in Tel Aviv, then traveled through Europe, India, and an apprenticeship in Japan before settling in Northern <strong>California</strong>. The full list of pieces in 2012’s Works in Nature exhibition can be found below. You’ll find a map of all the sculptures and other details to the left of the path near the entrance to the plaza, and more information about the rest of the artists in subsequent 2012 show programs. More information about this year’s installation can be found online at calshakes.org/WorksinNature. encoreartsprograms.com 23
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Page 3 and 4: We’re proud to announce our upcom
Page 5 and 6: PHOTO BY KEVIN BERNE FROM THE ARTIS
Page 7 and 8: Triangle Lab Activities at the Brun
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Page 13 and 14: CALifOrNiA SHAKESPEArE tHEAtEr eXec
Page 15 and 16: THREE ENCOUNTERS WITH WHEN Zora Nea
Page 17 and 18: Spunk takes us from the rural South
Page 19 and 20: COMING NEXT AUG 8-SEP 2 HAIL TO THE
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Page 27 and 28: YOrK KENNEDY (Lighting Designer) Mr
Page 29 and 30: EBECCA NOViCK (Triangle Lab Directo
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Page 33 and 34: All listings current as of June 20,
Page 35 and 36: WHO’S WHO continued from page 29

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