Born in Connecticut, Ms. Robushi relocated to California in 1985 and received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. She works out of her San Francisco studio at Hunter’s Point Shipyard, an artists’ colony of over 250 artists, where she has been based since 1989.

Retrospective 4 is a great opportunity to overview the entire 2011 year at Inclusions. The show is a mix of new and revisited work from each featured artist. Highlights include: Nordic 5-Voyages of Discovery, featuring: Colette Crutcher, Ellen Faris, Marc Ellen Hamel. The Landscape Within, featuring: Thea Schrack. Five Now, featuring: Paul Moshammer, Monique Casteaux & Hideo Yoshida. Works in Collage featuring: Mark Faigenbaum and David King. Wax featuring: Jenny Phillips and Larraine Seidan. From The Road, experiments in ultra large format photography featuring: Darren Samuelson. Deja View, a second look at SF, featuring: Rich Nyhagen. Additional works from Peter Arvidson, Kim Smith and Deborah Caperton.

The forms and textures inherent in natural objects often inspire the work of, Bernal Heights artist and jewelery designer, Deborah Caperton.

In her jewelry designs inspiration is found in the minute detail of things that are commonly overlooked such as the fragements of plants, seeds, pods and leaves. By incorporating magnifying lenses she adds emphasis to reveal the object’s subtle beauty. In other pieces she invents new species of flora from wax castings and fabrications in Silver and Gold.

The work in her Copper Botanical Collection can be used to decorate tabletops, placed in a vase or hung on a wall. Each starts as an individually selected botanical specimen, such as a picked and dried poppy. Its essential form is preserved within a thick layer of copper. Various patinas enhance the unique qualities of each piece and bring out the metal’s broad palette of color. The final product is an everlasting treasure.

Deborah began selling her jewelry in 1987. In 1989, she earned a BFA in Jewelry and Light Metals, with a minor in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design. Since then, she has lived and worked in Northern California. Currently Deborah’s jewelry, objects and assemblages are being shown in galleries and stores nationally. She teaches at The Richmond Art Center in Richmond, California and at San Francisco State University.

ARTIST RECEPTION:  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 / 6-8 PM

Bernal Heights resident, Rich Nyhagen has successfully shown a number of photographic, screen-printed, assemblages at Inclusions Gallery. The assemblages are  based on an  image series of San Francisco’s urban landscape.  Nyhagen’s process involves screen-printing photographic images directly onto thick plexiglass, which can be one large sheet or several smaller sections pieced together.  The printed plexi is then riveted onto a wooden base that is often layered with colored under painting, screen printing and drawing.  The result is graphic, smooth and clean, while maintaining a sense of urban grit.  Nyhagen will be introducing a new group of larger scaled works as well as revisiting some familiar themes for his first solo exhibit at Inclusions Gallery.

Richard Nyhagen has been living and working in San Francisco since 1987.  He received his MFA in Printmaking from San Francisco State University in May, 1995.  He currently teaches screen-printing at City College of San Francisco, Ft. Mason Campus, and at the Mission Cultural Center located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

“The urban landscape is a vast, shifting plane of rapidly changing images, events, and ideas.  The mind takes in what it can and attempts to piece together a coherent narrative.   My work is about perception, and construction of the stories we tell ourselves and others in an attempt to define and know our experience.  But the map is never the territory and the illusion of something solid and real, sooner or later gives way to something more transparent and changing.”     -Rich Nyhagen

Photo of Darren by Tom Genoni

Reception:  Saturday July 16 | 6-8pm

Inclusions is pleased to present new encaustic paintings by San Francisco artists Jenny Phillips and Larraine Seiden.

Jenny Phillips has been painting and print making for 30 years.  In this new series of paintings she centers on feeling, rather than ideology. Drawn to quietness, subtlety and understatement, her work evokes the mood and luminosity that costal light and organic form inspire. Using the interplay of line work and texture she successfully strikes a balance of simplicity, expression and the rich sensory qualities of encaustic wax. Jenny grew up in the northeast.  Having spent her formative years at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,  the combination of theater, dance and music, continue to inform her work.  She is a graphic designer by trade and has worked with a number of design firms before settling in San Francisco where she’s launched her own studio.  She works and lives in Bernal Heights with her husband and two children.

Larraine Seiden uses the thick physicality of encaustic paint to explore experiences of inner and external place.  In this new series, Sensate of Place, she projects an emotional terrain onto the constructed world.  While the human figure is not immediately apparent, it is implied in the encaustic surfaces that she sees as skin.  Lines are built up and stretched by pressing fabric pieces into thick layers of wax pigment.  The undulating impressions suggest cityscapes, calendars, and maps that reflect the subjective nature of time and place.   Viewed together, the paintings are like a walking meditation on how we are marked by the spaces we inhabit and in turn mark/make them.  Larraine grew up in Pennsylvania where the fine craft of quilts and the town’s historic center made their lifelong impression.  She received her M.S. in Art and Design Education from Pratt after earning her B.A. in Studio Art from California State University.  She has taught art at the K-12 level and to adults in the Bay Area, Oaxaca City in Mexico and New York City.  Recently Larraine has worked with Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and her son Brian Bomeisler.  She is one of the very few certified to teach Betty Edward’s method.  Larraine is inspired by her husband, two little boys and by their city of San Francisco.  She exhibits her work in the Bay Area and throughout the United States.

Owen McInerney has always been interested in making things with his hands. From an early age, in Ireland, where he was born and raised, he won school prizes for his work in silver wire jewelry. His designs are unique and are influenced by what he see around him in the everyday. Most of it is influenced by nature, above ground, in the skies and below the seas. Urban centers and architecture also play a significant role in what he makes. Shape, color, texture, content, material composition and position, are all important, whether it’s a tall building or a tiny pebble on the beach.  Owen attended San Francisco State University where he learned the basics with Julia Turner, taken various workshops at California College of Arts and Crafts and is a regular at Scinilliant Studios

Come meet Owen and see the wonderful collection he will be presenting. During the Trunk Show Inclusions will be offering 15% off of Owen’s entire “in house” collection.  If you’ve been an admirer of his work, this is the optimal time to acquire one of his pieces.

MAY 14 – JUNE 19 2011

Reception:  Saturday May 14 / 6-8 pm

David King’s work explores his profound interest in the metaphysical – the underlying or fundamental interconnectedness of things.  In his abstract work, it is difficult to determine if the forms are to be read a microcosmic or macrocosmic; are we looking at a cell cluster or a planetary body?  His narrative pieces are created to be visually beautiful, intellectually stimulating, and sometimes humorous.  All of his collages are constructed in the traditional, cut-and-paste method and have an obsessive attention to detail.